Archive for the ‘Concert Concats’ Category

Concert Concat 2024

Published by peter on 2024-04-11 in Concats, Concert Concats, Concerts, Jazz and Music. Closed

This post is one in a sequence which lists (mostly) live music I have heard, as best as memory allows. I write to have a record of my musical experiences and these entries are intended as postcards from me to my future self. All opinions are personal, although music historians from the 25th Century may find some of them of interest.

Other posts in this collection can be found here. The most recent prior post in this sequence is here.

  • Kasparas Mikužis in his debut recital at Wigmore Hall, London, on Wednesday 4 December 2024. The program:
    • Rameau: Suite in G
    • Rachmaninoff: Sonata No 1 in D minor, Op. 28

    This was an outstanding mid-day recital on the Wigmore’s Steinway piano, to a hall about two-thirds full. Mr Mikužis played one encore, a short prelude by his fellow Lithuanian Mikalojus Čiurlionis. It is charming that Mr Mikužis so often plays the music of Čiurlionis, drawing our attention to this fine composer.

    I only heard the Rachmaninoff first Sonata for the first time a few weeks ago (played by Professor Dmitri Alexeev), and I was delighted to hear it again so soon. The work is intellectually and emotionally very challenging, with a great symphony’s worth of ideas, lines of development, moods, techniques, and effects. Mr Mikužis rose superbly to its many challenges and presented a powerful and coherent reading of this masterpiece.

    How immensely different this performance was to that other Opus 28 I have Mr Mikužis play several times this past year, Chopin’s collection of 24 Preludes. Chopin’s theme in that set was death and its presentiment, and Rachmaninoff’s here (at least initially) was the legend of Faust, a story which is also about death and how one should live one’s life in face of it. I wonder where this deep thread will take Mr Mikužis next!

  • Krius String Quartet to an audience of about 50 people in St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, London on Friday 22 November 2024. The quartet comprises Alfie Weinberg (v), Louis Solon (v), Theo Hayward (va), and Frederick Carter (c), all students at the Royal Academy. The programme was:
    • Haydn: String Quartet, Op. 54 No. 2
    • Puccini: Crisantemi

    This was another very fine performance by this young quartet, sounding more confident and assured than they did just a few weeks ago at St Marylebone Church. For the audience, and perhaps also the performers, the acoustic of St Bride’s is far better than at St Marylebone (where the sound seemed to disappear upwards). As in the previous concert, the descant melody over the sombre chords of the second movement of the Haydn quartet was profoundly moving.

    This concert was a wonderful experience, and I look forward eagerly to hearing Krius play again. Their lightness of touch and tight co-ordination would make them ideal performers for the quartets of Cherubini and Arriaga.

  • Harp Chamber Music, by students from the Royal Academy of Music, at Regent Hall, London, Friday 15 November 2024. The programme was:
    • 1. Debussy (arranged Henk de Vlieger): Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune
    • 2. Christopher Gunning (1944-2023): Lament
    • 3. Britten: Folk Songs for High Voice
    • 4. Andre Jolivet (1905-1974): Chant de Linos

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Transcendent music

Published by peter on 2023-12-11 in Concert Concats, Concerts, Jazz, Minimalism and Music. Closed

Some years ago, I compiled a list of purposes that may motivate composers, performers or listeners of music, under the heading What is music for?

An objective that may motivate many performers is that of reaching a transcendent state, as the Russian-Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg, describes here. His blog post was written after he had performed all five Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Brussels Philharmonic (under Thierry Fischer) across three evenings, in February 2020 (blog entry of 18 February 2020):

The high point for me was No. 4, during which I experienced something which until now I’ve only felt while playing Russian music: a kind of floating, when your brain disengages or splits in two. One (small) part is alert and following the performance, and perhaps directs the musical flow a little bit, the other (much larger) part is completely sunk into the music, experiencing it in a kind of visceral, instinctive way which precludes logical thinking and seems wired directly to your deepest feelings, without any buffers or defenses. After that concerto I was drained, bewildered, exhilarated – a complete mess. But what an unforgettable night.”

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Concert Concat 2

Published by peter on 2023-11-16 in Concats, Concert Concats, Concerts and Music. Closed

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This post is one in a sequence which lists live music I have heard, as best my memory allows, from the Pandemic onwards. I will update this as time permits. In some cases, I am also motivated to write about what I heard.

Other posts in this collection can be found here.

  • Ariel Lanyi – piano recital at the Wigmore Hall, London, 27 December 2023. The program was:
    • Beethoven: Sonata #2 in A, Op 2 No 2 (1794-5)
    • Franck: Prelude, Aria et Final (1887)
    • R. Schumann: Etudes Symphoniques Op 13 (with posthumous etudes) (1834-7)

    A very refined performance to a house about 3/4 full. Many people seemed to know each other. I was not able to stay for the Schumann.

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Concert Concat 1

Published by peter on 2011-06-04 in Concats, Concert Concats, Concerts, Music, Reviews and Violin. 0 Comments

As part of the diverse mental attic that this blog is, this post simply lists live music I have heard, as best my memory serves, up until the pandemic. In some cases, I am also motivated to write about what I heard.

Other posts in this series are listed here.

  • Gulce Sevgen, piano, in a concert at the Gesellschaft fur Musiktheatre, Turkenstrasse 19, Vienna 1090, Austria, 15 November 2018.   This venue turned out to be a small room holding 48 seats in a converted apartment.  There were 20 people present to hear Ms Sevgen play JS Bach’s Chromatic Fantasie & Fugue in d-minor BWV903, Beethoven’s Pastorale Sonata, excerpts from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”, Mendelssohn’s Variations Serieuses, Op. 54, and Liszt’s Concert Etude E/M A218 and Zweite Ballade, E/M A181.  Ms Sevgen’s performance throughout was from memory, a quite remarkable feat.  Her playing was perhaps too loud for the size of the room, even with the piano lid half-down. The Bach, Beethoven and Mendelssohn were all excellent.  I have remarked before that I do not “get” the music of Prokofiev.  His music for Romeo and Juliet is a prime example:  the famous dance with its large-footed stomping bassline conjures up, for me, Norwegian trolls not feuding Italian merchant families, as if the composer had read a different play altogether. (Mendelssohn’s and Shostakovich’s incidental music to Shakespeare, by contrast, both make perfect sense.)  The playing of the Liszt works was fluent and articulate, but devoid of any meaning; it is perhaps unfair to ask performers to add meaning where there was none, since these are simply show-off pieces, all style and no substance.  But it is not unfair to ask performers not to play such vapid, meaningless music in public.

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