Tag Archives: charles ives

Arts & Entertainment, Music

What We’re Hearing This Month: Classical Music Picks for May

As the weather gets warmer, things are starting to heat up in the local classical music scene. Catch world premiere performances from today’s hottest composers and choreographers. Explore great works of the 20th century with Shostakovich at Benaroya Hall and a Charles Ives festival at the University of Washington. Or travel further back in time with the Medieval Women’s Choir as they transport audiences to 12th century Germany.

May 3 — The Oregon Symphony rolls into town for a performance at Benaroya Hall. Our orchestral neighbors from the south bring along a diversity of musical treats. Hear Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony alongside music by Ravel and Kurt Weill (of “Mack the Knife” fame). A special performance of a work by Thai composer Narong Prangcharoen rounds off the evening.

Who’s there? Soprano Nuccia Focile in La Voix Humaine (Photo: Tristram Kenton)

May 4 – 18 — Seattle Opera brings two unusual tales of damsels in distress to the McCaw Hall stage. The operatic double bill begins with Francis Poulenc’s The Human Voice. Based on a 1930 play by Jean Cocteau, the one-woman opera captures one side of the conversation as a despairing Parisian woman is dumped via telephone. After intermission, Puccini’s Sister Angelica transports the audience to 17th century Italian convent, where a young nun struggles with hidden secrets from her past.

May 6 – 8 — The University of Washington School of Music explores the strange world of American composer Charles Ives with three days of lectures and performances. An insurance agent by day and composer by night, Ives was fond of quoting American patriotic songs and familiar classical works in his compositions. Hear Ives’ orchestral works on May 6, his devilishly difficult “Concord” Piano Sonata on May 7, and a collection of songs and chamber music on May 8.

May 8 — Pianist Jon Kimura Parker shows off his chops at the UW’s Meany Hall with his own solo piano arrangement of Stravinsky’s infamous ballet Rite of Spring. As if a full-length performance of Rite isn’t enough, Parker also throws in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and works by Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff.

May 11 — Soprano Marian Seibert joins the Medieval Women’s Choir for “Music of the Spheres,” a tribute to 12th-century abbess and religious mystic Hildegard of Bingen. A renowned healer, poet, and composer, Hildegard is most famous for her multi-sensory “visions” that affected her throughout her lifetime. Travel back in time to Hildegard’s Middle Ages with this choral performance, accompanied by period instruments.

May 14 — Learn about the astounding life of poet Krystyna Zywulska, member of the Polish Resistance and survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Music of Remembrance presents the world premiere performance of Jake Heggie’s Farewell, Auschwitz!, which brings Zywulska’s poetry to life through music and song.

May 16 – 17 — The Seattle Symphony celebrates Shostakovich with two concerts of the composer’s most beloved works. On May 16, the orchestra performs the dramatic Symphony No. 5 along with Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring guest soloist Ignat Solzhenitsyn. The next evening, May 17, hear Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 performed by 21-year-old Julian Schwarz, son of SSO Conductor Laureate Gerard Schwarz.

May 18 – 19 — With the long, sunny days of summer quickly approaching, it’s the perfect time to pay tribute to sunshine and light. Seattle Pro Musica‘s “Lucis” celebrates the season with a program of contemporary choral works devoted to the theme of light. The concert features several composers who herald from Scandinavia and the Baltics, including Finnish composer Jaakko Mantyjarvi, whose Canticum calamitatis maritimae honors those who perished in the tragic MS Estonia shipwreck of 1994.

May 31 – Jun. 9 — Who says Pacific Northwest Ballet doesn’t do modern? The company’s annual “Director’s Choice” production brings together short masterpieces by the great choreographers of the 20th century and today. This year’s show pairs Balanchine favorites with a world premiere by Christopher Wheeldon, one of contemporary ballet’s shining stars.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Stephen Hough “Shines” in Rach 3 with Seattle Symphony

Stephen Hough, pianist

If notes were steps, Stephen Hough would have run—and won—a full marathon playing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall Thursday night. He’ll do it again three more times this weekend. From the look of Thursday evening’s almost-full hall, tickets are selling briskly.

Made even more famous than it was already by its use in the movie Shine (about the Australian pianist David Helfgott), this concerto is an Everest for performers, loaded with notes to be played at warp speed. Where Hough is unusual is in his ability to add phrasing even when his hands are a blur on the keys.

In the few slower moments, including the lovely theme at the start, he gave an expressive nuance hardly possible the rest of the time. Hough’s playing is extraordinarily clean for such a work, with never a misplaced note, and while his playing is decisive, he never bangs on the keyboard.  In the few moments when he was not playing he mopped the sweat from his brow and wiped the keys with his black handkerchief.

The orchestra under Ludovic Morlot kept pace with him, with fine solos from principals Seth Krimsky, bassoon, and Ben Hausmann, oboe.

Exciting as this performance was, the highlight of the concert came earlier with a superb performance by the orchestra and Morlot of Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 2. We are so used to thinking of Ives as an iconoclast whose music is quirky to a degree, fascinating and challenging to play and to hear, that this symphony written in his mid-to-late 20s comes as a surprise. It is in straightforward symphonic mode, showing the composer’s thorough grasp of European compositional style and of inspired orchestration.

Yes, there are many instances where he has incorporated snatches of popular songs, most familiarly Camptown Races and Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, but this is a time-honored choice of many composers. Only at the very last does Ives present us with a sudden surprise, departing from conventional harmonies to end on a clashingly dissonant chord.

The orchestra played it with freshness and verve under Morlot’s firm but easy guiding hand, bringing out a myriad little details and with notable solos from the horns and principal cello Efe Baltacigil.

The concert began with another, quintessentially American work, Leonard Bernstein’s Overture to Candide. Quite short, it received a vibrant, scintillating performance from Morlot and the orchestra, the conductor almost dancing on the podium and conveying his exuberance to the musicians.

Before the concert bagan, three musicians were honored on their departure from the orchestra. Violinist Jun Liang Du, in the orchestra since 1986, has already left, but second violinist Virginia Hunt Luce, who has played in the orchestra 46 years, received a warm tribute from colleague Sande Gillette, and cellist Susan Williams with 35 years under her belt, was lauded by violist Vincent Comer.