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Wednesday, March 3rd, as usual the Chicago Cultural Center hosted
a Dame Myra Hess concert under the Tiffany dome.

This week it was played by Noah Turner Rogoff, cello and Nathan Bruckner,
piano. Both are from the University of Nebraska, Kearny.

The first work, Scherzetto by Frank Bridge, was a foreshadowing of things to
come. I.e. not very exciting.

Then followed a rather dull piece by Schubert, Sonata in A minor for Piano
and Arpeggione made even duller by Noah not keeping up with his fingering
on the cello.

But the bright spot was the final Ginastera Pompeana #2 for cello and piano.
Noah and Nathan got into it, but that was only eight minutes of a forty-five
minute sit-down.

On the up side, it was a very sunny day for the walk up to the CCC
and sirens on Michigan Ave only disturbed the concert once.
–
Bruce

Pronunciation of her name aside, Xiayin played a great recital
at the PianoForte Salon Series at the Friday noon-time recitals.

The first work was a Haydn E-flat Major Sonata #52. Because
I was sitting in the 1st row, I marveled how the stiletto heels of
her boots pivoted on the floor to work the pedals. She said after
the recital that the pivot point made the pedals easier to push.

Debussy’s delicately played L’Isle Joyuse followed.

A new work by Richard Danielpour came next. Xiayin premiered
Book II of Richard’s piano preludes. Today she played #1,
Persepolis, and #6, There’s a Ghost in My Room, which was
inspired by Xiayin recounting a story about a ghostly experience.

Then we heard a Scriabin “fantasie” about the Earth colliding with
the Sun called Towards the Flame. It was a typical late Scriabin
work with all his customary keyboard nuances.

And as a way to flush out all doom and gloom of crashing into
the Sun, Xiayin finished up with I’ve Got Rhythm by Gershwin.

Valentine’s Day afternoon at the Chicago Cultural Center Third Coast Percussion played a concert of four works that I wasn’t lucky enough to get a printed program for. But that was OK because the music was great and the crew spoke about all the pieces, especially the in the second half when composer, Martin Bresnick, explained his inspiration from Goya’s sketches  Los desastres de la guerra for the last piece, which was a
collection of “Farandoles” in their Spanish interpretation, acompanied by Goya slides compiled by his daughter.

http://www.martinbresnick.com/programnotes/caprichosenfaticos.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farandole

Third Coast Percussion has quite a following judging by my sightings of local New Music enthusiasts.

[I'm going to name names here]
Larry Axelrod
Teddy Boys
Amy Briggs
Lisa Kaplan
Mabel Kwan
Janice Misurell-Mitchell
Bernard Rands
Daniel Schlosberg
Augusta Read Thomas

Percussion in the largest ceramic “bathroom shower” in the city can’t fail to get you going.
–
Bruce

I attended the Chicago Chamber Musicians concert Monday, 2/15, at the
Merit School’s Gottlieb Hall.

Embracing Dvořák’s semi-familiar Bagatelles for wind and strings were two
new ones for me. First was the Wind Partita by Franz Krommer (c.1794). Two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, a trumpet and a double bass.
The sound was wonderful. I was in Row B so all the oboe fingerings
were in plain sight. Amazing.

The Dvořák Bagatelles (1818), with a more diverse ensemble of flute,
oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, two violins, viola, cello & bass, was a very
enjoyable toe-tapper. I was sitting next to an “Angel” whose late husband
was a violinist. Because we were sitting so close to Joe Genualdi, I asked
for her assessment of Joe’s style. I got a non-committal reply of “everyone
is different”.

But up next was the pièce de résistance. The string quintet in F Major by
Anton Bruckner. For this performance, Jasmine Lin (violin) was in charge
of Joe Genualdi (violin), Rami Solomonow & Yukiko Ogura (violas) and
Cheng-Hou Lee (Cello).

In four movements, it didn’t sound like any Bruckner I’ve ever heard before.
But I did think the adagio third moment went on too long, ala some of the
Bruckner symphonies.

Afterwards, in a discussion with Joe Genualdi and Lee Hyla, who happened
to be there, I found out Katinka Kleijn suggested the Bruckner piece, but
wasn’t available to play the cello part. Too bad.

–
Bruce

Saturday afternoon Amy Briggs performed a recital at the U of C’s
beautiful Fulton Hall.

There were works by the two Györgys: Ligeti, and Kurtág with short interludes by Arvo Pärt.

I was up front and was able to see Amy’s nimbleness and athleticism on the keyboard and with the huge sheets she also manipulated on the music stand.

For me, the new revelations were the piano Etudes by Ligeti. Amy
played numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10 & 13, (not in played in that order). The last, L’escalier du diable, was certainly a work of the devil.
–
Bruce

I don’t know how Thomas Zoells recruits his talent for the PianoForte Friday Salon Series, but this week was a winner.

Ingrid Marsoner played piano fantasies by Haydn and Mozart that kept me dazzled even though I’m not a lover of either composer as a symphonist.

She finished up with two Schubert Impromptus and then two Janacek pieces from “In The Mists’.

During the half-time interview with the lovely red-headed Ingrid, with an Austrian accent (as Thomas Zoells was standing by to translate if required), it was apparent she was fluent in English. I wouldn’t hesitate to attend to hear
her again, but her performance at Julius Meinl on Lincoln is sold out.
–
Bruce

Saturday night, 2/6, The CSO played the Vaughan-Williams Fifth Symphony.
The first half of the concert was very nice, with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Cappricio
Espanol followed by Mozart’s Piano Concerto #20 played by Shai Wosner.
The Russian’s impressions of Spain were brought home by Patricia Dash’s
banging of castinets on her thighs.

But the amazing thing for me was Vaughan-Williams. I’ve never seen it
live and I’m probably only vaguely familiar with the third and fourth movements
from listening to WFMT. It was performed by the CSO in 1987, but I don’t
think I was a subscriber that year .

It has some really beautiful string passages and they’re accented by wind
and brass as only Vaughan-Williams can do. The oboe, English horn,
piccolo (Jennifer Gunn), brass and Concertmaster (David Taylor, that night)
got kudos during three rounds of applause.

It’s not too late to get a ticket for Tuesday, 2/9.
–
Bruce

Tonight, Friday, the long-gone-from-here Hothouse organization scheduled
a performance of the Andreas Kapsalis Trio at Reggie’s Music Joint, just
south of the 60616 Post Office on State & 21st and North of a regular liquor
store hang out you don’t want to know about.

I’ve seen Kapsalis at the Cultural Center before in a more ethnic program.
Tonight he and his two percussionist partners were very more interesting.

Andreas plays an amplified acoustic guitar and is a master of playing
on the neck of the guitar by impacting the frets to get the strings
singing. I was sitting up front and was amazed by the finger work.
One or more songs concluded with delicate harmonics on the strings.

The percussionist on stage right had an African hour-glass shaped drum
rigged up as a kick-drum. At one point he also played cymbals with
mini-straw brooms and rubbed a mini-cow-bell on the cymbal too.
But he really rocked on the tom-toms.

The percussionist on stage left had straight forward drums and several
other gadgets to pound and shake. At one point I think he was shaking
something with LED lights in it(?).

Reggie’s seem to draw lots the 20yr old hipsters from the south side.
But once the music got going, I didn’t feel out of place.

I stayed for the 1st set, ending about 11pm. I would certainly recommend
hearing the A-K Trio to anyone with good ears.

–
Bruce

In honor of Schubert’s 213th birthday, and because I’m friends
with Thomas Zoells and know some of the musicians, and
I’m an open minded music lover, I decided to attend this
year’s Schubertiade. It was held Saturday 1/30 on the
8th floor of the Fine Arts Building in Studio 801 (Liz Stein Co.),
Studio 825 (Fazioli Salon) and Studio 833 (Chicago Youth
Symphony Rehearsal Hall).

It was seven hours long with no major breaks, only passing
periods between studios. The statistic were:
60 Musicians
31 Ensembles
92 Deutsch catalogue works played (minus 3 or 4 duplicates)
4 Arrangements of Schubert works by Franz Liszt

I was able to hear 6 ensembles allowing for a snack break at
5pm in the “Schubert Cafe”, where coffee, sweets, crackers,
cheese and Austrian wine were served. It was no Sacher Cafe,
but it was always crowded nonetheless.

The three performances I enjoyed the most were:

Ryan de Ryke (baritone) & Daniel Schlossberg (piano)
performed Lieder based on themes of Nature. Ryan’s
voice was positively great and his total involvement
in the emotion of the songs was impressive. I had this
bug in my mind the whole time: who was the pianist
that accompanied Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau?

Duo pianists Alexander Djordjevic and Brenda Huang
performed Schubert’s Hungarian Divertimento for Four
Hands. I’ve never heard this before, so it was a pleasant
surprise and I’ll seek it out again.

One of the best was saved for last at 8pm – Schubert’s
Guitar Quartet. He arranged it to include a cello part for
his father from a flute, viola and guitar trio composed by
Wenzel Thomas Matiegka. The quartet playing it this time
was Yoo-Jin Hong (flute), Maria Ritzenhaler (viola),
Karen Schulz-Harmon (cello) and Casey Nielsen (guitar).

PianoForte estimates 500 people attended at one point or
other. I’d say the two elevator operators had their hands full.
–
Bruce

This report is intended mainly for our CUBE mutual friend and oboeist ‘Trisha Morehead.

Today at the 12:15 Classical Monday concert series at the Chicago Cultural Center,
a young oboe player named Jennet Ingle went 45 minutes with music by Telemann,
Madaline Dring, Antonio Pasculli and then more Telemann to finish off.

It’s not very often the oboe is featured as the star player in a recital. There
was piano accompaniment by Paul Hamilton, but it faded into the background
compared by the spectacular oboe-ising of Jennet.

This’s got me all tuned-up for the ICE battle of the oboes Feb 10th at MoCP.