92Y Online Concert - New York Philharmonic String Quartet. Viewed December 20, 2020.

Concert recorded December 17, 2020.  Part of the 10-concert subscription series.

Program

Schubert, Quartettsatz, D. 703 (1820).

Mendelssohn, Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13 (1827).

Ravel, String Quartet.

The concert originally had Emanuel Ax appearing as well, a few weeks ago 92Y sent out an email announcing that Ax won't be on the program.  I was quite disappointed as I had always enjoyed Ax's musicianship.

Despite that, this program was thoroughly enjoyable.  From what I could tell, both the Mendelssohn and the Ravel pieces were not easy to pull off; they were performed brilliantly.

I was wondering why the first movement of Schubert was played (the "satz" in the title should have been a giveaway).  Turns out this was a quartet Schubert never completed.

It always amazes me how easy Schubert made key changes effortless, he seemed to be able to jump to any key he wanted with a few transitional notes.

I could find scores for all three pieces on the web, and followed along best I could.  This was my first listening of all three pieces, I am torn between just sitting back and enjoy versus not being able to follow where the music is going.  (The simple answer is to listen multiple times, but not practical in many instances.)

The movements of the other quartets are as follows.  Mendelssohn: Adagio-Allegro vivace; Adagio non lento; Intermezzo: Allegretto con moto-Allegro di molto; Presto-Adagio non lento.  Ravel: Allegro moderato-tres doux; Assez vif-tres rythme; Tres lent; Vif et agite.

92Y Online Concert - Jeremy Denk, piano. Viewed December 17, 2020.

Concert recorded Sunday December 13, 2020.  Part of the 10-concert subscription series.

Program

MOZART: Sonata No. 14 in C Minor, K. 457
BLIND TOM WIGGINS: The Battle of Manassas
JOPLIN: Heliotrope Bouquet (arr. Chauvin)
TANIA LEÓN: Rituál
FREDERIC RZEWSKI: Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues
BEETHOVEN: Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111

Ellie and family were baking Christmas cookies at house on December 13, so I didn't get to see this live.  From the closing credits it appears the concert was not recorded on the 92Y stage, but somewhere in San Francisco instead.

Regardless of when or where it was recorded, this is a concert one will enjoy no matter when one sees it.

Below are some of the notes I took during my viewing of the event.

After Mozart, Denk talked about bookending the recital with the tragic sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, which to him is a reflection of the year.

The Battle of Manassas is a collection of favorite "patriotic" tunes woven together as a fantasy/impromptu.

Joplin's unmistakable sound followed.

Rzewski's Cotton Mill Blues started sounding like a cotton mill (as close as the piano can come to imitate it).  Keys hit with entire palm and fist.

(Not sure what happened to the Tania Leon piece!)

Talked about the Beethoven sonata.  Beethoven used C Minor key multiple times.  Some Bach themes.  In two movements.  Second a set of variations with infinite patience.  Long-short-long- series of themes, gets into the wilderness, and comes back.

92Y Online Concert - Xavier Foley, double bass, and Kelly Lin, piano. Viewed December 10, 2020.

Live Broadcast on December 4, 2020.  Part of the 10-concert subscription series.

Program

Bottesini, Elegy No. 1.

Bach, Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1008.

Xavier Foley, Irish Fantasy.

Foley, Always on the Move.

Gliere, Intermezzo & Tarantella, Op. 9

I couldn't get to this program until about a week later.  Besides being a bit busy with other (mostly trivial) things I needed to take care of, I also didn't think I would get too excited about the double bass as a solo instrument.  My experience with bass as more than a "double bass" was limited to its chamber role in Schubert's "Trout Quintet" and every now and then listening to Max's playing on the instrument (in person or on TV).

In that regard I was glad I caught this program.  The most prominent takeaway for me was the instrument sounded good for most of the 60-plus minutes of the program.  Perhaps - as my aforementioned friend insisted at one time - there is no parallel between cello and bass techniques, nonetheless the similarity in sound was a lot more than I expected.  (I realize saying "wow, it sounded like a cello" may be the biggest compliment or biggest put-down you can have on the instrument.)  It was also unexpected that, at least in this case, the bass can't take that much punishment either, if the need for frequent tuning was any indication.

Foley made quite a few remarks on stage.  One puzzling statement was Bach's Suite was in D-flat minor, and it had to do with the tuning of the instrument.  And after the Bach piece he did retune the strings.  Irish Fantasy was his work based on the theme music in the game (Fate?) that came with a Windows XP computer he bought in Costco.  And Always on the Move has elements of CSI: Miami and lots of R&B to it.  The piece did start and end with traditional classical pieces, which I appreciated.

However, I am not sure how well the Bach Suite worked on the bass.  There was a distinct lack of counterpoint in the music, perhaps to play two notes "simultaneously" (by jumping quickly from one string to another) only works in specific instances.

He ended the program with an encore piece: an etude called "The Dance."

Foley plays an instrument made by Solano.  Notice the fingerboard: it ends in a notch.

92Y Online Concert - The Emerson String Quartet and Yefim Bronfman, piano. Viewed November 19, 2020.

Live Broadcast on November 19, 2020.  Part of the 10-concert subscription series.

Program

Schumann, Movements 2 & 3 from String Quartet in A Major, Op. 41, No. 3 (1842).

Brahms, Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 (1864).

Even during these COVID times when I seldom go anywhere, I still had trouble catching too many of these 92Y concerts live.  Go figure.  In any case, I caught up with this later in the evening, thus both "viewed" and "live" dates are November 19.

Another enjoyable concert.  Only remark I had was about Bronfman's appearance: he appeared thinner, not as impeccably groomed as he used to be for the live concerts I attended (most notable was his somewhat unkempt hair, which was a lot whiter than I expected), and didn't push himself up as much.  Overall, he looked a lot healthier.

The quartet only played two of Schumann's four movements: Assai agitato and Adagio molto.  Brahms's quintet also has four movements: (I) Allegro non troppo; (II) Andante, un poco adagio; (III) Scherzo: Allegro; and (IV) Finale: Poco sostenuto - Allegro non troppo - Presto, non troppo.

For the Brahms piece, I was following along with the score.

92Y Online Concert - Aaron Diehl, piano. Viewed November 18, 2020.

Live broadcast on November 17, 2020.  Part of the 10-concert subscription series.

Program

William Grant Still (1895-1978): Seven Traceries (1940)

Sir Roland Hanna (1932-2002): Century Rag

Willie “The Lion” Smith (1893-1973): “Fading Star”

James P. Johnson (1894-1955): “Keep Off the Grass"

Wynton Guess: “J-Walking”

Duke Ellington (1899-1974): “New World A-Comin’”

R. Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943): “Juba Dance”

This is a program of works by (mostly) African American composers, with quite a few in what I would call the Jazz genre.  Below are some of the notes I jotted down, some from what Diehl said on stage, and some from the web.

Diehl is a young (early 30s) jazz pianist with classical training at Julliard.  We heard him performing with the New Jersey Symphony in December, 2018.

The piece by Still was the longest, the seven traceries being the seven attributes of God.  The movements are: Cloud Cradles, Mystic Pool, Muted Laughter, Out of the Silence, Woven Silver, Wailing Dawn and A Bit of Wit.  I managed to locate a webpage describing the work, which I used to follow along. Still is known as the "Dean of African American Music."

Hanna dedicated "Century Rag" to Eubie Blake, who was the founder of Eastern Ragtime, which later evolved to the "strike style" (just quoting Diehl here).  Diehl proceeded to mention that the pieces by Smith and Johnson were written in that style.

Guess is a young American composer, about 24.  The work "J-Walking" was commissioned by American Composer Orchestra.

Dett was an Canadian-American Black composer per Wikipedia.

92Y Online Concert - Anthony McGill, clarinet and Members of the New York Philharmonic. Novemeber 12, 2020.

Live Broadcast from 92Y ($10).

Program

Mendelssohn, String Quartet in D Major, Op. 44, No. 1 (1838)

Coleridge-Taylor, Clarinet Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 10 (1895)

New York Philharmonic members

Yulia Ziskel, violin; Na Sun, violin; Cynthia Phelps, viola; Nathan Vickery, cello.

How much the concert can be enjoyed depends very much on how well the internet is working at the moment of broadcast.  Today the network was somewhat unstable.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed the Mendelssohn piece and learned something about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.  The clarinet quintet probably would sound better if one gets more familiar with it, although the last movement was quite easy to like.

The movements of the compositions are as follows.  For Mendelssohn: (1) Molto allegro vivace; (2) Menuetto: Un poco Allegretto; (3) Andante espressivo ma con moto; and (4) Presto con brio.  For Coleridge-Taylor: (1) Allegro energico; (2) Larghetto affecttuoso - Molto espressivo; (3) Scherzo. Allegro leggiero; and (4) Finale.  Allegro agitato - Poco piu moderato - Vivace.  Coleridge-Taylor also supplied the tempo for the various movements.

A few things I learned about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.  He was born in London in 1875 and died in Surrey in 1912 from pneumonia.  His mother was English, his father a physician from Sierra Leone who returned to Africa not knowing he had left a pregnant woman behind.  He was named after the poet Samuel Taylor Colerdige, and at some point added the hyphen to his name.  A musical prodigy, he enrolled at the Royal College of Music at age 15 and eventually studied composition.  During one of his many visits to the US, he was nicknamed the "African Mahler."  His work supposedly drew on African music in the same tradition as Brahms with Hungarian music and Dvorak with Bohemian music.

92Y Online Concert - Midori, violin; Ieva Jokubaviciute, piano. November 6, 3030.

Live Broadcast from 92Y ($10)

Program

Grieg, Sonata No. 2 in G Major, Op. 13

Mozart, Sonata in E-flat Major, K. 302

Franck, Sonata in A Major

This was the fourth concert in this online series at the 92Y, and was the most enjoyable one so far.  First, the movements of the sonatas:

Grieg (1867): Lento doloroso - Allegro vivace; Allegretto tranquillo; Allegro animato.

Mozart (1778): Allegro; Andante grazioso.

Franck (1886): Allegretto ben moderato; Allegro; Ben moderato: Recitativo-Fantasia; Allegretto poco mosso.

While Midori was definitely the headline artist, Jokubaviciute also put in a remarkable performance.  It's a pity that the cameras were mostly focused on the violinist.

92Y Online Concert - Emerson Quartet. Viewed November 5, 2020.

The program was broadcast live on November 4, I viewed it a day later.  This was part of the 10-concert series subscription.

Program

Beethoven String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 (with Grosse Fuge, Op. 133).

The history of the composition is somewhat interesting.  Beethoven first completed the piece in the form played tonight.  The reception to the last movement at the work's premiere was negative, and at his publisher's urging Beethoven replaced it with Finale: Allegro in B-flat major, and the original sixth movement (Gross Fuge) was published as a stand-alone work numbered Op. 133.  Modern performances tend to go back to Beethoven's original version, although some argue the best interpretation is to play the "modified" work followed by the Grand Fugue, thus making the quartet a seven-movement work.  

Beethoven completed the replacement Finale in late 1826.  The first performance of the modified quartet was in April 1827, a month after the composer's death.

The Emerson Quartet performed the six-movement, "original version."  The movements are: (i) Adagio, ma non troppo - Allegro; (ii) Presto; (iii) Andante con moto, ma non troppo, Poco scherzoso; (iv) Alla danza tedesca.  Allegro assai; (v) Cavatina.  Adagio molto espressivo; and (vi) Gross Fuge (Op. 133) Ouverture.  Allegro - Meno mosso e moderato - Allegretto - Fuga. [Allegro] - Meno mosso e moderato - Allegro molto e con brio - Allegro.

I managed to locate the music on line and could follow along as the quartet played.  It was generally enjoyable, although there were segments that could have sounded cleaner than they did.  As this was my first encounter with the piece, I do not know if that how it should sound.  The 92Y website describes this quartet as the piece that put the Emerson Quartet on the map.

Information from the 92Y website.  Conflicting information as to when the recording was made.

Live Broadcast - Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Louis Langree, conductor; Augustin Hadelich, violin. October 24, 2020.

Program

The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives (1874-1954).

Concerto in A Major for Violin and String Orchestra, Op. 5, No. 2 by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1754-1799).

Pulcinella Suite by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971).

CSO is offering a series of digital concerts for free, donations accepted.

This is the first live concert I have viewed since COVID restrictions hit in mid-March.  There were a maximum of about 40 musicians on stage, which can easily accommodate four times as many people.  Each musician sits alone, with partitions between the wind instruments.  All other players wear masks, and the seating is "reversed" so the conductor is in the back of the stage and the winds at the front: makes sense as the front is most open.

I have heard the Ives piece a couple of times before, performed by the New York Phil, conducted by Dudamel and Gilbert.  Here Langree said he wasn't even sure what the question was; NY Phil claimed it to be question on existence.

Bologne was born in Guadeloupe to a slave mother; his father was a wealthy landowner.  He eventually moved to France and was a composer, virtuoso violinist, conductor, and a champion fencer to boot.  He was a prolific composer, with 6 operas and many violin concertos among his works.  And this was the first time I heard about him.  His work reminded me more of Vivaldi than Mozart, both in sound and in apparent difficulty.  The concerto wasn't easy, but I imagine within reach of most violin students.  It was always enjoyable to see Hadelich perform.  The clarity of his sound is simply amazing.

We had heard Pulcinella only once before, and it was adapted for three brass instruments.  Today had a "full" complement of musicians.  This was composed during Stravinsky's "neo-classical" period, and it was reasonably easy to get.

The Bologne concerto has three movements: Allegro moderato, Largo and Rondeau.  The Pulcinella Suite comprises of the following: Sinfonia, Serenata, Scherzino, Tarantella, Toccata, Gavotta con due variazioni, Vivo, Minuetto, and Finale.

I am glad to have caught this concert.

Dimmed lighting for Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question.

Hadelich performing Bologne's Violin Concerto No. 2.

Stravinsky's Pulcinella.  Notice the partitions placed between the wind instruments.

About 40 members on stage.  Each person by him/herself.

ALL-ARTS Channel Broadcast - Israel Philharmonic. Itzhak Perlman, conductor. October 21, 2020.

Original Performance Date: March 22, 2010.

Location: Mann Auditorium, Tel Aviv.

Program - All-Beethoven 

Egmont Overture, Op. 84

Triple Concerto in C Major, Op. 56

Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 (Pastoral)

Trio Members

Giora Schmidt, violin; Zuill Bailey, cello; Navah Perlman, piano.

I came across this concert while browsing through the ALL ARTS channel schedule.  I have never seen Itzhak Perlman conduct, so that would be something new.  Navah is Perlman's daughter and a sufferer of rheumatoid arthritis.  She was about 40 years ago when she performed at this concert.

The concert recordings are also available on YouTube.  I actually watched the entire concert via a combination of YouTube and ALL ARTS viewings.

I got the date of the performance from a YouTube recording.

All the pieces are quite standard, and the performance was most enjoyable.

92Y Online Concert – Tai Murray, violin & Hee-Kyung Juhn, piano, play Beethoven and Jeffrey Scott. October 15, 2020.

"Live" Broadcast from 92Y ($10).

Program

Beethoven, Sonata No. 5 in F Major, Op. 24 "Spring"

Jeffrey Scott, Transparencia (2015)

Beethoven, Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 "Kreutzer"

Today's program worked much better than the one on Tuesday.  I enjoyed it very much.

Much of that was undoubtedly due to my familiarity with the two Beethoven sonatas, which are "requirements" for violin students in their career.  I haven't listened to either sonata for a while, and Murray certainly attacked them with a lot of gusto, and in an unorthodox manner in some instances.  Not that the sound was very different, but the bowing was certainly not how I remembered it.  Both pieces were performed very well, although I thought the pianist could have asserted herself more forcefully when she had the baton, so to speak.

The movements of the Beethoven sonatas are:

Sonata No. 5 (1801)

Allegro

Adagio molto espressivo

Scherzo: Allegro molto

Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo

Sonata No. 9 (1803)

Adagio sostenuto - Presto

Andante con variazioni

Presto

Sandwiched between the two sonatas was a composition by Jeffrey Scott, a Queens, NY native who now teaches at Montclair State University in New Jersey.  I didn't know what to expect, but overall I liked what I heard.  It was supposed to capture all kinds of Brazilian music, but I frankly wouldn't know what Brazilian music should sound like.  I couldn't find much about the music on the web, and vaguely recall its having four movements.

Murray is in her late 30s, and is a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant.  She plays on a ca. 1765 Tomaso Balestrieri fecit Mantua.  Well, I don't have a good audio setup at home, so couldn't tell how good the sound was.

Our grandchildren were listening to part of the program.  Maisie (not quite 6) made the remark that the piano part looked so much more difficult than the violin part.  I couldn't object.  Wait till she sees a Mozart violin sonata.

92Y Online Concert – Brentano String Quartet Plays Mendelssohn and Haydn. October 13, 2020.

“Live” Broadcast from 92Y ($10).

Program

Mendelssohn, Selections from Four Pieces, Op. 81

Haydn, Quartet in D Major, Op. 17, No. 6

Mendelssohn, String Quintet No. 2 in -flat Major, Op. 87 (with Hsin-Yun Huang, viola)

Quartet Members

Mark Steinberg, Serena Canin – Violin; Misha Amory – Viola; Nina Lee – Cello

92Y offered a series of solo recitals and chamber concerts at $15 each, discounted to $10 each if one signed up for all 10.  It is a rather impressive list of artists, at a very reasonable price.

It is very difficult to locate on the 92Y website the program for the concert, and I still can’t find any notes on the different pieces being played.  One would think that would be a natural, what with the concert being on-line only.  I did manage to locate the music scores for the pieces, and able to follow along.  There were "technical issues" that caused a postponement of an hour; so not all kinks have been worked out yet.

It took me a while to locate this description of the Program on the 92Y website.

I don’t have a good setup to view these online concerts.  I could only use Chromecast if I view that on our TV.  That ended up with a jerky video stream, so I ended up watching this on a laptop, using my Bose Bluetooth speaker.  It was okay, but not great.

There were quite a few lovely passages, performed beautifully by the musicians.  I just wish the viewing experience had been better – no doubt much of the bad experience was my setup.

The string quintet was my first encounter with a second viola in a group.  One could argue there is a richer texture to the music, but one could also be excused if one doesn’t notice a fifth string instrument in the mix.

The movements of the pieces are listed below:

Mendelssohn: Four Pieces for String Quartet, Op. 81.  These were four different works published together after Mendelssohn’s death.  As far as I could tell, all four pieces were played.

Tema con variazioni (Andante sostenuto) in E Major, Op. 81/1 (1847);

Scherzo (Allegro leggiero) in A Minor, Op. 81/2 (1847);

Capriccio (Andante con moto) in E Minor, Op. 81/3 (1843);

Fugue (A tempo ordinario) in E-flat Major, Op. 81/4 (1827).

Haydn: Quartet in D Major, Op. 17, No. 6 (Quartet No. 20, Hoboken No. III:30) (1771)

Presto

Menuetto

Largo

Finale: Allegro

Mendelssohn: String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 87 (1845)

Allegro vivace

Andante scherzando

Adagio e lento

Allegro molto vivace

Notice the marking "DVR" on the upper left corner of the screen.  At the beginning of the broadcast it said "Live."

Metropolitan Opera at Home - Wagner's Gotterdammerung. October 10, 2020.

Original Performance Date: April 21, 1990.

Conductor - James Levine.  Brunnhilde - Hildegard Behrens, Siegfried - Siegfried Jerusalem, Hagen - Matti Salminen, Waltrute - Christa Ludwig, Gutrune - Hanna Lisowska, Gunther - Anthony Raffell, Alberich - Ekkehard Wlaschiha, Norns - Gweneth Bean, Joyce Castle, Andrea Gruber; Woglinde - Kaaren Erickson, Wallgunda - Diana Kesling, Flosshilde - Meredith Parsons.

One reaction I didn't expect to have is that I prefer the 24-plank set to this one, described (somewhere) as the one truest to Wagner's original concept (at least until then, and who is to judge?).

Behrens got hurt at the end of one of the Gotterdammerung Valhalla destruction scenes, and had to withdraw from the last cycle.  Since she also sang in the April 26, 1990 Siegfried, one can assume it wasn't at this performance.  She would die in her early 70s while traveling in Japan.

The quality of the video was quite bad.  I wasn't sure if that is how it is, or my home network had bandwidth problems.  I took a look at the Parsifal broadcast; it was in HD, and was fine.

In a live Ring cycle one sits through 4 operas in 6 to 7 days, here it was broadcast over four nights.  Very difficult to sustain that level of concentration, and there are so many distractions at home.

Gibichung vassals being summoned to the marriage of Guther and Brunnhilde.  One of the few instances in the Ring where a chorus is used.

Hagen, Gunther and Brunnhilde talking about Siegfried's weakness.

Curtain call after Act 2.

Hagen stabbing Siegfried in the back with a spear, as Gunther looks on.

Immolation scene.

Curtain call at end of opera.

List of actual performance dates for this "Ring" cycle.  Looks like only Das Rheingold and Siegfried are from the same Ring cycle.

This recording from Parsifal was done in 2015, the video quality has improved tremendously over the years.