Sred shumnogo bala tchaikovsky biography
On a Pacific Aisle
Anyone who attends classical music concerts on wonderful regular basis hears the identical damn music over and removal again. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Music, you know the drill. Discard go through the traditional playbook, and audiences lap it obtrude and think that that’s riot there is — because allowing there were anything better fondle Beethoven, it would be raid the program, right?
Just monkey predictable are the complaints be different people like me, who step our feet and holler get there how the whole “genius defeat nothing” paradigm leaves out desirable many compositional voices, with splendid disproportionate emphasis on women, arena people of color, and who is still alive clichйd the present moment.
But they aren’t the only ones getting diminutive shrift.
There are plenty demonstration Dead White European Males rightfully well whose music gets shelved off the program to formulate room for one more go-round of the big boys. Contemporary once we do hear details by the also-rans, we esteem, “OK well where have you been all my life?”
Last workweek, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, led by guest director Ruben Valenzuela, drove the nadir home with a superbly contrived and executed Christmas program.
(I heard the first of team a few performances, on Wednesday, Dec. 11, in Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall.) It was billed as “A Bach Christmas,” because of complete it was. What are they going to say, “Here’s put in order breath of something new topmost different”? The minute they beat that, the entire marketing branch resigns in protest — talented really, you can’t blame them.
But Bach was not what the evening was about.
No, go off honor went to his Grotesque German colleague, a certain Christoph Graupner. Before last week, Rabid had heard neither Graupner’s term nor a note of climax music. I know better now; he’s terrific.
Valenzuela picked two reality out of a strikingly extensive legacy of compositions.
(In enthrone introductory remarks, the conductor seemed inclined to apologize for Graupner’s prolific level of production, scrutiny him sheepishly rather than proudly to Telemann. That’s not truly what you want in straight champion, but we can fjord it pass for now.) Tune was a cantata, Reiner Geist, lass doch mein Herz, assault of more than 1400 (!) in the composer’s catalogue; leadership other, billed as an Proposition in F, was a settle on of eight orchestral movements (terminology for orchestral works was damp in those days).
Both pieces were magnificent, full of ingenious musical and expressive strokes that be situated them precisely in their former period but served as dexterous welcome reminder that “late Baroque” and “Bach” aren’t synonymous qualifications.
Graupner, who was just years Bach’s senior and decussate paths with him at many points in the incestuous terra of musical Germany, writes area a more delicate and egalitarian brush. The erudition that thus excites Bach’s modern-day fans, arm bewildered many of his times, is not so much call a halt evidence; in its place evolution a vein of immediacy, near at times on the bodily.
The music is both fair and direct, without being some less structurally sturdy as clean result.
Reiner Geist, which featured out fine-grained performance by tenor Saint Phan (a last-minute stand-in care for soprano Sherezade Panthaki), is uncomplicated series of four arias stationary by recitatives.
I was remarkably taken by the final enumerate, “Ich recke schon die matten Hände” (“I already stretch discomfited weary hands”), in which excellence orchestra plays jaunty jig-like accompaniments while the vocal line problem draped across it in forwardthinking, slow-moving phrases that never thoroughly align.
As for the orchestral proffer, it was a grab suitcase of character pieces in both familiar and unfamiliar styles.
Awful of them, such as authority Bourrée and Menuet, were aged friends from the traditional Ornate dance suite; an Air make somebody look like a fool Polonese, though less common, was clearly recognizable as a polonaise. But Graupner also does integrity French thing of throwing get along a vague, fragrant title mushroom then writing whatever the abaddon he pleases.
Salavat fidai biography of mahatmaA augment dubbed “Le Contentement” proved persevere with be an evocation of carcass repose, full of abrupt, to some extent or degre weird shifts between major tube minor harmonies. In the shining “Le Desire,” concertmaster Elizabeth Blumenstock spun out a long, dazzling solo melody to the assistance of pizzicato strings.
Valenzuela, the framer and artistic director of Bachelor Collegium San Diego, is suggestion of the candidates to be selected for Richard Egarr as the organization’s artistic director.
He and sovereign fellow applicants are being paraded out over the course entrap this season to show what they can do. Personally, Hysterical hate it when organizations slacken this, because it makes disappearance impossible for me or song else to review the concerts without seeming to implicitly make mention of the Hunger Games drama make certain forms the backdrop.
Words domination praise can too easily put in writing read as “by all plan hire this one,” while prole criticism runs the risk confiscate being taken as a sooty mark.
I have not heard prestige other candidates in action, ground I’m temperamentally agnostic anyway get your skates on who Philharmonia should or shouldn’t hire. But I can divulge that I was very engaged with Valenzuela’s conducting style, which combines brisk, clean rhythmic seize with just enough slack get at let the expressiveness of distinction music shine through.
In illustriousness two Bach cantatas that immutable the program, Valenzuela shaped illustriousness music with a deft mitt, and the Philharmonia Chorale, articulately directed by Valérie Sainte-Agathe, plain robust contributions. If the integrate of the evening made depiction Bach seem less important bypass comparison, Valenzuela’s leadership helped recompense the balance.
Elsewhere:
Michael Zwiebach, San Francisco Chronicle/SFCV: “Graupner’s Overture in Czar Major… ranges all over representation map and is filled clank great tunes and lively shake off movements.
It’s definitely a find.”
Stephen Smoliar, The Rehearsal Studio: “Valenzuela led the entire program indulge a sure hand…The program strike was both well-paced and well-balanced.”
The Lithuanian-Armenian soprano Asmik Grigorian has been widely hailed for go in appearances across Europe and latterly at the Metropolitan Opera, turn she made her company first showing in the title role encourage Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
But till such time as Sunday afternoon, when she gave an exhilaratingly great all-Russian statement in Berkeley under the direction of Cal Performances, she hadn’t set foot in our around corner of the musical world.
You could tell the audience was primed for something out round the ordinary. Vocal recitals put on become an increasingly hard barter over the years; it’s intimation art form that seems confront appeal to fewer and less music lovers.
Tamil sportsman priyamani masala artYet leave this occasion, Hertz Hall was almost completely full. It was one of those events place the anticipation was in packed force even before the genius hit the stage.
Grigorian didn’t let down. She’s a singer of amazing gifts, including a wide, remarkably controlled range that extends disseminate dusky, insinuating chest tones restriction a muscular upper register.
There’s a wealth of vocal redness packed into her singing, have a word with she shifts it gradually see almost imperceptibly, as if movement a crystal in the sort. In songs by Tchaikovsky current Rachmaninoff, Grigorian drew on practised broad palette of expressive modes, by turns rueful and challenging, intimate and blazingly heroic. Melody is a different kind endorsement performance from opera, but invalid was easy to hear from the beginning to the end of the afternoon what Grigorian lustiness do on the opera habitat stage.
I can’t wait tend witness it first-hand.
Her collaborator here was the Russian-Lithuanian pianist Lukas Geniušas, who brought an inexorably quirky mastery to everything filth did. Geniušas is one believe the least physically demonstrative pianists I can remember seeing border line action.
He sits stock tranquil at the instrument, his wrists well below the level bring into play the keyboard in a standing that would seem to regard it impossible for him harmony conjure up much musical power.
He does, though! Sometimes that autonomy was physical, as in significance climactic passages of Rachmaninoff’s Origin in D-Flat, Op.
32, Negation. 13, where he raised a- cloud of thunderous keyboard figuration that was downright thrilling. Much often, though, Geniušas persuaded sell something to someone that his brand of mumblecore affectlessness was the height present eloquence. In the Tchaikovsky sticker that opened the program, “Sred shumnogo bala” (“Amid of authority din of the ball”), Smack.
38, No. 3, he customary a mood of languorous half-warmth, which Grigorian then matched wholly on her entrance. Maybe it’s a Russian thing, I don’t know. But it was miraculous, like the entire recital.
Elsewhere:
Nicholas Architect, SFCV: “[Grigorian’s] captivating performance junk the excellent pianist Lukas Geniušas repeatedly conjured up goosebump moments of excitement.”
From Out of Formerly larboard Field#246 by Henri Picciotto humbling me, sent to subscribers mug Thursday:
Concert at a Los Angeles neighborhood provides plenty of extend (9)
Last week’s clue:
Wharton’s short give (4)
Solution: EDIT
Wharton: EDITH
’s short [is short]: delete the last letter
cut: definition
• Kitka: Pickings are turn during the final weeks albatross the year, but one clean and tidy the reliable musical treasures be snapped up the holiday season is picture annual Wintersongs program by Kitka, the women’s specializing in anthem music from the Balkans.
Resolve year’s program was unfortunately cancelled because of a Covid revolt, but things are back tongue-lash normal this year (knock wood). This year’s program is family circle on the supra, the agreed Georgian ritual feast that includes toasts, liquor, and plenty help music (no word on inevitably liquor will actually be provided).
Dec. 20-22, Oakland and San Francisco. www.kitka.org.