Berlioz

A Concert Roundup, Where We Lay Our Scene

• Look, up in the sky! It’s Tchaikovsky! No, it’s Berlioz! No, it’s PROKOFIEV! Which is my ridiculous and convoluted way of saying that this week the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performs Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, which, if you weren’t aware, is better than anyone else’s. So yay for that! Also a piece by Prangcharoen and Saint-Saens‘ third piano concerto. May 23 & 24 at the Meyerhoff; May 25 at Strathmore. [ See it! ]
• The National Symphony Orchestra breaks out the NSO Pops to play with Trey Anastasio of Phish. No. Really. I promise I’m not making this up. Apparently he composes? And there’ll be some orchestrations of Phish songs? Interesting. Hey Trey, d’you feel like being interviewed by a plucky young blogger? May 22. [ See it! ]
• The NSO is also performing a free Memorial Day concert at the Capitol building on Sunday with the usual assortment of military music ensembles and patriotic music. May 26. [ See it! ]
• This week at Strathmore: fiddler Rickie Simpkins; a discussion of arts and their impact on the development of the adult brain. [ See the calendar! ]

If you’d like your concert included in next week’s roundup, leave a comment or drop me a line.

All the Concert Roundup You Want

• This week’s Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concert is deeply romantic when it isn’t being kinda classical. Brahms‘ Double Concerto for Cello and Violin, Mozart‘s fifth symphony aka the “Haffner,” and something called Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks by Strauss, Richard. October 26 & 28 at the Meyerhoff; October 27 at Strathmore. [ See it! ]
• Not a concert, but interesting nonetheless while on the subject: the BSO just introduced their “Passport” which, for $75, enables you to attend as many concerts as you like for what as far as I can tell looks like the rest of the season. Caveat: 40 and under. If you qualify, might be worth investigating. [ Learn more! ]
• Meanwhile, back at the National Symphony Orchestra, the Pops take over with a series of concerts featuring Roberta Flack. Looks like she’ll be interpreting the Beatles. October 25 – 27. [ See it! ]
• Are you plagued by an extremely short person who seems to need things from you constantly? If so, this might be your child. If you suspect you may have a child, you should probably bring it to an NSO children’s concert, just to be safe – don’t want the little bugger to grow up to be some kinda philistine. Luckily there’s a Halloween-themed performance on October 28, including logical stuff like Berlioz and Dukas. [ See it! ]
• This week at Strathmore: impressive looping fiddler Casey Driessen and two performances by the Dali Quartet. [ See the calendar! ]

If you’d like your concert included in next week’s roundup, leave a comment or drop me a line.

A Concert Roundup Just for Me

I. Am. So. EXCITED.

• And here’s why: the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, ends its regular season with NADJA SALERNO-SONNENBERG OMG SQUEEEEEEEEE! That’s not enough; I’ll say it again. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Performing Tchaikovsky‘s violin concerto! ^_^ Also Kevin Puts‘ fourth symphony and – squeesqueesquee – Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring! SQUEEEEE! I am ten seconds away from combusting from excitementNADJA SALERNO-SONNENBERG, PEOPLE! June 7, 8, & 10 at the Meyerhoff; June 9 at Strathmore and I’ll see you there!  [ See it! ]
• The National Symphony Orchestra does not have NADJA SALERNO-SONNENBERG, but it does offer Claudio Bohorquez on the cello, Berlioz‘s Roman Carnival overture, the Lalo cello concerto in d minor, and Tchaikovsky‘s fifth symphony. June 7 – 9. [ See it! ]
• Strathmore just announced their 2012-2013 season; you should check it out immediately! Classical highlights include Maurizio Pollini and Jennifer Koh. [ See the season! ]

Concert Roundup: Some Will Be Pardoned and Some Punish-ed

Go forth and have more talk of these musical things.

• Oh, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. You raise me to the highest highs only to plunge me into the lowest lows. I see a concert entitled “Romeo and Juliet” and immediately I think, PROKOFIEV! SQUEE! And what do I get? Berlioz? NOT EVEN. I get TCHAIKOVSKY. I love almost all Tchaikovsky — EXCEPT HIS R&J. Ugh. What are you trying to do, kill me and then bring me back to life with Mussourgsky‘s Night on Bald Mountain, my boy Khachaturian‘s violin concerto, and no less an adrenalin shot to the heart than Stravinsky‘s Firebird Suite? It’s an emotional roller coaster, I tell you! April 13 & 15 at the Meyerhoff; April 14 at Strathmore. [ See it! ]
  Edited to add: Whoops, jumped the gun. That’s NEXT week’s concert. Unfortunately I built the theme of this post around it, so I can’t take it out. You’re just super-prepared for next week. Hush.
• The National Symphony Orchestra has no time for roller coasters. They prefer a steady, even keel with ONE composer only, thank you very much. That composer is Mendelssohn, and the piece is Elijah. April 5 – 7. [ See it! ]
• This week at Strathmore, we have Kevin Costner. No, seriously, Kevin Costner is coming! Do you have ANY IDEA how I feel about Field of Dreams?! But he’s not playing baseball; he’s singing with his band, Modern West. So there’s that, and there’s Video Games Live which I talked about on Monday (you should come and say hi and check out the costume contest and play some Guitar Hero), and a wind ensemble called Flutopia of all things. [ See the calendar! ]

Concert Roundup: The Reckoning

Hey, guess which blog has its second anniversary tomorrow? No, no, you have to guess.

While you’re thinking, here are this week’s concerts:

• The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is trying to fake me out by titling this week’s offering “Rachmaninoff’s Third,” but I’m way too sharp for that. Rather than dismiss it at face value, I ripped off the mask and said “AHA! It’s Rimsky-Korsakov‘s Capriccio Espagnol under there!” And, admittedly, Rachmaninoff‘s third symphony. And the first Liszt piano concerto. But everyone knows I have a soft enough spot for Capriccio Espagnol to carry me through. Vasily Petrenko conducts, Barry Douglas pianates, and you can find it October 28 and 30 at the Meyerhoff, October 29 at Strathmore. See it!
• The National Symphony Orchestra counters with a different handful of the Mighty Handful and offers up Mussourgsky‘s Pictures at an Exhibition. Talk about carrying you through. If you’re not already convinced, the Exhibition is augmented with a Grieg piano concerto and a Berlioz overture. Solid. Lorin Maazel conducts, Simon Trpčeski pianates, and you can find it October 27-29 at the Kennedy Center concert hall. See it!
• Update to add: @TerpsMusic tells me that there’s a concert at The University of Maryland on October 28 featuring Jonathan Richards, winner of the 2010 UMSO Concerto Competition. He’ll play Shostakovich‘s first violin concerto; the program also includes some Tchaikovsky, Ravel, and Takemitsu. See it!

Adventures in hashtaggery

Yesterday evening I made an amazing discovery by way of the lovely @NaxosUSA: the Twitter hashtag #budgetclassical. These tweets are all terrible puns and mockery of classical music titles as they might have been had they been composed on the cheap. Since I spent something like two hours addicted to making and reading these, I’m tossing out the usual LOL Friday image format to bring you all the ones I made up myself. The hashtag is still happening; read ’em here and submit your own! (And when you do, make sure you add @aintbaroque so I can see.)

And now, in reverse posting order, one of my greatest strengths: horrible, horrible puns!

1. Dies Felinae
2. Flesh Wound on Tenth Avenue
3. The Ambivalent Widow
4. Transgendered Night
5. Stars and Stripes for a Pretty Long Time
6. Serenade for String
7. Escape from the Questionable Massage Parlor
8. The Wiccans’ Sabbath
9. About Halfway Down the Steps of Central Asia
10. March to the Lethal Injection from Symphonie Just Okay
11. West Side Tweet
12. Nopetha
13. Music for the Sparklers in the Backyard
14. Rhapsody in Teal
15. What the Wildflowers Refuse to Tell Me
16. Doctor Subatomic
17. Saunter of the Valkyries
18. The Beggar’s Opera (oh, wait…)
19. Snapping Music
20. Haydn’s Very Little Warning Symphony
21. Three Little Swans and a Duck
22. Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2: the “Embryonic Russian”
23. Ives’ Chuck Rutlage
24. Khachaturian’s Shuffle of the Rose Maidens
25. Saint-Saen’s Petting Zoo of the Animals
26. Mendelssohn’s Sicilian Symphony
27. The Love for Three Clementines
28. Polevtsian Marking the Steps
29. Crash Landing of the Bumblebee
30. Officer Cadet Kije
31. Thus Whispered Zarathrustra
32. Pete & Pete Grimes
33. The Civil Ceremony of Figaro
34. Pavane for a Princess Who’s Feeling Under the Weather
35. Madama Caterpillar
36. 4’33” of White Noise
37. Smetana’s The Loaned-Out Bride
38. Mozart’s The Regular Old Flute
39. Appalachian Puddle
40. The Bach Single
41. The Brandenburg Concerto
42. Gilbert and Sullivan present Lady-in-Waiting Ida
43. Die Maus
44. Die Bieberflote

Wow, I had no idea I did so many. I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.

The aftermath of purging files

Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it?

Don’t worry, all I mean is that I ran across my old quote collection from five, six, even seven years ago (of course I’m dorky enough to have had a quote collection) and while sifting through it I figured you might enjoy some of the music related ones. So here you go.

1. “When I was young, I used to have successes with women because I was young. Now I have successes with women because I am old. Middle age was the hardest part.” Artur Rubinstein
2. “Sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.” Artur Rubinstein
3. “Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently.” James Gibbons Huneker
4. “When I was young, I was told: ‘You’ll see, when you’re fifty.’ I am fifty and I haven’t seen a thing.” Erik Satie
5. “When a piece gets difficult, make faces.” Vladimir Horowitz
6. “My music is best understood by children and animals.” Igor Stravinsky
7. “The Prelude to [Wagner’s] ‘Tristan und Isolde’ reminds one of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel.” Eduard Hanslick
8. “The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.” Pablo Casals
9. “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” Dr. Albert Schweitzer

I chose to sift out the non-music arts quotes, but if you guys feel like seeing how the other half lives, let me know. Salvador Dali alone is worth the price of admission (“Take me! I am the hallucinogenic!”).

Barlioz would be a good name for a pub

Benevolent Dictator Jamie bought me a mug with reindeer on it. It is ENORMOUS, and holds a proportionately enormous amount of hot cocoa with marshmallows. This pleases me.

Y’know what else pleases me? College Night is tonight! I’m gearing myself up for Symphonie fantastique. It’s not every day the pizzicato is representative of a head falling from the guillotine, you know? (Incidentally, were you aware that the real title is An episode in the life of an artist and that Symphonie fantastique is a subtitle? I wasn’t!)

I think there are still a couple tickets left if you’d like to share in my fabulously morbid experience. You can purchase them here, and then afterwards enjoy the free college night food that B. D. Jamie and I will be setting up in the Grand Tier while you’re taking your bathroom break.

Y’know what else pleases me? The microwave in the break room makes flawless popcorn.