Atypical Romantic

The BSO, under the baton of visiting French conductor, Stéphane Denève, harnessed this whirling beast with great aplomb, taking us for a lovely hurl towards the edge of Viennese culture — as seen by the French composer. I’ve never heard a more genuinely- paced rendition.

“The impression of fantastic and fatal whirling” — this is what Maurice Ravel had to say of composing La Valse in 1919. That’s all that remained after he’d first envisioned La Valse — the tone poem — back in 1906. What intervened? Only the cataclysm of World War I.

Imagine yourself, asking a lovely partner of the opposite sex to waltz, to step — while turning — with a leg directly between your own. Chances are, you’d get drunk first. Just like you do before you go out to bump and grind. Denève offered a most drunkenly-divine slowness to start this unholy ballroom dervish. There’s a flash of percussion promise, a swish of skirt riot from the woodwinds before the strings take up. Best of all, as this turbine cranked up to full devilry, the cellos were raw and randy. There was almost a Latin-like squaring off with the two string sections as things got steamy.

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MP3: Shostakovich – Symphony No. 5 – Iv. Allegro Non Troppo by Bernstein & the NY Phil

In 2008, the Brit music mag Gramaphone ranked the top-world orchestras with the help of critics and musicians. We could, of course, head to Amsterdam, Berlin, or Vienna to capture the best of the best, but our home turf is rich. Here’s my take on performances that will bring the 2008-2009 season to a wondrous, raucous close.

1. Chicago Symphony Orchestra (pictured right)

We read excellent things about the CSO’s brass, which is, at times Baltimore’s Achilles’ heel.  In Chicago, immerse yourself in contemporary classical. See the noble father-and-sometime-bully, Pierre Boulez conduct a unique “American” homage: the work of Stravinsky who expatriated to Cali, Edgard Varèse, French transplant to New York, and Elliot Carter — the true American centenarian — born on Dec. 11, 1908.  Celebrations and new compositions are being mounted everywhere.

This Carter-champion, Boulez, himself is 83, so witness this living master while the getting is still good: Feb. 26th – Mar. 3rd.

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Cavani String Quartet is a rare all-female ensemble. Going strong for 25 years, they don’t overwork the red evening gowns or blow-dried curls. Instead, they dart bows with accuracy and elegance, indulging in much sul ponticello.

With Cavani, the Candlelight Concert series of Columbia, MD strutted out with some daring — before garnishing with usual string quartet fare: a Mendelssohn takeaway treat. Read the rest…

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MP3: West Side Story – The Rumble by original Broadway cast

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MP3: West Side Story – Gee, Officer Krupke! by original Broadway cast

Get thee to the National Theater over Christmas — or at least by Jan. 17 — before its sneak preview of Lenny Bernstein’s iconic musical West Side Story heads off to a NYC Broadway revival. This same theater hosted the first shows of WSS back in 1957, and WSS is shaking the theater’s neoclassical foundations again fifty-one years later. Read the rest…

Even if you have a dread allergy to the marimba (as do I), you’d still conclude that the Peabody Percussion Group holds a smashing Sunday soiree at Griswold Hall Hell, even the four-year-old attention span of the kid sitting next to me stilled with rapture. And best of all, the price tag:FREE front row seats.

Yes, battered, dollar-saving twenty-or-thirty-somethings, while the Baltimore Opera Company may falter, Peabody stands ready to accommodate the empty wallet with top-of-the-line taste. Read the rest…

For, despite my mad adoration for the boys in Monument Trio, this Bela-Bartók-ian ho-down goes down as the Best Concert of 2008.

Béla Bartók, with his genius for creating pieces entirely novel in musical language, is sometimes labeled “challenging” or “difficult.” As in WARNING: NOT for the novitiate to the broader spectrum of “The Rest Is Noise” classical.

This concert stamped that notion underfoot in about .5 seconds. Read the rest…

Midori (Wiki) took Strathmore’s stage on Sunday for the Washington Performing Arts Society. Her silk dress smacked of 1930s conservatism: blue chintz pattern and apron collar. She’d forgotten her sheet music, and sent pianist, Robert McDonald, to fetch it. I held my breath, ready for her bowmanship to blow back the folks in the upper tier and smash that dowdy image.

First pitch: Schumann. Read the rest…

Bloodlusting Broad

Last week, I attended the only operatic event you need to see in 2008: Salome @ the Met Opera in NYC. Salacious greed of Biblical proportions makes perfect parallel to today’s vulgarity on Wall Street and Main. Plot-in-brief: Booze, more booze, and a winsome floozy — complete with black-winged angels of death. A voice in the wilderness… One act Opera put on in the midst of “A once-in-a-century credit tsunami.”

Join me in my Dress Circle seat… Read the rest…

To start ringing in the occasion, Marin Alsop (pictured left) led the BSO in a rousing take on Leonard Bernstein’s Jeremiah, Symphony No. 1. After that, she followed it up with Mahler’s first Symphony, affectionately named Titan. In case you think Bernstein was nothing but a show pony for Broadway, think again.

We got Prophecy, Profanation, and a Lamentation from the biblical seer: Jeremiah. – as sung by lovely mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor (pictured far right). First off, Marin cemented us in the context of the work with her “common man” charm; she likened the demise of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians to our present day. The Profanation movement, she said — with the BSO backing her with fierce musical flourish — was like our “ bankers passing off those bad loans.”

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Prolific recitalist, Soheil Nasseri, vowed to perform all Beethoven’s works for piano by 2020. He’s already 28-out-of-32 on the piano sonatas, but, on Thursday, we were treated to “trifles”: Beethoven’s Seven Bagatelles. And he began with Schumann. But then Nasseri warned: “If you have hearing aids, turn them off now.”

Hear that in a concert, and you’re almost guaranteed to be treated to some “sneak preview” premiere. Two works by composer Samir Odeh-Tamimi. Don’t know him? Me neither. He’s a Palestinian Israeli composer calling Berlin’s Avant-Garde home. Accordingly, Nasseri apologized as he sat down: “I hope that not too many of you leave.”

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