NJPAC in
Newark. Orchestra (Seat G105, $52.)
Program
The Hebrides
Overture, “Fingal’s Cave” Op. 26 (1829-30, revised until 1835) by Mendelssohn
(1809-1847).
Violin Concerto
in D Major, Op, 35 (1878) by Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).
Serenade No. 1
in D Major, Op. 11 (1857-58) by Brahms (1833-1897).
We got home
after a 240 or so mile drive from Boston on Friday, the previous night. And for today (Saturday) we needed to check
into our hotel in Rockville, MD; we were planning on attending a 9:45 am
service on Sunday.
Our daughter and
others, after hearing this, all agreed the prudent thing to do was to skip the
concert. But with Hadelich playing Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, I really
wanted to hear it. So we decided to
compromise by leaving after the first half of the program.
I usually don’t
do any research, beyond reading the Program Notes, before I listen to a live
concert. Either I am that lazy, or I don’t
want to be biased towards one particular interpretation. (For similar reasons I don’t read the reviews
either.) There are those who swear by
learning about the music as much as possible beforehand. I imagine there are reasons to go one way or
another.
Today I made the
“mistake” of searching for the overture on YouTube, and listened to it. It matched very well the description in
today’s Program Notes, with the seas around the island calm at times, and
stormy at others. Tonight’s performance
was at best competent, I had to really work on my imagination to picture the
scenery. Perhaps it’s the unfavorable comparison to the YouTube tape, or it was
simply an uninspired reading.
Fingal’s Cave is
on an island that is just a little south from the Isle of Skye, a place we are
visiting later this summer. It would be
interesting if we can find a way to see the cave.
The size of the
orchestra remained the same for Tchaikovsky.
Hadelich put in a great performance, although the violin was slight off-tune
after the first movement, some of which couldn’t be fixed as they were
harmonics, but a bit of minor tuning before the second movement (and the
enthusiastic applause) fixed the problem.
We were seated
quite close to the stage, and I expected a great sound from the
instrument. Not that there was anything
wrong with it, but the violin didn’t quite have the brilliance of a
Stradivarius, and didn’t quite measure up to my memory of Hadelich’s previous
performances. The Program Notes doesn’t
mention the violin, so let me try a web search now … the Wikipedia entry says
he is still playing on the 1723 Stradivarius.
I also found out he suffered severe burns when he was a teenager and
required extensive skin grafts during his recovery.
The applause was
thunderous, and for encore he played Paganini’s Caprice No. 5. It was close to perfect. So readers of this blog won’t complain about
my harsh grading, I considered the way he played No. 24 perfect, and this was
certainly a better performance than the last time I heard him play it. (So far he’s played Paganini’s caprices as
encores for all three of the concerts.)
We have seen
Rohrer conduct a couple of times before, leading the Mostly Mozart Festival
Orchestra. I described him as animated,
and he was relatively subdued today.
We left Newark a
bit after 9:15 pm, and it was about 1:30 am that we checked into the hotel in
Rockville, MD. It was worth the trouble
to go to this concert.
