interesting cello site March 12, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : cello, music, soloists & recitals, add a comment
Tim Scott, one of my cellist colleagues from the Oregon Symphony, emailed me a link to the labyrinthine web site of Italian period specialist cellist Claudio Ronco. He looks a bit like Lucian Pavarotti after a few months on Jenny Craig, and he’s clearly got a lot going on with baroque cello. Lots of sound files, instrument pictures and other stuff that defies categorization.
oso cellist wins big gig January 31, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : News, cello, the orchestra world, add a comment
Photo credit: Charles Noble
Oregon Symphony cellist Adam Esbensen, a native of Corvallis, and a member of the Oregon Symphony since 2004 (he’s also the cellist with local new music ensemble fEARnoMUSIC), has won what is considered the Holy Grail of orchestral jobs, a position in a Big Five orchestra, in this case the Boston Symphony! (more…)
fEARnoMusic winter concert photo January 15, 2008
Posted by Charles Noble in : contemporary, music, photography, add a comment
Just got this done for them today - we shot Adam (cello), Joël (boom box), and Joel (cymbals of death) in Joël’s living room against a blank wall with a sheet on the floor. Then I went home, picked the best poses and laboriously cut them away from the existing background using Photoshop, replacing it with the spotlit background you see, plus shadows for depth. All in a day’s work!
[click image to view larger version]
hearing (or lack thereof) December 8, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, the orchestra world, 1 comment so farIf you’re a regular concert goer, and you happen to either be close enough to the stage or own a pair of opera glass or good birding binoculars, you’ve noticed those portable plexiglass things scattered about different parts of the stage. Mostly they’re located at the back of the cello and second violin sections, and behind the woodwinds, and between the timpani and the trumpets. Why are these unsightly things on stage in the first place? (more…)
thoughts on this week’s program November 15, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, music, the orchestra world, add a commentThis week we’re rehearsing for the Classical 6 series: Sibelius’ Sixth Symphony, Haydn’s D major Cello Concerto, and Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, under the direction of Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu. It’s an interesting program. So far we’ve only rehearsed the two symphonies, but they bring surprises, both in comparison to each other and in their own right. (more…)
Classical 6 iMix November 12, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : music, recordings, 1 comment so farHere’s the iMix for this coming week’s classical series concerts with conductor Hannu Lintu and cellist Ralph Kirshbaum. (more…)
more reactions to crosscut OSO article November 3, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : appreciation/criticism, music, the orchestra world, add a commentYou can read them here.
A couple more things that occurred to me as I was reading the comments: during the last seasons of the DePreist music directorship, the programming became more and more conservative - it was wall-to-wall Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. Yet the subscription numbers continued to fall.
In the first years of Carlos Kalmar’s tenure, we have performed music by Benjamin Britten, Steven Mackey, György Ligeti, John Adams, Bohuslav Martinu, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Harrison Birtwistle, Luciano Berio, Henri Dutilleux and Alban Berg, among others. Many of these composers’ works had never before been performed by the Oregon Symphony in its history. In addition, less often performed works of old masters were also given their due in Portland: the Barber Cello Concerto, Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto, Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, and Dvorak’s Symphonic Variations come immediately to mind.
lachrymae October 21, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, 2commentsThere are instances where a topic sweeps across the blogosphere, sometimes it’s referred to as a “meme”. I hadn’t heard of this before, so I checked dictionary.com and found that a meme is described thusly:
a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of gene
In this instance, I found a post from a new blog to me: The Omniscient Mussel, who wrote a post based upon a post at Iron Tongue of Midnight about what pieces (or parts of pieces) of music make one cry. Since I’ve been all over the emotional map this month, and much of that territory was in the sad or worse region, this is a timely topic.
So, without further ado, a small selection of the pieces that, if they don’t make me cry they at least move me deeply.
- Adams - On the Transmigration of Souls. I really didn’t expect that this piece would get to me, especially as a performer. There’s a lot to do in this piece, and it’s easy to get lost, so there isn’t a ton of time to devote to getting emotionally involved. However, the street sounds and voices of relatives that bookend the work immediately got right to the core of me from the first moment of the first rehearsal. There’s such a sense of time and place, of empathy for those people who were there at Ground Zero, or were just going about their lives, not realizing that they or their loved ones were being irrevocably tied to history.
- Mahler - Ninth Symphony, mvt. IV - Adagio. I played this piece in conservatory orchestra, as principal viola, and it was a life changing experience. This last movement of a composition that is essentially a farewell to the world, and a premonition of death, is one of the great valedictory statements in music. Such sweep and intimate grandeur (if that can be made to make sense) - and the entry of the woodwinds after nearly 15 minutes of incredibly moving string passages just makes my heart break every time I hear it.
- Puccini - Nessun dorma, from Turandot. This always made me weepy, especially the Pavarotti version. It’s pure emotion for the sake of emotion, and that is something that I’m a bit ashamed to love, but I do.
- Bach - Goldberg Variations. It’s such a journey, through the whole range of keyboard possibilities and the final return of the opening Aria is always a moment that brings such relief and feelings of an epic journey brought to a satisfying conclusion.
- Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21, Kv. 467 “Elvira Madigan” - I hate these nicknames derived from films, but you use this one and everyone knows the concerto you’re talking about, so there you go. The Andante from this movement is just so absolutely sublime, it did actually bring me to tears the first time I played it. It was during my first season with the OSO, and Yoël Levi was conducting. I don’t even remember who was playing the piano, but they were terrific whoever they were. We got to the Andante and to the section where the pizzicato accompaniment by the strings doubles in tempo - it’s such a great spot, just absolute perfection - you cannot imagine anyone else writing something this perfect. Man, Wolfie knew how to write a good chart.
- Brahms - Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, mvt. 3 - Andante. The stumbling, ruminative, despairing piano solo passage that precedes the return of the opening cello solo in the slow movement of this concerto never fails to move me. I remember the first time I ever heard this piece, it was a recording of Leon Fleisher with the Cleveland Orchestra under Georg Szell, and I knew that Brahms would have pride of place in my musical heart forever.
- Beethoven - String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130 - mvt. 5 - Cavatina. Anyone who loves listening to or performing string quartets must claim this piece, and this movement of this piece as being near the top of their personal best list. For me, the unbelievable passage where the world is shut out and we find ourselves at the very core of Beethoven’s experience is the pinnacle of the art of the quartet. If you haven’t heard the Guarneri Quartet’s performance of this movement in their second cycle of the quartets, then you really owe it to yourself to get hold of the recording and prepare to shed a few tears.
- Bach - Partita No. 2 in d minor for Solo Violin, BWV 1004 - Ciaconna. Truly one of the towering works for any solo instrument, or for any instrumental combination for that matter. Mahler liked to describe the symphony as a container which could hold an entire world in its confines. Bach beat him to it by a couple hundred years, and with a single instrument. The maggiore section is one of my favorite places in this piece, a place near the emotional nadir of the work, and then there is the miraculous return to the opening minor sequence, with the violin clawing its way back up from the edge of the abyss only to triumph. Amazing.
There are many more, but this is a good top of the list for me. Have your own nominations? Send a comment along.
quartet for the end of time October 4, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a commentI was watching the last installment of the PBS series “The War” when they came to a segment about the liberation of the death camps across Europe. The music chosen for this was Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.
How appropriate - this music which largely ignores the concept of human time, and goes for the inexpressible language of Eternity.
I’ve been hearing the cello/piano movement in my head - “Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus” (Praise to the eternity of Jesus) today.
So ecstatically slow (a metronome marking of 44 to the sixteenth note) that time seems to stop. Like for those poor souls consigned to the camps, like those of us waiting for news of a desperately ill friend, colleague, loved one, daughter, sister, aunt.
Time is in suspension - we almost dare not draw a breath, for that would move time forward - we will our hearts to stop, for time to really stop.
So the inevitable will be rendered moot.
It is times like this that remind me why personkind invented religion. We need a way to make the infinite, inevitable, instinctual, ineffable somehow manageable.
Pax tibi in vitam aeternam
tenure troubles in philly September 20, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, add a comment
As I noted when Ellen DePaquale resigned in protest from the Cleveland Orchestra last year, when internal orchestral machinations make the media, you know that something major has gone on behind the scenes.
Philadelphia Inquirer classical music critic Peter Dobrin writes in his blog about the grievance process filed by Philadelphia Orchestra principal cellist Hai-ye Ni in reaction to her non-renewal verdict at the end of last season.
