This summer, for various reasons, I spent a lot of time with the Brahms d minor concerto. This fact will please those who remember the article I wrote about my ambivalence towards Brahms the composer (though that article, if you read it, is actually more about my exploring that ambivalence, and coming to terms with Brahms, than my simply "not liking" him).

After my intense immersion this summer, however, and a deluge of new insights (and you would have to be a nitwit if you could talk to Leon Fleisher in depth about the Brahms d minor and NOT end up with a more profound view of the piece), I have emerged with a sense of possessive intimacy about the d minor concerto, the feeling of tough respect that can attend on relationships that are hard-won, as opposed to the ease of those that come more naturally.
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In today's Washington Post: The NSO Produces Mixed Results on a Night of Emotional Music, by Anne Midgette.

A belated link: In today's Washington Post, Charles T. Downey reviews the American Brass Quintet.

I was intrigued to read on MusicalAmerica.com yesterday (sorry, you need a subscription for the link to work) that for the first time an orchestra in mainland China is taking on a foreign music director: the French conductor Michel Plasson is becoming music director of the China National Symphony Orchestra. Certainly, many Western conductors have worked in China: Maurice Peress, for one, has appeared frequently with Chinese orchestras including the CNSO. There are two sticking points to an actual music directorship: dealing with the Chinese bureaucracy as a foreigner without skills in the language, and salary. In Plasson's case the later, at least, has been taken care of, according to Musical America, by a private sponsor.
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Web-only review:

Virtuoso Makes Striking Terrace Debut
by Charles T. Downey

The Young Concert Artists series presented an extraordinary recital by Korean violinist Hahn-Bin on Monday night at the Terrace Theater. The former child prodigy, now a mohawk-sporting 22-year-old identified only by his given name, is fresh out of Juilliard, where he studied with Itzhak Perlman and Catherine Cho. As if to present his bona fides as a serious artist, his Kennedy Center debut program drew unexpected connections between little-heard modern works and a few older pieces.
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Baseball is moving into the postseason, and the classical music world is moving through its annual wave of home openers. The common link between these two events: the National Anthem, heard at home openers in the concert hall, and always, of course, at the ballpark.

In my review of the NSO's opening gala, I observed the anthem's omission, which led one commenter to ask how common such an omission was. The only rule appears to be that I don't know when to expect it. The NSO did indeed play the National Anthem the following week at its first regular-season concert, before the Beethoven Pastoral.

Does it have a place? It can seem slightly odd. The concert hall is aglitter with expensive evening gowns and tails; the audience is seated; the lights go down; the conductor comes out; and suddenly the lights come up and everyone stands up, as if in school, and sings along. Then the "real" music starts. I love the National Anthem, but in this context it always feels like an abrupt change of mood.
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Web-only review:

Bach Consort and Lewis, Again Transcendent
by Cecelia Porter

Once again the Washington Bach Consort's performance of Bach's monumental B Minor Mass, composed piecemeal over a 15-year period, was a transcendent one. On Sunday at the National Presbyterian Church, conductor J. Reilly Lewis underscored the hidden rhythmic pulse that impels this work forward from start to finish despite the afternoon's lengthy intermission.

Chorus, orchestra and soloists responded confidently and instantaneously to Lewis's every gesture, his conducting style a minutely detailed one most visible in his fingers and facial expressions. He conducted the entire two-hour work from memory.
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Web-only review:

Strong Cellist, Pianist Animate Beethoven
by Cecelia Porter

Beethoven broke new paths with his music. In many of his compositions he fragmented his themes, making them almost unrecognizable, leaving it up to performers to make sense of the whole. Friedrich Kleinhapl, on a lovely 1743 Guadagnini cello, and the pianist Andreas Woyke played Beethoven’s first three sonatas for their instruments at the Austrian Embassy on Thursday night. Creating scenes of exciting havoc, their performance was driven and unorthodox, leading the capacity audience to the brink of the music’s emotional abyss by quicker-than-the speed-of-light contrasts in dynamics and tempo, abrupt pauses, and asymmetrical phrasing. Yet, working together as if one voice, the duo gave daring new meaning to Beethoven’s overall structural landscape even in these early works. (Occasionally, to some ears, however, the musicians’ extremes bypassed the cello’s opportunities for full-bodied resonance.)
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Lest we forget (and how could we?): Gustavo Dudamel led the first concert of his tenure in Los Angeles this weekend. And it wasn't even his official opening concert with the L.A. Philharmonic. But his "Bienvenido, Gustavo!" event at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday had international buzz, live Internet presence, enthusiastic participation from a wide audience, and a number of critics. Even the latter got excited. Mark Swed, in the Los Angeles Times, called it "a Beethoven Ninth to be remembered." Anthony Tommasini, in the New York Times, was more cautious, but observed that "the finale... was exhilarating." Even Variety weighed in -- and waxed enthusiastic. The lovefest continues.

In today's Washington Post: The season openers of the Folger Consort and the Meyer Concerts at the Freer this weekend both contrasted Chinese traditional instruments with Western ones. By Anne Midgette.

Edited to add: Ionarts also reviewed the Folger Consort.

Web-only review:

Husband and Wife Singers Show Russian Style, Languor at WNO

by Charles T. Downey

The Washington National Opera presented an unusual concert of mostly opera arias on Saturday night. Artistic Director Plácido Domingo took the podium of the Opera House orchestra, its players now seated on the stage instead of in the pit. The celebrated tenor is not a conductor born, but he acquitted himself honorably, with a little help from the players, who came in a couple times with the singers even before a downbeat from the rostrum.
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