Dmitri Shteinberg, the Russian-born pianist who has been coordinator of Virginia Commonwealth University’s piano program, is leaving VCU to join the faculty of UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, NC.
Shteinberg, who earned degrees from the Gnessin Special School of Music in Moscow and Manhattan School of Music in New York, has been active internationally and in this region as a recitalist, accompanist and orchestral soloist, performing in recent seasons with the Richmond Symphony and Charlottesville & University Symphony. He also serves on the faculty of the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, VT.
He takes up his new post in Winston-Salem in the fall.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Stravinsky for Freedom House
A cast of present and former Richmond Symphony musicians and guests will perform Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” in a concert benefitting Freedom House at 7 p.m. May 2 in Perkinson Recital Hall, North Court, on the Westhampton campus of the University of Richmond.
Performers include violinist Karen Johnson, former concertmaster of the symphony; double-bassist Fred Dole; clarinetist Ralph Skiano; bassoonist Sue Heineman; cornet player Matthew Harding; trombonist Samuel Barlow; percussionist Jim Jacobson; and narrator Nick Anderson. Gustav Highstein, the symphony’s principal oboist, will conduct.
Suggested donation is $7. Proceeds will support Freedom House, which provides services to Richmond’s homeless.
For more information, call (540) 223-3003 or e-mail betweenordandaard@yahoo.com
Performers include violinist Karen Johnson, former concertmaster of the symphony; double-bassist Fred Dole; clarinetist Ralph Skiano; bassoonist Sue Heineman; cornet player Matthew Harding; trombonist Samuel Barlow; percussionist Jim Jacobson; and narrator Nick Anderson. Gustav Highstein, the symphony’s principal oboist, will conduct.
Suggested donation is $7. Proceeds will support Freedom House, which provides services to Richmond’s homeless.
For more information, call (540) 223-3003 or e-mail betweenordandaard@yahoo.com
Audubon Quartet disbanding
The Audubon Quartet, which barely survived a wrongful termination lawsuit by its former first violinist, has decided to disband, Mike Allen of The Roanoke Times reports:
http://www.roanoke.com/extra/arts//wb/284234
http://www.roanoke.com/extra/arts//wb/284234
Rachmaninoff on recording, radio
A fascinating article by Sergei Rachmaninoff, published in 1931 in Gramophone magazine, in which the composer-pianist heartily endorses recordings but dismisses radio performances as “pale ghosts of music”:
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/focus/the-most-significant-of-modern-musical-inventions
The article was written in the toddlerhood, if not infancy, of both radio and recording. Electrical recording supplanted the old acoustical process in the mid-1920s; a few years earlier, regular radio broadcasts had begun in the U.S. and Britain. (The first commercial radio station in this country, KDKA in Pittsburgh, signed on in 1920; the BBC was founded in 1922.)
If we’re to trust Rachmaninoff’s ears – as keen as any at the time, surely – the audio quality of radio lagged far behind that of recordings in the 1930s. Contemporaneous evidence is hard to find: We can hear many transcriptions of broadcasts from the period, but those document what went out from radio studios, not what came in to people’s homes on their radios. Very few musical performances recorded at the receiving end of radio signals survive from the 1930s. A sonically adequate home recording of broadcast music wasn’t really possible until tape recorders hit the market in the 1950s.
In my own listening experience, from the 1950s onward, I would say that radio did not begin to catch up with recordings until FM stereo became widespread in the 1970s. Parity in audio quality was not achieved until the arrival of digital radio early in this century.
The crux of Rachmaninoff’s argument was that recordings are lasting documents of performances that can be perfected through corrective retakes. (By this reasoning, recordings differ from live performances as writing differs from speech.) Broadcasts are as transient as other live performances, but denatured because listeners are physically separated from performers.
The article, unfortunately, does not address filmed performances of music, which began to appear in the late 1920s. Would Rachmaninoff have lauded the documentary values of music video, or considered it unnatural?
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/focus/the-most-significant-of-modern-musical-inventions
The article was written in the toddlerhood, if not infancy, of both radio and recording. Electrical recording supplanted the old acoustical process in the mid-1920s; a few years earlier, regular radio broadcasts had begun in the U.S. and Britain. (The first commercial radio station in this country, KDKA in Pittsburgh, signed on in 1920; the BBC was founded in 1922.)
If we’re to trust Rachmaninoff’s ears – as keen as any at the time, surely – the audio quality of radio lagged far behind that of recordings in the 1930s. Contemporaneous evidence is hard to find: We can hear many transcriptions of broadcasts from the period, but those document what went out from radio studios, not what came in to people’s homes on their radios. Very few musical performances recorded at the receiving end of radio signals survive from the 1930s. A sonically adequate home recording of broadcast music wasn’t really possible until tape recorders hit the market in the 1950s.
In my own listening experience, from the 1950s onward, I would say that radio did not begin to catch up with recordings until FM stereo became widespread in the 1970s. Parity in audio quality was not achieved until the arrival of digital radio early in this century.
The crux of Rachmaninoff’s argument was that recordings are lasting documents of performances that can be perfected through corrective retakes. (By this reasoning, recordings differ from live performances as writing differs from speech.) Broadcasts are as transient as other live performances, but denatured because listeners are physically separated from performers.
The article, unfortunately, does not address filmed performances of music, which began to appear in the late 1920s. Would Rachmaninoff have lauded the documentary values of music video, or considered it unnatural?
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Choral director out
The Virginia Chorale of Hampton Roads has fired Scott Williamson, who was about to complete his third season as its artistic director, in an apparent dispute over management authority, Teresa Annas reports in The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk):
http://hamptonroads.com/2011/04/virginia-chorale-ousts-artistic-director
Williamson remains general and artistic director of Opera Roanoke.
http://hamptonroads.com/2011/04/virginia-chorale-ousts-artistic-director
Williamson remains general and artistic director of Opera Roanoke.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Roanoke reaches out
The Roanoke Symphony launches an international piano competition, plans concerts in non-traditional venues, expands its pops series and commissions a bluegrass mandolin concerto. Mike Allen of The Roanoke Times reports on the orchestra's efforts to broaden its audience:
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/283799
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/283799
Avant-garde fin de siècle?
“No matter what path of experimentation a new composer might attempt to clear, it has been previously explored at great length — generally by composers several generations removed. Microtonality? Partch. Noise-based compositions? Varèse. Electronic sounds that are impossible to create through acoustic means? Been doing that too, for nearly 100 years. Works that assault the audience or involve self-mutilation? Done and done. Silent musical compositions? Done. . . . I believe that our generation's contributions will be incremental rather than revolutionary. We are living in an era of consolidation,” David Smooke writes in a NewMusicBox posting:
http://www.newmusicbox.org/chatter/chatter.nmbx?id=6889
A century ago, present- and future-tense composers were convinced that there was nothing original left to say within bounds of traditional tonality. Hmm.
http://www.newmusicbox.org/chatter/chatter.nmbx?id=6889
A century ago, present- and future-tense composers were convinced that there was nothing original left to say within bounds of traditional tonality. Hmm.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Bankrupt in Philly
The Philadelphia Orchestra, facing a $13 million gap between income and expenditures, is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The orchestra's musicians protested the action by the management and board, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Peter Dobrin reports:
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20110416_Philadelphia_Orchestra_seeks_bankruptcy_reorganization.html
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20110416_Philadelphia_Orchestra_seeks_bankruptcy_reorganization.html
Friday, April 15, 2011
Review: Richmond Symphony
Steven Smith conducting
April 14, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
The Cochrane Atrium of the new McGlothlin Wing at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is a bright, monumental space that serves as the “main street” of the expanded facility. More prosaically, it is the building’s lobby, with constant coming and going and attendant chatter and ambient noises. It is not a space suited to a performance by a chamber orchestra. That was (semi-)audible just a few minutes into a concert staged to celebrate “Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso,” running through May 15.
The program was right: works by Stravinsky, Satie, Ravel and Milhaud, all figures Picasso knew (and sometimes collaborated with in theatrical productions) in early 20th-century Paris, plus an arrangement of Vernon Duke’s “April in Paris” prepared by conductor Steven Smith. The orchestra’s placement, on a sun-dappled second-story landing, clustered around Barry Flanagan’s “Large Leaping Hare” (popularly known as the golden bunny) and a backdrop of spring greenery outside the windows, was a vision waiting to be documented on canvas.
But the music sounded distant and muted; only high-register sounds carried to listeners seated and standing 20 feet below. It would have sounded anemic under optimal conditions.
The symphony and museum, Richmond’s two largest arts institutions, hope to collaborate regularly. To collaborate successfully, they need a space in which music can be heard clearly and with minimal extra-musical noise.
The museum’s Marble Hall has proved to be an excellent space for all kinds of music, including orchestral. The Cheek Theater is used for music, among other things, but its acoustics are too dry for orchestra. Outdoors, several spots in and around the Robins Sculpture Garden look promising; the terrace and sloping lawn just west of the main entrance might do nicely as an amphitheater.
The atrium? No. Unless you like playing in traffic.
April 14, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
The Cochrane Atrium of the new McGlothlin Wing at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is a bright, monumental space that serves as the “main street” of the expanded facility. More prosaically, it is the building’s lobby, with constant coming and going and attendant chatter and ambient noises. It is not a space suited to a performance by a chamber orchestra. That was (semi-)audible just a few minutes into a concert staged to celebrate “Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso,” running through May 15.
The program was right: works by Stravinsky, Satie, Ravel and Milhaud, all figures Picasso knew (and sometimes collaborated with in theatrical productions) in early 20th-century Paris, plus an arrangement of Vernon Duke’s “April in Paris” prepared by conductor Steven Smith. The orchestra’s placement, on a sun-dappled second-story landing, clustered around Barry Flanagan’s “Large Leaping Hare” (popularly known as the golden bunny) and a backdrop of spring greenery outside the windows, was a vision waiting to be documented on canvas.
But the music sounded distant and muted; only high-register sounds carried to listeners seated and standing 20 feet below. It would have sounded anemic under optimal conditions.
The symphony and museum, Richmond’s two largest arts institutions, hope to collaborate regularly. To collaborate successfully, they need a space in which music can be heard clearly and with minimal extra-musical noise.
The museum’s Marble Hall has proved to be an excellent space for all kinds of music, including orchestral. The Cheek Theater is used for music, among other things, but its acoustics are too dry for orchestra. Outdoors, several spots in and around the Robins Sculpture Garden look promising; the terrace and sloping lawn just west of the main entrance might do nicely as an amphitheater.
The atrium? No. Unless you like playing in traffic.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Flops
Here’s a nice interruption of your regularly scheduled programming: Marcia Adair of the Los Angeles Times’ Culture Monster blog quizzes the reader on 10 of the biggest box-office duds in stage, screen and music history:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/04/monster-quiz-cultures-epic-fails.html
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/04/monster-quiz-cultures-epic-fails.html
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Review: 'Madama Butterfly'
Virginia Opera
Joseph Walsh conducting
April 10, Richmond CenterStage
Virginia Opera concluded its 2010-11 mainstage season with a visually austere but vocally and dramatically potent production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.”
Soprano Sandra Lopez de Haro, as Cio-Cio San, the 15-year-old Japanese geisha who naively enters a marriage of convenience of an American naval officer, only to be abandoned after she bears him a son, looked and sounded more mature and robust than her character warranted in the first act of this final performance. She may have been out to match, in tone and projection, the rather stentorian tenor of Brian Jagde, portraying the sailor, Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton.
In Act 2, however, Lopez transformed herself into a more persuasively vulnerable character, singing with more nuanced passion. Her duet with mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wór, as the maid Suzuki, was the vocal high point of this performance. Coming a close second was Lopez’s powerfully moving rendition of Cio-Cio San’s great aria “One Fine Day.”
Baritone Levi Hernandez was in fine voice and even finer character as Sharpless, the humane and deeply conflicted American consul who tries and fails to convince Cio-Cio San to let Pinkerton go. Among singers in supporting roles, Jeffrey Halili as the marriage broker Goro and Ashraf Sewailam as the Bonze (Shinto high priest) were standouts.
This minimal “five-screen” staging, devised several years ago by designer Peter Harrison and director Dorothy Danner for a production in Philadelphia, was enhanced by backdrop projections and pastel-tinted lighting (by Kendall Smith). Austerity comes naturally to an opera set entirely in a hilltop house in turn-of-the-20th-century Nagasaki, Japan, and can enhance a production that focuses on characters, which this did.
Conductor Joseph Walsh, who with this production takes his leave of Virginia Opera to become general director of Lyric Opera Virginia, the new venture led by ex-Virginia Opera maestro Peter Mark, led members of the Richmond Symphony in a warmly textured, well-balanced reading of Puccini’s orchestral score.
Joseph Walsh conducting
April 10, Richmond CenterStage
Virginia Opera concluded its 2010-11 mainstage season with a visually austere but vocally and dramatically potent production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.”
Soprano Sandra Lopez de Haro, as Cio-Cio San, the 15-year-old Japanese geisha who naively enters a marriage of convenience of an American naval officer, only to be abandoned after she bears him a son, looked and sounded more mature and robust than her character warranted in the first act of this final performance. She may have been out to match, in tone and projection, the rather stentorian tenor of Brian Jagde, portraying the sailor, Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton.
In Act 2, however, Lopez transformed herself into a more persuasively vulnerable character, singing with more nuanced passion. Her duet with mezzo-soprano Magdalena Wór, as the maid Suzuki, was the vocal high point of this performance. Coming a close second was Lopez’s powerfully moving rendition of Cio-Cio San’s great aria “One Fine Day.”
Baritone Levi Hernandez was in fine voice and even finer character as Sharpless, the humane and deeply conflicted American consul who tries and fails to convince Cio-Cio San to let Pinkerton go. Among singers in supporting roles, Jeffrey Halili as the marriage broker Goro and Ashraf Sewailam as the Bonze (Shinto high priest) were standouts.
This minimal “five-screen” staging, devised several years ago by designer Peter Harrison and director Dorothy Danner for a production in Philadelphia, was enhanced by backdrop projections and pastel-tinted lighting (by Kendall Smith). Austerity comes naturally to an opera set entirely in a hilltop house in turn-of-the-20th-century Nagasaki, Japan, and can enhance a production that focuses on characters, which this did.
Conductor Joseph Walsh, who with this production takes his leave of Virginia Opera to become general director of Lyric Opera Virginia, the new venture led by ex-Virginia Opera maestro Peter Mark, led members of the Richmond Symphony in a warmly textured, well-balanced reading of Puccini’s orchestral score.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Snowbird symphony
As the Cleveland Orchestra wraps up its fifth year of residency in Miami, South Florida Classical Review’s David Fleshler notes that the orchestra received more than $8 million from local donors in the first three years of the residency, and wonders whether these visits have siphoned off support for local musical institutions and prevented formation of a Miami orchestra to replace the defunct Florida Philharmonic:
http://southfloridaclassicalreview.com/2011/04/after-five-years-the-cleveland-orchestra’s-miami-residency-remains-both-prized-and-controversial/
A bit of Virginia musical history may be pertinent: Richmond was late in starting a local orchestra. The Richmond Symphony dates from 1957, nearly 30 years after the debuts of the Norfolk (now Virginia) Symphony and National Symphony of Washington. Richmond was a regular stop on tours by the Philadelphia Orchestra and other major U.S. and European ensembles. With a half-dozen or so concerts each season, these performances (led by the likes of Toscanini, Stokowski, Ormandy and Szell) amply satisfied the town’s symphonic appetite, and retarded demand for a hometown orchestra.
http://southfloridaclassicalreview.com/2011/04/after-five-years-the-cleveland-orchestra’s-miami-residency-remains-both-prized-and-controversial/
A bit of Virginia musical history may be pertinent: Richmond was late in starting a local orchestra. The Richmond Symphony dates from 1957, nearly 30 years after the debuts of the Norfolk (now Virginia) Symphony and National Symphony of Washington. Richmond was a regular stop on tours by the Philadelphia Orchestra and other major U.S. and European ensembles. With a half-dozen or so concerts each season, these performances (led by the likes of Toscanini, Stokowski, Ormandy and Szell) amply satisfied the town’s symphonic appetite, and retarded demand for a hometown orchestra.
Music for Picasso
The Richmond Symphony will give a free concert, in conjunction with the Picasso exhibit currently running at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, at 7 p.m. April 14 in the museum’s Cochrane Atrium.
The hour-long concert, conducted by Steven Smith, includes Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” Suite and excerpts from Satie’s “Les Adventures de Mercure,” pieces written for productions by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, for which Picasso designed sets and costumes.
The program also will feature Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte,” Milhaud’s “Le beouf sur le toit” and “April in Paris” by Vernon Duke, who, as Vladimir Dukelsky, wrote for the Ballet Russes.
There is no formal seating for the concert.
For more information, visit www.richmondsymphony.com
Thursday, April 7, 2011
In concert, onstage and off
Among the 48 full-time members of Hampton Roads’ Virginia Symphony, 18 are married to fellow members of the orchestra. Add part-timers to the equation and things are even more harmonious, writes The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-harmonious-married-couples-of-the-virginia-symphony-orchestra/2011/03/30/AFJGhUlC_story.html
Monday, April 4, 2011
Timely reads
Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Bill Lohmann catches up with Kate Lindsey, the Richmond-bred, globe-trotting mezzo-soprano returning to one of her professional launch pads, Wolf Trap in Northern Virginia, on April 8:
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/entertainment/2011/apr/03/tdarts01-have-voice-will-travel-kate-lindsey-at-wo-ar-939076/
The Washington Post’s Anne Midgette profiles Ricky Ian Gordon, composer of “Rappahannock County,” a music-theater work on the Civil War, premiering on April 12 in Norfolk in a Virginia Arts Festival-Virginia Opera production:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ricky-ian-gordon-sets-the-civil-war-to-music/2011/03/28/AForzfIC_story.html
Also from Midgette, a profile of the librettist of “Rappahannock County,” Mark Campbell:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/rappahannock-county-librettist-explains-his-process/2011/03/29/AFIhMiIC_story.html
Rashod Ollison of The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk) profiles BJ Leiderman, the Virginia Beach-based composer who is best-known for his signature tunes for many popular public-radio programs:
http://hamptonroads.com/2011/04/bj-leiderman-1minute-music-master
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Review: Richmond Symphony
Steven Smith conducting
with Evelyn Glennie, percussion
April 2, Carpenter Theatre, Richmond CenterStage
It’s quite rare to hear a symphony audience listen in rapt silence and with evidently deep concentration to a lengthy work of contemporary music, let alone one in which most of the aural foreground is occupied by percussion instruments. In this case, however, the percussionist was a star and the performance was as much visual as musical.
Evelyn Glennie, the acclaimed Scottish percussionist, is the most prominent deaf musician at work today. Having lost her hearing in childhood, Glennie feels sound waves through her hands and body; over time, she has developed acute tactile sensitivity to the differing vibrations of air that produce different pitches. (Those who can hear feel musical sound in the same way, but generally aren’t aware of it unless the sound is loud and pitched low – a rumbling vehicle close by, for instance.)
In this date with the Richmond Symphony, Glennie performed one of the many pieces written for her, and one of the largest in scale: Michael Daugherty’s “UFO” (1999), a five-movement, 42-minute concerto in which the percussionist and orchestra produce a host of otherworldly sounds, often with wide spatial effects.
Daugherty’s score draws upon many of the imagined sounds of aliens and their machinery popularized through generations of science-fiction film and TV soundtracks, which in turn incorporated many of the “spacey” sonic innovations of modern composers – notably, Bartók and Messiaen. The big tune of “UFO,” a broad, wistfully mellow (or, per the composer, “mysterious”) melody running through the central section “Flying,” harkens back to the more lyrical themes in Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” which shared this program with the Daugherty.
Glennie performed on four arrays of percussion instruments, some familiar (drums, cymbals, vibraphone, xylophone), some exotic (waterphone, mark tree, “unidentified metal” objects), frequently played unconventionally (bowed or stroked rather than struck) and sometimes accompanied by vocalizations. The soloist and her instruments were amplified, but volume levels were moderate enough not to overbalance the orchestra or overwhelm listeners.
Whether by design or natural gracefulness, Glennie’s movements amounted to choreography; her fluid physicality was worldly counterpoint to Daugherty’s otherworldly music.
Conductor Steven Smith and the symphony gave Glennie attentive and sonorous support. In the fourth section of “UFO,” titled “???” several of the orchestra’s percussionists “wandered” through the audience, effectively using the whole hall as a sound stage.
Following “UFO,” Holst’s “Planets” was a comfortable return to earth, both figuratively in its largely traditional tonality (the composer was a fringe member of the English pastoral school of the early 20th century) and literally in that Holst’s planetary evocations are not astronomical but astrological, about stellar influence on human feelings and behavior.
The seven-part suite is best-known for its opening movement, “Mars, the Bringer of War” (the template for all the battle music of sci-fi filmdom), and for “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity,” a miniature tone poem whose high-Edwardian central tune was borrowed for the patriotic anthem “I Vow to Thee, My Country” and the hymn “O God Beyond All Praising” (also known as “Thaxted”). Other sections of the suite, notably “Mercury, the Winged Messenger” and “Uranus, the Magician,” draw liberally on the tonal effects and orchestration techniques of the French impressionists and avant-gardists of Holst’s time – making “The Planets” a piece of digestible modernism, akin to Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
In this performance, Smith and a generously augmented orchestra – extra stands of string players, double the usual complements of winds and most brasses, two sets of timpani, two harps, celesta and organ – produced glorious sonorities in “Jupiter” and “Venus, the Bringer of Peace," high impact in “Mars” (although it was rhythmically a bit too angular for my taste) and fine detail in the more rarified likes of “Uranus” and “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age.” The wordless, offstage contribution of the Richmond Symphony Women’s Chorus at the conclusion of “Neptune, the Mystic” was unusually subtle, seemingly rising from and then returning to the void.
These days, “The Planets” is frequently staged with extramusical effects, such as light shows or video (almost always astronomical, i.e. misrepresentational). This performance, without visual additives, was a welcome opportunity to let Holst work his wonders on the ear and the imagination.
The program, the centerpiece of the symphony’s Regale fund-raising gala, also turned out to be a consolation prize for fans of the Virginia Commonwealth University Rams, whose loss to the Butler Bulldogs in the Final Four of the NCAA Basketball Tournament was given a pre-concert screening at the Carpenter Theatre. About half of the concert audience came early for the screening; its highly vocal reaction to the game, and to the orchestra’s wildly energetic rendition of the VCU fight song as a prelude to the announced concert program, contrasted vividly with its unusually quiet absorption of the music that followed.
with Evelyn Glennie, percussion
April 2, Carpenter Theatre, Richmond CenterStage
It’s quite rare to hear a symphony audience listen in rapt silence and with evidently deep concentration to a lengthy work of contemporary music, let alone one in which most of the aural foreground is occupied by percussion instruments. In this case, however, the percussionist was a star and the performance was as much visual as musical.
Evelyn Glennie, the acclaimed Scottish percussionist, is the most prominent deaf musician at work today. Having lost her hearing in childhood, Glennie feels sound waves through her hands and body; over time, she has developed acute tactile sensitivity to the differing vibrations of air that produce different pitches. (Those who can hear feel musical sound in the same way, but generally aren’t aware of it unless the sound is loud and pitched low – a rumbling vehicle close by, for instance.)
In this date with the Richmond Symphony, Glennie performed one of the many pieces written for her, and one of the largest in scale: Michael Daugherty’s “UFO” (1999), a five-movement, 42-minute concerto in which the percussionist and orchestra produce a host of otherworldly sounds, often with wide spatial effects.
Daugherty’s score draws upon many of the imagined sounds of aliens and their machinery popularized through generations of science-fiction film and TV soundtracks, which in turn incorporated many of the “spacey” sonic innovations of modern composers – notably, Bartók and Messiaen. The big tune of “UFO,” a broad, wistfully mellow (or, per the composer, “mysterious”) melody running through the central section “Flying,” harkens back to the more lyrical themes in Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” which shared this program with the Daugherty.
Glennie performed on four arrays of percussion instruments, some familiar (drums, cymbals, vibraphone, xylophone), some exotic (waterphone, mark tree, “unidentified metal” objects), frequently played unconventionally (bowed or stroked rather than struck) and sometimes accompanied by vocalizations. The soloist and her instruments were amplified, but volume levels were moderate enough not to overbalance the orchestra or overwhelm listeners.
Whether by design or natural gracefulness, Glennie’s movements amounted to choreography; her fluid physicality was worldly counterpoint to Daugherty’s otherworldly music.
Conductor Steven Smith and the symphony gave Glennie attentive and sonorous support. In the fourth section of “UFO,” titled “???” several of the orchestra’s percussionists “wandered” through the audience, effectively using the whole hall as a sound stage.
Following “UFO,” Holst’s “Planets” was a comfortable return to earth, both figuratively in its largely traditional tonality (the composer was a fringe member of the English pastoral school of the early 20th century) and literally in that Holst’s planetary evocations are not astronomical but astrological, about stellar influence on human feelings and behavior.
The seven-part suite is best-known for its opening movement, “Mars, the Bringer of War” (the template for all the battle music of sci-fi filmdom), and for “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity,” a miniature tone poem whose high-Edwardian central tune was borrowed for the patriotic anthem “I Vow to Thee, My Country” and the hymn “O God Beyond All Praising” (also known as “Thaxted”). Other sections of the suite, notably “Mercury, the Winged Messenger” and “Uranus, the Magician,” draw liberally on the tonal effects and orchestration techniques of the French impressionists and avant-gardists of Holst’s time – making “The Planets” a piece of digestible modernism, akin to Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
In this performance, Smith and a generously augmented orchestra – extra stands of string players, double the usual complements of winds and most brasses, two sets of timpani, two harps, celesta and organ – produced glorious sonorities in “Jupiter” and “Venus, the Bringer of Peace," high impact in “Mars” (although it was rhythmically a bit too angular for my taste) and fine detail in the more rarified likes of “Uranus” and “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age.” The wordless, offstage contribution of the Richmond Symphony Women’s Chorus at the conclusion of “Neptune, the Mystic” was unusually subtle, seemingly rising from and then returning to the void.
These days, “The Planets” is frequently staged with extramusical effects, such as light shows or video (almost always astronomical, i.e. misrepresentational). This performance, without visual additives, was a welcome opportunity to let Holst work his wonders on the ear and the imagination.
The program, the centerpiece of the symphony’s Regale fund-raising gala, also turned out to be a consolation prize for fans of the Virginia Commonwealth University Rams, whose loss to the Butler Bulldogs in the Final Four of the NCAA Basketball Tournament was given a pre-concert screening at the Carpenter Theatre. About half of the concert audience came early for the screening; its highly vocal reaction to the game, and to the orchestra’s wildly energetic rendition of the VCU fight song as a prelude to the announced concert program, contrasted vividly with its unusually quiet absorption of the music that followed.
Review: Zuill Bailey
April 2, Virginia Commonwealth University
By Francis Church
guest reviewer
Zuill Bailey represents the fast-rising new generation of cellists for the 21st century. Bailey, now 38, was inspired by Mstislav Rostropovich when the late great Russian cellist was music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington. Bailey grew up in Northern Virginia.
Bailey did some inspiring of his own for the less than capacity audience at the Singleton Center on Saturday night and for several aspiring young cellists earlier in the day on the same stage at an annual event called Cellopaloosa.
Bailey possesses a rich but carefully etched tone, stressing clarity and, as a pianist in the audience noted, very nuanced. His program was mostly romantic in scope, even the “Suite de canciones y danses” (“Suite of songs and dances“), composed two years ago by Roberto Sierra, which opened the proceedings. For emphasis Bailey preceded the suite with the prelude to J.S. Bach’s Suite in G major for solo cello.
One could feel some ties of Sierra’s work to Bach, but mostly it had a jaunty Latin feel, influenced no doubt by Sierra’s birthplace, Puerto Rico. (Sierra currently is on the faculty at Cornell University). In the final movement there was even a brief bow to Frederic Chopin. Altogether this was an engaging ear-opener.
Next up were two thoroughly romantic works from the 19th century: Robert Schumann’s “Fantasy Pieces,” Op. 73, and Mendelssohn’s Concert Variations, Op. 17. Before he embarked on the Schumann, Bailey told the audience, “I have bad news and good news for you. First, the bad news, VCU lost 70-62 (in their Final Four game against Butler).” A collective groan from the listeners. “Now for the good news: Schumann.”
Good news, indeed. The three “Fantasy Pieces,” a favorite of student cellists the world over, are cheerful, belying the often tortured life of their composer. The Mendelssohn variations likewise are delightfully sparkling, symbolic of the happy young adulthood of the composer’s days in Berlin, where Sunday soirees were part of his family life, Bailey pointed out.
Here, it is well to point out the pianistic virtuosity of Bailey’s collaborator, Piers Lane. His work was positively ear-boggling!
The main event at this concert, part of the Mary Anne Rennolds Chamber Concerts, was reserved for after intermission. It was the 45-minute Sonata in G minor, Op. 19, by Sergei Rachmaninoff. This is vintage Rachmaninoff: rambling, sweeping melodies, not one note implying the radical things to come in the later years of the 20th century. The third-movement andante is one of the great slow movements in all of music, and Bailey played it for all of its worth. Never once, though, did he and Lane exaggerate. This was music for music’s sake.
As a bonus, the pair offered two short pieces by Brahms, a love song and the ever-famous lullaby. A salve for a crowd still suffering the pain of VCU’s loss in the Final Four.
More about Cellopaloosa: This all-day workshop and play-in for cellists was organized two years ago by Dana McComb, who shares teaching duties at VCU with her husband, Jason, associate principal cellist of the Richmond Symphony.
This event has attracted cellists of all ages, mostly young, from all over Virginia and even North and South Carolina. Several top students are treated to the individual master class, this year with Bailey.
Bailey proved an engaging, upbeat clinician. Before the class started, he noted, “With Rostropovich, I learned what NOT to do in a master class. I decided my job is to help.”
And help he did, as he managed to ease his four young charges over their understandable nervousness. You could sense another new generation of cellists in the making.
And to cap off the day, all 80 participants, ranging in age from 8 to 80s, gave a concert at the James W. Black Music Center, across the street from the Singleton Center. You could only imagine the sound of 80 buzzing cellos playing the Pachelbel Canon. Mrs. McComb appropriately used a cello bow for a baton. No wedding music was ever like this!
Francis Church, who was the music critic of The Richmond News Leader, is a cellist who has performed extensively in orchestral and chamber music.
By Francis Church
guest reviewer
Zuill Bailey represents the fast-rising new generation of cellists for the 21st century. Bailey, now 38, was inspired by Mstislav Rostropovich when the late great Russian cellist was music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington. Bailey grew up in Northern Virginia.
Bailey did some inspiring of his own for the less than capacity audience at the Singleton Center on Saturday night and for several aspiring young cellists earlier in the day on the same stage at an annual event called Cellopaloosa.
Bailey possesses a rich but carefully etched tone, stressing clarity and, as a pianist in the audience noted, very nuanced. His program was mostly romantic in scope, even the “Suite de canciones y danses” (“Suite of songs and dances“), composed two years ago by Roberto Sierra, which opened the proceedings. For emphasis Bailey preceded the suite with the prelude to J.S. Bach’s Suite in G major for solo cello.
One could feel some ties of Sierra’s work to Bach, but mostly it had a jaunty Latin feel, influenced no doubt by Sierra’s birthplace, Puerto Rico. (Sierra currently is on the faculty at Cornell University). In the final movement there was even a brief bow to Frederic Chopin. Altogether this was an engaging ear-opener.
Next up were two thoroughly romantic works from the 19th century: Robert Schumann’s “Fantasy Pieces,” Op. 73, and Mendelssohn’s Concert Variations, Op. 17. Before he embarked on the Schumann, Bailey told the audience, “I have bad news and good news for you. First, the bad news, VCU lost 70-62 (in their Final Four game against Butler).” A collective groan from the listeners. “Now for the good news: Schumann.”
Good news, indeed. The three “Fantasy Pieces,” a favorite of student cellists the world over, are cheerful, belying the often tortured life of their composer. The Mendelssohn variations likewise are delightfully sparkling, symbolic of the happy young adulthood of the composer’s days in Berlin, where Sunday soirees were part of his family life, Bailey pointed out.
Here, it is well to point out the pianistic virtuosity of Bailey’s collaborator, Piers Lane. His work was positively ear-boggling!
The main event at this concert, part of the Mary Anne Rennolds Chamber Concerts, was reserved for after intermission. It was the 45-minute Sonata in G minor, Op. 19, by Sergei Rachmaninoff. This is vintage Rachmaninoff: rambling, sweeping melodies, not one note implying the radical things to come in the later years of the 20th century. The third-movement andante is one of the great slow movements in all of music, and Bailey played it for all of its worth. Never once, though, did he and Lane exaggerate. This was music for music’s sake.
As a bonus, the pair offered two short pieces by Brahms, a love song and the ever-famous lullaby. A salve for a crowd still suffering the pain of VCU’s loss in the Final Four.
More about Cellopaloosa: This all-day workshop and play-in for cellists was organized two years ago by Dana McComb, who shares teaching duties at VCU with her husband, Jason, associate principal cellist of the Richmond Symphony.
This event has attracted cellists of all ages, mostly young, from all over Virginia and even North and South Carolina. Several top students are treated to the individual master class, this year with Bailey.
Bailey proved an engaging, upbeat clinician. Before the class started, he noted, “With Rostropovich, I learned what NOT to do in a master class. I decided my job is to help.”
And help he did, as he managed to ease his four young charges over their understandable nervousness. You could sense another new generation of cellists in the making.
And to cap off the day, all 80 participants, ranging in age from 8 to 80s, gave a concert at the James W. Black Music Center, across the street from the Singleton Center. You could only imagine the sound of 80 buzzing cellos playing the Pachelbel Canon. Mrs. McComb appropriately used a cello bow for a baton. No wedding music was ever like this!
Francis Church, who was the music critic of The Richmond News Leader, is a cellist who has performed extensively in orchestral and chamber music.
Friday, April 1, 2011
April calendar
Classical performances in and around Richmond, with selected events elsewhere in Virginia and the Washington area. Program information, provided by presenters, is updated as details become available. Adult single-ticket prices are listed; senior, student/youth, group and other discounts may be offered.
SCOUTING REPORT
* In and around Richmond: Steven Smith and the Richmond Symphony open and close the month, performing in a gala with percussionist Evelyn Glennie on April 2, and in a Masterworks program of Barber, Mendelssohn and Prokofiev with violinist Tai Murray on April 30, both at the Carpenter Theatre of Richmond CenterStage. . . . Cellist Zuill Bailey performs on April 2 in the final program of this season’s Rennolds Chamber Concerts at Virginia Commonwealth University. . . . Guitarists Sérgio and Odair Assad and their extended family perform on April 3 at the University of Richmond’s Modlin Arts Center. . . . The Richmond Choral Society performs Thomas Beveridge’s “Yizkor Requiem” and Eric Whitacre’s “Five Hebrew Songs,” April 3 at Temple Beth-El. . . . The Virginia Opera brings its season finale, Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” to the Carpenter Theatre on April 8 and 10. . . . eighth blackbird joins the University of Richmond’s Schola Cantorum and Women’s Chorale in a new work by the Chinese-American composer Chen Yi, April 8 at the Modlin Center.
* Star turns: Violinist Midori, pianist Jonathan Biss and friends play Haydn, Schubert, Martinů and Dvořák, April 6 at Washington’s Kennedy Center. . . . Soprano Dawn Upshaw joins Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony in a program of Mahler, Golijov and Webern, April 7-9 at the Kennedy Center. . . . Kate Lindsey, the Richmond-bred mezzo-soprano, sings on April 8 at the Barns at Wolf Trap in Northern Virginia.
. . . Violinist Itzhak Perlman performs on April 10 at Charlottesville’s Paramount Theater. . . . Cellist Alisa Weilerstein joins Yuri Temirkanov and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, April 12 at the Music Center at Strathmore in the Maryland suburbs of DC. . . . Violinist Joshua Bell joins JoAnn Falletta and the Virginia Symphony in a Virginia Arts Festival program, April 23 at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk. . . . The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, with violinist Arabella Steinbacher, perform on April 23 at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts in Fairfax. . . . Baritone Thomas Hampson and cellist Andrés Díaz join the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on April 28 at the Library of Congress in Washington. . . . Pianist Marc-André Hamelin performs on April 29 at Strathmore.
April 1 (8 p.m.)
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
UVa Chamber Singers
Michael Slon directing
April Fool’s Day program, works by P.D.Q. Bach, Paul Carey, others
Free
(434) 924-3984
http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/music/concertsevents/index.html
April 1 (8 p.m.)
April 3 (2 p.m.)
Center for the Arts, George Mason University, Fairfax
Virginia Opera
Joseph Walsh conducting
Puccini: “Madama Butterfly”
Sandra Lopez (Cio-Cio San)
Brian Jagde (Pinkerton)
Magdalena Wór (Suzuki)
Levi Hernandez (Sharpless)
Dorothy Danner, stage director
in Italian, English captions
$44-$98
(888) 945-2468 (Tickets.com)
http://www.vaopera.org/
April 1 (8 p.m.)
April 2 (8 p.m.)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington
National Symphony Orchestra
Iván Fischer conducting
Rossini: “La gazza ladra” (“The Thieving Magpie”) Overture
Paganini: Violin Concerto No. 1
Jozsef Lendvay Jr., violin
Schumann: Symphony No. 3 (“Rhenish”)
$20-$85
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 1 (8:15 p.m.)
Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop conducting & narrating
“Off the Cuff:”
Prokofiev: “Cinderella” Suite
$28-$44
(877) 276-1333 (Baltimore Symphony box office)
http://www.strathmore.org/
April 2 (2 p.m.)
Gellman Room, Richmond Public Library, First and Franklin streets
G Sharp Saxophone Quartet
classical, jazz works TBA
Free
(804) 646-7223
http://www.richmondpubliclibrary.org/
April 2 (8 p.m.)
Singleton Arts Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Park Avenue at Harrison Street, Richmond
Rennolds Chamber Concerts:
Zuill Bailey, cello
Piers Lane, piano
Mendelssohn: “Concert Variations”
Schumann: “Fantasiestücke”
Roberto Sierra: commissioned work TBA
Rachmaninoff: Cello Sonata in G minor, Op. 19
$32
(804) 828-6776
http://www.vcumusic.org/
April 2 (8:30 p.m.)
Carpenter Theatre, Richmond CenterStage, Sixth and Grace streets
Richmond Symphony
Steven Smith conducting
Michael Daugherty: “UFO”
Evelyn Glennie, percussion
Holst: “The Planets”
$17-$72
ticket includes admission to screening of VCU-Butler NCAA Tournament game at 6:09 p.m.
(800) 982-2787 (Ticketmaster)
http://www.richmondsymphony.com/
April 2 (8 p.m.)
Chrysler Hall, 201 Brambleton Ave., Norfolk
Virginia Symphony Pops
Benjamin Rous conducting
Debbie Gravitte, Jan Horvath & Christiane Noll, guest stars
“Three Broadway Divas”
$40-$85
(757) 892-6366
http://www.virginiasymphony.org/
April 2 (8 p.m.)
April 3 (3 p.m.)
Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD
National Philharmonic
Piotr Gajewski conducting
Beethoven: “Coriolan” Overture
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4
Seymour Lipkin, piano
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7
$32-$79
(301) 581-5100
http://www.strathmore.org/
April 3 (3 p.m.)
Camp Concert Hall, Modlin Arts Center, University of Richmond
Sérgio & Odair Assad, guitars
Christiane Karam, vocals
Clarice Assad, piano & vocals
Jamey Haddad, percussion
“De Volta as Raizes” (“Back to Our Roots”)
$34
(804) 289-8980
http://www.modlin.richmond.edu/
April 3 (4 p.m.)
Temple Beth-El, 3300 Grove Ave., Richmond
Richmond Choral Society
Markus Compton directing
Thomas Beveridge: “Yizkor Requiem: a Quest for Spiritual Roots”
Eric Whitacre: “Five Hebrew Love Songs”
Benjamin Warschawski, cantor
Lisa Edwards-Burrs, soprano
Robynne Redmon, mezzo-soprano
pre-concert lecture by Beveridge at 3:30 p.m.
$12 in advance, $15 at door
(804) 353-9582
http://www.richmondchoralsociety.org/
April 3 (3:30 p.m.)
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
David Sariti & David Colwell, violins
Adam Carter, cello
Peter Spaar, double-bass
Tasha Warren, clarinet
Susan Barber, bassoon
Paul Neebe, trumpet
Nathan Dishman, trombone
Mimi Tung, piano
I-Jen Fang, percussion
Paul Schoenfield: “Café Music”
Stravinsky: “L’histoire du soldat” (“The Soldier’s Tale”)
Kate Tamarkin conducting
Doug Schneider & Boomie Pedersen, narrators
$20
(434) 924-3984
http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/music/concertsevents/index.html
April 4 (7:30 p.m.)
Camp Concert Hall, Modlin Arts Center, University of Richmond
Jepson Leadership Forum:
Chen Yi, composer
talk: “A Journey of Creativity and Building an East-West Cultural Bridge”
Free; tickets required
(804) 289-8980
http://www.modlin.richmond.edu/
April 5 (7:30 p.m.)
Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington
Opera Lafayette
Ryan Brown conducting
Handel: “Acis and Galatea”
Thomas Michael Allen (Acis)
Rosa Lamoreaux (Galatea)
Robert Getchell (Damon)
Peter Becker (Polyphemus)
in English
$60 (waiting list)
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 6 (7:30 p.m.)
Camp Concert Hall, Modlin Arts Center, University of Richmond
UR Orchestra
Alexander Kordzaia conducting
Schumann: Cello Concerto
Nicholas Photinos, cello
other works TBA
Free
(804) 289-8980
http://www.modlin.richmond.edu/
April 6 (7:30 p.m.)
Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington
Midori, violin
Nobuko Imai, viola
Antoine Lederlin, cello
Jonathan Biss, piano
Haydn: Piano Trio in A major, Hob. XV:9
Schubert: Piano Trio in B flat major, D. 898
Martinů: Madrigals for violin and viola
Dvořák: Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 87
$55
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 7 (8 p.m.)
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
UVa New Music Ensemble
I-Jen Fang & Ted Coffey directing
Christian Wolff: works TBA
Free
(434) 924-3984
http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/music/concertsevents/index.html
April 7 (7 p.m.)
April 8 (1:30 p.m.)
April 9 (8 p.m.)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington
National Symphony Orchestra
Christoph Eschenbach conducting
Webern: “Im Sommerwind”
Golijov: “She Was Here”
Mahler: Symphony No. 4
Dawn Upshaw, soprano
$20-$85
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 8 (7:30 p.m.)
Camp Concert Hall, Modlin Arts Center, University of Richmond
UR Schola Cantorum & Women’s Chorale
eighth blackbird
David Pederson conducting
Chen Yi: commissioned work TBA (premiere)
other works TBA
Free; tickets required
(804) 289-8980
http://www.modlin.richmond.edu/
April 8 (8 p.m.)
April 10 (2:30 p.m.)
Carpenter Theatre, Richmond CenterStage, Sixth and Grace streets
Virginia Opera
Joseph Walsh conducting
Puccini: “Madama Butterfly”
Sandra Lopez (Cio-Cio San)
Brian Jagde (Pinkerton)
Magdalena Wór (Suzuki)
Levi Hernandez (Sharpless)
Dorothy Danner, stage director
in Italian, English captions
$29-$99
(866) 673-7282
http://www.vaopera.org/
April 8 (8 p.m.)
Ferguson Arts Center, Christopher Newport University, Newport News
April 9 (8 p.m.)
Chrysler Hall, 201 Brambleton Ave., Norfolk
April 10 (2:30 p.m.)
Sandler Arts Center, 201 Market St., Virginia Beach
Virginia Symphony
JoAnn Falletta conducting
Bach: Concerto in D major (after Vivaldi)
Arutiunian: Trumpet Concerto
Joe Burgstaller, trumpet
Rimsky-Korsakov: “Scheherazade”
$20-$85
(757) 892-6366
http://www.virginiasymphony.org/
April 8 (8 p.m.)
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
UVa Baroque Orchestra & Paladian Chamber Orchestra
David Sariti directing
Mozart: Symphony No. 25 in G minor, K. 183
works TBA by Torelli, Giovanni Gabrieli, Biagio Marini, Steven Kemper, Joseph Muldoon
Free
(434) 924-3984
http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/music/concertsevents/index.html
April 8 (8 p.m.)
Salem Civic Center
Roanoke Symphony Pops
David Stewart Wiley conducting
Boz Scaggs, guest star
$19-$79
(540) 343-9127
http://www.rso.com/
April 8 (8 p.m.)
The Barns at Wolf Trap, Trap Road, Vienna
Kate Lindsey, mezzo-soprano
Kim Pensinger Witman, piano
Bizet: “Ouvre ton coeur,” “Chanson d’Avril”
Liszt: “S’il est un charmant gazon,” “Oh! Quand je dors”
Mohammed Fairouz: “Jeder Mensch (Song Cycle on Alma Mahler)”
Ives: “Du bist wie eine Blume”, “Frühlingslied”, “Gruss”, “My Native Land”
Argento: “Miss Manners on Music” (excerpts)
$35
(703) 938-2404
http://www.wolftrap.org/
April 8 (7:30 p.m.)
Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington
James Madison University series:
JMU Brass Quintet
works TBA by Scheidt, Farnaby, Terracini, Arnold, Byrd, Premru
$25
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 8 (8 p.m.)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington
Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic
Ronald Zollman conducting
Arvo Pärt: “Silhouette” (U.S. premiere)
Martinů: Symphony No. 5
Noel Zahler: Symphony (premiere)
Respighi: “The Pines of Rome”
$15-$25
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 8 (8 p.m.)
Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, First and Independence streets SE, Washington
London Conchord Ensemble
Mozart: Quintet in E flat major, K. 452, for piano and winds
Poulenc: Sonata for flute and piano
Bridge: Divertimenti for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon
Beethoven: Quintet in E flat major, Op. 16, for piano and winds
Free; tickets required
(703) 573-7328 (Ticketmaster)
www.loc.gov/rr/perform/concert/1011-schedule.html
April 8 (8 p.m.)
Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD
Post-Classical Ensemble
Angel Gil-Ordóñez directing
Washington Bach Consort Chorus
J. Reilly Lewis directing
Alexander Toradze, George Vatchnadze, Genadi Zagor, Vakhtang Kodanashvili & Edisher Savitski, pianos
Stravinsky: Concerto for piano and winds
Stravinsky: “Symphonies of Wind Instruments”
Stravinsky: “Danse sacrale” from “The Rite of Spring” (four-piano & percussion arr.)
Stravinsky: “Les Noces”
$21-$49
(301) 581-5100
http://www.strathmore.org/
April 9 (2 p.m.)
Gellman Room, Richmond Public Library, First and Franklin streets
Greater Richmond Children’s Treble Choir
Hope Armstrong Erb directing
The Diggity Dudes
program TBA
Free
(804) 646-7223
http://www.richmondpubliclibrary.org/
April 9 (8 p.m.)
American Theatre, 125 E. Mellen St., Hampton
Turtle Island Quartet
“A Love Supreme – the Music of John Coltrane”
$25-$30
(757) 722-2787
www.hamptonarts.net/american-theatre
April 9 (3:30 p.m.)
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
UVa Women’s Chorus
Katherine Mitchell directing
Karl Jenkins: “Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary”
other works TBA
$15
(434) 924-3984
http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/music/concertsevents/index.html
April 9 (2 p.m.)
Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, First and Independence streets SE, Washington
U.S. Army Band (“Pershing’s Own”)
Col. Thomas Rotondi Jr. directing
Copland: works TBA
Free
(703) 573-7328 (Ticketmaster)
www.loc.gov/rr/perform/concert/1011-schedule.html
April 9 (8 p.m.)
Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, Sixth and I streets, Washington
Simone Dinnerstein, piano
Schumann: “Fantasiestücke”
Bach: “English Suite” No. 3
Bach: Chorale preludes, BWV 147, 307, 639, 734
Beethoven: Sonata in E flat major, Op. 27, No. 1 (“Quasi una fantasia”)
$25
(202) 785-9727 (Washington Performing Arts Society)
http://www.wpas.org/
April 10 (4 p.m.)
Bon Air Presbyterian Church, 9201 W. Huguenot Road, Richmond
Second Sundays South of the James:
Stephanie Auld, soprano
Russell Wilson, piano
Rodrigo: “Cuarto Madrigales Amatorios”
Richard Pearson Thomas: “Ballad of the Boy Who Went to Sea”
Donation requested
(804) 272-7514
April 10 (7 p.m.)
Epiphany Catholic Church, 11000 Smoketree Drive, Midlothian
Richmond Concert Chorale
Grant Hellmers directing
Monacan Singers from Monacan High School
Nate Miller directing
Britten: “Choral Dances” from “Gloriana”
Debussy: “Trois chansons de Charles d’Orléans”
works by Byrd, Stanford, Vaughan Williams, Dufay, Rachmaninoff, others
Donation requested
(804) 353-5326
April 10 (8 p.m.)
Paramount Theater, 215 E. Main St., Charlottesville
Itzhak Perlman, violin
Rohan Da Silva, piano
program TBA
$55.50-$250
(434) 979-1333
http://www.theparamount.net/
April 10 (4 p.m.)
Merchant Hall, Hylton Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Circle, Manassas
Fairfax Choral Society
Mendelssohn: “Elijah”
$15-$35
(703) 993-7759
http://www.hyltoncenter.org/
April 10 (2 p.m.)
Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington
Kennedy Center Chamber Players
Brahms: Piano Trio No. 1 in B major, Op. 8 (original and revised versions)
Brahms: two songs for mezzo-soprano, viola and piano
Cynthia Hanna, mezzo-soprano
$35
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 10 (3 p.m.)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington
The Choral Arts Society of Washington
Norman Scribner directing
“Mozart’s Requiem: What Makes it Great?”
Rob Kapilow, commentator
Mozart: Requiem
soloists TBA
$15-$65(202) 785-9727 (Washington Performing Arts Society)
http://www.wpas.org/
April 10 (4 p.m.)
Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD
Alexander Toradze, George Vatchnadze & Genadi Zagor, pianos
Stravinsky: Scherzo from Sonata in F sharp minor
Stravinsky: “The Rite of Spring" (two-piano transcr.)
Stravinsky: Tango
Stravinsky: Piano Sonata
Stravinsky: Concerto for two solo pianos
Zagor: improvisation on Stravinsky themes
$20-$45
(301) 581-5100
http://www.strathmore.org/
April 11 (7:30 p.m.)
American Theatre, 125 E. Mellen St., Hampton
Barcelona Guitar Orchestra
program TBA
$25-$30
(757) 722-2787
www.hamptonarts.net/american-theatre
April 11 (7:30 p.m.)
Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington
Young Concert Artists:
Jennifer Johnson, mezzo-soprano
Christopher Cano, piano
Porpora: “Alto giove" from “Polifemo”
Mahler: “Songs of a Wayfarer”
Ravel: “Cinq mélodies populaires grecques”
Argento: “From the Diary of Virginia Woolf”
$35
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 12 (8 p.m.)
April 16 (8 p.m.)
April 17 (2:30 p.m.)
Harrison Opera House, 160 E. Virginia Beach Boulevard, Norfolk
Virginia Opera
Rob Fisher conducting
Ricky Ian Gordon & Mark Campbell: “Rappahannock County” (premiere)
Aundi Marie Moore, soprano
Faith Sherman, mezzo-soprano
Matthew Tuell, tenor
Kevin Moreno & Mark Walters, baritones
Kevin Newbury, stage director
in English
$25-$75
(866) 673-7282
http://www.vaopera.org/
April 12 (8 p.m.)
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Tuesday Evening Concerts:
Augustin Hadelich, violin
Robert Kulek, piano
Debussy: Sonata in G minor
Takemitsu: “Hika” (“Elegy”)
Poulenc: Cello Sonata
Schnittke: Sonata No. 1
Brahms: Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100
Sarasate: “Zapateado”
$12-$30
(434) 924-3376
http://www.tecs.org/
April 12 (8 p.m.)
Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD
St. Petersburg Philharmonic
Yuri Temirkanov conducting
Rimsky-Korsakov: “Russian Easter” Overture
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1
Alisa Weilerstein, cello
Brahms: Symphony No. 4
$35-$95
(202) 785-9727 (Washington Performing Arts Society)
http://www.wpas.org/
April 13 (7:30 p.m.)
Camp Concert Hall, Modlin Arts Center, University of Richmond
UR Wind Ensemble
David Niethamer directing
Alfred Reed: “Othello”
other works TBA
Free
(804) 289-8980
http://www.modlin.richmond.edu/
April 13 (8 p.m.)
April 14 (7 p.m.)
April 15 (8 p.m.)
April 16 (8 p.m.)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington
National Symphony Pops
Steven Reineke conducting
Pink Martini, guest stars
$20-$85
(800 ) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 15 (8 p.m.)
Vlahcevic Concert Hall, Singleton Arts Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Parke Avenue at Harrison Street, Richmond
Commonwealth Singers
John Guthmiller directing
VCU Women’s Choir
Rebecca Tyree directing
program TBA
$5
(804) 828-6776
http://www.vcumusic.org/
April 15 (8 p.m.)
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
University Singers
Michael Slon directing
David Norfrey, organ
Lauridsen: “Lux Aeterna”
Kodály: “Missa Brevis”
works TBA by Britten, Parry
$15
(434) 924-3984
http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/music/concertsevents/index.html
April 15 (7:30 p.m.)
Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington
James Madison University series:
Carl Donakowski, cello
Gabriel Dobner, piano
works TBA by Bach, Debussy, Schumann, Chopin
$25
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 15 (8 p.m.)
Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Marin Alsop conducting
“The Gold Rush,” Charlie Chaplin film with orchestral accompaniment
$28-$88
(877) 276-1333 (Baltimore Symphony box office)
http://www.strathmore.org/
April 16 (7:30 p.m.)
Vlahcevic Concert Hall, Singleton Arts Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Park Avenue at Harrison Street, Richmond
VCU Percussion Ensemble
Peter Martin directing
program TBA
Free
(804) 828-6776
http://www.vcumusic.org/
April 16 (7:30 p.m.)
Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington
International Performing Artists:
Xaiyin Wang, piano
works TBA by Bach, Haydn, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Gershwin, Ravel
$20-$40
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 17 (2 p.m.)
Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center, Washington
Afiara String Quartet
Haydn: Quartet in D major, Op. 76, No. 5
Berg: “Lyric Suite”
Beethoven: Quartet in F major, Op. 59, No. 1 (“Razumovsky”)
$35
(202) 785-9727 (Washington Performing Arts Society)
http://www.wpas.org/
April 17 (7 p.m.)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington
Michael Feinstein, vocals & piano
“The Sinatra Project”
$40-$75
(202) 785-9727 (Washington Performing Arts Society)
http://www.wpas.org/
April 18 (8 p.m.)
April 19 (8 p.m.)
Kimball Theatre, Merchants Square, Williamsburg
Williamsburg Symphonia
Janna Hymes conducting
Vivaldi: Concerto in B minor for four violins, strings and continuo
Dvořák: Serenade in E major for strings
Mendelssohn: Concerto in D minor for violin, piano and orchestra
Akemi Takayama, violin
Christine Niehaus, piano
$TBA
(757) 229-9857
http://www.williamsburgsymphonia.org/
April 19 (10:30 a.m.)
Trinity Episcopal Church, 500 Court St., Portsmouth
Virginia Arts Festival:
Parker Quartet
Kurtag: “Twelve Microludes,” Op. 13
Brahms: Quartet in A minor, Op. 51, No. 2
$20
(757) 282-2822
http://www.virginiaartsfest.com/
April 20 (7 p.m.)
Vlahcevic Concert Hall, Singleton Arts Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Park Avenue at Harrison Street, Richmond
VCU Symphonic Wind Ensemble
Terry Austin directing
program TBA
$5
(804) 828-6776
http://www.vcumusic.org/
April 20 (8 p.m.)
Black Music Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Grove Avenue at Harrison Street, Richmond
VCU Choral Arts Society
Vocal Chamber Ensemble
Rebecca Tyree directing
program TBA
Free
(804) 828-6776
http://www.vcumusic.org/
April 20 (7:30 p.m.)
Camp Concert Hall, Modlin Arts Center, University of Richmond
UR chamber ensembles
program TBA
Free
(804) 289-8980
http://www.modlin.richmond.edu/
April 20 (8 p.m.)
Hixon Theater, Barr Education Center, 440 Bank St., Norfolk
Virginia Arts Festival:
Parker Quartet
Haydn: Quartet in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5
Haydn: Quartet in C major, Op. 74, No. 1
Haydn: Quartet in G major, Op. 77, No. 1
$40
(757) 282-2822
http://www.virginiaartsfest.com/
April 21 (7:30 p.m.)
Merchant Hall, Hylton Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Circle, Manassas
U.S. Marine Corps Band
Capt. Michelle A. Rakers directing
“The Witching Hour,” music and poetry
Free; tickets required
(703) 993-7759
http://www.hyltoncenter.org/
April 23 (8 p.m.)
Chrysler Hall, 201 Brambleton Ave., Norfolk
Virginia Arts Festival:
Virginia Symphony
JoAnn Falletta conducting
Shostakovich: “Festive” Overture
Prokofiev: “Cinderella” Suites Nos. 1-3
Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto
Joshua Bell, violin
$30-$90
(757) 282-2822
http://www.virginiaartsfest.com/
April 23 (8 p.m.)
Center for the Arts, George Mason University, Fairfax
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Richard Strauss: Serenade, Op. 7, for winds
Hartmann: “Concerto funèbre”
Mozart: Rondo in C major, K. 373
Arabella Steinbacher, violin
Mozart: Adagio in E major, K. 261
Haydn: Symphony No. 104 (“London”)
$28-$56
(888) 945-2468 (Tickets.com)
http://www.cfa.gmu.edu/
April 25 (8 p.m.)
Chrysler Museum Theater, 245 W. Olney Road, Norfolk
Virginia Arts Festival:
Manuel Barrueco, guitar
Beijing Guitar Duo
Assad: “The Enchanted Island”
Piazzolla: “Fugay Misterio”
Piazzolla: “Revirado”
$25
(757) 282-2822
http://www.virginiaartsfest.com/
April 28 (7 p.m.)
April 29 (8 p.m.)
April 30 (8 p.m.)
Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington
National Symphony Orchestra
Kurt Masur conducting
Mendelssohn: “Ruy Blas” Overture
Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor
Sarah Chang, violin
Brahms: Symphony No. 1
$20-$85
(800) 444-1324
http://www.kennedy-center.org/
April 28 (8 p.m.)
Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, First and Independence streets SE, Washington
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Thomas Hampson, baritone
Andrés Díaz, cello
George Crumb: “American Songbooks” (excerpts)
Tan Dun: “Elegy: Snow in June” for cello and percussion
Free; tickets required
(703) 573-7328 (Ticketmaster)
www.loc.gov/rr/perform/concert/1011-schedule.html
April 29 (8 p.m.)
Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD
Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Haydn: Sonata in E minor, Hob. XVI: 34
Schumann: “Carnaval”
Wolpe: “Passacaglia for Four Studies on Basic Rows”
Fauré: Nocturne No. 6, Op. 63
Liszt: “Réminiscences de Norma”
$45-$65
(202) 785-9727 (Washington Performing Arts Society)
http://www.wpas.org/
April 30 (7:30 p.m.)
Vlahcevic Concert Hall, Singleton Arts Center, Virginia Commonwealth University, Park Avenue at Harrison Street, Richmond
Opera Theatre VCU
VCU Symphony Orchestra
Daniel Myssyk conducting
Humperdinck: “Hansel and Gretel”
cast TBA
Melanie Kohn Day & Kenneth Wood, stage direction
in English
$15
(804) 828-6776
http://www.vcumusic.org/
April 30 (8 p.m.)
Carpenter Theatre, Richmond CenterStage, Sixth and Grace streets
Richmond Symphony
Steven Smith conducting
Barber: “The School for Scandal” Overture
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto
Tai Murray, violin
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5
$17-$72
(800) 982-2787 (Ticketmaster)
http://www.richmondsymphony.com/
April 30 (8 p.m.)
Old Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Charlottesville & University Symphony Orchestra
Kate Tamarkin conducting
Mozart: “The Abduction from the Seraglio” Overture
Richard Ciofarri: Trumpet Concerto (premiere)
Paul Neebe, trumpet
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4
$10-$35
(434) 924-3984
http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/music/concertsevents/index.html
April 30 (8 p.m.)
Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda, MD
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Cornelius Meister conducting
Smetana-Mahler: “The Bartered Bride” Overture
Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 2
Jonathan Carney, violin
Brahms: Symphony No. 2
$33-$93
(877) 276-1333 (Baltimore Symphony box office)
http://www.strathmore.org/