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Classical Concert chat...

On the coach again - matinée concert today :)

...and the CBSO under Eduardo Strausser (a young Brazilian conductor to keep an eye on) really delivered again - stunning playing.

Cedric Tiberghien was soloist in the Emperor concerto. Very good, and strewth is he tall... Strausser had to stand on the podium to look him in the eye!

In Prokofiev 5 my favourite moment, clearly visible from the Choir seats, was when the young woman in the percussion section warmed up gong and tam-tam, positioned behind her, and then hit both at once :eek:
 
Thomas Sondergaard conducting the RSNO at the Usher Hall last night..... Totally packed for the first time in years. Remarkably cough-free audience for once!

First - Lisa Robertson's am fìor-eun - winner of the RSNO's Composer's Hub competition, this was a too-short piece inspired by the eagles flying near her home in the Western Highlands. I wish it had been longer! Quite good. I hope to live long enough to hear at least her first 5 symphonies.
more info here - https://www.rsno.org.uk/rsno-announ...s chosen,this year's Composers' Hub programme.

Second - Beethoven's Emperor Concerto - with Francesco Piemontesi. Wow...splendid. Just brilliant performance. Not sure what the encore was - I think something by Liszt, if not then maybe one of Chopin's wilder pieces.

After the Interval.... Brahms 4th Symphony. I stopped my own survey of Brahms 4 recordings a couple of weeks ago just to give myself room to appreciate this performance. It was very good, but not perfect. The tempos were swift and flowing, as I like it. But I felt that it showed rehearsal might have mainly gone on the new piece and the Beethoven concerto, as there were a few dodgy entrances from the wind and brass. Also there was sometimes the risk of being overwhelmed by thick strings (always a risk with Brahms). However, overall it was an excellent satisfying performance. I still think Sondergaard is the RSNO's best ever chief conductor, I've never heard a less than superb concert when he has been in charge.
 
Bit of a nightmare getting to Symphony Hall tonight - my coach, one of two going from Shrewsbury for this event, made it with 13 minutes in hand - but a good concert: the terrific Alexandre Kantorow in Tchaikovsky's more virtuosic Second piano concerto, and then The Planets. CBSO not quite as on song as last week, but the two timpanists were perfect (I once played Timp.2 in the Planets, the greatest performing experience of my life).

Journey home going straightforwardly, thank heavens... I've had enough excitement for one night :)
 
Saw Mitsuko Uchida at the RFH yesterday. I’m very much a classical novice, so can’t provide any useful review, other than to say I greatly enjoyed it. Have vowed to go to more concerts this year.
 
Also, and adding to the conversation above, the noise management required certainly takes some getting used to. At one point I scratched my chin, and was very aware of the sound of nail on stubble. In a space where you can clearly hear the musicians turning their scores (and I was up in the Gods) I really didn’t want to be ‘that guy’.

The other interesting thing for me, was how much the sound showed up my (or any I’ve heard) hifi. The gap between live and recorded is vast. Complete lack of stereo imaging, yet absolutely effortless dynamics.
 
CTank said:
...The gap between live and recorded is vast. Complete lack of stereo imaging, yet absolutely effortless dynamics.
Click to expand...
Yup. This is why I like omnidirectional speakers - they don't do that "holographic imaging" thing, and consequently are much more realistic for classical music in a domestic setting than straight-at-you speakers.

As for noise management... I wish that more people appreciated that an old-fashioned handkerchief, applied at the right time, makes a huge difference to the audibility of a cough.
 
At the Usher Hall again today: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with local boy done good Donald Runnicles: Mahler's 9th Symphony.

I had swithered about going because frankly its a symphony that I have overdosed on and heard too many times, and I have too many recording of.... and when I try to listen to it nowadays it just does not have the impact that it should. Not like when I heard it for the very first time, John Barbirolli's legendary recording with the Berlin Phil. That was 32 years ago now and I can still remember how it turned me over. It hasn't done that for me for a while.

So I only decided to go to this concert a few days previously, with the result that the best seat I could get was up in the Upper Circle where I have not sat for nearly 30 years! But the view was excellent and while the Orchestra was a bit further away than ideal, the sound was excellent too.

But never mind that, the performance: Awesome.

Everything was just perfectly judged throughout. Tempos spot on, not laborious but flowing, wonderful solos from the orchestra. It was superb. By the end I was welling up.

And miracle of miracles..... through that long quiet closing of the final movement the ending came in stillness. Runnicles held the audience in silence and no applause started until he finally let his baton drop. Well done Usher Hall.
 
I'm glad to read your post, Alan, because I have Thursday's R3 broadcast from Glasgow lined up for listening.

Mahler 9 is the one symphony of his that I simply do not understand. I don't know why... 10 is no problem. I am determined to crack it, so am on a campaign of listening to lots of different versions. Some have left me cold, others put me to sleep... but a few (Blomstedt, Barbirolli) have given a glimpse of what is there. Maybe Runnicles holds the key, and then...

Or if not him then perhaps Wyn Morris, or Abbado, or Rattle...
 
I've got Mahler's ninth on blu ray performed by Abbado-Lucerne FO and the quiet closing at the end is spellbinding. I mean, it's like the entire audience is completely enchanted and nobody wants to be the first person to break the spell. Well worth a watch just to see the epic pause before the audience finally does applaud.

 
That is a stunning performance. Mahler 9's orchestration sometimes can sound a bit strident on record, Abbado gets a wonderfully warm and human sound from the Lucerne lot.
 
Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah. Daniele Gatti, Academia Santa Cecilia last weekend
soprano Marlis Petersen
contralto Michèle Losier
tenor Bernard Richter
baritone Jordan Shanahan (Elijah)
Beautiful writing for orchestra and voices and beautifully turned by this group of soloists, choir and orchestra under Gatti. A spiritual sense to the performance I wasn’t expecting.

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You wait more than 35 years for some minimalist opera to return, then two come along at once. Catching the train to get back for Akhnaten. Nixon brings together Renee Fleming, Thomas Hampson and Gustavo Dudamel!

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gingermrkettle said:
That is a stunning performance. Mahler 9's orchestration sometimes can sound a bit strident on record, Abbado gets a wonderfully warm and human sound from the Lucerne lot.
Click to expand...
I've bought the Abbado/Lucerne DVD, which seems to be downright legendary...

We don't use a TV, so I ripped/demuxed the audio today (strewth, what a performance doing that is) to 16/48 FLAC and it's in the listening queue for the main system along with the others :)
 
TheDecameron said:
...Nixon brings together Renee Fleming, Thomas Hampson and Gustavo Dudamel!
Click to expand...
Wow, that sounds fantastic...

Since trains actually work for you, I'm guessing that you live in continental Europe? Long distance train travel ceased to be a pleasure here in the UK a long time ago - along with all the other things that don't work properly any more :(
 
I was lucky enough to see the Scottish Opera production of Nixon In China just before lockdown in 2020... the final scenes were especially superb where the main characters all question their place in history while images of the events they were implicated in and responsible for are projected onto a rotating cube. It was haunting to say the least.
 
On the coach home from tonight's CBSO concert and going like the clappers so won't have time to say much... except that it was thoroughly enjoyable. Isata K-M may not have the steeliest fingers but brought real poetry to the slower sections of Prokofiev's 3rd concerto... and it is impossible not to feel fired up by Sibelius 5, on which Ilan Volkov and the orchestra did an excellent job :)

Hear for yourself on BBC Sounds - it was tonight's Radio 3 concert.
 
Yesterday at the Wigmore Hall -
Leonidas Kavakos & Enrico Pace
Violin Sonatas by Beethoven, Bartok, Ravel & Franck
A full hall & rapturous applause.
 
On the way home from The Dream of Gerontius at Symphony Hall... and it was fantastic. Conductor Ryan Wigglesworth was a late substitute for the unwell Sir Andrew Davis and did a terrific job, no doubt hugely helped by building on CBSO Chorus master Simon Halsey's foundation of work with the chorus.
Tenor Brenden Gunnell was superb - sounding almost frail at times in Part 1, as is entirely appropriate for a dying man... but with no shortage of ringing tone when it was called for.

Orchestra in absolutely top form again... Chorus world class, as always.

No time for more comment - approaching first drop-off in Wellington - but it was a great, great night out. I cannot imagine Gerontius being done better anywhere in the world.
 
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Heading home from Paul Lewis playing three Schubert sonatas (D840, D664 and D845) at Birmingham Town Hall. Not an easy place to get close to with a 53-seater coach!

PL is definitely the inheritor of Brendel's mantle - there is a sense of simple rightness about each phrase, as though it could not be played any other way. I could see his hands clearly... and the Town Hall acoustic is great. A very satisfying recital.

Out again tomorrow - Vilde Frang and Mirga G-T in Elgar and Schumann. And an easy coach journey :)
 
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