in situ August 20, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : the orchestra world, add a commentI’m once again back in PDX, and pretty tired from a busy two weeks at the Sunriver Music Festival.
There was some early drama as Andre Watts was forced to cancel due to health problems, and a last minute replacement was found in the person of Rachel Barton Pine, the wonderful violinist from Chicago who made her festival debut last summer with us. This year she played the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, with her own cadenzas (wonderfully idiomatic, btw) and followed up with a dizzying set of variations on “Happy Birthday” in honor of the festival’s 30th anniversary.
The major soloist of the second week was the young cellist Alisa Weilerstein, who I was very eager to see and hear. After doing so, I’m a bit less inclined to be as excited. She is a cellist with a formidable technique, but in the Haydn D major Cello Concerto her rhythm was all over the map and her bodily and facial contortions were quite distracting. The Tchaikovsy Pezzo Capriccioso was more suited to her approach, which makes me worry about how her style will wear after a few years’ time. I hope that time will mature her stage manner and interpretive stances - if she settles down she could be the real deal. The end of the festival was especially bittersweet, as long-time concertmaster Philip Ruder was playing his last concerts - period - he intends to no longer play the violin at all after the conclusion of the festival. I admire his courage to put down the fiddle while still playing so well, and will miss his rare brand of music making. Philip is the epitome of class and a true gentleman and scholar. I wish him and his lovely wife Ruth all the best and many happy travels.
As for other activities, I did a hike up Mt. Tumalo with fellow OSO players Jeff Johnson and Mary Grant. It’s a nice hike (once you reach the top), but it covers about 1500 vertical feet in 1.5 miles. Still, it was much easier than Mt. Bachelor last year. I also did a fair amount of riding - I’d say I covered only about 75 miles over two weeks, but it was good to fit in that much with the rehearsal and concert schedule. We also bought a new toy - a Garmin Forerunner 301, which is a GPS-enabled fitness trainer which you wear on your wrist. Very cool and now we’re fighting over it. I may have to just shell out for the cycling-specific model…
under the radar July 19, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, 7commentsHere’s a great article by David Brewster about the much-respected and financially secure Chamber Music Northwest from the online journal Crosscut. Here’s the opening:
If Seattle is a bright beacon flashing out its grandness, Portland is a bushel basket, under which well-kept secrets gleam. My favorite example is Portland’s Chamber Music Northwest summer festival, now in its 37th year and one of the finest in the country. My family has been going for the past 25 years, but I rarely encounter a music lover in Seattle who’s ever been. CMNW, doing just fine, thank you, shows no inclination or need to market to a Seattle audience.
denk thinks, portland listens July 18, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a comment
One of my favorite music bloggers, the pianist Jeremy Denk, made quite a splash at the Portland International Piano Festival this past weekend - click here for a complete review by Oregonian classical music critic David Stabler. Here’s the lead-in:
Many piano concerts are like trips to the shopping mall: safe, predictable excursions with a commercial intent.
Not Jeremy Denk’s. Last weekend in Portland, the 37-year-old New York pianist took us to the edge of a precipice, lined himself up and jumped.
Denk’s piano recital was so daring, so fraught with peril that I expected to see hazard lights flashing around the perimeter of the stage. Men with walkie-talkies would warn us to keep our distance. Ambulances would be lined up to handle injuries. Gawkers would sell souvenirs.
Below him lay the abyss of Ivesian chaos (Charles Ives’ “Concord” Sonata), with its four movements of surging strife and transcendental difficulty. Beethovenian chaos followed (the “Hammerklavier” Sonata) with its own four movements of surging strife and transcendental difficulty. They are similar in intent, both ending where they began, making a dangerously brilliant pair.
Beauty and refinement — the customary rewards of recitals — ceased to exist. Instead, Denk took us to the heart of darkness with music that normally repels audiences: dysfunctional harmonies, chord clusters, lack of continuity, contradiction.
max aronoff viola institute 2007 July 7, 2007
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a commentAs I noted in my last post, I’ve been performing and teaching this past week. I was taking part in a string camp that I, along with my then teacher Joyce Ramée, founded back in 1990. With two exceptions (to attend the Tanglewood Music Center in 1994-1995) I’ve taught and performed at the institute every year. My wife, cellist Heather Blackburn, joined the faculty in 1997 and has been there every summer since.
This year was a difficult one - the symphony season was particularly back-loaded with difficult and unfamiliar repertoire at the end of the season, and I did a recital and audition towards the end, so there was little time to recharge built in to the normally quite relaxed end of the season - going from May into June. My state of mind going into the summer would have been quite accurately described as “burned out”. (more…)
festival report: sunriver music festival, week two August 20, 2006
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a commentWell, the Sunriver festival is now history for this year. It was a good run, very enjoyable in many ways. It was nice to have some time to hike (Newberry Crater trail) and bike (the 40 miles of bike paths in Sunriver) and just hang out with my friends and colleagues in the orchestra.
The highlight of the second week was undoubtedly the arrival and performance of violinist Rachel Barton Pine. She performed the monumental Beethoven Violin Concerto, and with great command and aplomb, I might add. She followed with two (!) encores: Kreisler’s Recitativo and Scherzo and her own fiendishly inventive and difficult variations on the New Zealand national anthem. Unbelievable!!
I don’t know why she hasn’t yet appeared with the Oregon Symphony (especially since she recorded the Brahms and Joachim concertos with our music director Carlos Kalmar in Chicago, and appeared with him in Iceland) - but it is an omission that must be rectified as soon as possible. She is a true virtuoso, but without affectation, and is also a voracious musical omnivore.
Heather and I had a chance to catch up with Rachel (I’d met her about 10 years ago when we were both teaching for a week at Interlochen) and read some string trios on Saturday afternoon, and it was great fun. We’re hoping that some future collaborations might become possible, and we’ve been looking for an excuse to visit Chicago, so who knows?…
festival report: sunriver music festival - week one August 13, 2006
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, 1 comment so farThis past Friday (11 August) I was pleased to give my first public performance of the Martinu Rhapsody-Concerto with the Sunriver Festival Orchestra and conductor Lawrence Leighton Smith. I was quite happy with how it went (unusual for me, as those who know me well can attest), especially for a first time, and for it being the first time in a few years that I’ve gotten up in front of an orchestra. For those of you who have not had the experience of playing a concerto or concert piece with an orchestra, it’s a bit like dancing the tango with a piano strapped to your back. It’s going to be a bit easier if the orchestra is the Cleveland Orchestra or Berlin Philharmonic, but it’s a different animal altogether than playing with a pianist.
The orchestra played beautifully, and the major tutti sections came across tremendously well, which is good since they really form the backbone of the work, emotionally speaking. It was also my most painless concerto appearance - the orchestra was wonderfully flexible and responsive, and Larry Smith is perhaps one of the best accompanying conductors working today, which may have a good deal to do with his long parallel career as a solo and collaborative pianist. While I was glad that my performance went well, I was even more gratified to find that the Martinu was a hit with both the musicians of the orchestra and with the audience. I hope that this piece will find a real following in the States, as it is virtually unknown even to most performing violists in this country. It is a tuneful, gorgeous, well-paced, and well-written work which shows the viola to its best advantage (it does not stray above ‘B’ above the staff in treble cleff), namely in its chocolatey and throaty middle and lower registers.
Other works we performed this past weekend were the First Suite for Orchestra by Tchaikovsky, which features a Miniature-March for upper strings and winds which is very much reminiscent of the Overture to The Nutcracker, and a delight to listen to (if not to play - very high stuff for the fiddles), Haydn’s Symphony 82 “The Bear”, Weber’s Overture to Oberon, the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No 5, and Schubert’s Symphony No 2. Of special interest was the Mozart Piano Concerto No 22 with Christopher O’Riley as soloist. He played with a beautifully light and varied touch, and performed a last movement cadenza of his own composition, with the earlier cadenzas which I couldn’t identify, but will find out about, since they were so interesting. In particular, the first movement cadenza had snippets of the Rondo Finale’s theme forshadowed, which I particularly enjoyed.
This just in: a quirky, funny, and dead-on review of the O’Riley concert - here is the link to the article.
festival report: methow music festival August 6, 2006
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a commentWe’re back for just an overnight at home, then it’s off to Sunriver for some chamber orchestra action. The Methow Festival went very well. There were more than a few communication and logistical snafus, but given that Artistic Director and Pianist Lisa Bergman had to leave for Seattle during the middle of rehearsals due to a medical situation, it all came together very well, indeed!
Heather was to play the Chopin Pollanaise Brilliante with Lisa, and then four of us were to do the Brahms Piano Quintet with her as well. The Chopin got axed, as did the Brahms, and in place of the Brahms we filled out the second program with the Haydn “Lark” Quartet, on two day’s notice and without having ever played it together, no less! It was a great confidence booster to see that we’d jelled enough as an ensemble to tackle the intricacies of Haydn on short notice and very little rehearsal time.
The Mozart Quintet in g minor (Kv. 516a) was great fun, and it was such a pleasure to share the stage with our fellow festival artists Maria Sampen and Timothy Christie (violin and viola, and wife and husband), who also played the Bach Double Violin Concerto with us. The quintet really is such a staggering work of heartbreaking genius (with apologies to Dave Eggers) and it was incredible to get back in touch with it after years of only knowing it as a recording and excerpts from Alfred Einstein’s biography of Mozart harking to Gethsemane and the poisoned chalice. Great stuff!
We also did the Haydn Op. 20 no 4 ‘Sun’ - a work from the amazingly mature and interesting (if a bit underplayed by the major touring quartets) opus 20. The set gets its name from the title page illustration of the original edition. It also made a cool bookend to our last work, the titanic Beethoven Op. 59 no 2 of the Razumovsky set, which Czerny called an evocation of a great starry night sky and the music of the spheres.
As if there wasn’t enough musical and life drama during the week, the complex of wildfires known as the “Tripod Complex” was buring through over 57,000 acres of rugged backcountry forest a short distance north and east of the town of Winthrop, where the festival is held. The fire provided a dramatic backdrop to the concerts, and became even more so after dark. Timothy Christie noticed tongues of flame coming up from the crowns of newly ignited trees and christened the area Mordor, after the land of the evil wizard Sauron from The Lord of the Rings.
For those of you who might be interested in such things, we’ll be deciding repertoire for the coming season by the end of the month - so far Beethoven Op. 130 has a strong chance of being on our fall concert…
montréal report June 10, 2006
Posted by Charles Noble in : Uncategorized, add a comment
Well, my time at the XXXIVth Int’l Viola Congress has come to an end. It was a wonderful couple days for me in the middle of the schedule of the Congress. I played the world premiere of Dorothy Chang’s Streams for solo viola Friday morning at around 10:00 a.m. I think I represented the piece well, and it got a good response from the audience (which was very respectable considering that the recital began at around 9:30 in the morning).
I didn’t honestly spend much time at congress events, as I arrived shortly before my run-through time on Thursday afternoon, then did some further work on spots in my room, and then took to the Metro to see some of the sights of Montreal before I returned back for the evening. Last night, however, I did catch the first half of the Gala Concerto Concert, which featured Lars Anders Tomter in the viola adaptation of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, and Roberto Diaz in the world premiere of Roberto Sierra’s new Concerto for Viola, Strings and Percussion. The accompanying ensemble was the venerable I Musici de Montreal chamber orchestra under the direction of Yuri Turovsky. They provided wonderfully deft and transparent support for both works. I must say that I had not heard the Mozart arrangement before, and it just doesn’t work for me, no matter how beautifully played, which Tomter most certainly did. Perhaps on repeated hearings, but I’m just not sure about it. The Sierra piece, however, is a new gem of the viola repertoire. It has shades of Penderecki throughout, and it’s a darker piece than I was expecting, though the final movement does incorporate some trademark Latin rhythms. Sierra has payed close attention to the style and tenor of Roberto Diaz’s playing, and really designed the piece artfully around his dark and intense playing. I think that the program will be broacast on CBC Radio Two at some point - check on the web for listings. Not to be missed!
