Stanford University Live presents Gidon Kremer & Kremerata Baltica
Bing Concert Hall
Stanford University, 327 Lasuen St, Stanford, CA 94305-5005 USA
7:30 PM, Friday, February 10, 2017
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!
[7:35 PM lights down, band out, chair-scraping]
Philip Glass (b.1937) (arr. Andrei Pushkarev (b. 1974)): Orpheus Suite for Strings and Percussion (1991/2000/2016)
[8:46 PM lights down, band out, sans GK]
Alexander Raskatov (b.1953): The Seasons Digest (after Tchaikovsky Seasons, op. 37a) (2001)
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) (arr. Leonid Desyatnikov (b.1955)): Las Quatro Estaciones Porteñas (The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires) for Violin and String Orchestra (1965-69; arr 1991)
As my friend Susan put it at the conclusion of tonight's show: “sugar, pure sweet sugar!” Indeed, despite the fairly dark emotional world of Kancheli's Chiaroscuro, I'd agree that the overall impression tonight was of sweetness and light – somehow it's hard to escape that in the string orchestra repertoire, but for the times when you want it, sweet! Hearing the Glass opener reminded me of seeing his movie works many years ago … and rekindled the desire to see those multimedia operas brought to life again! Hopefully someone will decide upon a revival around here soon!
Kancheli's piece was unfamiliar to me; the strongest impression I got from this first listen was of contrast: of long, fairly quiet sections, punctuated by startlingly loud blasts of percussion. Interesting enough that I could stand to hear it again.
Opening the second half of the night, Raskatov's Seasons Digest, was another unfamiliar piece. And I'm embarrassed to say that I don't recall the Tchaikovsky suite that stimulated it, either. I would guess that I'd heard the Tchaikovsky at some point, but maybe not. In any case, Raskatov seemed to me to exhibit quite a sense of humor, what with the interjection of strange sounds via the prepared piano, percussion, and special instructions to the musicians, who whispered, sang, rang bells, scraped and tapped their instruments, stomped their feet, and generally added considerable visual interest to the performance.
I'm sure I've heard Piazzolla's Four Seasons of Buenos Aires on several occasions, but this might have been the first time I'd encountered the arrangement by Desyatnikov – I liked the sneaky way that he managed to insert quotes from Vivaldi here and there within the work – it reminded me of a listener's version of “Where's Waldo?”
At this point, soon after the show, I have no idea what the first encore piece was, since Kremer made no introduction or announcement. I'm reasonably sure that the second piece was Weinberg's Bonifatsy's Holidays, since it jogged my memory of seeing them in 2014. Hopefully someone with better connections will post a review that fills in these blanks!
James Oestreich posted a promo article about Gidon recently in the NY Times.
Tysen Dauer posted a review of the show at SFCV.
Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!