great concert
Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2008 11:47 pm
Howdy fellow tubenetters,
Saturday night I attended the Reading (PA) Symphony Orchestra concert and was really blown away by the show.
They opened with Borodin's Polovetsian Dances. A very exciting rendition. The new director is exciting to watch and the orchestra seems to have a bit more spark to it than in previous seasons and reacts positively to him. He spekas well to the audience and seems like he would be very enjoyable to perform with.
The next piece was Michael Daugherty's "Hell's Angels" which is a concerto for bassoon quartet (3 bassoons and a contrabassoon) and orchestra written in 1998. The piece was wild and crazy and really cool. It of course used lots of sound effects like trombone pedal tones and glissandi to mimick tha accellerating Harley, but once it got past that it also had some very complex and interesting contrapuntal writing for the quartet and lots of interplay between the orchestra and the bassoons. The third movement included a police siren, mission impossible style 5/4 ostinato rhythms and a wind machine. And there were tons of percussive effects throughout. Very modern harmonies, both traditional and non, with jazzy blues licks, lots of dissonance of course. The second movement however was very "angleic" and etheral in color. They played up the black leather and rolled out Harley on the side of the stage before the performance. A very programatic piece of course.
The neat thing about the performance of this piece is that they tied it all together with the Reading Public Museum which is having a "Born to Be Wild" exhibit of the Art of the Motorcycle, similar to the one that was at the MOMA in NYC 2 years ago only much smaller obviously. Including a "bike ride" two weeks ago to open the exhibit, in which I participated. The coordination with the museum and the RSO was very cool. Both organizations have new directors, who are trying to expand the reach of their respective institution. And I think they hit a bulls eye with this one. While it is not Mozart or Beethoven, i think it is much more relevant to the culture of our times. Granted I am not suggesting that they have a season full of these type shows which some probably considered "over the top" with the theatrics, but it most certainly brought a number of different audience members in attendance. And got alot of people sitting up and taking notice of the orchestra.
The second half of the concert was a brilliant performance of Petrouchka, one of my favorites. Matt Brown played tuba and was a great dancing bear! Trumpet player Frank Ferraro Jr. nailed the trumpet solos as did all of the woodwind players. Truly a masterful performance.
One of the best concerts I have been to in a long time.
ken k
Saturday night I attended the Reading (PA) Symphony Orchestra concert and was really blown away by the show.
They opened with Borodin's Polovetsian Dances. A very exciting rendition. The new director is exciting to watch and the orchestra seems to have a bit more spark to it than in previous seasons and reacts positively to him. He spekas well to the audience and seems like he would be very enjoyable to perform with.
The next piece was Michael Daugherty's "Hell's Angels" which is a concerto for bassoon quartet (3 bassoons and a contrabassoon) and orchestra written in 1998. The piece was wild and crazy and really cool. It of course used lots of sound effects like trombone pedal tones and glissandi to mimick tha accellerating Harley, but once it got past that it also had some very complex and interesting contrapuntal writing for the quartet and lots of interplay between the orchestra and the bassoons. The third movement included a police siren, mission impossible style 5/4 ostinato rhythms and a wind machine. And there were tons of percussive effects throughout. Very modern harmonies, both traditional and non, with jazzy blues licks, lots of dissonance of course. The second movement however was very "angleic" and etheral in color. They played up the black leather and rolled out Harley on the side of the stage before the performance. A very programatic piece of course.
The neat thing about the performance of this piece is that they tied it all together with the Reading Public Museum which is having a "Born to Be Wild" exhibit of the Art of the Motorcycle, similar to the one that was at the MOMA in NYC 2 years ago only much smaller obviously. Including a "bike ride" two weeks ago to open the exhibit, in which I participated. The coordination with the museum and the RSO was very cool. Both organizations have new directors, who are trying to expand the reach of their respective institution. And I think they hit a bulls eye with this one. While it is not Mozart or Beethoven, i think it is much more relevant to the culture of our times. Granted I am not suggesting that they have a season full of these type shows which some probably considered "over the top" with the theatrics, but it most certainly brought a number of different audience members in attendance. And got alot of people sitting up and taking notice of the orchestra.
The second half of the concert was a brilliant performance of Petrouchka, one of my favorites. Matt Brown played tuba and was a great dancing bear! Trumpet player Frank Ferraro Jr. nailed the trumpet solos as did all of the woodwind players. Truly a masterful performance.
One of the best concerts I have been to in a long time.
ken k