Anne sneaked in a photo of Argerich doing an encore (Third movement of Ravel's piano concert in G).
Program
Philippe Boesman's Chambres d'a cote
Maurice Ravel's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G major
Sergei Prokofiev's Suites from "Romeo and Juliet" op. 64 (excerpts)
One major reason we are in Hamburg for a few days is to attend a concert at the Elbphilharmonie. We managed to get tickets for only one concert at the venue (as usual, hesitation was the culprit). We did get tickets for two concerts at Laeiszhalle - the venue before Elbphilharmonie came into existence. This one in the large hall, and a chamber concert in the small hall this coming Sunday. I am also thinking of going the Hamburg Opera Sunday evening, even though we are flying back to NJ the following morning.
As I am also trying to record the "travel" aspect of this trip, I am a bit pressed for time to write my impressions of these concerts, so here we go ... Not being able to find a program for this concert helps as I don't need to digest and react to it; all I plan to do is write what comes to mind.
First note the ticket price, not even 10 euros. The most expensive tickets sold for 62.70 Euros, so the concert was not expensive. But 9.9 euros. When we got to our seat, we found out the section is behind these arches which severely limited visibility of the stage. The photos included in this entry were made with me standing up. We moved to different seats, but they were all "bad." A friend used to say they went to concerts for the real time sound, I had to try to adopt that attitude today. In my defense ... One, those were probably the only seats left when I tried to book, I might have chosen the aisle seats for ease of access, but they were blocked most by the arches; Two, who would have thought of such a design? There are examples of old concert halls built without such huge arches.
Laeiszhalle was first augurated in 1908.
When seated, our seat in the Gallery afforded a very limited view of the stage. And this is before people sat down.
Front of hall.
Back of Hall. Seats behind the arches have a very limited view of the stage. The auditorium seats over 2000.
The Boesman piece can be characterized as a sound experiment. There are quite a few sections to this (about 20 minutes) piece, with each exploring a different effect created by different voices and techniques. It was quite interesting.
A while back I was confused about Gershwin's piano concerto, and concluded soon after it start that it was not Ravel, somewhat to my credit. I must say Ravel's concerto can easily be confused with Gershwin's, especially the first movement. (I vaguely remember Ravel visiting Gershwin at some point.)
The definitive performance of this concerto was by Yuja Wang a few years ago (with the London Symphony at NJPAC). It "broke the code" and I have since come to understand and appreciate the piece. Argerich's performance certainly was good, but didn't add new insight into the piece, and the "message" wasn't as clear as Wang's performance (or how I remember it).
She performed two encores. The first one was with the orchestra, and for a while I thought it was composed by Gershwin, and that would have been a natural thing to do. When I turned on the Google APP, it returned the third movement of Ravel's concerto. Well ... this was one of the few instances an encore actually was a repeat. She played a solo piano piece as her second encore. The Google APP returned Arthur Rubinstein's Fantasiestucke, Op. 12: Traumes Wirren. Let's go with that.
The concert concluded with excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet Suites, I take that to mean the conductor selected different movements from the several Suites Prokofiev constructed. The individual movements are quite familiar, I wish I had a listing of what they were so I can imagine along. (Or, having heard this so many times, I should know the scenes depicted in the numbers.) It was clear there were two families, things were tender, things got violent, and death ensued.
A rather small ensemble was used by Boesman to produce some very interesting sounds.
At the conclusion of the concert. The Hamburg Symphony calls Laeiszhalle its home, and Cambreling is the music director.
.Overall, I enjoyed the concert, even though I had a limited view of the musicians, and the sound reaching my seat wasn't ideal (I am sure).
We ate at a Japanese restaurant before the concert. It was close to 10 pm when we got back to the hotel.
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