I’ve heard good things about last night’s Sound Check concert. A modest house of high school and college students responded enthusiastically to the Opening Weekend program.
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to program a rarely performed work, Bartok’s The Wooden Prince, for the opening of the season, but that’s our music director. I recently had an email exchange with a Harmonielehre fan -- the John Adams’ work that was the main course of last season’s opening. Harmonielehre was an SLSO premiere and after the Saturday night performance I wrote a special blog post from home the next morning to encourage folks to make a trip to the hall their Sunday outing. ‘“Wonder’ is a quality of art that has been lacking over the last few decades of the postmodern chill. Today’s concert has that” I wrote. The person who emailed me about the last year’s opening was so enthused by the SLSO’s Harmonielehre that he went to both the Saturday and Sunday performances. He says that after the Adams concluded on Sunday afternoon, a woman in the seat ahead of him turned and said “Now I know why you wanted to go twice.”
I bring this up because it expresses the rare engagement that occurs when you encounter the new. Although the fan knew Harmonielehre from recordings, this was his first live experience. The Bartok isn’t anything like the Adams – rather, consider that Bartok had seen Diagalev productions of Stravinsky’s The Firebird and Petruschka in Budapest before he took to composing The Wooden Prince – except that both Bartok and Adams, in their own ways, invent overwhelming sound experiences. Especially so when you enter the work as you would unfamiliar, yet inviting, territory. To put it succinctly, it’s fun to hear something new. So get a ticket. You can buy a thrill.
Also, tomorrow night the women in the orchestra will be in their pretty dresses and gowns rather than the standard attire. That’s always fun.
And Leif Ove Andsnes breaks in the new piano. The late lamented Babe has been replaced by this big beauty (more on this exchange later).
And Free Candy: David Robertson is slated to appear with KDHX’s Amanda Doyle and freelancer Julia Smillie at the Hartford Coffee Company (3974 Hartford) on the Free Candy Show at 7pm Sunday night. It’s kind of like having your own local talk show without the TV cameras. Check out their site: www.freecandy.net.
