My short string of finals was capped by a concert, where the Kirov Orchestra performed the pieces noted above. They followed with 3 encore pieces, but sitting up in the choir loft I couldn’t make out their titles since the conductor turned to face the general audience when he spoke (and he didn’t say the title of the third).
Choir loft is a sweet place to be, effectively behind the orchestra. Our seats were in Row C, probably more descriptively known as Bench Row. It wasn’t even bolted down, that’s how awesome it was. There was a good amount of leg room. We also got a good dose of brass, if that’s your thing.
I went with 3 others. Choir loft seats only opened up a few days ago, apparently, and tsoundcheck had them at steep discount, even after the $7.50 service charge for ordering by phone.
My prior exposure to The Firebird was select passages featured in Fantasia 2000, and maybe whatever I heard (and subsequently forgot) while studying the listening excerpts for History 5. Prior exposure to The Rite of Spring was even more limited, to about a few bars in the polyrhythmic introduction.
When the orchestra walked in, the oboist had a tuner for his 440 Hz. I don’t know if that counts as cheating or not, or goes against the spirit of the tradition. You could always get around that by using that tuner in the warm-up room, but I can understand wanting to be tuned for the venue, not the warm-up room.
After the orchestra tunes and warms up for a few seconds, we all waited for the conductor to step on stage. It always irks me to hear all that “discreet” coughing. I’m at home with silence, so polite coughing is superfluous in my view, and there can’t be that many sick people in the audience despite the fact that it’s winter.
First up was Firebird in its original ballet score glory. I came away with the impression that the whole thing was fairly demanding. It’s long — at almost an hour with no break between movements — and intense for most of that length. Loud sections were incredibly loud, and they added two trumpets for the final push. No chairs, they were just there to bring the power at the end. So in general, the Kirov Orchestra does loud pretty well, but I don’t feel that they kept things as tight as they could have when things got busy, loud busy or simmering busy.
Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the Fantasia 2000 recordings, where the Chicago Symphony Orchestra had the benefit of multiple takes (if they needed them), but when the going got hectic, one could still hear very clean lines even if those lines were intense runs. In fact, they were made more intense because they were clean. Kirov, in contrast, had moments when things just kind of smeared together, sounding like a wash.
It’s probably not something the general audience hears clearly, but for us in the choir loft, the conductor’s grunting was distracting. Glenn Gould hummed to himself, Valery Gergiev grunts. There were grunts right off the bat. Loud passages might be acceptable, but in the quiet ones? No thanks.
Rite of Spring calls for more players, so those extra trumpets were added, as well as two more (French) horns that did double duty as euphoniums. Several of the performers had two instruments, like clarinet and basis clarinet, or clarinet and sopranino saxophone (I’m pretty sure I saw one, even though it’s not in the score), bassoon and contrabassoon.
It could be because it was getting late, but I found myself losing interest at some point past the halfway mark. We agreed that it was a gutsy piece even today, never mind 94 years ago, yet I fell off the aggression train. Part of the reason has to do with the fact that it’s almost unceasing in its hostility, and without any other direction my brain simply shut down. The performance itself felt more together overall than Firebird, but Firebird was a much more engaging listen.
After Rite of Spring, and after an encore, the conductor took a bow, the orchestra took a bow, and then the conductor walked off the stage, and would then come back with his jacket off, take a bow, etc, walk off the stage, then come back again with his jacket on. I don’t quite understand this.
I got a lift home, saving me a token. w00t. It’s a real word now, dontcha know.
Tags: music, toronto
Entries (RSS)