In case all of this and this weren't enough for this busy month, here's another enticing concert (especially if you're a cello fan):
Ligeti: Solo Cello Sonata – Brady Anderson, cello
Popper: Requiem for Three Cellos and Piano – Rio Vander Stahl, Mosa Tsay, Rachel Keynton, cellos, Karen Rosenak, piano
Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1 for orchestra of violoncello – Brady Anderson, Rio Vander Stahl, Mosa Tsay, Lukas Whaley-Mayda, Rachel Keynton, Cindy Hickox, Katie Concepcion, Felicia Tang, Katherine Soo-He Cho, Sam Leachman and Michael Tan, cellos
That's this Wednesday, November 9, 12:15-1:00 PM, at Hertz Hall on the Berkeley campus, and it's one of the free noontime concerts at Hertz Hall sponsored by the UC-Berkeley Music Department (check out their calendar of events here).
Often I don't even read the Music Department announcements not because they're not interesting but because they are, and I have to work and can't go, so why torment myself; but if I'd spotted this one sooner I might have given up a PTO day to hear the Ligeti solo cello sonata live. By the way, for those who followed the Ripken-era Baltimore Orioles, this Brady Anderson is not the now-retired outfielder.
07 November 2011
06 November 2011
05 November 2011
Haiku 2011/309
the night slips away
spring and summer slip away
the hours slip away
(turn your clocks back: daylight savings time ends tonight)
spring and summer slip away
the hours slip away
(turn your clocks back: daylight savings time ends tonight)
04 November 2011
03 November 2011
02 November 2011
01 November 2011
the kind of information you might want to put on your website
At lunch today I tried to go to the Noontime Concert at Old St Mary's, which is reasonably close to where I work. These concerts normally start at 12:30 and are designed for people on lunch break. This one featured soprano Shauna Falihee and Miles Graber on piano performing Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs, John Harbison's Mirabai Songs, and, according to the website, More! I'm afraid I can't tell you what constituted "More!" since I found out when I got to St Mary's that the concert wasn't starting until 12:45. Fifteen minutes is actually a pretty big chunk of time for someone on an hour-long lunch break. I pondered staying anyway, then realized the timing just wouldn't work out and I had better skip the concert, which is too bad since I had had my eyes on this one for several weeks now. I even double-checked the website this morning, and there was nothing about a special start time. I'm guessing the noon mass at St Mary's was especially long since this is All Saint's Day, but it would have been nice to have the information before I got there. On the "making lemonade out of lemons" front (I am a notorious optimist!), at least I varied my lunchtime routine a bit, though not in the way I had hoped.
Simon Keenlyside in recital
Last Thursday I went to hear Simon Keenlyside and accompanist Malcolm Martineau in recital, presented by San Francisco Performances at Herbst Theater. This was the second concert in their vocal recital series, following a triumphant Stephanie Blythe, and it was just as good in very different ways.
Keenlyside and Martineau strode out onto the darkened stage almost abruptly and plunged right into the Mahler songs in the first set. Keenlyside’s tone is burnished and bronze, and he characterizes the songs deeply but unostentatiously. He seems somewhat self-effacing on stage, yet establishes a direct emotional communication with the audience – I think this isn’t something he does, it’s more something he is. He appears to have a lot of nervous energy and is in almost constant though subtle motion – leaning forward, clenching his hands, wiping his brow.
After the Mahler set came six songs from A Shropshire Lad, set by George Butterworth.
Keenlyside suggested that we not regard these as English pastoral piffle by remembering they were written during wartime – I think he was referring to the poems rather than the settings, but I wasn’t sure. Wartime would give added resonance to Housman’s obsessive theme, the death of young men, but I think these are resonant poems no matter what their context. I disliked Butterworth’s setting of the first song, Loveliest of trees, because that lyric is pretty much perfection on its own and I think the music doesn’t add much.
In fact for me the music in this case distorts the rhythm and flow of the poem. And that’s a problem I have with most musical settings of Housman; his poems gain such energy from the tension between their very deep emotions and their very strict forms that adding a third element seems pointless. Nonetheless Keenlyside made a very convincing case for the rest of them; the final number, Is my team ploughing?, with its powerful contrast between the unearthly hollow high voice of the dead man and the answering strength of his still-living friend, was particularly powerful.
The second half, featuring songs by Richard Strauss, Duparc, and Debussy, was at the same high level. It’s strange that such an intensely dramatic, vividly communicative singer can seem at the same time subdued and inward. He sang a generous four encores, two by Schubert (first and last of the four) and one each by John Ireland and Percy Grainger. He introduced the first by saying that it seemed as if he were always singing Schubert, which was a good thing for him. He introduced Ireland’s Sea Fever by mentioning how much he loved the whales and other marine life of the Pacific coast, and Grainger’s Once I Had a Sprig of Thyme by saying it made him think of his little son.
Keenlyside and Martineau strode out onto the darkened stage almost abruptly and plunged right into the Mahler songs in the first set. Keenlyside’s tone is burnished and bronze, and he characterizes the songs deeply but unostentatiously. He seems somewhat self-effacing on stage, yet establishes a direct emotional communication with the audience – I think this isn’t something he does, it’s more something he is. He appears to have a lot of nervous energy and is in almost constant though subtle motion – leaning forward, clenching his hands, wiping his brow.
After the Mahler set came six songs from A Shropshire Lad, set by George Butterworth.
Keenlyside suggested that we not regard these as English pastoral piffle by remembering they were written during wartime – I think he was referring to the poems rather than the settings, but I wasn’t sure. Wartime would give added resonance to Housman’s obsessive theme, the death of young men, but I think these are resonant poems no matter what their context. I disliked Butterworth’s setting of the first song, Loveliest of trees, because that lyric is pretty much perfection on its own and I think the music doesn’t add much.
In fact for me the music in this case distorts the rhythm and flow of the poem. And that’s a problem I have with most musical settings of Housman; his poems gain such energy from the tension between their very deep emotions and their very strict forms that adding a third element seems pointless. Nonetheless Keenlyside made a very convincing case for the rest of them; the final number, Is my team ploughing?, with its powerful contrast between the unearthly hollow high voice of the dead man and the answering strength of his still-living friend, was particularly powerful.
The second half, featuring songs by Richard Strauss, Duparc, and Debussy, was at the same high level. It’s strange that such an intensely dramatic, vividly communicative singer can seem at the same time subdued and inward. He sang a generous four encores, two by Schubert (first and last of the four) and one each by John Ireland and Percy Grainger. He introduced the first by saying that it seemed as if he were always singing Schubert, which was a good thing for him. He introduced Ireland’s Sea Fever by mentioning how much he loved the whales and other marine life of the Pacific coast, and Grainger’s Once I Had a Sprig of Thyme by saying it made him think of his little son.
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