Proms
I feel like I should post something today that doesn't involve bizarre doodling.
Hey, it's the middle of August! The BBC is webcasting Proms concerts on the Radio 3 website. Sound quality isn't the greatest, but it's worth listening if there's a concert of interest.
This week you can hear Gustavo Dudamel and the Youth Orchestra of Venezuela lay down a solid Shostakovich Tenth Symphony (or, if that's too cheesy for you, Bernstein and Ginastera on the other half of the program). Pretty amazing. (Review in the Guardian here.)
Also of note, the world premiere performance of John Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony. It's hard to judge without hearing it live -- so much of the quality in Adams's recent music is in the texture and orchestration, its shimmer and resonance -- but geez, this piece sure sounds like a nonstarter: formally and dramatically shapeless, and for close to 40 minutes at that. That concert was earlier today (yesterday, rather, in London); I'm curious what the reviews will say.
For another couple of days, you can still listen to Leila Josefowicz playing Oliver Knussen's Violin Concerto, too. Josefowicz is amazing, and it's good news that she's picked up this piece, which is that rare atonal work that manages to be lyrical and elusive and very subtle. I heard it when the Philly Orchestra brought it to Carnegie Hall in '03, the year it premiered, with Pinchas Zukerman; the orchestral part is mesmerizing, done in deft watercolor-like strokes.
Hey, it's the middle of August! The BBC is webcasting Proms concerts on the Radio 3 website. Sound quality isn't the greatest, but it's worth listening if there's a concert of interest.
This week you can hear Gustavo Dudamel and the Youth Orchestra of Venezuela lay down a solid Shostakovich Tenth Symphony (or, if that's too cheesy for you, Bernstein and Ginastera on the other half of the program). Pretty amazing. (Review in the Guardian here.)
Also of note, the world premiere performance of John Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony. It's hard to judge without hearing it live -- so much of the quality in Adams's recent music is in the texture and orchestration, its shimmer and resonance -- but geez, this piece sure sounds like a nonstarter: formally and dramatically shapeless, and for close to 40 minutes at that. That concert was earlier today (yesterday, rather, in London); I'm curious what the reviews will say.
For another couple of days, you can still listen to Leila Josefowicz playing Oliver Knussen's Violin Concerto, too. Josefowicz is amazing, and it's good news that she's picked up this piece, which is that rare atonal work that manages to be lyrical and elusive and very subtle. I heard it when the Philly Orchestra brought it to Carnegie Hall in '03, the year it premiered, with Pinchas Zukerman; the orchestral part is mesmerizing, done in deft watercolor-like strokes.
1 Comments:
I listened through the Doctor Atomic Symphony and I'm a little more sympathetic to its form than you are, though I agree that it never really generates much momentum. It's missing the overarching, subtle transformations of the musical material that shape most of Adams' other big symphonic pieces, and he doesn't seem to have replaced that with anything else.
He does wisely end the piece with the opera's setting of Batter My Heart, which probably deserves to be broken off into its own freestanding concert piece. The biggest point against the symphony as a whole may be that it has to compete with the rest of Adams' very solid, very prolific symphonic output.
Another takeaway from the broadcast for me is that it is possible to use too many keening, Unanswered Question-like brass figures within a large-scale orchestral work.
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