Conductivity

[kate_schaefer]

This is mainly for the benefit of calimac, but others are welcome to play along. We've seen Lawrence Renes as guest conductor with the Seattle Symphony a few times before, and we've always been really happy with the performance he pulls, pushes, dances, leaps, and contorts out of the orchestra. I'd describe him as a coiled spring, but he doesn't stay coiled very long. This leapediness would only be amusing, except that I think it's part of what he does to get the orchestra to play above themselves.

I am not saying here that the Seattle Symphony isn't a fine orchestra; it is. What I'm saying is that even a fine orchestra has to work pretty damn hard (or relax perfectly into the music) to make Brahms's Hungarian Dances sound fresh, and Renes made it work.

I don't care for the Bartok Violin Concerto #2 that followed, though it seemed like a good performance. I'm just not fond of the second as a chord, over and over and over. At several points the violinist, Leonidas Kavakos, was leaping into the air along with Renes, which was fun to watch.

The second half of the concert was Stravinsky's Petrouchka, which I like a great deal, and which they performed beautifully.

So, calimac, I know you know what the conductors currently touring are like. Is there anyone else like Renes touring these days?

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There are three kinds of classical music fanatics, Kate: performer mavens, recording mavens, and repertoire mavens. I'm the last. I can tell you which are the best early Haydn symphonies, or that Erno von Dohnanyi and Franz Reizenstein wrote the world's silliest piano concertos, or cry the praises of Cornelis Dopper, or explain why a recently-found Schubert symphony is a hoax, but I don't know all the touring conductors.

My experience with San Jose, which uses all guest conductors, most of them little-known, is that maybe a third of the ones I'd never heard of will turn out to be really outstanding, and will be just as good when they come back, too.

I've looked over the rest of your season, but half of the guest conductor names are not known to me. The one I'd jump at from experience is Vassily Sinaisky in Shostakovich's Tenth in March. I know him from recordings of other works by this composer, and while his approach is not the most dramatic, it is pellucidly clear and well-shaped. I expect he'll do a very good job.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Thanks, David. Which are the best early Haydn symphonies? I am not a classical music fanatic; I just like it a lot, and find that I'm rarely led very far astray by the recommendations of fanatics, particularly when I take into account my own prejudices.

We have tickets for that Shostakovich concert. Gerard Schwarz particularly likes Shostakovich (he likes that whole group of early 20th-century Russian composers), so the Seattle symphony plays a lot of Shostakovich with him and with other people, and they're good at it.