Kammermusik
Went to a delightful chamber music concert last night. The Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, playing music by Britten, Bach, and some other contemporary guy, and also Barshai's arrangement of Shostakovich's 8th string quartet for string orchestra. Very well programmed concert actually, and in that regard more fulfilling than the two Philharmonie concerts I've been to (especially Petrouschka & Mahler 1 strikes me as an arbitrary pairing).
The two Britten pieces one the program were his Prelude & Fugue for 18 Strings, to open the concert, and the Lachrymae, reflections on a them of Dowland, for solo Viola and string orchestra. Both quite delightful pieces to hear live, only 3 meters from the stage (with studentenkarte that costed nur 10 euro. Especially the fugue is super fun to watch, with the subject / countersubjects dancing around the orchestra (and the opening of the fugue is great as it unfolds across the orchestra from right to left). The Prelude though, has this tenseness about it that balances well with the glee of the Fugue.
I'd never heard the Lachrymae before, but this was a very cool piece. Much darker than the fugue, obviously, but resonates very fully on both an emotional and intellectual level. Britten maintains this dark, often stressful dissonance through the course of the piece, often breaking down into a more tonal melancholy. You don't actually hear the Dowland theme, open and bare, though, until the very end of the piece. For me, it was almost a retrospective noticing: it wasn't until the last handful of notes that I realized I was suddenly just hearing that theme being played in the solo viola, and after the piece ends, I couldn't help but immediately think back through what I had jsut heard, placing that theme back into the various "reflections."
The Bach viola concerto was well-played, and in the correct key to go along with the rest of the concert, but for me, sadly, so much of Bach's musicfor string orchestra is just so reminiscient of drive-time classical that its hard to hear without vibrations of most-hated auto-commuting. There was also a throw-away modernist piece on the frist half, by a guy named Frank Michael Beyer, who was present in the concert hall. Intersting textures, I suppose, but dense in that kind of way... to trail off a bit, I feel like the piece fit into the concert well, but in general, my reaction is that I think its good that modernist music gets played, since it reminds us that a lot of people wrote that kind of music. It's like all the other Baroque music that isn't Bach and isn't quite as good, but provides a lot of useful context.
As for the Shostakovich, I'm always a bit torn by this arrangement of the quartet. This is the third or fourth time that I've heard the string orchestra version played in concert, and I always end up feeling a bit manipulated by it. There's obviously something very powerful in the piece, and hearing, especially, for example, the 2nd movement, played by a larger group can be almost overwhelming. Although, this time, the entire concert up to that point had me in such a good mood that I just rocked out with it, rather than concerning myself with any stated or unstated emotional context/reaction. Or also, in one of the later movements, where a solo violin holds out its tenuous high note, and a whole group of strings behind it hits their chords, rather than just three other instruments, there's this notion to me of it being a wee bit much.
The string players of the Radio symphony, though, in this concert, played phenomenally. Wonderful sense of ensemble. The chamber musical hall is just as acoustically marvelous as the philharmonic hall. And they really just dug in to their instruments. Across all the concerts I've heard thus far here in Berlin, the string-sound just blows me away. It just sounds more locked in than orchestras in the states. Its got me in a pretty-much full-blown classicay-music-nerd phase... I'm skipping De La Soul w/ Prince Paul tonight in order to save more euros for future classical concerts. Oh well.
The two Britten pieces one the program were his Prelude & Fugue for 18 Strings, to open the concert, and the Lachrymae, reflections on a them of Dowland, for solo Viola and string orchestra. Both quite delightful pieces to hear live, only 3 meters from the stage (with studentenkarte that costed nur 10 euro. Especially the fugue is super fun to watch, with the subject / countersubjects dancing around the orchestra (and the opening of the fugue is great as it unfolds across the orchestra from right to left). The Prelude though, has this tenseness about it that balances well with the glee of the Fugue.
I'd never heard the Lachrymae before, but this was a very cool piece. Much darker than the fugue, obviously, but resonates very fully on both an emotional and intellectual level. Britten maintains this dark, often stressful dissonance through the course of the piece, often breaking down into a more tonal melancholy. You don't actually hear the Dowland theme, open and bare, though, until the very end of the piece. For me, it was almost a retrospective noticing: it wasn't until the last handful of notes that I realized I was suddenly just hearing that theme being played in the solo viola, and after the piece ends, I couldn't help but immediately think back through what I had jsut heard, placing that theme back into the various "reflections."
The Bach viola concerto was well-played, and in the correct key to go along with the rest of the concert, but for me, sadly, so much of Bach's musicfor string orchestra is just so reminiscient of drive-time classical that its hard to hear without vibrations of most-hated auto-commuting. There was also a throw-away modernist piece on the frist half, by a guy named Frank Michael Beyer, who was present in the concert hall. Intersting textures, I suppose, but dense in that kind of way... to trail off a bit, I feel like the piece fit into the concert well, but in general, my reaction is that I think its good that modernist music gets played, since it reminds us that a lot of people wrote that kind of music. It's like all the other Baroque music that isn't Bach and isn't quite as good, but provides a lot of useful context.
As for the Shostakovich, I'm always a bit torn by this arrangement of the quartet. This is the third or fourth time that I've heard the string orchestra version played in concert, and I always end up feeling a bit manipulated by it. There's obviously something very powerful in the piece, and hearing, especially, for example, the 2nd movement, played by a larger group can be almost overwhelming. Although, this time, the entire concert up to that point had me in such a good mood that I just rocked out with it, rather than concerning myself with any stated or unstated emotional context/reaction. Or also, in one of the later movements, where a solo violin holds out its tenuous high note, and a whole group of strings behind it hits their chords, rather than just three other instruments, there's this notion to me of it being a wee bit much.
The string players of the Radio symphony, though, in this concert, played phenomenally. Wonderful sense of ensemble. The chamber musical hall is just as acoustically marvelous as the philharmonic hall. And they really just dug in to their instruments. Across all the concerts I've heard thus far here in Berlin, the string-sound just blows me away. It just sounds more locked in than orchestras in the states. Its got me in a pretty-much full-blown classicay-music-nerd phase... I'm skipping De La Soul w/ Prince Paul tonight in order to save more euros for future classical concerts. Oh well.
2 Comments:
Sounds good. I'm glad you're getting to go to this many classical shows, even if it has to be at the expense of the De La Soul type fare.
One of the not-always-stated joys of live classical music -- one of the first ones I picked up on in high school -- is watching a theme move around the orchestra as different instrumental sections pick it up.
There are decent chamber orchestra arrangements of several of Shostakovich's string quartets (many of them by Barshai) though they all do lose some of that fiery intimacy. That being said, I don't think the orchestrated 8th comes off as that much more extrovert than the quartet is in performance (I tend to rock out more when I'm at a concert than when I'm listening to a recording). Jack and I heard Gidon Kremer and one of his chamber outfits play this at Carnegie Hall (I think) last year, but with a timpani part grafted on, and I thought that was a bit much, especially in the 2nd movement when they were drumming out DSCHes a la the 10th symphony.
I agree about the intimacy, and that is what makes it, in the end, work as a chamber piece as well as just a quartet.
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