Program: A concert of the Society of the Friends of Music in Vienna
Overture in G major by Luigi Cherubini.
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Stranvinsky
Symphony No. 4, C minor, D 417 ("Tragic") by Schubert
We are in Vienna with our friends David & Ruby, whom we
have known since our college days. One
should never visit Vienna without going to a concert, so here we are. The big names are of course the Vienna
Philharmonic and the State Opera. The
State Opera has tickets only in the E250 range, which is a bit too much for
us. When I found out we could get
contiguous seats at E46 each, I got them right away. Notice the seats don’t have a row number. We found out they are actually a few chairs
they put out on the side, right behind the violas, right next to the cellos,
and right in front of the basses. Anne and I just had to make sure to suppress the cough we had, and good thing we did.
The acoustics of the hall isn’t quite up to what I recall of
Tonhalle in Zurich, but certainly quite adequate, perhaps because we are so
close to the players. The first violins,
quite far from us, were quite easy to hear.
On the other hand, I had trouble hearing the violas, which were right in front of us. For some reason, my ears are simply not tuned
to its pitch range and its timbre.
Riccardo Muti was supposed to be the conductor, but he had
to withdraw because of illness. Andres
Orozco-Estrada, a young conductor of another of the many orchestras in Vienna,
stepped in. Since I didn’t pay a lot of
attention to the original program, I am not completely certain (but quite sure)
that the program was changed. Similarly,
the solo violinist is the Orchestra’s concertmaster; and I am sure he wasn’t
the originally-scheduled soloist.
Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) was an Italian composer who
spent most of his time in France. I had
never heard of him before, and thought his music sounded quite baroque.
The Stravinsky violin concerto was a first-time listen also. It is quite long at about 30 minutes, not
extremely difficult as far as I could tell.
On the other hand, it is easy to like, and I am sure I will enjoy it
more as (if) I get to know it better.
There are some interesting effects.
For example, by having the piccolo doubling the violin, it sounds like
harmonics are being used. The solo
violin’s sound was quite good, but didn’t project as well as I would like.
I am still not sure if I have heard the Schubert piece
before - I do have that on my iPod. Nonetheless, in one regard it is
very Schubertian: the themes get used so many times that by the end the piece
simply sounded very familiar. The sound
of the orchestra was crisp, and dynamics was great.
These last minute substitutions sometimes can make an artist. Orozco-Estrada is a young man (may be early
30s?) and did a credible job. I am not
sure this event would make him, though.
One other surprising thing about the concert hall is how
worn things look and how small the stage is.
The orchestra for tonight wasn’t particularly large, but there was not
much spare room on stage. The conductor’s
dais is pushed all the way to the edge, and it is a good thing there is support
behind him. The wood of the stage could
use a new coat of varnish, a long time ago.
Finally, we noticed that some double basses have 5
strings. Need to do some research on that.
All said and done, we were all happy that we could see this
event.
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