A few weeks ago I went to the MSO's concert conducted by Alexander Shelley which featured a piece by Reveultas, the Concierto de Aranjuez by Rodrigo and West Side Story Symphonic Dances. I went for the Bernstein - I will pretty much go to any concert that involves Bernstein. (Although I do draw the limit at really bad school bands playing bad arrangements of WSS which I have unfortunately been privy to in the past).
This was the second time I'd seen/heard Shelley conduct the piece - the other time was in January last year with AYO. It was an exciting performance. I was listening and watching in a different way to normal as someone in the Frankston Symphony has requested that we play it in a movie-theme concert at the end of the year. In particular, I was focussing on what the strings role was and how hard their parts were. I was actually surprised at how uncomplicated yet fantastic their parts are in the first two main dances. Afterwards their parts became more challenging - far beyond our players at the moment. A highlight of the performance was Geoff Payne's trumpet solos, especially in the Mambo (always a highlight, actually) and the orchestra yelling out 'Mambo!'. Concertmaster Marcus Tomasi turned directly to the audience each time and yelled at the top of his lungs with great love and energy - looked like he was having a ball. The violas too were having fun - they seemed to pulse their instruments ever so slightly upwards. With each successive cry of 'Mambo' I was on the edge of my seat waiting to see if they would go the thole Simon Bolivar thing and jump up and down. If you haven't seen the video you need to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtnjixhvOTU
Lots of fun!!
Slava Grigoriyan (?sp) played the Rodrigo, which was great, but sandwiched between the two much fuller pieces the guitar sound seemed to pale in comparison, just to do with the orchestration. Interesting to note in my future programming.
No comments:
Post a Comment