We finished our second of three subscription concerts tonight - a big program of Dvorak, Rachmaninoff and Strauss.  It’s so interesting to me the differences in the personalities of the audiences each night.

Usually Saturday night’s audience (which used to the famous “Tuesday Nighters”) is pretty boisterous and excitable.  There are usually quite a few whistles, bravos and various screams perpetrated by this audience.  In short: they’re pretty crazy about the symphony and classical music, and they let us know about it.

Sunday night’s audience couldn’t be more different.  Sometimes I think that Jesus could come down to earth in physical form, play a major piano concerto, walk on water as an encore, and the Sunday night audience would still only give him one curtain call.  It’s not that they don’t appreciate what we do, I’m sure of that, but they are just less demonstrative (and apparently more attuned to the length of the drive home) than the Saturday night crowd.

Finally, there’s the Monday group.  They’re supposedly the patrician, old-money crowd, but they run hot and cold - some weeks it feels like we scorch the very air with our wild abandon and people are out there giving the ol’ “golf clap”.  Other times we give a lackluster and listless performance, only to get 10 minute standing ovations.  Go figure.  Maybe it has to do more with the performance of the stock market that day than how we play (ooh! I made $300,000 today, that Beethoven was great!).

Whatever night it is, these first two shows sold quite well.  The first night was close to sold out, and tonight looked about 85-90% full.  Very respectable.  Now we just have to do that for about five more seasons and raise a record amount of money, and we just might make it!

Today and yesterday at rehearsal I was so nostalgic during the Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto. Usually I get into the music (more or less) during the rehearsals, which leaves me free to concentrate on execution during the concerts. Yes - that’s what I said! I find that I need to have a certain margin of control during concerts which I can only get (usually) if I’m in a calm, focused space. Over-emoting or surrendering to emotion only creates problems for me - I leave the zone, so to speak.

But yesterday, during the indescribably lovely slow movement of the Rachmaninoff, there was a moment towards the last third of the movement, a transition, where the two flutes play five notes in thirds going into a very restful cadence - the denouement of the climax of the movement. It’s an incredible moment, and it made me think of a colleague who is fighting for their life right now against cancer, and I just began to weep (luckily, I was just counting a lot of rests at the time). My thoughts were of this person, and whether I’d ever hear them play again, or see them alive again, or how I could be any sort of help to them in their situation. And the music was the conduit to my innermost self, where these things normally lay under lock and key during public life, and Rachmaninoff had the key to this place, and the door was opened, and so was I. I got myself together during the end of the movement, and all was back to normal by the beginning of the last movement.

Anyone who wonders what music is “about” and why it’s “important” should look to any similar moment they might have had in their own experience as a listener. Music expresses that which would be too painful, too private to express in words or concrete images. Music can do this despite having been written by someone days, years, decades, or centuries ago - and it still has that immediate impact: how did Rachmaninoff know I needed those flutes in thirds yesterday? He didn’t - but the fact remains that those two instruments, capable of being shrill and staccato and strident in their upper register, were instead mellifluous and limpid and soothing at just the right time to open my eyes to what was in my heart. It’s a miracle, really. Tonight, listen to the your favorite moment of your favorite piece, and see what your heart tells you.

pianist Valentina Lisitsa

This weekend’s first subscription concert at the Oregon Symphony is pretty much a must-see/hear. There’s a terrific piece of Dvorak - his Symphonic Variations - that I’ll bet you’ve never heard live before (and maybe not even on a recording) - but which is both totally charming and an orchestral showpiece. Then there’s the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, which I never grow tired of hearing, which was played absolutely stunningly today at rehearsal by substitute pianist Valentina Lisitsa. Amazing - she plays with no apparent effort, but with great clarity and power. Make sure you come hear her play this piece! Last is the iconic Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. There’s stunning virtuosity on display all around, and it gives a chance to hear our orchestra 2.0 in all its glory. If you want better seats, availability is best for Sunday and Monday.

A clip of perhaps my favorite living pianist, Martha Argerich, performing the last movement of the Tchaikovsky 1st Concerto.  Hair-raisingly good and exciting!  I must hear her live sometime…

Last night, finally, the regular season was underway! It was a typical gala opening night affair - sold out house (thank goodness!), well-to-do patrons dressed to the nines, the women of the orchestra bedecked in extra spangles and bling (allowed in the dress code specially for the occasion) and a program guaranteed to please most everyone, and disappoint no-one, with a household name soloist and a blockbuster concerto favorite. [Read more →]

Just a shameless plug: the Arnica Quartet will be giving a performance at the Loucks Lecture Hall of the Salem Public Library (central branch on Liberty Street) on Sunday, September 16th at 3:00 p.m.

We’ll be playing an early Haydn quartet (Op. 20 no. 4), the lone quartet of Claude Debussy, and the Brahms Piano Quintet with esteemed local pianist Cary Lewis, of the Lanier Trio.

The best part is…it’s free! Hope we see you there!

It looks like there may be a new arms race amongst conservatories - there are some quite high profile artists included in this latest round at the Juilliard School.

Here are the bios of these new faculty members, from a Juilliard press release: [Read more →]

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.

The pianist Jeremy Denk (of Think Denk fame) has gotten a very nice mention of his performance of Charles Ives‘ “Concord” Sonata. Now Jeremy can use “brilliant” - the New York Times, in his promo materials! You can read the entire article (ostensibly a review of a concert from the Emerson Quartet’s Beethoven “Quartets in Context” series going on a Carnegie Hall this month) here. Here’s the bit on Mr. Denk: [Read more →]

I just finished reading David Stabler’s post about his experience on the judging panel for the Cliburn Fifth International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs in Forth Worth, Texas. [Read more →]