Just a quick reminder that the Elgin Symphony Orchestra concert I told you about, featuring Beethoven’s 6th Symphony and works by Argentinian composers Astor Piazzolla and Alberto Ginastera, will be on WFMT-FM’s “Music in Chicago” tomorrow at 8 p.m. CST. If you’re not in Chicago, you can hear it online.
I’d be interested to know what you think.
David Bratman says:
Alas, I wasn’t able to hear the concert. But as I have some familiarity with Piazzolla and Ginastera, if not those specific pieces, I can comment a little on the points you found interesting when you reviewed the live concert.
If you’re used to the violins dominating the string ensemble, you’ve been listening to a lot of pre-20th century music. Even there, there are often melodic lines given to the cellos or violas. But there are also works for orchestra with no violins whatever (a category also including Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6), and others in which the lower strings dominate. Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (Symphony No. 3), probably the most popular work of “classical” music composed in the last 50 years (though people who hate it _really_ hate it), begins with a long slow canon that starts with the double basses and slowly works its way up, though split sections, eventually to the violins. At the end of the movement it slowly diminishes back down again.
As for orchestration: I’ve noticed in a lot of recent music that some composers are brilliantly clear orchestrators who can make everything heard, and others turn everything into a muddy jumble. I’ve heard both from the same performers in the same hall, so it’s not just acoustics and performing quality.
April 25, 2009, 12:09 pm