The New Yorker (October 31) lists in its “On the Horizon” notes of upcoming events: “At Carnegie Hall, David Robertson conducts the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in ‘Seeing Debussy, Hearing Monet,’ which features performances of ‘Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune’ and ‘Jeux’ along with a discussion exploring Impressionism and French music and painting accompanied by projections of Monet’s works.”
Of course, you can see and hear the same program at the Touhill as part of the Fusion Series on Wednesday, November 16 at 7:30pm. You can also preview the main event of the Carnegie trip – Mozart, Feldman, Mahler – tonight and tomorrow afternoon right here at Powell Hall.
I was at the concert last night. David offered a few perceptive and funny comments before Feldman’s Coptic Light to settle the audience into 30 minutes of music devoid of the melodic form they had just heard in Mozart’s Overture to The Magic Flute.
A screen hangs above the orchestra, with a projection of Sabine’s Shawl, a fifth-century Coptic tapestry from the Louvre. As the orchestra plays, the image on the screen shifts – at first barely noticeably – more and more into closeup. What is once distant becomes near – in both image and music.
My wife and I both found that in the first few minutes of Coptic Light we had trouble finding our aesthetic bearings, then we were fully in it, absorbed.
As the Mahler left that pleasant orchestral ringing in my ears, the Feldman left a ringing in my mind.
