I hope you all have a chance to come to the concert this weekend, it’s shaping up to be very interesting and very well played. Our dress rehearsal this morning was quite good, with the Mozart “Linz” Symphony jelling into what one should expect from this orchestra – elegant and flexible. Horacio Gutierrez is masterful in his reading of the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, as usual. Ravel’s Bolero, which is physically punishing to play for just about everyone on stage, also sounds great, with a grinding tempo set up by our guest conductor Hannu Lintu that makes the pay off at the end pretty exhilarating. The novelty work on the program is a massive piece by the contemporary Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg (his name always makes me thing of the World’s Strongest Man competition, which always features many huge Scandinavia competitors with one of their names being Magnus) called Feria. It’s intended to be a post-modern re-envisioning of the works of the French impressionists, and as an example of spectacular orchestration it’s well worth hearing.
Tickets available here.
To make a brief note about my recent “rant” post, I’d like to make it clear that my colleagues are never less than fully professional – that being said, however, variations in the level of performance, especially in rehearsals, does occur, and I thought it might be interesting to present an inside (and admittedly singular) view of the phenomenon. I meant no disrespect to my esteemed colleagues and apologize if any was taken.