Sprightly

Stop the Planets - I Want to Get Off The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once did a bit where he wondered what aliens landing on earth would make of dogs and their owners. Seeing members of one species following those of another, picking up their poop and carrying it around in a little bag, which would the aliens consider to be the masters? The thought crossed my mind the other day while playing The Planets with a click track syncing the live orchestra to a film. While both dog and owner are at least living creatures, the subservience of something alive to something not alive is problematic, at least when considering that the 'live-ness' of the music is supposed to be one of ts most compelling features. Strangely, the most 'real' imagery from the Planets film was shot by the robots sent to Mars a few years back, actual photographs taken by real cameras as opposed to digital animations. Whether in service of our curiosity or merely our vanity, those machines nevertheless op...

programming, old school! A concert featuring an overture, symphony, concerto and virtuoso showpiece, nary a Broadway show-tune in earshot, Teutonic death worship given the week off, sweltering heat, swarming gnats, cannons – this week had it all. Program A BARBER Overture to The School for Scandal SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 70 INTERMISSION BARBER Violin Concerto, Op. 14 R AVEL Tzigane (Joshua Bell, violin) Program B BERLIOZ Three Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 17 INTERMISSION VERDI Overture to Giovanna d'Arco DVOŘÁK Slavonic Dance No. 2, Op. 72 MENDELSSOHN The Hebrides Overture, Op. 26, “Fingal's Cave” ROSSINI Overture to William Tell Program C TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36 INTERMISSION TCHAIKOVSKY P iano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23 TCHAIKOVSKY 1 812, Overture solonelle , Op. 49 The brief flashback I had in in the middle of program B took me back to circa 1993. That is until I realized we were playing on a Thursday night and...

The week that wasn't There were two concerts scheduled this week and, as luck would have it, I ended up off both nights. Having Wednesday night off was not by choice. The Weill and Schrecker program called for a very small orchestra. As I have mentioned before, any concert with 'Gala', 'Special', 'Festive', or other superlative attached immediately goes to the top of my wish list for days off. All of the speechifying, bowing, hugging, and whatnot gives me the willies, so Saturday had a big 'X' through it in my calendar. I suffered a brief pang of regret, looking at the program order and noticing the concert ended with 'Ravel', fearing I might miss out on another extraordinary overtime bonanza until it became apparent 'Ravel' referred to Daphnis and not Bolero. Also, Conlon has much better clock management skills than Eschenbach.

Eschenbach and More Show Tunes The Sunday concert (I don't know what to call it, is 5 PM afternoon or evening?) seemed like a microcosm of the whole Ravinia experience. A small crowd witnessed an underutilized orchestra swelter through a program of Broadway show music. The most disturbing fact is that may have been the best concert of the week. If anyone needs help filling out their Ravinia scorecard, my records show the following after two weeks: Total concerts: 6 Pops concerts: 3 (.500 average) Concerts with Patti Lupone: 0 Usually all sorts of interesting things happen when Christoph Eschenbach comes to town. One of the more mundane yet annoying is that the rehearsal schedule gets all cockeyed. Thursday 10-12:30 Brahms Symphony 1:30-4 Dvorak Symphony Brahms Double Friday: 2:30-5 Dvorak Symphony Brahms Symphony Korngold violin concerto At first glance the above seems unremarkable, until one realizes that the two Brahms pieces were on the Friday concert, the Dvorak and Korngol...

Death Marches and Show Tunes To give credit where it is due, an irate yet erudite colleague who gave me an earful on the way home from the concert on Sunday suggested the title for this post. The first three concerts featured a turgid, steaming slab of Mahler 6, served up between two pretty flimsy slices of Americana. There has been a fair amount of grousing in recent years that the programming at Ravinia has become all about either concentration camps and (perhaps motivated by some fairness doctrine) heavy German fare on the one hand, or show tunes on the other – as if there was nothing worth hearing in between. The programming for week 1 did nothing to dispel that. Since much of the country suffered the same fate last week, I risk little in the way of betraying the identity of the orchestra I work for by reporting that the weather was beastly hot and humid – over 100 degrees for three days in a row. A tiny crowd braved the heat to watch our 5 PM July 4 th show – the first one I ...

Viva il puma! The other day, it struck me as odd that after a trip to Russia (of all places) I'm not supposed to mention what I did upon my return to the good old USA. What a universe we live in... Anyhow, it is probably high time to finish writing about the tour,now that is has been over for more than a week. The St Petersburg passport officers could learn a thing or two from their counterpart in Rome who didn't stop talking on his phone long enough to open my passport before welcoming me to the country with an impatient flick of the wrist. As the name suggests, the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome is an opera house. The hall, a typical opera house design, semicircular with box seats stacked to the ceiling, had dry, if not unpleasant acoustics. Perhaps the miles of crushed velvet and brocade had something to do with it. Quite a change from the the two wonderful, if relatively unadorned shoe-box halls in Russia. The president of Italy (Giorgio Napolitano!) himself attended ...

Goodbye to all that. As mentioned, the hall in Moscow turned out to be a wonderful place to play after all the tripping and slipping on the stairs. St Petersburg also had a magnificent concert hall, although I might not have been in the best spot on the stage to appreciate the acoustics. The earplugs were pushed in so far one of them didn't come out until I sneezed the next morning, if you know what I mean. As with almost every tour, the public transit infrastructure in Russia made what we have back home look pretty shabby. I imagine if more Americans traveled overseas they might approve increased funding for transportation if only to avoid shame and embarrassment. However, the St Petersburg airport needs works, and lots of it. One of my colleagues who dropped off his partner earlier in the day warned of a possible cluster-f#ck when our large group arrived. Sure enough, as our buses pulled up the line was already out the door, although that line turned out only to be a sort of...