shows: Orchestra 2001 with Hila Plitmann at [F's college], Sunday 11/15/09
Last night, F made me go with him to an orchestra concert on campus. For some reason he really wanted to go and I kind of didn't, but then I think I ended up enjoying it a lot more than he did.
Orchestra 2001 is a group I'd never heard of before, but apparently they're a Philly-based orchestra that's been around since 1988. (I have no idea why their name is O-2001 when they were founded in 1988 and it's now 2009--it doesn't say in the program, even though there is a bio of the group--and it bothered me all night.) The orchestra has a relationship with F's college, such that whenever they play a concert there it's free, so that was cool. Looks like they play there several times a year. Last night they played a program of three pieces.
The first part of the program was a piece by Franz Schreker called Chamber Symphony, composed in 1916. Schreker was a European composer whose career pretty much got destroyed by the Nazis, leading to his death in 1934, after which he kind of fell off the radar and nobody played his stuff, but now there's a bit of a revival going on. I wasn't all that psyched about the piece, though. Honestly, we thought it was going to be played last on the program and were planning to sneak out at intermission and skip it, but it turned out to be first so we were stuck. Which makes perfect sense. I don't know, it was pleasant enough, and had a few really lovely moments, but it was nothing I would have left the house for on purpose.
After intermission, the second part of the concert was the best. They played a composition by Libby Larsen, who happened to be there to talk about it. She set six poems from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese. Originally Larsen composed this for the soprano Arleen Auger, who wanted to sing songs about real, mature love (as opposed to the young, sweet, fluffy sort of love that she usually had to sing about), but unfortunately Auger died before they could premiere the work. Last night it was performed by Hila Plitmann, who if you haven't heard of her (and I hadn't) is an amazing classical soprano who's won a Grammy and who sang on the soundtrack for the movie The Da Vinci Code. (Apparently she's also a Buffy fan. Wow, I totally love Hila Plitmann now.)
Anyway, Plitmann's performance of Larsen's music for Browning's poems was terrific. I absolutely loved this, and I am so glad F dragged me out of the house. I was all teared up by the end (which was, of course, the "How do I love thee" sonnet). It was amazing. I really, really want a recording of this piece.
The last piece was a libretto composed by Esa-Pekka Salonen, a Finnish composer, based on ancient poem fragments by Sappho. F and I were expecting to love this but mostly we didn't like it at all. Plitmann sang this too, and sang it beautifully, but we felt that the music itself was overdramatic and too big for the poems. The one exception was part 4, "The Evening Star", which was lovely and glimmery like starlight. Unfortunately, it was followed by part 5, "Wedding", which went on and on and on and was really weird and didn't sound wedding-celebratory at all. Honestly, I was really sad that they ended on Salonen's work--it would have been better (for me at least) if they'd ended with the Larsen, and it also might have made more sense because she was actually there and they could have highlighted her awesomeness a bit more.
Overall, it was kind of an uneven program, but definitely worth it for me, mostly because of Larsen and also because now I've discovered Hila Plitmann. I'm really glad I went. It was nice to get back in touch a little bit with my musical past.
Orchestra 2001 is a group I'd never heard of before, but apparently they're a Philly-based orchestra that's been around since 1988. (I have no idea why their name is O-2001 when they were founded in 1988 and it's now 2009--it doesn't say in the program, even though there is a bio of the group--and it bothered me all night.) The orchestra has a relationship with F's college, such that whenever they play a concert there it's free, so that was cool. Looks like they play there several times a year. Last night they played a program of three pieces.
The first part of the program was a piece by Franz Schreker called Chamber Symphony, composed in 1916. Schreker was a European composer whose career pretty much got destroyed by the Nazis, leading to his death in 1934, after which he kind of fell off the radar and nobody played his stuff, but now there's a bit of a revival going on. I wasn't all that psyched about the piece, though. Honestly, we thought it was going to be played last on the program and were planning to sneak out at intermission and skip it, but it turned out to be first so we were stuck. Which makes perfect sense. I don't know, it was pleasant enough, and had a few really lovely moments, but it was nothing I would have left the house for on purpose.
After intermission, the second part of the concert was the best. They played a composition by Libby Larsen, who happened to be there to talk about it. She set six poems from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese. Originally Larsen composed this for the soprano Arleen Auger, who wanted to sing songs about real, mature love (as opposed to the young, sweet, fluffy sort of love that she usually had to sing about), but unfortunately Auger died before they could premiere the work. Last night it was performed by Hila Plitmann, who if you haven't heard of her (and I hadn't) is an amazing classical soprano who's won a Grammy and who sang on the soundtrack for the movie The Da Vinci Code. (Apparently she's also a Buffy fan. Wow, I totally love Hila Plitmann now.)
Anyway, Plitmann's performance of Larsen's music for Browning's poems was terrific. I absolutely loved this, and I am so glad F dragged me out of the house. I was all teared up by the end (which was, of course, the "How do I love thee" sonnet). It was amazing. I really, really want a recording of this piece.
The last piece was a libretto composed by Esa-Pekka Salonen, a Finnish composer, based on ancient poem fragments by Sappho. F and I were expecting to love this but mostly we didn't like it at all. Plitmann sang this too, and sang it beautifully, but we felt that the music itself was overdramatic and too big for the poems. The one exception was part 4, "The Evening Star", which was lovely and glimmery like starlight. Unfortunately, it was followed by part 5, "Wedding", which went on and on and on and was really weird and didn't sound wedding-celebratory at all. Honestly, I was really sad that they ended on Salonen's work--it would have been better (for me at least) if they'd ended with the Larsen, and it also might have made more sense because she was actually there and they could have highlighted her awesomeness a bit more.
Overall, it was kind of an uneven program, but definitely worth it for me, mostly because of Larsen and also because now I've discovered Hila Plitmann. I'm really glad I went. It was nice to get back in touch a little bit with my musical past.