DJ and D&D Go to the Symphony

[PowerRR]

Also I can't believe I just read This whole thread. I didn't read closely enough though... who is Barber?

[cigar joe]

Also I can't believe I just read This whole thread. I didn't read closely enough though... who is Barber?

The Barber, he's getting his hair cut.

[Dust Devil]

Now that was rather funny.

[dave jenkins]

Can you two have your next date be at the Scorsese Exhibit at Museum of Moving Image? Trying to budget in a NY trip and wanna see if it's worth it (I'm sorry - but I dont like NY generally. But every few months something draws me there).

I hate, hate, hate the Museum of the Moving Image (and Astoria, Queens), so I for one won't be going.

[drinkanddestroy]

Now that I have my haircut, I can finish this 
I went to the stage door afterward and met some of the people.

Laura Aikin, the soprano, told me that the BFO is coming back to Lincoln Center in August for the Mostly Mozart festival, and that she would be performing in Don Giovanni. (I've never gotten into opera; haven't even tried. Maybe I should.) She, along with the other 4 singers (but not the choir, which is NY-based) is continuing on with the BFO during the rest of this tour: Chicago, Ann Arbor, Boston.


Aniko the violinist was gone by the time I reached the stage door - she probably was in a rush to get back to her hotel and have Skype sex with her husband in Budapest.


Giovanni the First Violinist and I had a good laugh (of course!) over how he is always laughing - he remembered me mouthing "no laughing" from the audience the previous night. Chatting with him about the evening's surprise with the choir, he is the first one who told me about the BFO's past "flash mobs" - which I have written about in posts above.

I ask every one of them, and not a single person I spoke with - audience, choir, singer, orchestra - had ever heard of this happening before.

I even met one American violist, a young man playing with the BFO like as a backup of sorts.

Finally, after a very long wait, the Maestro emerges. He definitely recognizes me from the audience because the moment I walked up to him, before I could start speaking to him, he says, "You are very kind." I tell him how much we all enjoyed the shows and that we hope he returns soon. He mentiones the summer Mostly Mozart Festival. I said that the next time he comes, he has to do one of Brahms's Hungarian Dances.  (I have an album of Fischer and BFO performing a bunch of them, in my iPod.) He asks me which one I would like to see. I told him No. 1 and No. 4, and he said he will try to see where he can fit it in sometime

I got a pic with the Maestro, said thanks and goodbye, and off I went, a happy little boy into a warm February Manhattan evening ......

[drinkanddestroy]

Seriously, I did not know that all of you would really read through these posts. I do appreciate it 

It's nice to have a place to keep the memories written down, and I hope that some of you found this a little entertaining 

I have to add one important point - maybe the most important of all: I have heard many many versions of Beethoven's Ninth, with many different tempos - so I know what tempo I like - and Fischer's tempo was absolutely perfect. PERFECT.

I Know that I posted a bunch of links, and I'm sure that you did not have time to click through all or even any of them, but if you have time to look at one, at least click the one from Lincoln Center's Facebook videos. again,

the one with Julliard & Bard students is called "Budapest Festival Orchestra Flash Mob" https://www.facebook.com/LincolnCenterNYC/videos/10154944124493187/


the one at Beethoven's Ninth is called "Budapest Festival Orchestra: Concert Chorale of New Yor" https://www.facebook.com/LincolnCenterNYC/videos/10154945363763187/

in the second one, you can see me and DJ. We are in the fourth row center, right at bottom of screen at the 13-second mark of the video. I am wearing dark blue shirt and turning around to see the choir, so you only see my back. DJ is sitting to my left, facing the stage.

-----

I  just saw this article from The New York Times

(note:  The author makes one mistake in first paragraph the Julliard and Bard students did not "unexpectedly" rush to the stage. As I mentioned, the public-address announcer announced before the symphony began that the Julliard and Bard students would join the orchestra onstage for the fourth movement. But with the Ode to Joy, the  choir in the audience was indeed a surprise.)

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/arts/music/budapest-festival-orchestra-triumphs-over-trumps-travel-ban.html

An Orchestra Triumphs Over Trump’s Travel Ban

By Michael Cooper

February 8, 2017

The Budapest Festival Orchestra and its conductor, Ivan Fischer, gave two of the freshest, least conventional Beethoven performances of the season at Lincoln Center this week. Music students unexpectedly rushed the stage to join them in a soaring section of the Fifth Symphony, and incognito choristers popped up among the audience members to sing the Ninth’s “Ode to Joy.”

But the high-energy concerts — part of a five-city American tour that concludes on Sunday in Boston — were briefly thrown into doubt by President Trump’s chaotically instituted travel ban. As the orchestra prepared to leave Hungary last week, it was informed that one of its cellists, a longtime Hungarian citizen, would not be allowed to enter the United States because he also held citizenship in Iraq, one of the seven predominantly Muslim countries named in the ban.

Mr. Fischer — who has become known as a voice for tolerance and inclusion as his native Hungary has embraced nationalist and staunchly anti-immigrant policies under the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban — suddenly found himself having to make the case for openness to United States officials, whom he called to protest.

“It struck a nerve in me, a very strong feeling that I will never allow anybody to single out a musician in my orchestra and disadvantage that person because of their origin, skin color, religion or any other factor,” Mr. Fischer said in an interview at his hotel on Tuesday.

Mr. Fischer, 66, who is Jewish and lost grandparents in the Holocaust, said that he had often thought of Jewish musicians’ being singled out and removed from leading orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic, during the Nazi period, some being exiled and some killed. “Having learned this lesson,” he said, “I have a very strong determination not to allow that ever to happen.”

So Mr. Fischer — who has worked to combat anti-Semitism at home by taking the orchestra to play in abandoned synagogues in Hungarian towns whose Jewish populations were killed off in World War II — spoke by phone to a State Department official. He argued that his cellist, whom he declined to name out of concern for the player’s safety, was as Hungarian as anyone in the orchestra, and that he did not believe that the executive order, which he read, applied to dual-passport holders. The next day, after pressure from diplomats in Britain, Canada and elsewhere, Trump administration officials announced that dual citizens would be allowed to enter the country.

So when the Budapest Festival Orchestra gathered onstage at David Geffen Hall on Monday evening to play the Ninth Symphony — and the “Ode to Joy” melody, a paean to brotherhood, was first sounded by the low strings — its cello section was intact.

The behind-the-scenes musical diplomacy was one of the more dramatic moments as the classical field adapts to a changing United States during the Trump era. The travel ban has drawn criticism from the League of American Orchestras and from Deborah Borda, the president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who wrote in The Los Angeles Times that it “betrays our immigrant roots.” The Seattle Symphony planned a free Wednesday concert of music from the countries it targeted. And Christoph von Dohnanyi, the former music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, wrote a denunciation of the ban, stating that his uncle, the German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by the Nazis, would have opposed a policy that barred Muslims while making exceptions for Christians.

For American music lovers, the resolution of the Budapest ensemble’s visa issue allowed them to hear one of the most admired, and unusual, orchestras of the day. Mr. Fischer is reverent about the music he conducts but not about what he sees as some of the stultifying traditions that have grown up around it.

For this week’s Beethoven concerts, that meant placing the timpanist front and center, where a concerto soloist usually stands, rather than at the back of the stage; inviting students from the Juilliard School and Bard College to run onstage to play near the end of a performance of the Fifth Symphony; and sprinkling undercover members of the Concert Chorale of New York around the audience so they could pop up to sing the “Ode to Joy” at the end of the Ninth.

“I think if we hear these voices from everywhere — from the audience, from us, the people, then it comes much closer to the original meaning of the work,” Mr. Fischer said.

Even his rehearsals are unusual. He began a Beethoven rehearsal at Geffen Hall on Monday morning with a Bach chorale, which he explained was a tradition: “It creates a separation between the outside world and our world — it helps the mind, it helps the soul, it helps the ears.” He sometimes got down from his podium to wander among the players, and repeatedly leapt off the stage and ran to Row J to test balances.

Jane Moss, the artistic director of Lincoln Center, said that Mr. Fischer had become a New York favorite for his virtuosity and his expansive ideas of what concerts can be. “In 80 percent of the cases, my right eyebrow is going up as there is yet again a new idea, and every single time, it turn out to be unbelievably powerful,” she said.

Mr. Fischer will return to the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center this summer with Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” one of several well-regarded semi-staged productions for which he serves as both conductor and director. (He calls the present tradition “completely artificial, with the director and the conductor being the two polarized forces pulling poor singers in two directions.”)

Asked if he saw parallels between the United States these days and Hungary — which has also had a rise in right-wing populism, battles over immigration and refugees, and the construction of a fence along its southern border — he said that he saw these trends in many places.

“I don’t see it as an American problem,” he said. “I see it as a worldwide problem. We now live in a period when fear is somehow misused and stirred up. And it’s an extremely dangerous phenomenon.”

[drinkanddestroy]

I say in the audience too. I'm lucky to have experienced the same thing at a musical show about Barbara. It was an incredibly powerful experience, especially since, just like with Ode To Joy, the mise en scène fits the message behind the music.

well I hope you write about your musical experiences here in this thread.

That's really how this thread came about. After the show I told DJ, we have threads where we discuss Broadway shows and art museums, but none for (non-Morricone) musical performances. (The "songs playing in your head" thread doesn't count.) So I said I'll make a thread for the musical experiences. Just for the hell of it, I gave the thread the funny name about me and DJ going to the symphony, but really this thread is not about me and DJ (or me and Aniko  ) but for everyone to share their musical experiences. When I go to a Metallica or Ozzy Osbourne concert (I've been to three of the former and two of the latter!) I'll write about that here, too  


I mentioned above that DJ and I are going back to Lincoln Center on Feb. 22: Beethoven's 7th & 8th Symphonies, with The New York Philharmonic, guest-conducted by Herbert Blomstedt.

I was just looking up Blomstedt's wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Blomstedt He will turn 90 years old in July!

I am looking up his stuff on YouTube. I do not see a YouTube vid of him conducting the Seventh, but here is a recent video of him conducting the (full) Eighth, with the Danmarks Radio SymfoniOrkestret (known in English as the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, or DNSO) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k4i_zxrDv0 (his tempo seems a bit fast compared to what I am used to with the Eights. "What I am used to" is the recording in my iPod of Wyn Morris conducting the London Symphony Orchestra) at the 26-second mark of the video you see a full shot of this hall - a very interesting hall! Like a bullring or an arena, the seats are all around above and the orchestra is in the floor below.

Blomstedt is conducting in that video without a baton.

and here is a full video of Blomstedt (with a baton!) and the Orchestre de Paris performing Beethoven's Third Symphony, better known as the "Eroica" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQWgwf33cLc

[drinkanddestroy]

Just looking at the Facebook comments on the video of the "flash mob" choir on Beethoven's Ninth. One commenter, and older man named William Hosking, writes, "I remember doing this with Bernstein, Westminster Choir, in Washington, D.C." I asked if he can provide some more info; we'll see if he replies.

[PowerRR]

I hate, hate, hate the Museum of the Moving Image (and Astoria, Queens), so I for one won't be going.

hmm what's wrong with it? A trip to NYC can get a bit pricey for me so I'm not sure if it's worth it

[drinkanddestroy]

hmm what's wrong with it? A trip to NYC can get a bit pricey for me so I'm not sure if it's worth it

you don't live far from Boston, right?

today, Sunday Feb. 12, the Budapest Festival Orchestra tour hits Boston, playing the program they played last week Sunday in NY (Beethoven's First and Fifth Symphonies, and Fourth Piano Concerto). At Symphony Hall at 3:00 p.m. There are still tickets available. You should go! http://www.celebrityseries.org/budapest/index.htm?gclid=CP2Tiej-idICFcKEswodJqcIqQ

[PowerRR]

you don't live far from Boston, right?

today, Sunday Feb. 12, the Budapest Festival Orchestra tour hits Boston, playing the program they played last week Sunday in NY (Beethoven's First and Fifth Symphonies, and Fourth Piano Concerto). At Symphony Hall at 3:00 p.m. There are still tickets available. You should go! http://www.celebrityseries.org/budapest/index.htm?gclid=CP2Tiej-idICFcKEswodJqcIqQ

ya it's hotel and a whole day commitment that puts me off if the exhibit is no good.

And yup I'm about 40 min to Boston normally but I'm in Philly right now

[dave jenkins]

The Museum of the Moving Image is not so much a museum as it is a movie theater with pretentions. It's a pain in the ass for me to get to, but if you're staying in Manhattan I guess it wouldn't be as much of a chore. As I said, I don't like the neighborhood much. Every once in a while they get films you can't see anywhere else, but for things that are readily available on Blu-ray I would never make a special trip. But hey, knock yourself out.

[PowerRR]

The Museum of the Moving Image is not so much a museum as it is a movie theater with pretentions. It's a pain in the ass for me to get to, but if you're staying in Manhattan I guess it wouldn't be as much of a chore. As I said, I don't like the neighborhood much. Every once in a while they get films you can't see anywhere else, but for things that are readily available on Blu-ray I would never make a special trip. But hey, knock yourself out.

ok. In the case I'll go if something else in NY entices me before April.

[drinkanddestroy]

DJ and I were at Lincoln Center Wednesday night for The New York Philharmonic, guest-conducted by Herbert Blomstedt, playing Beethoven's 7th and 8th Symphonies.

This time, DJ and I sat 4 rows from the back (at our previous shows, we sat for 4 from the front) dead-center. The acoustics were noticeably worse, and from now on we will always try to get closer seats. (Ideal is like 15 rows from the front, but those get sold out first.)


This review is negative on the Eighth but positive on the Seventh

 http://newyorkclassicalreview.com/2017/02/blomstedt-philharmonic-achieve-mixed-results-with-beethoven/


This review is more positive http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_concert_review.php?id=14334

A recent interview with Blomstedt in The NY Times https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/arts/music/herbert-blomstedt-is-turning-90-he-is-also-conducting-over-90-concerts-this-year.html

From earlier this month, a negative review of a performance of Beethoven's Ninth with Blomstedt conducting The San Francisco Symphony https://www.google.com/amp/s/bachtrack.com/review-beethoven-choral-blomstedt-san-francisco-symphony-february-2017/amp%3D1

[dave jenkins]

DJ and I were at Lincoln Center Wednesday night for The New York Philharmonic, guest-conducted by Herbert Blomstedt, playing Beethoven's 7th and 8th Symphonies.

This time, DJ and I sat 4 rows from the back (at our previous shows, we sat for 4 from the front) dead-center. The acoustics were noticeably worse, and from now on we will always try to get closer seats. (Ideal is like 15 rows from the front, but those get sold out first.)


This review is negative on the Eighth but positive on the Seventh

 http://newyorkclassicalreview.com/2017/02/blomstedt-philharmonic-achieve-mixed-results-with-beethoven/

Gotta say I enjoyed the 7th a whole lot more than the 8th, but it's the better, more substantial work anyway.