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Arts & Entertainment, Music

Seattle Symphony Rings in the New Year With the Ninth

The Seattle Symphony performs Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on Saturday night, December 31, at 9 p.m.  at Benaroya Hall. Saturday’s New Year’s Eve concert will be followed by a gala celebration with drinks, dancing, and a midnight countdown. More details and tickets are available at the Seattle Symphony website.

Gerard Schwarz

It’s safe to say that virtually everyone knows Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The work’s famous “Ode to Joy” melody, taken from the final movement of the Symphony, is one of the most recognizable tunes in Western music. The Ninth’s uplifting message and epic scale, which combines orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists for a grand finale, makes this piece a favorite for the holiday season.

The Seattle Symphony has an annual tradition of ringing in the new year with performances of Beethoven’s Ninth, and this year, Conductor Laureate Gerard Schwarz returns to the podium at Benaroya Hall for these popular concerts. Performances began on Wednesday evening and will be held nightly, culminating in a special New Year’s Eve concert and gala on Saturday night.

Last night’s performance brought a festive atmosphere and diverse crowd to Benaroya Hall. It marked a special day for the Seattle Symphony: The 108th anniversary of its first concert.

Although this fact wasn’t mentioned at last night’s concert, everyone seemed to be in a celebratory mood, from the musicians to the audience. The program was very family-friendly, featuring vivid and colorful pieces guaranteed to enthrall both children and adults alike. In addition to Beethoven’s Ninth, the Seattle Symphony performed a suite of excerpts from another holiday favorite, Engelbert Humperdinck’s fairytale opera Hansel & Gretel.

The program opened with the Suite from Hansel & Gretel, which is comprised of five musical interludes taken from scenes in the opera. Humperdinck, a colleague of Richard Wagner, took cues from his celebrated contemporary by using rich orchestral textures and complex harmonies, evoking a fairytale landscape both enchanting and perilous.

After a majestic brass fanfare at the beginning of the suite, the woodwinds paint a whimsical picture of Hansel and Gretel frolicking in the forest and eventually stumbling upon the witch’s gingerbread house. Humperdinck’s writing calls for a rich string texture, which helps create drama when the witch is defeated and the children dance a celebratory waltz. The Seattle Symphony string section was up to the task, creating many lovely and exciting moments.

The audience returned from intermission eager for the epic majesty of Beethoven’s Ninth. The work opens dramatically, beginning with small chirps from the string section and building until the orchestra is playing in full force. Maestro Schwarz did an excellent job of maintaining the dramatic sound over the course of the first movement. The second movement is dominated by a fugue theme that begins in the string section and echoes throughout the movement, and the French horn and woodwind sections gave particularly fine performances here, especially Seth Krimsky on bassoon.

After a slow and lyrical third movement, the fourth movement begins with a roiling storm that musters the entire orchestra. As the storm subsides, strains of the “Ode to Joy” theme begin to peek through, finally emerging in full form in the low strings.  The doublebass section sounded fantastic in those first, muted statements of the theme.

Greer Grimsley

After the “Ode to Joy” theme is tossed around the orchestra a few times, the chorus and vocal soloists step in with tidings of joy and praise. The text they sing is based on a poem by Friedrich Schiller, with alterations by Beethoven himself. This year, the four soloists joining the Symphony are soprano Christine Goerke, tenor John Mac Master, and the husband-and-wife team of mezzo-soprano Luretta Bybee and bass-baritone Greer Grimsley.

Grimsley’s powerful voice made a majestic entrance and set the mood for the rest of the epic finale, which brings together orchestra, chorus, and soloists in various configurations. Mac Master was spot-on in the famous tenor solo.  The Seattle Symphony Chorale, led by Joseph Crnko, gave a spirited performance that added even more excitement and energy.

Last night’s rousing performance inspired and excited many audience members. As I was exiting Benaroya Hall, I kept overhearing people raving about how much the musicians and singers seemed to enjoy themselves. Clearly, the tradition of celebrating the New Year with Beethoven’s Ninth remains alive and well in Seattle.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Music of Remembrance’s “Astounding” What a Life!, a British Detention Camp Revue

Erich Parce and Ross Hauck, with the Music of Remembrance ensemble

We are now starting the fourteenth season since Music of Remembrance began its odyssey, of telling the tale of the Holocaust from the aspect of the creative art nurtured within its horrors.

Its indefatigable founder and artistic director, Mina Miller, has every year unearthed more highlights, sidelights, spotlights, and gems of music and poetry pertaining to life in the concentration camps, ones that most of us would never have known about were it not for her work.

Each year Music of Remembrance offers two concerts at Benaroya Hall’s Nordstrom Recital Hall, one around the time of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, which took place November 9, 1938, when Nazi thugs roamed Germany destroying anything and everything Jewish they could find. The other concert takes place in May and next year commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day with a new opera by Jake Heggie.

Hans Gál

Monday’s concert, like so many others in this series, brought a largely unknown aspect of the Holocaust to our attention, with a satiric revue, What a Life! by composer Hans Gál, composed and performed when he was in an internment camp on the Isle of Man off the coast of Wales in the United Kingdom.

Like many others, I never knew until recently that the British interned anyone they thought might be supporting German aspirations, and since they couldn’t tell who was bona fide and who was an infiltrator among the thousands of Jewish refugees pouring into the country, they interned them all until they had checked them out. Families were broken up, communication was poor. Families already refugees were subjected to even more stress.

Like the Japanese internment camps in this country and opened for the same reason, they are a blot on the country’s history. (I am English. Yes, England was on her knees in 1940, and many of my family died along with so many others, but it still seems shameful to me that we should have interned any Jews.)

Hans Gál, however, bore the British no lasting ill will, and unlike so many of his countrymen, lived a long and fruitful life in that country until his death in 1987.

His cabaret revue comprises a series of songs of camp life sung here by baritone Erich Parce and tenor Ross Hauck to words by Schubert scholar and fellow-internee Otto Erich Deutsch, with a small orchestra of piano, four strings, and two winds. Originally there was a theatrical script between numbers written by another internee, film director Georg Hoellering. This has been lost, and a new narrative taken from Gál’s diary which he kept meticulously.

What’s astounding is Gál’s and Deutsch’s upbeat attitude. The songs are irreverent, ironic, rueful, and funny as they skewer camp life. As well as singing, Parce gave it a light staging, so that a six-foot stretch of wire with barbs appears for the “Barbed Wire Song” (“Why are human beings behind wire?”), and a folding single bed arrives for the two singers in “Song of the Double Bed” with humorous consequences on stage (though they probably weren’t at the time). From the diary excerpts, read by actor Kurt Beattie, we find that the row of beachside hotels commandeered for the camp housed 72 inmates per house.

Gál was only in the camp about 19 weeks, but this clever, amusing, and truthful revue with its charming music hits home. In addition to the two singers, Jesse Parce acts as a battlebloused camp guard, with an unnerving toothbrush moustache.

Earlier in the program flutist Zartouhi Dombourian-Eby, and violinists Elisa Barston and Mikhail Shmidt performed Gál’s four-movement Huyton Suite, written while he was in transit camp near Liverpool in 1940. His own words say it best: “Here I am, writing…ridiculous, fantastic music…while the world…is coming to an end.”

True. The Suite, written for the only instruments available to him, is perky, and amusing, optimistic, lively, with the flute mimicking the camp bugle, a well-written piece we might easily hear on Seattle Chamber Music Society’s programming.

The program began with Vilem Tausky’s beautiful 13-minute Coventry: Meditation for String Quartet from 1941. Better known as a conductor, Tausky wrote this quartet while a member of the Czech Army in Exile and helping to search for survivors after the big Nazi air raid on Coventry. The first impression is that it conjures up the same mood as Barber’s Adagio for Strings. There is a sadness which pervades it, and part which seems a protest. The viola, played by Susan Gulkis Assadi, leads the melody, and the whole ends with a chord resolving into the major, perhaps an acceptance.

The fourth work on the program, Marcel Tyberg’s Piano Trio in F major, is a comedown musically from the quality of the other works. It’s a palm-court, salon-style piece, lush, a bit pretentious, schmaltzy, well-constructed but old-fashioned for its date, 1936.

Other musicians for the program included violinist Leonid Keylin, cellists Mara Finkelstein and Walter Gray, and pianists Craig Sheppard and Mina Miller.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Mariinsky Orchestra Visits, Plays, Conquers

Valery Gergiev (Photo: Marco Borggreve)

The sound of Russian voices pervaded the lobby at Benaroya Hall Wednesday night as the local community turned out en masse to hear the legendary Mariinsky Orchestra from St. Petersburg under equally legendary conductor Valery Gergiev on the Seattle Symphony’s Visiting Orchestra Series.

In the auditorium, the orchestra confirmed its stature as it performed a program of Russian favorites.

As a short opener, Gergiev chose three very different excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suites, with the leisurely “Friar Laurence” and quirky “Masks,” after which all hell broke loose in the fury (with alternating moments of peace) of the antagonistic “Montagues and Capulets.” This last sounded quite shocking in its vitality as the brass and percussion let fly but it was not loud for loudness’s sake. There were no moments of wanting to protect the eardrums.

Joining the orchestra for Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, 18-year-old Belorussian cellist Ivan Karizna reminded this audience member of the young Lynn Harrell, another big kid with blond hair who plays his cello like an extension of himself creating miracles of breathtakingly beautiful sound.

Warm and open, somber or lively, light, dancing, floating or shimmering liquid gold, the gorgeous tones Karizna drew from his instrument were musically satisfying and technically excellent. The orchestra stayed closely supportive but never overwhelmed him.

Though the Variations were a pleasure to hear, the most profound moments of the program came with Tchaikovsky’s last symphony, No. 6, the Pathétique.

Gergiev’s interpretation of the first movement left one believing that it was the musical expression of the composer’s most painful thoughts. Agonizing conflicts and a plea for understanding needed only one’s imagination to hear them, and also the relief of the peaceful oases which occasonally came through.

Gergiev lightened the mood considerably in the second and third movements, Tchaikovsky’s brilliant waltz/two-step rhythm of the second with its irresistible melody, and the rushing anticipation of the jaunty upbeat march leading to its energetic peroration in the third. The sudden change of pace to slow and deeply somber pulled listeners up short, as the orchestra continued without a pause to the last movement, which almost seemed like a prayer of anguish, of crisis, of questioning Why me?, with again, a restfully serene melody interspersed.

Tchaikovsky, who died mysteriously nine days after the premier of this symphony, was a master of pacing his music so that it makes the utmost impact; and this was the most compelling, enlightening performance of this symphony this listener has heard over decades of concertgoing.

Gergiev, who conducted without podium and mostly without score, has a distinctive conducting style with fluttering fingers and not always a discernible beat, but his whole body, particularly in the Pathétique, conveys his intention to the musicians. They responded like a Rolls Royce engine to his every indication. The audience brought him back five times to accept applause with his musicians.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

What to Hear at Decibel Fest 2011

The ninth Decibel Festival, Seattle’s International Festival of Electronic Music Performance, Visual Art, and New Media, began overloading Seattle’s senses last night. The Fest runs until this Sunday, October 2. Tickets for individual events are on sale in advance and at the door: Check the links below for prices and venues.  

Below are recommendations for the remainder of the Fest from SunBreak Contributor Donte Parks and Music Editor Tony Kay.

Donte:

Amon Tobin [Tonight @ The Red Bull Music Academy Presents Showcase, Paramount Theatre–SOLD OUT]
The premiere of Amon Tobin’s ISAM A/V setup at MUTEK this year was a mindblowing visual extravaganza, leaving audiences awed by the eye candy if not necessarily by the music. If you have the opportunity, this is definitely not one to miss. Now the bad news. It’s sold out. That said, there’s bound to be someone selling a ticket at the door. This is worth taking on that hassle.

Miracles Club [Friday @The Loft Revival, The Woods]
This Portland group isn’t yet a household name, but considering how much they’ve been performing in NYC lately they’re definitely on the rise. Poised to be the most fun at all of Decibel, this group plays house music with tables full of analog gear, a throwback to a rawer-sounding era. Come ready to dance.

Martyn [Friday @ Resident Advisor Presents The Blurring the Lines Showcase, Neumos]
A few years ago, Martyn became a Decibel highlight with his (short) set at the Church of Bass afterhours. Now he’s back to show off his new live set, and expectations are running high that he’ll be able to repeat his past glory. His newest material show he’s picking up right where he left off, eschewing strict genre categorization with his rhythmically interesting productions.

dOP [Sunday @ The Flammable Showcase, Re-Bar]
dOP’s tracks don’t give much indication of just how insane their live shows can be, leaving the audience laughing as much as dancing. Will there be nudity? Probably. Booze poured over the audience? Again, probably. Is the fact that this is happening at Flammable as the Decibel finale going to take this to absolutely ridiculous levels of fun? Definitely.

Tony:

Ladytron  [Tonight @ Sinthetic Showcase, Showbox Market]
It’s odd to refer to Ladytron’s blend of detached femme vocals, icy keyboards, and Euro-chic songcraft as warm and fuzzy–but in the context of the Brave New World of modern electronic music, it is. This Liverpudlian quartet emphasizes the pop in synth-pop, and their frankly retro sound should fuel plenty of swoony swaying. If replicant versions of Ani and Agnetha from ABBA fronted Ultravox, it’d sound something like this.

Mountains/Simon Scott [Friday @ OPTICAL 1: Sine Your Name Across My Heart Showcase, Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall]
When My Bloody Valentine fired up their bongs and plugged in synthesizers along with their guitars twenty-plus years ago, they didn’t just influence guitar bands. The first installment of OPTICAL’s Decibel Fest presentations showcases three acts who marry MBV’s shoegazing sound with Ambient Electronica. Headliner Schnauss will likely provide a palatable bed of gently-shuffling dance atmospherics, but the highlights to these ears will be the two openers.

UK artist Simon Scott knows a thing or two about eddying currents of sound: He drummed for the late great shoegazer band slowdive in the ’90’s, and his solo material unearths pockets of haunted romance amongst Eno-esque textures.

Mountains, by contrast, present a deceptively minimal soundscape that has a way of building and metamorphosing unexpectedly.  The Brooklyn-based duo’s live sets lean on organic sounds more heavily than most of Decibel’s acts, stretching and molding acoustic/analog instruments and field recordings like so much electronic taffy. The end result is as mesmerising as anything you’ll hear all Decibel Fest.

Oval [Saturday @ OPTICAL 2: Grains of Sound Showcase, Nordstrom Recital Hall, Benaroya Hall]
Oval (AKA Berlin musician Markus Popp) helped pioneer Glitch electronica. He’s a master of manipulating the sub-genre’s hallmark whirs and irregularities into playful soundscapes that somehow manage to soothe, unsettle, and induce booty-shaking at equal turns. This set marks the world premiere of his new music/AV show, and he seldom makes his way to the states, so expect one of Decibel’s undisputed treats herein.

 

Arts & Entertainment, Music

The Morlot Era at Seattle Symphony Has Now Begun

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Morlot_Opening Night
©2010 Darin Fong Photography
Efe Baltacıgil_Credit Christian Steiner
Roman, Joshua1(c)Jeremy Sawatzky

Ludovic Morlot at Opening Night at Seattle Symphony, 2011 (Photo: Ben VanHouten)

Demarre McGill (Photo: ©2010 Darin Fong Photography)

Efe Baltacigil (Photo: Christian Steiner)

Joshua Roman (Photo: Jeremy Sawatzky)

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©2010 Darin Fong Photography thumbnail
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Roman, Joshua1(c)Jeremy Sawatzky thumbnail

Saturday night at Benaroya Hall saw the dressiest Seattle crowd since the opening of McCaw Hall, with silks, satins, sparkles and high fashion abounding. The occasion? Ludovic Morlot’s debut as music director of the Seattle Symphony. The auditorium was packed, following a pre-concert cocktail party and preceding a gala dinner.

Proceedings on stage began with a brief, graceful welcome by board chair Leslie Jackson Chihuly, who mentioned also that conductor, now laureate, Gerard Schwarz and his wife Jody were present, as were Morlot’s wife Chizlane and two children.

And then the concert began.

As well as Morlot, two more musicians made their orchestra debuts at this concert: principal cello Efe Baltacigil and principal flute Demarre McGill, both experienced performers who seemed very much at home in the repertoire. Two positions remain open, that of concertmaster, and unexpectedly and to our loss, principal horn, as John Cerminaro has quietly retired.

Morlot chose wisely for his gala program. All four works were immediately accessible to the audience, two of them familiar favorites, one being French, as is Morlot. The third was an appropriately classical opener stylishly played, Beethoven’s Overture to The Consecration of the House, and the fourth showcased Morlot’s adventurous musical spirit and that of solo cellist Joshua Roman, who has had his own following here ever since his two years as principal cellist with the Seattle Symphony.

So often people turn away from concert programs which include a composer name they don’t know–particularly if it is from the 20th, or heaven forbid, the 21st century. Morlot is determined to undo that prejudice and at the same time encourage the performing of music from genres which have rarely been welcome on a symphony stage. Yet many well-known performers from other genres have written in a symphonic vein, though that may not be where their fame lies. Take Frank Zappa, whose “Dupree’s Paradise” comes up in next week’s symphony concerts.

In this gala, it was a concerto for cello and wind orchestra by 20th century classical and jazz pianist Friedrich Gulda. He frequently mixed both genres on the concert stage and he does in this 1980 work.

While the stage was being reset, Morlot took the microphone to say a few words, including his thanks to the community and the orchestra for making him and his family welcome, and he also took time to thank the stagehands, by name, for the work they do. Talking about the outreach he hopes to do, bringing music to people, and people to Benaroya, he mentioned that school children will be able to come free to Masterpiece series concerts on a companion ticket. He talked a bit about Gulda, and his passion for jazz and improvisation as well as his ability to play and record impeccable classical performances.

The cello role in the Gulda is nonstop for the entire 30 minutes of this five-movement work. The mood swings from folk type melodies to jazzy sections and back without a hitch, the jazzy parts backed by a couple of electric guitars and drumset. Much of the music is recognizable dance rhythms such as a German laendler going oom-pah-pah to a lullaby to a Sousa-type march with the tuba belting it out. The third movement is an extended unaccompanied cadenza for the cello, with brief snatches from the Marseillaise, Reveille and more, each of which brought appreciative laughs from the attentive audience.

It isn’t a profound work, but it is great fun and musically solid, just right for a concert such as this. Roman did it proud, his technique as unerring as ever, his tone singing, his musicianship making the most of the work’s arches and shape. Morlot too made the most of it, keeping the balance and the vigor going throughout.

Morlot’s own abilities showed up best in Gershwin’s An American in Paris. In his hands it became a joyous, exuberant performance, yet with seamless connections between sections, and nuance which left one hearing it fresh.

Bolero, by his compatriot Ravel, is a crowd-pleaser, not for any exciting musical content, but for the way its constant repetition grows from soft to huge, and by the contrast in different instruments playing that melody. Morlot brought snare drummer Michael Werner, who repeats the same brief phrase from start to finish, to perform at the front of the stage. I’ve never heard this piece begun so softly. It seemed no one was playing at all, but the cellists’ hands were moving, as were Werner’s, and only gradually, as one listened harder, did the sound begin to emerge and grow.

In the middle, Morlot, a violinist, put down his baton and joined the first violins for a spell, while around him the musicians continued as closeknit as before. Towards the end, he took up his baton again, but it showed, which perhaps he intended, the coherence and professionalism of the orchestra, that, where necessary, it can play without leadership.

All in all, this was an auspicious beginning to Morlot’s tenure here. Let’s hope that packed audience repeats at many more concerts. Preview the many, varied programs to come here.