To start I shall apologise for the gap in my recent posts! I’m somewhat forgetful about doing blog posts in the recent past.  This post won’t necessarily be a review more observations that I made during the concert! The concert of the year for me in the National Concert Hall‘s International Concert Season 14/15 was undoubtedly the New York Philharmonic with Joyce DiDonato mezzo-soprano. 

The NY Phil played music suited to an orchestra of its size and brilliance, starting with contemporary music by conductor/composer Esa-Pekka Salonen that is called Nyx. Written in 2010 this music was new to me. From the very first notes from the horns and eventually the strings, I knew this was going to be superb music with the magnificent resonant sound from this orchestra was like nothing I’d heard before.  Presumably named after the Greek goddess of the night, the music was abrasive from the percussion and brass one minute, nocturnal and lyrical from the woodwind the next. Sometimes during concerts my mind wanders, but not this time I barely noticed the 20 minutes go by with this music from the Finnish composer. Now that I think of it some parts of it reminded me of his fellow Finn Magnus Lindberg, but that could have been my mind playing tricks on me! Make up your own mind with this link here.

After the dramatic first 20 minutes, Joyce DiDonato came on to the stage, things were a little calmer with music of Maurice Ravel’s Schéhérazade In reading other people’s  reviews of this concert they thought she had difficulty with first 2 songs “Asie” and ”La flûte enchantée”, (i didn’t notice) but I would agree with the last of 3  ”L’indifférent” it was beautifully sung and the best of of the cycle. Robert Langevin principal flautist had a lovely solo in ”L’indifférent”. Indeed I welled up a little at the end of the last song, and of course she and the orchestra got an enormous applause.  At this point Joyce spoke to us with a couple words of Irish! If I had done my research properly I would have known her maiden name is Flaherty, she told us this much to the surprise of myself and the audience!

For her encore Alan Gilbert introduced and told us that they’ve had a long relationship with Joyce and asked her to sing Richard Strauss‘s song “Morgen!” for this tour, much to the delight of us all. It was stunning and yes for the first time in my concert going years, I had a little emotional moment. Watch the rehearsal of it here.

During the interval I made an interesting observation about the ladies in the first violins!

Also noticed there is not one man in the 1st violins in the @nyphil maybe they’ll swap for the 2nd half! ☺ @NCH_Music

— Andrew Newman (@irishpianoman) April 16, 2015

After the interval there was more music of Ravel this time Valses Nobles et Sentimentales waltzes which are a homage to Franz Schubert I must admit some parts were a little dreamy and not very waltz like but overall quite enjoyable.

But it was the last in the programme which was the most magnificent part of this concert , Strauss‘s Der Rosenkavalier Suite not made by Strauss himself and probably compiled by Artur Rodziński. The opera was inspired by Mozart with a nod to the waltzes of his namesake. This is where the NY Phil excelled, from the blaring French horns at the beginning the Philharmonic had such precision and much feeling with the music jumping off the pages, my favourite part the ‘Trio’ was sublime, and fine attention was made to the dynamics throughout the suite.

After about 5 curtain calls where the audience rather confusingly stayed sitting, my new friend to my left a seasoned visitor to the NCH said “They’d (the audience) jump up for less!” What followed was a lovely rendition and danceable version of the waltz from the first act of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake. After that I said to my new friend “Well if nobody is going to stand up I will!” I did and the rest of the hall followed me! Finally we were jazzed out of the hall with a brass quintet (horn, two trumpets, trombone and tuba) in a 1920s-sounding number that was unexpected and entraining!

As I said earlier, in all my years going to the National Concert Hall this stands at the very top of the great orchestras that I’ve the the absolute pleasure of seeing there.

Lets hope it won’t take this truly staggering orchestra another 19 years to come back!

On this weeks Classical Sounds which I present every Sunday on Claremorris Community Radio @ 3pm! I have music from little known but very tuneful English composer Christopher Ball. Also accidentally keeping an English theme I also play great music by Peter Maxwell Davis and Malcolm Arnold. Old favorite Mozart is in the mix too plus music Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach who Mozart said of “Bach is the father we are his children”. I  have also found a composer recently who was strangely known as the “Swedish Mozart” Joseph Martin Kraus His instrument of choice was the viola and i have chosen the second of the three he wrote for that instrument. Born the same year as Mozart and dying the year after him but his life was much different to the great man himself!

Hope you like the show and like this website. Thanks

Listen to latest programme below.

Classical Sounds Sunday 16 November 2014 by Claremorrisfm on Mixcloud

Spotify Playlist of music played on the Show

On this weeks Classical Sounds with Andrew Newman there’s music by Grieg, Giordani, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and even Nina Simone! Tune in every Sunday at 3 for the live show but if you miss that you can always get it here!

You can listen to just the music that I played on the embedded Spotify link or the entire show on the embedded Mixcloud link below.

Classical Sounds Sunday 2/11/2014 by Claremorrisfm on Mixcloud

Spotify Playlist of music played on the Show

The Creation – Joseph Haydn

Before I begin a little explanation about the musical terminology I may use here occasionally . Every time you see a word in red, you can click on it to get and explanation of what it means hopefully this will be helpful to you while reading this review.

If you have been following my blog you may have noticed I haven’t been to any concerts lately, I missed 2 in the last month alone! But last Sunday night I finally got a chance to see Sir Simon Rattle conducting a period instrument orchestra,  The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment  and their 34 strong choir. They were doing a very mini tour indeed, just Dublin and on Tuesday 6th London with the wonderful music Joseph Haydn and his oratorio  The Creation.

While in London in the early 1790′s Haydn heard a few of Handel’s oratorio’s so he decided to write one of his own. Written between 1796-98 Haydn takes his words from Book of Genesis and Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. It’s certainly one of his greatest masterpieces of his late period. I  must admit I never listened to this music until a week before the concert, and hearing it live was a totally different experience than listening to a recording.

This is my third time seeing Mr. Rattle and second time the OAE, my last time with him also 2 years ago with Haydn and also Mozart. This time I wondered would I lose concentration during the work, but the way Rattle conducted the music the audience me included,were tranfixed from beginning to end!

It was a very packed stage with 3 soloists; soprano, tenor and bass. The 34 voice choir just about squeezed into the back, the orchestra was pretty large for the standards of the time with trombones, french horns and a very large countrabassoon!

As I said above there were three soloists : Sally Matthews soprano, who was a late substitute for another soprano who fell ill. She looked nervous, constantly reading the music when not singing but when she did she sang very well, with a clear tone her enunciation was not as clear as the others but her singing made up for it. John Mark Ainsley, a lyric tenor had a expressive voice which never strained too much. The star of the night for me was the bass Peter Rose , particularly good at enunciation. Soft and gentle one moment, loud and forceful in others but best moments were when he was describing the worm with a very low D! Also his love duet with Sally Matthews in the third section somewhat similar to Mozart. I know I have mentioned enunciation a few times here I had no problem in understanding what they were singing compared to some recordings I’ve heard.

We here in Ireland never have the pleasure of hearing a period instrument orchestra of the size playing such great skill and speed when needed and soft subtlety  also. The choir were the best choir I’ve heard there in a long time defying the size of only 34 singers. And of course it was all sown together by the brilliant conducting of Mr. Rattle!

All in all a great night, two observations that I made though, firstly during the first soprano solo audience members were coughing at a very quiet moment a bit too loudly, the maestro turned around to the audience and gave a fleeting glance of disapproval, and after that there was hardly a sound! At the end when everybody was giving a standing ovation the people next to me refused to get up and join in because there perceived notion that the woodwind made a blaring mistake in the first half? I encouraged them to get up to which they did!

Final thought, this concert stands up at the very top tier that I’ve been to over the years, Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic,  Riccardo Chailly + Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Below is a very short video of the well deserved applause at the end.

Today the world of classical music lost one of its greatest conductors Claudio Abbado. Even though he had many health problems in recent years, it came as a little shock to me when I saw the news flash up on my computer screen! I have a bucket list of great conductors I’ve always wanted to see. They are: Simon Rattle who I’ve seen twice, and will again in May. Valery Gergiev who I’ve seen twice, Riccardo Chailly,  twice, Daniel Barenboim who I saw once with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. But it was Abbado I really wanted to see the most. I almost had the opportunity  a few years ago when I tried to get to see him at the BBC Proms with his Lucerne Festival Orchestra but alas I couldn’t get a ticket…

This post was never meant to be an obituary to Claudio Abbado but you can read a very detailed one from the Guardian newspaper here.

Here is a youtube clip of the end of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.2 one of my favourite video recordings of Claudio Abbado conducting his Lucerne Festival Orchestra showing his unique gentle style.

Also I’ve made a Spotify playlist of my favourite Abbado recordings in no particular order.

My name is Andrew Newman and you’re welcome to my classical music blog.

Why classical music?
I’ve been listening to classical music for as long as I can remember. In the early 80′s my father had a tape of a guy called Richard Clayderman. He wasn’t a classical pianist  per se, but I obviously listened to it with my father. We had an upright piano in the sitting room which was kinda always out of tune, but okay. Apparently one morning , when I was five, I started to play a tune of his called Ballade for Adeline (I had up to that point never played the piano before!).

I started piano lessons soon after that and that’s when my interest in classical music started. I can still remember the first recordings that were given to me as presents: Mozart piano concertos numbers 20, 21 and 23 with Maurizio Pollini and the famous recordings of  Beethoven’s symphonies numbers 5 and 7 with the great  Austrian conductor Carlos Kleiber.

I really didn’t like any music other than classical music from an early age which was, I suppose, a little odd. I never really strayed from the German/Austrian composers: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. The most radical music that I just about could tolerate was Mars from the Planet Suite by the English composer Gustav Holst! All these were found on a Christmas present that I got: ’The Essential Karajan’. I used to listen to that tape for hours until eventually it broke

The teenage years…
In around 1993 I got a CD player and started buying the, now defunct, magazine Classic CD. Each month it had an attached CD with 10 recordings of the month. This really opened my eyes to other composers music. I found Gustav Mahler and Igor Stravinsky whose music I would otherwise never have bothered listening to. I eventually realised that not all contemporary classical music sounded like the, in my opinion, awful music of the 20th century composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

In 2002 I was introduced to the wonderful music of Magnus Lindberg, with his wonderful clarinet concerto. That opened my eyes to other contemporary composers who didn’t mind writing tunes e.g. Thomas Adès and Eric Whitacre.

What will be in my blog?
I have been presenting a classical music radio show on Claremorris Community Radio in Mayo every Sunday (at 3pm) called “Classical Sounds”. Each week I’ll be posting a podcast and the playlist and maybe a Spotify playlist here of my programme.

I also attend concerts fairly regularly at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. Next week I will have the unusual pleasure of a lady conducting an orchestra. Marin Alsop is bringing her São Paulo Symphony Orchestra who are on a 15 country tour with a great programme of music. I hope to review this concert and other’s that I’ll be attending in the future.

That’s all I hope you didn’t find this too rambling until next time. Cheerio!