The New York Times is reporting the loss of Mstislav Rostropovich, one of the great musicians of the past century. He's one of the greatest cellists of all time and will be missed. (19:53)
Last week we played the Martinu Rhapsody-Concerto for viola and orchestra, and our principal violist Ute Miller played the solo part. She's always a great musician, and so of course she was fantastic. I wasn't very familiar with this piece before, but now I'm sort of unsure about it. It's really beautiful, but the ending of the piece is very strange and just doesn't make sense to me. There's a snare drum that plays with the viola solo and it sounds really out of place. The rest of the orchestra is holding some long chord, I think an F chord or something, and then for some reason we play a beat of repeated 32nd notes on that chord. It's just weird and out of place to my ears. (23:34)
Before I went to El Paso I had the opportunity to hear Paul Silverthorne, principal
violist of London Symphony Orchestra, play the Walton viola concerto
here. It was a really fantastic performance, and I feel like I
understand the concerto better than before. It's still not my favorite
viola concerto, but I do have a new appreciation for it.
I just learned today that Roberto Diaz is coming back here to play the Bartok viola concerto with the Fort Worth Symphony in October. I can't wait! (02:43)
I went to El Paso last week to see Lesley and to play in the orchestra there. She's running the El Paso Youth Orchestras along with Ben Loeb, a conductor we went to school with in Baltimore. He is also the associate conductor for the El Paso Symphony, and they had a side-by-side of the symphony and the youth orchestra together with Ben conducting. The symphony played The Three Cornered Hat suite by Manuel de Falla, the flute concerto by Jacques Ibert, Ravel's La Valse, then the youth orchestra played Marquez's Danzon No. 2, and then the symphony and youth orchestra did Bernstein's West Side Story symphonic dances together.
Ben and Lesley have been working really hard with the youth orchestras
and the symphony, and it sounds like things are going really well there.
Me and Lesley from this morning.
Photo of Ben and his wife that I took last night when we went out for Italian food. (02:06)
I've been listening to my awesome new CD of the Hagen Quartett (my
favorite string quartet these days) playing the Verdi String Quartet.
It's a fantastic recording, I'm glad to have found it. It was
discovered on Amazon, being sold by some seller in Germany.. however,
that seller wouldn't ship the disc outside of Germany! But Mirco Müller was kind enough to
let me send it to him and he shipped it to me.
Thanks Mirco! (01:29)
Very cool news from the White Stripes today. They've finished recording and mixing their sixth album, which will be called "Icky Thump". Okay, whatever. But I'm excited because the White Stripes are completely awesome. More info about the album.. some of the songs are:
On Wednesday I went to the university to hear a cello recital by Philip von Mahltzahn, who was a friend of mine back in high school when we played in a string trio together. It was a cool recital, with a Boccherini sonata, George Crumb sonata, sonata by György Ligeti, Astor Piazzolla's Le Grand Tango, and what cellist could do a recital without a Bach suite.. so Philip did the third one. It was cool to meet him again after the recital and say "hi". Philip plays in the Degas Quartet now. I hope I get a chance to hear them sometime. (18:13)
As always, I'm looking forward to starting some new chamber music soon. I ordered a copy of the Piston duo for viola and cello to play with Amirosh and a copy of Mozart duos K423 and K424 for violin and viola to play with Jason. I just found out last night that Jason just came back from his long gig in Florida, but he's going to Colorado in a few days to play a couple concerts. So hopefully by the time he gets back I'll have the Mozart duos. Also, I am itching really badly to start a new Beethoven quartet. (04:57)
Last night I played in a benefit recital for Valentina Mengjesi, an Albanian woman who lives around here and who has breast cancer but not much money to pay for the medical expenses. I have never met her, but she is a friend of some friends of mine, Amela Koci (who is a very close friend) and Tonda Sykes.
The concert went well. It consisted of the Corelli Christmas Concerto, Beethoven Op. 18/6 string quartet in B-flat, Vaughan Williams Rhosymedre, Mozart Horn Quintet K.407, and Saent-Saens Romance in F. Brian Brown played horn, Arthur Busby and Amela Koci played violins, Paul Palmer and I played viola, and Amirosh Issa was the cellist. At the end Amela's husband Gjergji joined Brian for a horn duo, but I forgot the name of the composer. (01:48)
So, as I last reported I had ordered some live CDs of the Raconteurs from some of their live shows in the UK but the package was open and empty when it arrived. So I talked to the company, Concert Live, about it and they were kind enough to send me a replacement set. I just received that today, and I'm very happy. (01:39)
I got a DVD a couple weeks ago of Alexander Markov performing the Paganini 24 caprices for solo violin. I saw this years ago on a bootleg VHS when I was at Peabody, and I blogged about it on Advogato. Apparently there were a number of people who wanted to see it, because I had four or five different people email me since that time asking me how to get the video. Some offered to pay me to make them a copy of the bootleg of the video, but it wasn't mine.
I watched the whole thing, and it's the same one that I saw back then. It's sort of cheesily done, and it looks like the director/editor got some video editing software and wanted to try all the goofy effects out. It's like when you open GIMP for the first time and you think it's a good idea to try to use all the pre-built effects or something. So, the DVD is pretty funny to watch because it's so bad. But Markov's playing is very good, and it's nice to see (when you can actually see.. there's a whole section where they thought it would be a good idea to just shoot his shadow) and hear.
I got my Aluminium CD in the mail. It's sort of an orchestral arrangement (supposedly avant garde, not not really in my opinion) of White Stripes music, which sounds sort of dumb but ended up working pretty well. At least, better than any other orchestral version of rock music I've ever heard. I think they tend to have more tunes than the bands that I have previously heard orchestral arrangements of.
I also ordered a set of CDs of live concerts of The Raconteurs from their UK shows, and I was really looking forward to getting those. Well, it turns out that the package was really poorly sealed or something because it opened up during transit and all the CDs spilled out of it and an empty package was delivered to me. I'm really sort of pissed about that. I contacted the company that sent it, hoping they'll send me another set. I feel like it is sort of their fault for not packaging it very well. I'm not really sure how else to deal with this right now, but I noticed that the shipment was insured.. although not for as much as I paid for it, so that is a little worrying. (02:47)
So, we ended up not reading Faure or Schumann or Mahler today. Instead we did the second movement of the Dvorak quartet that I don't love that much.
We're going to meet on Saturday to read through the new music instead. I can't wait! I'm very excited about it. (18:09)
I got this from Lesley today. Maybe this is why I'm not married yet. :)
(18:07)
Finally our new quartet music came in the other day, so on Thursday my group is going to read through something new and fun. We ordered both piano quartets by Faure, and the Mahler piano quartet. Maybe something else too, but I forgot. It will be a welcome change for me, because we've been working on Dvorak Op.23 and I'm not really all that excited by that piece.
I also just ordered the Bruch Eight Pieces, Op.83 for viola, clarinet, and piano. I am performing that in a recital next month for a doctoral student's recital I think. It should be a lot of fun, I think. I played the Bruch Double Concerto for viola and clarinet when I was in school, and I liked it a lot. It's a very nice piece that is still not very well known for some reason. (17:26)
I went to Dallas Symphony last night to hear their concertmaster, Emanuel Borok, play the third Mozart violin concerto. They also did Rachmaninov's second symphony and Mannheim Rocket by Corigliano. It was overall a really great concert, but I went there especially for the Mozart and I was not disappointed. Borok really played well, I thought, and the orchestra sounded very good. I had heard that he also has written his own cadenzas for all the Mozart concerti, so I was looking forward to hearing that. The the first two cadenzas were nothing out of the ordinary I think.. especially the first one I thought was very sensible and traditional. In the last movement, however, the cadenzas were completely surprising! It didn't sound really Mozartian, I'm not really sure what it was.. I guess just very Borok, I don't know. It's hard to describe here. But I definitely enjoyed it. He just totally threw me for a loop for that last movement, because especially after the previous ones I did not see that coming.
I had never heard the Corigliano before. It was okay, but nothing to write much about. And so, I guess I won't. The best part was before it started some lady behind me asked if this was that Christmas music thing, by which she meant Mannheim Steamroller. heh :) (14:56)
Amirosh and I went over to Dr. Hunt's house this weekend to read some piano quartets with the new violin professor, Dr. Walvoord. It was really fun, and it looks like we're going to prepare something for a concert sometime. Dr. Walvoord seemed really cool, and is a really good violinist so it was a lot of fun. Amirosh and I are supposed to also play the Brahms clarinet trio with Dr. Solomons, so we figured we could put them on the same program.
I also came across a couple really cool duos for viola and cello, by Piston and Lutoslawski, that I would like to read through with Amirosh sometime. (16:35)
So I went to tonight's (Saturday's) Fort Worth Symphony concert because it included the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante with violist Roberto Diaz. It was very good, and I was happy I went. This was actually my first time to hear a live performance of that piece with orchestra (the only other time I think I have ever heard it live was when a couple Peabody students played it).
So the violinist in this concert was someone named James Ehnes, who I had never heard of before. I thought he was pretty good but his interpretation was pretty stiff. He played all the notes and everything, but it lacked a lot of musicality I thought.
Roberto, on the other hand, was very expressive. His rhythm was not rigid, and he was very lively and energetic. My only complaint about the performance in general was that I felt like the first two movements were far too fast, and Roberto seemed to be pushing it somewhat. I'm not sure if that is entirely true, but of the two soloists I felt that he was sort of the one in control. I also thought the last movement seemed ever so slightly too fast, but it's marked presto so I guess you can go as fast as you want. I wouldn't say it felt out of control or anything, it just felt hurried.
Still, this was a very nice performance and I am certainly glad that I went to it. I think today was the only day that they were playing this program, otherwise I probably would have gone to hear them tomorrow as well. (08:16)
I was listening to Luigi Alberto Bianchi's recording of the Paganini viola sonata a few days ago, and decided to Google his viola, the 1595 Brothers Amati "del Crocifisso". It was stolen in 1980 and as far as I knew never recovered, but I was surprised to find an article from April that claimed the instrument was recovered in Milan, about 26 years after it was lost. (05:16)
So I posted on the viola list yesterday, thinking I had found the cheapest strings in the country, when someone responded and told me that Concord Strings is cheaper. So don't I feel stupid now. :) (16:21)
Today I found out about Prodigy Instruments, a musical instrument shop located in Maryland somewhere. They appear to have about the cheapest strings anywhere in the country, so I ordered a set of strings and decided to post a quick blog entry here about them in the hopes of promoting their awesomely cheap strings. I just bought a full set of Evah Pirazzi stark viola strings for $58.99 (presumably also plus tax, but I forgot to check) and free shipping. Not bad, considering that Shar sells the same set for $66.90 and Southwest Strings sells it for $67.23. (20:09)
So, Special K has ordered her bow from Thomachot now and she wanted to have it made very much like mine. So she asked him if he can make it the same weight as mine, but I guess he doesn't have all the measurements of my bow on record so she asked if I could send her the weight of the bow. I pulled out a little measuring scale from the kitchen and it said the bow is 70g. But that scale isn't very accurate, and the little markers on it go to the nearest 5g. I just measured it with that out of curiosity. But today I went back to Arlington and took the bow to Mike Sherriff, a bow maker there, because he has a scale that measures to 0.1g accuracy.. and it turned out that the bow was 70.0g. Go figure. :) (19:50)
So I just found out from Yi-Ping today that György Ligeti died in Vienna last Monday, on June 12. I had just been sitting around talking to Amirosh and Dr. Walters about Ligeti and his music sometime last week, when Amirosh asked if he was still alive. Dr. Walters and I both said he was, although he has been sick for a long time so we thought he may not live much longer. But it turned out by that time we were already wrong.
I really like Ligeti's viola sonata, although it's way too difficult for me to attempt to play any time soon. But I can still listen to it and enjoy it. I have heard some of his chamber music as well, and really enjoyed it a lot. (19:29)
It seems like I'm the last person I know to start getting really into The White Stripes, but I finally bought their first two albums today.
They have very quickly become my favorite modern rock band out there. Their simplicity is great, but they have such style and coolness about them. (06:30)
Bach Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas
I got the recording by Sigiswald Kuijken and have been listening to it. It sounds really weird at first because I think it's supposed to be more of an "authentic" performance. The strings are probably gut or something, and it has a very dead sort of sound. Dead as in, the quality of tone coming from the strings; it doesn't have the strength of modern silver or steel strings or whatever. But it sounds very beautiful, and I'm enjoying this recording a lot. (17:41)
I'm sort of frustrated by other chamber musicians. I am constantly trying to assemble a quartet to work on Beethoven, and for some sick reason nobody ever seems interested. Seriously, this drives me near the edge of madness and I just may have to kill someone soon if they won't agree to do a Beethoven string quartet.
Don't fuck with someone who names his viola VLA THE IMPALER. (00:03)
People who don't suck
Lesley Chen
Miguel de Icaza
Jeff Waugh
Duncan Mak
Elliott Lee
Mike Shaver
Vladimir Vukićević
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