inside scoop on de waart appointment January 5, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, the orchestra world, add a commentThis blog entry, written by MSO principal violist Robert Levine, talks about the recent appointment of Edo deWaart as the next music director of the Milwaukee Symphony.
Here’s a taste:
Most members of the orchestra regard this as very good news, I think. He’s arguably the best-known conductor we’ve ever had as music director (certainly the one with the most illustrious career prior to coming here). In fact we have rarely had conductors of his stature even as guests. And the orchestra reacted very positively to him when he was here in December. People were also relieved that the orchestra would be able to avoid being without a music director for a season or two, which is always death for ticket sales.
Will it “work”? It shows all the makings of working musically. As I said, the orchestra was very happy about what they saw in December. And while his public words of praise for the orchestra were what one would expect, I though I saw genuine surprise and pleasure about the quality of the orchestra from him when he was here in December – a reaction I’ve seen many times before from first-time visitors to the MSO. Perhaps they’ve seen too many “LaVerne and Shirley” re-runs, but the quality of this orchestra does seem to be a closely-guarded secret in the business.
more raves on seattle opera 08-09 season January 5, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, opera, seattle, add a comment
Gavin Borchert shares my enthusiasm about the Seattle Opera’s 2008-2009 season, especially the Bartók/Schoenberg duo of one-act operas:
Most exciting—unbelievable, in fact—is their presentation of Robert Lepage’s production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s monodrama Erwartung (Feb. 21-March 7), which I saw in Vancouver in 1998 and never dreamed would be done here. I did, however, hang on to the review I wrote:
“Bartok’s 45-minute opera is a duologue between Bluebeard and his bride Judith. In his great hall stand seven doors; one by one she demands to open them, revealing the horrors and wonders within. But behind the last are the apparitions of Bluebeard’s three previous wives, and Judith joins them to be sealed up forever as the curtain falls. In Michael Levine’s black-box set, the floor, ceiling, and walls slope up, down, and in from the proscenium to converge on a portcullised entrance at the rear of the stage—a space which both conveys the somber vastness of a castle hall and becomes increasingly claustrophobic as the psychological screws tighten. Robert Thomson’s lighting was an equal partner in the drama, from the row of illuminated keyholes in the darkness that marked the doors to the dazzling bursts of light as each one opened. Most magical was the moat at the lip of the stage, silvery waters from which the three wives rose, a stunningly beautiful effect.
“Lepage’s Schoenberg staging used the same set. In the original stage directions, a woman wanders through the woods and discovers the body of her lover, who, it is implied, she killed in an insane fit of jealousy. Lepage presented this as a flashback from the woman’s asylum cell, a hallucination decked with Dadaist details: a psychoanalyst in a chair on the wall, a floating bed, a scarlet moon.”
As long as I live, I’ll never forget the moat. “Stunningly beautiful” doesn’t even begin to cover it. This is the must-see of the season, if not the decade.
favorite intermissions January 5, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : contemporary, music, recordings, the orchestra world, 1 comment so farThis is just fascinating, and I’m ashamed that I’ve only just discovered this! “This” is a CD of composer and “sound artist” Christopher DeLaurenti which consists of surreptitiously recorded audio tracks from intermissions of orchestral concerts around the U.S. (more…)
