I've been to a number of concerts and pushed the boat out with regards to videos also.
Wednesday 12 took me to the Philharmonic Hall for the start of the RLPO's new season. We heard Mahler's Rückert Lieder and his Symphony No 2 Resurrection. I particularly liked our mezzo Jane Irwin. The conductor was our new principal, Gerard Schwarz, previously in charge of the Seattle Symphony.
The audience was still in a state of shock from the previous day's events in America. We took the optional pause after the first movement and used it as a moment to stand in silence. Certainly the demonic aspect of that first 25 minutes has never felt quite so shattering and the relief of the final chorale more uplifting. But I suspect that we were all watching internal videos of planes smashing into buildings. And I doubt that I should want to buy the recording of the event which will become available later in the year. Everything was taken at an extreme, tempi, dynamics. It felt like, as someone perceptively said of Solti's conducting, he knows how it goes but not why.
By Saturday 22, I was in Londinium with my Rossi and we went to the Royal Opera to see Rigoletto. I thought that we had not been to see this work together but, when I checked back in this EJ, I found that we had back in 1996 not long after we first met. This is why everyone needs an EJ.
The evening was sensational from the musical point of view. I doubt that I shall every hear the title rôle of Rigoletto sung more beautifully than it was by Paulo Gavanelli.
I had been wanting to hear Marcelo Alvarez for some time and, again, his singing of the Duke was magnificent - elegant, resourceful, tuneful and virile. I was less happy with Christine Schäfer's Gilda but it certainly had purity of tone and agility. She just felt too cool.
There was a big brouhaha about David McVicar's production mainly because it started with what the critics were pleased to call an orgy. Well, all the ones I've been to were a lot less noisy and involved far fewer clothes.
Edward Downes was the conductor. He kept the pulse going fine and the elegance and the beauty of the score.
But. And this is a big BUT. It all felt too refined. Rigoletto to me should be summed up by words like searing and elemental. This was all just too nice. I have to say that this could have been because of where we were sitting. The night we attended was also the night the show was broadcast by the BBC and the telecast feels a lot more visceral in its orchestral swagger. Still, this was not an experience I would have missed for the world.
Back in Liverpool, on Wednesday 26, Ross and I went to another concert at the Liverpool Phil - Glinka's Overture to Ruslan and Ludmilla, Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6 Pathétique. Garry Walker was the conductor and Nadia Cole our pianist. It was a pleasant without being exceptional concert. The two main protagonists were young and their inexperience told.
On the video front, there's been a number to tell you of.
Pay It Forward was a clever, whimsical parable. Its big idea was that,
if everyone did three selfless acts for complete strangers, the world would
change. Mimi Leder's film mostly avoided the mawkish before copping out with
a shockingly sentimental finale. The performances by Helen Hunt, Haley Joel
Osment and Kevin Spacey were exceptionally good.
However, Kevin Spacey's appearance, plus music by Thomas Newman and some swirling camera shots were just too reminiscent of American Beauty for comfort.
Gus Van Sant 's Finding Forrester was another urban parable with a
heart of gold. Sean Connery and Rob Brown held the show together as the main characters
of reclusive author and young, aspiring, black writer. Parts of the film were
like a seminar in writing technique.
The Watcher was really awful. Too slick for its own good and no heart at all.
It was a waste of the talents of James Spader, Marisa Tomei and Keanu Reeves.
Oh, and Keanu cannot play bad guys.
But he's still looking good.
