Category — audio

We had our first rehearsals on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony yesterday, and it was one of those days where I was tired from the very beginning, but I thought I could at least dredge up nine observations about this well-loved work from an insider’s perspective.  In the spirit of full disclosure, I cannot vouch for the veracity of these thoughts, they are just what came forth as I as pondering what to write today. [Read more →]

We’re at the final movement of this great symphony, and what a movement it is! If you mention Mahler 9 to almost anyone, they’ll invariably start to talk about the first time they ever heard the slow movement, and how it affected them at a critical time in their life.

In the orchestral parts, the string parts span only two pages, yet the movement can last upward of 25 minutes. It’s a very slow piece of music, but not an uneventful one. [Read more →]

Stuttering, arrhythmic, heartbeat rhythms in the horn and cellos, hesitant fragments of a melody in the distant french horn, then the rocking of the harp, and the first ineffably sad song of melancholic longing in the strings accompanied by restlessly rustling sextuplets in the violas. It’s the opening of Mahler’s massive, elegiac Ninth Symphony, and I cannot think of another piece which begins in such a place of desolation as this one. [Read more →]

What would a Mahler symphony be without a sprawling, hectic, and by turns achingly beautiful scherzo? Well, quite a bit shorter, for one. Mahler is often in the habit of taking a huge movement in cut time and making a huge journey out of it, and the Ninth Symphony is no exception. [Read more →]

I’m pleased to welcome as my first guest blogger Jeffrey Work, principal trumpet of the Oregon Symphony. He, among other things, is an enthusiastic collector of old recordings, and as such, I thought that he might like to delve into his massive collection and give us some nuggets that relate to the upcoming work on the next classical series: Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Enjoy! — CN

As the Oregon Symphony’s musicians prepare for our upcoming performances of the Mahler 9th, most of us will head to our record and CD libraries. It’s a common first step before we go to the more important second step: heading to the practice room. My routine is no different. [Read more →]

I’ve loved Der Rosenkavalier since I first became acquainted with it during my undergraduate music history courses. What’s not to love? Great melodies, a classic love triangle, and the Vienna Philharmonic!

My favorite moment comes from the mind-blowing trio that concludes the opera (but not the cobble together suite that we’re playing this weekend) - where each of the three main characters express their differing kinds of love for each other, and engage in simultaneous soliloquies about their innermost thoughts and feelings about those forms of love. It’s a tour de force moment in opera composition, and it has few parallels, except perhaps the sextet from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.

So, the trio features as the high point of the entire opera, and the suite which we are playing this weekend at the OSO concerts. Solo strings double the vocal parts (since there are no vocalists in the suite) and there is a suspension that just happens to occur in the second viola solo part (which happens to be played by me) that I (humbly) suggest just might be the most painfully sublime note in the entire suite (except perhaps the high D that principal trumpeter Jeffrey Work is so gorgeously playing at the final climax of the trio) - you be the judge: the note happens right about 51 seconds into this minute-long clip.

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Since we don’t have the advantage of voices in the suite version of the opera, I thought it might be fun to give the actual excerpt that you just heard in the form in which it’s heard in the actual opera:

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To give credit where credit is due:

The first excerpt is from a performance of the suite by the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Andre Previn.

The second excerpt is also the Vienna Philharmonic, this time conducted by Herbert von Karajan.  The singers are Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Agnes Baltsa and Janet Perry.

March arrived today, and it came in like its proverbial lion, with rain and hail squalls and gusting winds. We headed down to NW Portland to have our first rehearsal of Janacek’s String Quartet No.2 “Intimate Letters” with the Arnica Quartet. [Read more →]

This coming weekend - Sunday, March 2nd @ 2 p.m., to be exact - the Oregon Symphony will present the next concert in its series Inside the Score. Under examination this time around is the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and his Fifth Symphony. [Read more →]

I talk a lot about what the orchestra plays, what other orchestras sound like, and what I think of other musicians. It dawned on me that I haven’t really put myself out there - if I’m going to throw stones, I might as well be in the line of fire myself.

Here’s a brief sample of Max Bruch’s Romance for viola and piano, Op. 85. It’s from a performance I gave with pianist Lisa Bergman at the Max Aronoff Viola Institute (where I serve on the faculty towards the end of each June). I don’t think that it stinks too horribly - enjoy!

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If you liked what you heard, you can go to my personal website and take a listen to the complete Bruch and two other selections at your leisure. [Note: the two other selections do require that you have Quicktime player installed on your computer - it's free and there are links to instructions on how to install and use Quicktime.]