Sequenza21

The Sunday evening concert explored the range of voices of a piano with four works for piano and orchestra, almost four concertos.  Pierre-Laurent Aimard was pianist in three and merely a conductor in the fourth, Dialogues for Piano and Large Ensemble (2003) by Elliott Carter.  One result of the differences in attitude (or fashion?) regarding contemporary music between northeast and southwest is that we hear much less of Carter’s music than do you in the more variable climates, so that hearing the work seemed both old and new.  Tamara Stefanovich was given the chance to shine as soloist, and she did

An evening joining the dots between music genres and digital art forms, and exploring the worlds of electronic music, contemporary classical practice and interactive visual arts, all taking place on a Cold War air base – that’s Faster Than Sound at the Aldeburgh Festival. It took place on Saturday, see more pictures of the event here, and read the background story here.    

Last night’s concert introduced us to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Douglas Boyd.  The major work was Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, transcribed for a chamber orchestra by Schoenberg in 1921 for a chamber orchestra of 14, and completed by Rainer Riehn in 1983.  I didn’t like this.  At over an hour in length, it wasn’t a condensation.  “Listen to all of Mahler’s pretty melodies without all those messy instruments getting too emotional.”  (Yes, I recognize that Schoenberg’s motivation was to try to bring a contemporary work to a local audience, even if he had to strip

Pierre-Laurent Aimard is music director for this year’s Ojai Music Festival, and his program for last night explored music in which the piano is used as a percussion instrument, while also continuing the use of multiple pianos begun last night.  With Saturday morning set for his solo program, his work yesterday evening was as a colleague.  The percussion group Nexus played in all three works of the program, as did his colleague Tamara Stefanovich on piano.  For the past several months Stefanovich has been Aimard’s fellow-player of choice, having filled in for another pianist who suffered what sounds like tendon

The 61st Ojai Music Festival opened last night.  Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams, returning after their success two years ago in their performances of Nancarrow, gave us a great survey of modern works for two pianos with works by Stravinsky, Ligeti, Sciarrino, and this season’s featured composer, Peter Eötvös.  (Us amateurs have trouble coming to a decision as to the best mispronounciation of his name.)  But let me start with the featured composer, glad I can write the name and not try to speak it. The second half of the program opened with his Cricketmusic (1970) a tape of cricket