Last night Ruth and i attended a performance of the Oregon Symphony. They performed Richard Strauss' "Don Quixote." they also performed Dutilleux's "Metaboles," and Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra."
Strauss' Don Quixote, is a tone poem (for those of you that don't know.) Which, very simply, is a work based on a writing; to bring across in the music that which was written. Strauss definately did well with that.
The Story is about a spainiard who confuses chivalry and real-life. For one example: Don Quixote sees a cloud of dust on the horizon and assumes that it is two armies warring with each other. He charges in meaning to put an end to the war only to discover that it is a large herd off sheep. no matter, he charges in anyway sword swinging. in the music you can hear what you believe is a battle in the distance. When he starts killing sheep the brass section comes through emulating bleeting sheep. quite funny!
It was a great evening. once again it helped me to realize that i made a good decision in deciding to return to the life of an academic musician.
on to other things...
this morning in the paper there is an article about kids in North Dakota getting out of school to help sandbag against the rising red river. it doesn't seem like its been 9 years since the "big, big flood" (of '97). when school was cut short and i wasn't able to raise that crappy grade in geometry.
have good days!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
What did you think of the Dutilleux?
to me the Dutilleux definately did what it was supposed to. the conductor, in his discussion, talked about how Dutilleux wanted to name the piece metamorphosis, but didn't becuase a few other composers had already used that as their title. instead he named it metabol to convey his thoughts of what his musical thoughts meant.
while listening to the work go throughout its movements and transform i couldn't help but think of Kafka's "Metamorphosis". the changing of one thing into another. reflections of what was and foreshadowing of what was to come.
at one point i thought...wow this sounds awesome and is really modern. and then my A.D.D. kicked in and i wondered how many of the bluehairs were not enjoying it.
it was very cool.
oh yeah...i forgot to write in my blog that 10 minutes into Don Quixote a cell phone began its ring and the inevitable destruction of a recording for OPBS.
the lady took her phone out of her purse after looking around a little bit...then looked to see who was calling before turning the ringer off.
WTF! hang up already.
Well, if you liked the Dutilleux, you should check out his cello concerto, conveniently packaged at mid-price on EMI with the Lutoslawski cello concerto performed by Rostropovich.
Also, his Timbres, Espaces, Mouvements has no violins and no violas. That's my kinda piece!
As far as the Strauss, we're doing it here next season when Yo-Yo Ma(!) is in town. Our new music director seems to be quite adept at the old Strauss tone-poetry. Hard to do because it can get really muddy really easily.
Oh, and what about the 'big flood' of '93???
Post a Comment