Near-rapture
May. 21st, 2011 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoNo, not what you're thinking. We went up to Wisconsin to hear the Lake Geneva Symphony's final performance of the season tonight. It was even inside an evangelical church. Somehow we're all still here.
The performance was remarkable. They have a new music director since the last time we heard them, and he has brought a new focus to the group and a new edge to the sound of the orchestra.
The guest soloist was a bass named Matthew Treviño from Texas (Texas? How did that happen?) who sang arias in Italian from Don Carlo, The Barber of Seville, and The Marriage of Figaro as well as "Some Enchanted Evening" by Rodgers and Hammerstein. That's pretty diverse but he did a masterful job on all of it.
The orchestra's pièce de résistance was a brilliantly different interpretation of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" but they also gave a fine rendition of Verdi's overture to Nabucco.
It was all so good that I find myself contemplating season tickets for next year. The Chicago Symphony is unquestionably first rate, and easy to reach by commuter train, but they are priced way out of my budget range. This is an orchestra I can afford and that is still worth hearing.
The performance was remarkable. They have a new music director since the last time we heard them, and he has brought a new focus to the group and a new edge to the sound of the orchestra.
The guest soloist was a bass named Matthew Treviño from Texas (Texas? How did that happen?) who sang arias in Italian from Don Carlo, The Barber of Seville, and The Marriage of Figaro as well as "Some Enchanted Evening" by Rodgers and Hammerstein. That's pretty diverse but he did a masterful job on all of it.
The orchestra's pièce de résistance was a brilliantly different interpretation of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" but they also gave a fine rendition of Verdi's overture to Nabucco.
It was all so good that I find myself contemplating season tickets for next year. The Chicago Symphony is unquestionably first rate, and easy to reach by commuter train, but they are priced way out of my budget range. This is an orchestra I can afford and that is still worth hearing.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-22 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-22 01:54 pm (UTC)The musical director now is David Anderson, and the differences we perceived in his interpretation of Dvorak were largely based on emphasis: we heard some passages we had never noticed before even in such an often-produced composition. He also changed some of the tempi in unexpected ways, slightly faster in the third movement, slower in the first I think. In spite of what many have said about associating the work with "American folk music" or "American Indian themes" we both agree that it is about the discovery and conquest of the Americas, and has a lot of nautical and military feeling to it. The timpani in the fourth movement always sounds like gunfire to me, and as it was performed last night, it definitely had that effect. We were told that the director relocated the percussion section from behind the violins to behind the basses because the violinists complained that the gunfire effects were deafening them. I find it quite believable. XD
no subject
Date: 2011-05-23 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-24 12:52 am (UTC)In fact, we seemed to have a large part of Mr. Treviño's cheering section right in the row behind us. Family maybe? Not sure. They spent most of their time talking about what a long trip it was flying from Lubbock to Milwaukee and then driving a rental car to Williams Bay.