Returning to Concerts

This past Saturday was the first time I had attended a classical music concert in over a year, and I chose to attend the Seattle Symphony's opening concert of the 2014-2015 season. Program as follows:

Opening Night Concert & Gala

Saturday, September 13, 2014

4PM

Suite Symphonique "Paris" - Jacques Ibert

Le métro

Faubourgs

La mosquée de Paris

Restaurant au Bois de Boulogne

Le paquebot "île-de-France"

Parade foraine

Gymopédies Nos. 3 and 1 - Erik Satie (orch. Debussy)

Lent et grave

Lent et douloreux

Havanaise for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 83 - Camille Saint-Saëns

Gil Shaham, Violin

Méditation de Thaïs - Jules Massenet

Gil Shaham, Violin

-Intermission-

Selections from Suite No. 2 from Coppélia - Léo Delibes

Entr'acte and Waltz

Prelude and Mazurka

Carmen Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 25

Gil Shaham, Violin

Selection from Orphée aux enfers - Jacques Offenbach

Ballet des mouches: Galop

Couplets des baisers

Duo de la mouche

Overture

Alexa Jarvis, Soprano

Charles Robert Stephens, Baritone

Ludovic Morlot, conductor

This event also had a gala at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel following the concert, which I did not attend (as packages for the concert and the gala started at $650). However, it did result in most concert attendees dressed very formally. It was probably the first concert I had ever attended where a majority of the men were wearing suits or tuxes and the women wore gowns. I still had on a shirt and slacks, but definitely was not quite prepared for this.

For this performance, $48 (the season member price) got you a seat in the top balcony, three levels above the orchestra seating. Capacity below the top balcony was pretty full, whereas the top balconies were somewhat empty.

 Benaroya Hall pre-concert (Click to Enlarge)

Box of 8 seats to myself (Click to Enlarge)

The performance began with a rendition of the National Anthem. I never really understood why orchestras have to be so nationalistic sometimes. Music is music and shouldn't have national bounds. Of course that's a different discussion for a different day.

This was the first time I had heard any of these pieces performed live (to the best of my memory), though most of them were familiar to me. I selected this concert primarily to see Gil Shaham perform live for the first time, with mixed results.

Beginning with Ibert's Suite symphonique, the Seattle Symphony was able to fill the auditorium with their sound. What I didn't like about this work's performance was the multimedia nature of it, with a film accompanying the orchestra. Seriously, just leave the bells and whistles at home and let's just have the music. Thankfully the pointless multimedia content only lasted one piece. Overall Morlot does a good job with the orchestra, though at times it does seem that the there is some discontinuity between the strings and the brass and they weren't always on the same page. The orchestra also seemed to struggle as a whole when there was the back and forth "boom chuck", particularly whoever was playing the off-beat notes at the time.

I was impressed with Gil Shaham's first two pieces on the program. His music was very warm, though it did lack a little brightness, and at times made it a little difficult for his sound to reach me (but when you're the soloist, you're supposed to reach everyone!). This also resulted in him occasionally getting drowned up by the orchestra. His final piece, the Carmen fantasy, on the other hand, was a near disaster. In addition to several mistakes, notably once near the beginning where he lost his fingerings and waited a measure to get back on, the piece overall was not very clean. Additionally, towards the end, the orchestra oftentimes was not with Shaham while suffering a bad case of those poor "boom chuck" patterns. Initially Shaham would be ahead of the orchestra, but in no time at all the orchestra was rushing past Shaham, almost as if trying to get off the stage first.

The orchestra reverted to its sound form for the final piece, though once again there was another small show. In his case, Stephens was made to look like a bee and Jarvis some kind of butterfly (not really costumes per se, but just wings and yellow stripes for Stephens and wings for Jarvis). Jarvis sang well and was able to fill the auditorium, but Stephens seemed to struggle projecting his voice into the audience, and was often drowned out by the orchestra when accompanied.

Overall the performance was pretty good, but not very good. Since I am a subscription holder, I'm hoping for some very good performances in the future, starting with another performance this coming Thursday featuring Tchaikovsky's piano concerto no. 1.