A Concert to Recommend in Chicago
There was an amazing concert at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last night.
An Estonian conductor named Paavo Järvi, a German baritone named Matthias Goerne, and a program of Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 (you can hear a clip of the orchestra playing the piece here) .
I recite this as though I know the music. But, in fact, I know very little about classical music history or styles or musicians. On the way in to the city, I drove and my husband read the liner notes for the concert aloud. Now this may sound incredibly pedantic and dull. But no, not at all. Very well written, nicely read, and how could one not be amused at the number of times the program annotator managed to work in the phrase "dass k-naaben vuunderhoorn" into the piece? Then, the Shostokovich review, which offered up details about Josef Stalin, the music on his turntable when he died (Mozart, not Shostokovich), intramarital affairs, and using musical notes to "spell" your lover's name out in a piece of music.
We sat way up in the lower balcony, in seats that seem to tip forward and want to spill you out on the row below. Not too much rustling or coughing, aside from a gentleman in the upper right balcony who sounded like he'd just escaped from The Magic Mountain. And the music was incredible. The Mahler song cycle, sung in German, was fluid and humorous at times, warlike and mournful in other songs. The Shostokovich symphony, even more amazing. The first movement is vibrant and insistent and loud. The second movement is so fast and bright that it seems impossible that the musicians could be moving so quickly and producing such beautiful sound.
And so it went. Unlike other concerts I've attended, I found myself focused on the music and the interactions of the conductor and musicians. And swept away for a few moments into the intricacy of the symphony. At the end, the audience clapped and clapped, and shouted Bravo for each soloist as he or she stood for recognition. It wasn't an effort to mine an encore: it was an audience truly responding to the art that had been achieved.
To make music seems such a difficult feat. To write a symphony that puts together so many instruments and sounds into a flowing beautiful whole: seemingly impossible.
And if you don't live near Chicago or can't get tickets, you can listen to the Mahler songs (say it with me: "dass k-naaben vuunderhooorn") on a recording with Anne Sofie Von Otter, Thomas Quastoff and the Berliner Philharmoniker. You won't be able to observe the Chicago orchestra - how chatty everyone is with one another when they are warming up, the animated conversation between two violinists about a large envelope that he's pulled out of his breast pocket, the angry violinst sitting in front of the harp not making eye contact with anyone, the number of times that the brass instrument musicians empty their spit valves - but the recording did receive a Grammy.
We do what we can, right?
An Estonian conductor named Paavo Järvi, a German baritone named Matthias Goerne, and a program of Mahler's Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 (you can hear a clip of the orchestra playing the piece here) .
I recite this as though I know the music. But, in fact, I know very little about classical music history or styles or musicians. On the way in to the city, I drove and my husband read the liner notes for the concert aloud. Now this may sound incredibly pedantic and dull. But no, not at all. Very well written, nicely read, and how could one not be amused at the number of times the program annotator managed to work in the phrase "dass k-naaben vuunderhoorn" into the piece? Then, the Shostokovich review, which offered up details about Josef Stalin, the music on his turntable when he died (Mozart, not Shostokovich), intramarital affairs, and using musical notes to "spell" your lover's name out in a piece of music.
We sat way up in the lower balcony, in seats that seem to tip forward and want to spill you out on the row below. Not too much rustling or coughing, aside from a gentleman in the upper right balcony who sounded like he'd just escaped from The Magic Mountain. And the music was incredible. The Mahler song cycle, sung in German, was fluid and humorous at times, warlike and mournful in other songs. The Shostokovich symphony, even more amazing. The first movement is vibrant and insistent and loud. The second movement is so fast and bright that it seems impossible that the musicians could be moving so quickly and producing such beautiful sound.
And so it went. Unlike other concerts I've attended, I found myself focused on the music and the interactions of the conductor and musicians. And swept away for a few moments into the intricacy of the symphony. At the end, the audience clapped and clapped, and shouted Bravo for each soloist as he or she stood for recognition. It wasn't an effort to mine an encore: it was an audience truly responding to the art that had been achieved.
To make music seems such a difficult feat. To write a symphony that puts together so many instruments and sounds into a flowing beautiful whole: seemingly impossible.
And if you don't live near Chicago or can't get tickets, you can listen to the Mahler songs (say it with me: "dass k-naaben vuunderhooorn") on a recording with Anne Sofie Von Otter, Thomas Quastoff and the Berliner Philharmoniker. You won't be able to observe the Chicago orchestra - how chatty everyone is with one another when they are warming up, the animated conversation between two violinists about a large envelope that he's pulled out of his breast pocket, the angry violinst sitting in front of the harp not making eye contact with anyone, the number of times that the brass instrument musicians empty their spit valves - but the recording did receive a Grammy.
We do what we can, right?
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