Clara Schumann and Sofia Gubaidulina at Wigmore

In a fine performance by Isata Kanneh-Mason:

 

Lovely Concert

Have no fear, despite it being Christmas Day, there will be a Friday Miscellanea tomorrow. And then I will start cooking because I am having guests over for a traditional Christmas dinner of turkey and trimmings.

Lea Desandre

But in the meantime, here is a lovely concert with mezzo Lea Desandre. She is singing Berlioz Nuits d'Été instead of her more usual early music but does a great job. The concert also features a performance of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez with guitarist Thibaut Garcia. Blogger won't embed. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm0_5wP3SVg

New Growth

My Friday Miscellanea began with a photo of a flowering shrub that I took this week. I wanted to show you a closeup of this unusual flower which is like a tiny explosion of threads. So here it is. I can't find the name of this plant, but you can see both the unopened buds and the open flowers:

In the same theme, there are signs of the re-awaking of musical performances. One example is a series of concerts at Victoria, British Columbia's Christ Church Cathedral (where I played concerts years ago). Yesterday's concert was French Baroque music for two violins with Tyson Doknjas, Chloe Kim, and Kathryn Wiebe on baroque violins.

https://www.timescolonist.com/entertainment/video-music-for-the-pause-7-french-baroque-rivals-1.24186140

Very nicely done.

Today's Concert: Shostakovich Quintet from Frankfurt

Introduction, mostly in German, by violist Dirk Niewöhner, though he does welcome we "international listeners" in English.

Today's Concert: Grieg from Frankfurt

The Frankfurt Radio Orchestra were doing a great job with high-quality concert videos before the coronavirus crisis and they have kept on during it. Today's streaming music concert is Grieg's Holberg Suite conducted by Ruth Reinhardt. Is it my imagination or are we seeing a lot more woman conductors than usual these days?

Bach Concert Today

Delighted to see the Netherlands Bach Society is still cranking them out. They just posted this lovely performance today:

Great resonant lower strings.

Today's Concert from Wigmore Hall, Paul Lewis, piano

From just a few days ago, Paul Lewis plays the Beethoven "Moonlight" Sonata and the Schubert G major sonata.

The commentator mentions that backstage, in the Green Room, the walls are covered with photos, with autographs, of the great artists who have played there. Seems like every great musician you have ever heard of, from Arthur Rubinstein to Jascha Heifetz, is there. Let me tell you, as a young musician making his debut there, it was seriously daunting gazing on these photos.

Today's Concert: Young Recorder Virtuoso and the Concertgebouw

This was just streamed earlier today:

Oh, and there is an actual audience, though quite a small one, it appears, tucked away in the balcony on either side.

Today's Concert: Andreas Hepp, percussion and Indian Music

Percussionist Andreas Hepp performs his own composition SAGITTARIUS for a wide variety of percussion instruments including piano. He gives an excellent introduction: in German, mind you. And yes, he does get to those water-filled glasses, around the 19 minute mark.

Next, an Indian instrument I just discovered, the rudra veena here played by virtuoso Ustad Asad Ali Khan. The instrument is a kind of bass sitar with two enormous resonating gourds. I am dying to see what a rudra veena travel case looks like...

Today's Concert: Concertgebouworkest, Beethoven, Symphony No. 7

This is the first post-coronovirus concert by the Concertgebouw, without audience still. It was recorded yesterday and posted today. The conductor is Gustavo Gimeno.

Today's Concert: French and Swiss Flute Music

The principal flute of the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, Clara Andrada de la Calle accompanied by
Maria Ollikainen, Piano in music by Francis Poulenc and Frank Martin.

This is quite a nice opportunity to get a closer acquaintance with individual members of the orchestra.

Today's Concert: Gergiev, Mariinsky, Shostakovich 9

How did Shostakovich get to fifteen symphonies instead of the nine that composers were supposedly limited to after Beethoven? Possibly by not taking the idea seriously. When he came to write the piece, at the end of the Second World War, instead of a big, serious work with vocal soloists and choir that he had hinted he was going to write, he produced a bright, jaunty neo-classical symphony of modest proportions. Just like Shostakovich to do the opposite of what was expected. This fine performance is part of a series filmed by a French crew in the Salle Pleyel in Paris. Gergiev is conducting with his famous toothpick.

Today's Concert

This is streaming live as I post it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti1FefnBAyk

This is the first concert I have seen back with an actual orchestra--or part of one! The Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada play Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question and Beethoven, Violin Concerto with Christian Tetzlaff, Violin. Notice the social distancing with each pair of stand partners a couple of meters from the next.

Today's Concert: Hába Quartet, Smetana, Borodin, Dvořák

As the lockdown winds down, we see larger ensembles from the Frankfurt series of streaming concerts. Today is a quartet with three popular quartet movements, one each from Smetana, Borodin and Dvořák. It is nice to get closer acquainted with the musicians. I even am following the German introductions a bit better!

Today's Concert: Marcin Dylla, Manuel de Falla

Marcin Dylla is the finest young guitarist I have heard in the last few years. This is a performance from 2018 of the Homenaje de Claude Debussy by Manuel de Falla. The piece seems deceptively simple to play, but in order to realize all the expressive indications and bring the subtleties of the music to life, you need to be fastidious both technically and musically. This is an extremely fine performance. Listen, for example, to how he changes the timbre for the Debussy quote towards the end.

Today's Concert: Franck Cello Sonata

The Frankfurt Radio Orchestra people put up a new concert every day and today it is Valentino Worlitzsch, Violoncello and Elisabeth Brauß, Piano playing the César Franck Cello Sonata A major.

Voice and Lute

This concert was posted on April 2nd from a concert given at the Festival de Maguelone last year. The singer is Lea Desandre and Thomas Dunford plays the very ungainly Baroque lute. The music is by a variety of 17th century French composers. What is most unusual is that both artists perform the whole concert from memory--something you often see with singers but never with accompanists. The program is all songs, with solo lute pieces by Robert de Visée and Marin Marais interspersed. Really a lovely and very unusual performance.

Encores included Debussy and Handel. You don't hear Debussy on Baroque lute very often. Nor harmonics, for that matter.

UPDATE: Looks like they were reading the encores at least from a discretely positioned iPad.

Guitar Concert Today

I don't listen to a lot of guitarists these days because, frankly, they are not that interesting. But I make exception for Marcin Dylla who is both technically adept and musically masterful. A couple of days ago he put up a performance of the Bach Suite in E minor, BWV 996 that is really outstanding:

Concert of the Day

At first it looks like a video on fence repair, but that's just the intro to this Concertgebouw concert introduced by the principal flautist Kersten McCall. The program is Rossini, La Gazza Ladra overture followed by the Symphony No. 5 by Prokofiev written in 1944 during the Second World War. The music starts around the 12 minute mark and the Prokofiev around the 22 minute mark.

Today's Concert is Solo Flute

Just posted today, this concert is by the principal flute of the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra, Sebastian Wittiber, who plays music by C. P. E. Bach, Debussy and J. S. Bach.