Monday, 2.8.10, 3:00 am
March in Music
Start your month with Noontime-Bach. Specifically Bach’s trumpet-reinforced Christmas Cantata Komm, du süsse Todesstunde, BWV 161. (WETA review of Koopman’s BWV 161) Jon Laird will preface it with Bach’s Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C Major, BWV 564. Washington Bach Consort, Church of the Epiphanyth & G NW), Tuesday, March 2nd, Noon. (13th & G.)
The NSO will perform Mozart—the “ Serenata notturna” and the Piano Concerto No.23—alongside Richard Strauss. And the choice of Strauss raises the question: Have we really gone through all the interesting Richard Strauss tone poems in the five years since last performing the Sinfonia Domestica? I’m not as critical of the work as Daniel Ginsberg was, but I’m beginning to see his point. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conducts, Ingrid Fliter plays the piano, and the show-times at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall are Thursday, March 4th at 7PM and Friday and Saturday at 8PM each.
The excellent Vienna Piano Trio at the Library of Congress performs, well, piano trios, by Clara Schumann and her hubby (opp.80 & 110). March 5th, 8PM.
The most interesting remaining of the Mariinsky performance(s) at the Kennedy Center is surely the staged performance of Prokofiev’s War & Peace. Listening to Prokofiev under Gergiev is easily as entertaining as reading Tolstoy on your own. And more time-efficient, too. Saturday, March 6th, 7.30PM and Sunday, March 7th, at 1.30PM.
What does the future for Washington’s classical music scene hold? Take a sneak-peak when Christoph Eschenbach makes his first appearance with the NSO since being named its next MD and the artistic director of the Kennedy Center. And he shows up with the Verdi Requiem (last performances in 2005 [NSO] and 2006 [Kirov]) and soprano Twyla Robinson, mezzo Mihoko Fujimura , tenor Nikolai Schukoff and bass Evgeny Nikitin. Performances at the Kennedy Center take place on Thursday, March 11th at 7PM), Friday, March 12th, and Saturday, March 13th (both 8PM). On Saturday there will be a pre-concert “Beyond the Baton” talk with Eschenbach in the Kennedy Center’s Atrium.
The BSO can’t be blamed for not trying its darndest to come up with something, anything different than the standard orchestra program. It is difficult to tell whether this indicates increasing success or increasing desperation, and I’m not sure what it could mean for the future of symphonic programming. I only know that amid all the hyperbolic excitement I am having an increasingly difficult time reading—never mind understanding—their concert announcements… but read for yourself:
Fun, frightening and fabulous. The BSO’s four-week mid-season music carnival opens by bringing the circus to town—performed under the Big Top by the Greatest Orchestra on Earth! This program of brilliant music and spectacular performance features Cirque de la Symphonie performers on and above the stage, presenting a feast for your eyes and ears. Marin Alsop leads a magnificent line-up of music from across the continents, from Poulenc’s charming portrayal of Louis XIV to Aaron Copland’s “ride tough, let’s dance, and shoot-’em-up” depiction of Billy the Kid.
The program consists of Poulenc’s “Les Biches” Suite (the title of which—“The Does”—I have mistranslated for the longest time), Bartók’s “Miraculous Mandarin” Suite, Satie’s “Parade”, and Copland’s “Billy the Kid” Suite. The performance under Marin Alsop at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore are on Thursday, Friday (8PM), and Sunday (3PM). Strathmore will hold the musical circus on Saturday at 8PM.
We know that Bach wrote a St.Mark’s Passion, we just don’t have any of the music. That has not kept diligent musicologists from surmising and constructing hypothetical versions—mostly made up from extant music Bach would possibly or presumably have used in that passion. Cathedra, the National Cathedral’s concert ensemble, will present the most recent such reconstruction by Malcolm Bruno, which should be exciting at best and still Bach if it isn’t. It takes place at the National Cathedral.
My concert highlight of the month is the recital by cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexandre Tharaud. Try to squeak into the Library of Congress on Friday, March 12th, 8PM—or catch them at the Baltimore Museum of Art at 3PM the day after. The program will consist of Schubert’s Arpeggione Suite, Bach, Debussy, and Poulenc. A short interview with Jean-Guihen Queyras will be published here on March 1st.
Chicken Speak to Duck, Pig Speak to Dog. Sounds like a Mitchell & Webb sketch, but is a composition of Zhou Tao’s. The 21st Music Consort presents a program that includes lots of new pieces, little known names, and known quantities like Scott Wheeler and Paul Moravec, whose music is always worth seeking out—if contemporary music has any appeal to you. To make discoveries, go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum on Saturday, March 13th, 5PM.
I’m not sure if I’d go to the Left Bank Concert a day later at the same venue (3PM) just to hear their Beethoven Piano Trio in E-flat major. Webern’s reduction of Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony would be rather more a draw, but the main reason might be Leon Kirchner’s Fourth String Quartet from 2006—a de-facto memorial performance for the American composer who died last September.
Gerald Finley’s recent Schumann disc with Julius Drake is marvelous and compares well to more recent additions to the Dichterliebe discography. The two will perform at the Embassy of Austria (courtesy Vocal Arts Society) on Wednesday, March 17th at 7.30PM.
The BSO—the organization, not the orchestra—continues its circus theme with Marin Alsop. The orchestra itself isn’t actually playing, that’s done by the Members of The United States Army Band and the University of Maryland Wind Orchestra. David Little’s Screamer is described as “a circus very nearly out of control” which is followed by Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf and then probably the main draw: John Corigliano’s Third Symphony, “Circus Maximus”. Thursday’s performance takes place at Strathmore at 8PM. Three more performances follow at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.
If you have missed the Duruflé Requiem last month (City Choir of Washington), Cathedra provides another chance at the Washington National Cathedral on Friday, March 19th, at 7.30PM.
Till Fellner’s self-recommending Beethoven cycle continues at the Austrian Embassy, organized by the Embassy Series, on Monday, March 22nd, at 7.30PM.
Thursday (7PM), Saturday (8PM), and Sunday (1.30PM) the NSO, under Jakub Hruša (discography), will perform Janáček’s Taras Bulba, Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, and tops it off with Dvořák’s Cello Concerto played by Daniel Müller-Schott at the Kennedy Center.
Vladimir Feltsman is presented by WPAS at Strathmore. I quite like his idiosyncratic Goldberg Variations, and his Bach Concertos are highly agreeable. His recital on Friday March 26th, 8PM, will flank Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with a Haydn and a Beethoven sonata.
The complete Pulcinella Ballet—Stravinsky at his most charmingly neo-classical—will be performed by the BSO and Marin Alsop on Saturday, March 27 th at 7PM. With a little good will it might be considered a continuation of their circus theme. (Meyerhoff Symphony Hall)
If you are listening to Bach’s St. John Passion at the Washington National Cathedral (4PM), the Klavier Trio Amsterdam (in a yet-to-be-announced program) at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (4PM) might be the place to be on Sunday, March 28th.
The early Schönberg Quartet in D major is a most lovely romantic bon-bon that does not even hint at the direction his music would take. It sounds rather more from the world of Dvořák’s String Quintet op.77 than Alban Berg’s String Quartet No.3—the two works also performed by the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society at the National Museum of American History . Also Sunday, March 28th, 7.30PM.