WETA FM 90.9 Blog

November is loaded with music, with one or more attractive concerts to chose from almost every day… and that’s after selecting only those events that I reckon have the greatest potential for excellence, discovery, and delight. And better yet: No premature* Christmas concerts need to be circumvented yet.

Till Fellner continues his Beethoven Sonata cycle at the National Gallery of Art with Sonatas nos. 4 (op.7), 15 (op.28, “Pastoral”), 24 (op.78 “À Thérèse”), 25 (op.79), and 27 (op.90—one of my most dear Beethoven sonatas). He will perform at the National Gallery of Art at 6.30PM on November 1^st. The concert is free, but you will have to fight for your seat.

If you are in Baltimore, free Bach (courtesy Bach Concert Series) might be a fitting alternative: Cantata BWV 80 (“Ein Feste Burg ist Unser Gott”) will be performed at Christ Lutheran Church at the Inner Harbor, 701 South Charles Street. (4PM) The concert opens with a little introduction to the music.

Noontime Cantata Bach (“Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn, BWV 132”) on Tuesday, November 3^rd at the Church of the Epiphany.

Later that night—also free (reserve tickets early through Ticketmaster or try your luck at the door on the night of the performance)—at the Library of Congress you can hear the Zemlinsky Quartet. If it’s got “Zemlinsky” in the title, I’m already interested. But beyond their name, this youngish quartet has many impressive performances and a few neat recordings under their belt and their program includes their namesake composer, Mozart’s most intriguing string quartet, and a quartet by Viktor Kalabis (1923-2006) that I’ve never heard (or knew existed), except that on account of Kalabis’ Harpsichord Concerto alone I am superbly   interested in what it might sound like.

Thanks to WPAS and their sponsors, Vadim Repin was finally brought to Washington last year.  Seems like his rather more subtle brand of excellence and unflashy musical authority has caught on, because he’s back now with the National Symphony Orchestra in the Brahms concerto under Alexander Vedernikov who gives his US conducting debut, also serving up Prokofiev’s 5^th Symphony. Serves the Washington Audience right to hear one of today’s very finest violinists. Performances take place at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall Thursday through Saturday on November 5^th (7PM), 6^th (8PM), and 7^th (8PM).

The Szymanowski Quartet (CD review on WETA) follows the Zemlinsky Quartet at the Library of Congress just a few days later. What is true for the former Czech group is equally true for their Polish counterparts—next to Apollon Musagete they’re the Polish quartet of its generation. Haydn-Szymanowski-Mendelssohn. Free. What else could one desire on a Friday night? November 6^th (8PM).

November 7^th (5PM) and again on November 15^th (2PM) at the Kennedy Center Opera House, the Washington National Opera performs—but does not stage—Götterdämmerung, the final opera in the Ring Tetralogy. To avoid the company’s own Götterdämmerung, what would have been the last installment of Francesca Zambello’s American Ring had to be axed. (Co-producers San Francisco Opera, who have arrived at Die Walküre this year, managed without canceling, somehow.) That’s a shame, because for all its clattered confusion (Rheingold and Walküre (p)reviews here), the “American Ring” was intriguing stuff and its tame controversy very healthy for the Washington opera scene. Perhaps a concertized Götterdämmerung will bring closure… or perhaps the necessary funds to stage the production as a cycle, after all. Dependable regulars like Alan Held, Gordon Hawkins, Gidon Saks, and Elizabeth Bishop (as second Norn) make it an attractive affair, as does the opportunity to hear—presumably—the orchestra outside the pit and thus many musical details otherwise lost in live performance.

For the purposes of hearing Bruckner’s Quartet alone you should consider a trip to the National Academy of Sciences. They, too, have a (free) program of chamber music and their venue, which looks like something between a 1970’s Star Trek movie set and an inverted Eulitz-cut diamond, has a fine acoustic. On Sunday, November 8^th (3PM), they present the Fine Arts Quartet in Haydn (“Sunrise Quartet”) and Schumann’s op.41/1, apart from the Bruckner.

Spirited performances and an intriguing, even eclectic mix of composers are hallmark signs of the “Musicians from Marlboro” series at the Freer Gallery of Art (also free). The first of these concerts takes place on Thursday, November 12^th (7.30PM) and features Mozart’s Flute Quartet, Brahms’s third Piano Quartet op.60; Messiaen’s Louange á l’Immortalité de Jésus (violin and piano); Takemitsu’s A Bird Came Down the Walk; and Kaija Saariaho’s Mirrors.

I have never claimed that Jean-Yves Thibaudet is anywhere near my favorite pianists, but in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F I can really imagine him as splendidly entertaining, especially when embedded in an all-Gershwin program with Marin Alsop at the helm of the B’more SO. On November 12^th, 13^th, and 15^th they will perform at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, on Saturday, November 14^th (8PM), at the Music Center at Strathmore.

François-Frédéric Guy has dilly-dallied in Washington before, but no more of that when he sits down to play a complete (!!!) Beethoven piano sonata cycle in just ten days. It’d require considerable stamina even on the listener’s part to sit through all 32 sonatas in the nine sessions at La Maison Française (never mind the performer), but what an opportunity, also. He’ll start on Friday November 13^th (7PM), continues with two performances on Saturday (4PM and 7PM), then one each until and including the 17^th; he then finishes the cycle (played more or less in numerical order) on the 20^th, 21^st, and 22^nd. Always at 7PM—except Sundays, when the recitals will begin at 4PM.

I don’t know the Ibis Chamber Music Society, but I do know that there isn’t a much more tender, more moving French song than Duparc’s L’Invitation au Voyage to be had, especially not in its slightly orchestrated version with flute, harp, and strings. If you don’t know the few songs that Duparc’s short and very troubled life have left us to adore and marvel at, do go and listen to it. If you know Duparc, you probably need no encouragement. The rest of the program looks intriguing enough: Piazzolla (“Histoire du Tango”), some De Falla, Pierne, Dvořák, and Corigliano. All on November 14^th, (7.30PM) at the Clarendon United Methodist Church in Arlington.

Early choral music on November 15^th can either be had courtesy of the Choral Arts Society of Washington and their program of antiphonal music, sung from all corners of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall at 4PM… or at the National Gallery of Art when the National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble performs music by Gevaert, Janequin, and Rameau. (6.30PM) The Choral Arts Society also includes the Mass for Double Choir by Frank Martin as well as works by Britten, Tavener, and Biebl.

Not a concert, but still important: WPAS presents a Lecture by Alfred Brendel, titled “On Character in Music”. To hear Alfred Brendel talk is the best thing after hearing him play live is no longer an option, and probably better than hearing his occasionally, curiously dull recordings (his Haydn be explicitly exempted). The talk—undoubtedly he’ll illustrate at the Boesendorfer—takes place at the Embassy of Austria, Monday, November 16^th (7PM) and will sparkle with the wit he displayed on stage and be saturated with his ferocious, unpretentious, and never overwhelmingly employed intelligence.

The welcome addition to the Noontime Cantatas continues for those near the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Center where on Thursday, November 19^th, you get Cantata BWV 93 (“Wer nur den lieben Gott last walten”) at the Bach Cantata Series’ free concert. (1.30PM)

Prokofiev, Grigory Krejn, Joseph Achron, Julius Chajes, and Osvaldo Golijov are on the innovative program of the Vogler String Quartet when they appear at the Terrace Theater on Thursday, November 19^th. This mix of composers is part of their “ZIMRO” project of combining Jewish art music with more standard chamber music repertoire and which is being captures on CD by Hänssler. Beautiful music, bits of which you can sample here. (7.30PM) For what it is worth, this is my concert tip of the month.

A Musorgsky-Schumann-Larcher project from Leif Ove Andsnes on November 20^th (7.30PM) promises to be a tasteful but grand multi-media experience. “Pictures Reframed” can be previewed on Youtube and takes place at the Terrace Theater.

Too bad attending Andsnes show means missing the Haydn Trio Eisenstadt at the Library of Congress on the same Friday (or vice versa). With soprano Lorna Anderson and tenor Jamie MacDougall they present a program of Haydn Trios (their recording of the complete Piano Trios is available on Phoenix Records) and best of all: Haydn’s Scottish Songs. I’ve written about them before and I maintain that these are must-hear marvels, whether on CD or better yet: live. They’ll further spice the concert up with the US premiere of Lalo Shifrin’s “Elegy & Meditation”, written for and dedicated to the group. (8PM)

If Bach is your ticket, the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra (2009/2010 schedule) can provide the necessary fix in either of their two “Brandenburg Festival” programs dedicated to the eternal composer. Both feature two Brandenburg Concertos, one Cello Suite or Violin Sonata, and a concerto or chamber piece.

You’d be forgiven if you tried to avoid concerts of the New York Philharmonic; too many 9-to-5 attitude concerts have ruined their reputation thoroughly with any discriminating orchestra lover. But if there’s one conductor who they cannot turn into an accomplice of disciplined boredom, it’s Riccardo Muti. So you’ll probably have to go, after all… for a little Liszt, Elgar, and Prokofiev. WPAS, Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Saturday, November 21^st. (4PM)

Gounod’s Faust is an outstanding opera; for all the trepidation with which this subject matter has been approached by composers, the results are outstanding more often than not. Busoni did well, as did Berlioz; Schumann got off to his most promising operatic start, Schnittke, Boito, and Gounod positively excelled. (Dusapin… not so much.) The Washington Concert Opera, with its small budget but inexorably high standards, will perform the work on Sunday, November 22^nd (6PM) at the Lisner Auditorium.

German violinist Viviane Hagner could well be one of the future great violinists; if you haven’t heard of her yet, it’s because she builds her career steadily, solidly—not by being a flash-in-the-pan violin girly. In that regard—and roughly in age—she’s similar to Julia Fischer and especially Arabella Steinbacher. At the Terrace Theater she will play promising mix of Turnage, Schubert, Bartók, and Schumann. WPAS presents the recital on November 24^th. (7.30PM)

The 64th American Music Festival at the National Gallery of Art features several interesting performances—the one that I find most interesting is on Wednesday, November 25^th, at noon (free), by the Ensō String Quartet in music by Steve Reich and Pierre Jalbert. 

* In light of all the soon to be ringing and jingling bells, trails of snow-from-a-can, and randomly attached antlers, it’s good to remind oneself that Christmas(tide) starts on December 25^th and lasts through Epiphany on January 6^th. The carol’s not called “Fifty-six days of Christmas”.