I’m just too wiped out to think of a snappy title this morning. We finished our classical series last night to very good audience response – several hundred of you took advantage of the ticket stub offer to repeat the concert experience (and some of whom were lucky friends who got to go to a free concert with their friends’ ticket stubs).
I think it’s safe to say that I’d welcome many repeat visits from our guest conductor of this week, Pietari Inkinen. He’s got the goods, and the guy is only 27! That’s a year older than I was when I arrived here for my first day of work in 1995. I knew crap at that point, so I’m pretty much in awe of someone who’s got their stuff that together at such an early age. I’ll be interested to see how he continues to develop.
He certainly got a good, robust sound from the orchestra. As soon as he gets more of the gravitas that will pull the brass into line, he’ll be a force to be reckoned with.
As for the soloist Pekka Kuusisto – I just wish that he’d showed up with the piece fully prepared and ready to go. He sounded like he was sight-reading the Stravinsky at the first rehearsal, and finally by last night it sounded like it was in the realm of what you expect from soloists for an orchestra of our caliber. He’s clearly a genius on the fiddle, and I enjoyed both of his encores tremendously, but he should have showed up with the Stravinsky memorized and nailed to the wall from day one – there are too many young guns that would have done so in a heartbeat. As an example, Midori played the Elgar Concerto for the first time here in Oregon, and did so in commanding fashion (and from memory) before going on to play it with several Big Five orchestras.
Now the orchestra goes on its spring break, and for me it’s actually a bit busier than the regular working schedule. Quartet rehearsals begin in earnest for our OHSU concert on the 26th, I’ve got repertoire to work up for recital concerts in June (Shostakovich Sonata and Joan Tower’s Wild Purple), the first viola part to the Mendelssohn Octet for a Community Music Center benefit on April 4th, and some graphic design work for fEARnoMUSIC.
And I’m not the only one who will be busy over the next two weeks. My colleagues at Third Angle New Music Ensemble will be recording a new CD of works by Chen Yi, and fEARnoMUSIC will be travelling to Utah to give concerts, master classes, and record a new work by BYU composer Steven Ricks, which was just given its world premiere here in Portland last Friday night.
Then our energies return to the symphony, with another interesting guest conductor and a load of cool repertoire March 29-31.