Hauptwerk: Concert: Adès, Crumb, Schönberg, Stravinsky

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Concert: Adès, Crumb, Schönberg, Stravinsky

Yesterday I attended an evening concert at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The program, performed by Ensemble Ulysses, was as follows:

Stravinsky - L'histoire du soldat, petite suite

Adès - Court Studies from The Tempest

Schönberg - Kammersymphonie nr. 1, op. 9

Adès - Catch, op. 4

Crumb - Vox balaenae

It was a nice evening. The small room of the Concertgebouw was pleasantly busy and the ensemble interpreted the works in a passionate and expressive way. The succession of works also worked pretty well, starting with the uplifting Histoire du soldat all the way to the deeply moving Vox balaenae by Crumb. I think the concert was supposed to focus on Adès, but Adès's two small works certainly didn't leave as much of an impression in the audience as Crumb's Vox balaenae did. I'll return to Crumb in my next post, but for now I'll leave you with a video of his Vox balanae, for 3 masked players on amplified instruments:

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This blog will focus mainly on presenting art with associated personal commentaries.

When presenting music, typically it will be modern classical, but that might not always be the case. In any case, however, the commentaries will be accompanied by the music to which they refer, so the audition of the music itself is of utmost importance. I aim to present my personal view on the music, together with dissertations on the feelings evoked by it. My hope is that any reader will listen to the music and, s/he too, be amazed by it. I will always try to provide accompanying scores and recordings of the works I am commenting on. This is not intended as distribution of copyrighted material, but rather as promotion of it. Whenever possible, I will provide links to where those scores/recordings can be bought

But this blog is not only about music. Music posts take me very long to create, so sometimes I also post about other artistic media, also with accompanying pictures and personal commentary. I might also refer classical music concerts I've recently attended and how I liked them. And last, but not least, every now and then I will be writing about good restaurants where fine culinary works of art are served.