Last night was a decent night at Symphony Hall. It began with Janáček’s rhapsody Taras Bulba. A dramantic and often exciting and beautiful work, Christian Arming did a decent job with it. Nothing stood out in his conducting of it that doesn’t jump out of the score anyway. I have to admit that my mind wandered a bit, which is probably more my fault than Arming’s: I’d been a little out of it all day.
Continue reading
One of the things that I really like about the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta is the way that their concerts are generally programmed with some kind of thread that connects the various pieces being played. The programs often span multiple musical periods but always manage to remain coherent, with some kind of conceptual or musical thematic connection. Tonight’s program for the Vega String Quartet was no exception; the evening began with a piece by the Classical composer Hayden, ended with a Romantic era piece by his student, Beethoven, and sandwiched in-between was an early 20th century modernist piece by Janacek that references a Beethoven sonata.
Continue reading