Taking Flight

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LSO!

London Symphony Orchestra

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

7:30 PM

Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor

"Four Sea Interludes" from Peter Grimes, Op. 33a - Benjamin Britten

Dawn: Leno e tranquillo

Sunday Morning: Allgro spiritoso

Moonlight: Andante comodo e rubato

Storm: Presto con fuoco

Concerto in F - George Gershwin

Allegro

Adagio-Andante con moto

Allegro agitato

Yujia Wang, Piano

-Intermission-

Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47 - Dmitri Shostakovich

Moderato

Allegretto

Largo

Allegro non troppo

This past week I had the pleasure of attending a performance by the London Symphony Orchestra, known in popular culture as being the orchestra that plays a lot of movie scores. The orchestra was led by MTT, one of the LSO's guest conductors, for his 70th birthday tour. I also noticed that he had previously worked with the soloist, most prominently during the first YouTube Symphony Orchestra.

Naturally, the LSO is much better than the Seattle Symphony-the orchestra is much more technically sound and plays much better as a unit. The orchestra flows as one body, and MTT, despite his age, was still very animated. The main issue I had with the performance was with the stage presence of the soloist. While she was very technically sound (and has some of the fastest fingers I have ever seen), it seemed she didn't know what to do when she wasn't playing the piano. I was almost afraid that she would trip and hit her head on something given how fast she went through her bowing motion. At least she wasn't as awkward as the pianist that played Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto earlier in the season. The concert did run very long with three total encores, and by the time the final note was played, only around half the audience remained-it seemed that people did tire a little bit towards the end, as three hours for a concert is longer than most.

A Dose of Contemporary

Catalyst Quartet

Thursday, March 19, 2015

7:30 PM

Karla Donehew-Perez, Violin

Jessie Montgomery, Violin

Paul Laraia, Viola

Karlos Rodreguez, Cello

String Quartet No. 1 - Charles Ives

Chorale: Andante con moto

Prelude: Allegro

Offertory: Adagio cantabile

Postlude: Allegro marziale

String Quartet No. 3 "Mishima" - Philip Glass

1957: Award Montage

November 25: Ichigaya

Grandmother and Kimitake

1962: Body Building

Blood Oath

Mishima/Closing

In Memory - Joan Tower

-Intermission-

Strum - Jessie Montgomery

Tenebrae - Osvaldo Golijov

String Quartet Op. 11 - Samuel Barber

Molto allegro e appassionato

Adagio

Molto allegro (come prima) - Presto

The Catalyst Quartet is a much younger quartet that likes to play a lot of contemporary music. Naturally I'm not a fan of contemporary music, but I did attend the concert since it is part of the Chamber Music Series and I bought tickets to see the entire series. While the musicianship was fine it didn't mask the overuse of dissonance that has been all too present in an effort to follow certain musical rules at the expense of the music just sounding good. What was interesting is that the Catalyst Quartet certainly lacked the stage presence of more seasoned quartets. For example, after they finished a piece, they would bow, sit down, bow again, and rearrange the violin players (the only professional quartet that didn't have set first and second violinists). It just seemed that outside of playing the music itself, the quartet wasn't really sure what they were doing, almost as if they were playing together for the first time and never really went over things such as bowing at the end of a piece. It really detracted from the performance and would make the Catalyst Quartet not worth a repeat attendance.

Sibelius Festival!

Currently the Seattle Symphony is in the midst of its Sibelius Festival, where it will perform all of Sibelius' symphonies and other select works over the course of several weeks. This past weekend I was able to attend the first series of performances featuring the first two symphonies and guest conductor Thomas Gausgaard.

Luminous Landscapes: Sibelius Symphonies 1 & 2

Saturday, March 14, 2014

8 PM

Thomas Dausgaard, Conductor

Finlandia, Op. 26, No 7 - Jean Sibelius

Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39 - Jean Sibelius

Andante, ma non troppo - Allegro energico

Andante, ma non troppo lento

Scherzo: Allegro

Finale (quasi una fantasia): Andante - Allegro molto

-Intermission-

Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43

Allegretto

Andante, ma rubato

Vivacissimo

Finale: Allegro moderato

With Dausgaard, the conductor of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, at the helm, this was easily the best performance by the Seattle Symphony I had witnessed thus far. Dausgaard brought a sense of excitement and energy that the orchestra had previously lacked, making the performance much less mechanical than previous performances. Dausgaard's passion and extensive knowledge of Sibelius was very apparent. Unfortunately I will be out of town for the remaining concerts of the series, but if you get the chance and are able to definitely find some tickets to the remaining concerts.

Restaurant Spending Now Outpacing Grocery Store Spending

Recently I came across some interesting data from the American Enterprise Institute on the food spending habits of Americans. For the first time since statistics were tracked, the amount of money that Americans are spending at restaurants outpaced the amount being spent in grocery stores for the first time this January.

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Naturally, since this comes from the American Enterprise Institute from a professor of economics, the primary issue that is addressed in the publication (and several others that note the milestone) is of the economic nature, in that the improving economy has lead to increased discretionary spending, and thus increased restaurant wages (the last part being a very recent trend). It's interesting that the social and personal aspect of this has more or less been ignored, particularly as to why this has just happened, instead of before the most recent recession (though trends from then also indicated that this would be happening).

First Business Class Flight! Asiana Old Business

The following is adapted from my trip report from Flyertalk, and will be split into two posts (one for each flight). These flights came at the conclusion of my winter trip to Australia and were booked on points, saving me a lot of money in the process.

Part 2 can be found here!

OZ602
SYD-ICN
Boeing 777-200ER
Seat 2D
January 2, 2015

I was sad to leave Australia and return to the relative cold of the US (and returning to work). However, I had been looking forward to these flights in particular due to it being my first time in a real premium cabin and flying a new airline (Asiana).

Our plane at the gate (Click to Enlarge)

Jerusalem Quartet!

Jerusalem Quartet

Thursday, February 19, 2015

7:30 PM

Alexander Pavlovsky, Violin

Sergei Bresler, Violin

Ori Kam, Viola

Kyril Zlotnikov, Cello

Quartet No. 59 in G minor, Op. 74, No. 3 "Rider" - Franz Joseph Haydn

Allegro

Largo assai

Menuetto: Allegretto

Finale: Allegro con brio

String Quartet No. 4, Sz. 91 - Béla Bartók
Allegro
Prestissimo, con sordino
Non troppo lento
Allegretto pizzicato
Allegro molto

-Intermission-

String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D. 810 "Death and the Maiden" - Franz Schubert
Allegro
Theme and Variations: Andante con moto
Scherzo: Allegro molto
Presto

This was a truly spectacular performance by the Jerusalem Quartet. The quartet was the most technically sound of all the chamber groups thus far this season; able to masterfully execute all the running passages and in particular the chaos that is the Bartók. I was very impressed with the cellist in particular. The quartet was also the most musically talented of the chamber groups this season, able to play as a group, covering the spectrum of musical expression. I was a huge fan of how they performed the Haydn and Schubert, and they at least made the Bartók bearable instead of the random jumbled mess of sound that it normally sounds like. Hopefully I'll get to see them perform again!

Theme Hospital

For a limited time, Theme Hospital is available for free on Origin (this is slightly old news). It's great that Origin is offering the game for free, but the bad news is that you have to deal with Origin.

Theme Hospital came out in 1998, long before I started any sort of gaming, but it comes from the era where games were much simpler (mostly because they couldn't be complex), but the games were still difficult. It's not like today's iteration of FPS games, where you have to memorize map layouts far in advance to beat the game at its highest difficulty levels bundled together with complex structures. With these older games there are only a few basic mechanisms, and really seem to relish in you failing (like trying to beat Super Mario on the SuperNintendo).

Theme Hospital, as the name suggests, is a game where you try to manage a hospital through increasingly difficult scenarios, trying to maintain a profit and happy patients combined with a few other objectives. It's actually a lot of fun and I'm having a difficult time putting it down...

The Importance of Conversation

...or more specifically, the importance of your conversation (to yourself, naturally).

I tend to people-watch when I'm on the bus (that is, when I'm not asleep myself), and I have a good 20-25 minute commute to and from work aboard the King County Metro's buses. It's always interesting to see what happens, and conversation tends to lead to interesting observations. Of course, these are not my conversations, but those of others.

The buses, particularly on the commute home from work, tend to be very crowded, and oftentimes the aisle of the bus becomes standing room. Naturally, when there are only a few seats left, and when friends get on the bus together, one person takes an available seat, and the other person, seeing that there are no nearby seats, stands in the aisle next to their friend to continue their conversation. Naturally, this happens while the bus is still on campus, with a good number of people still wanting to get on the bus. Of course, the second friend is standing in the aisle near the front of the bus and is always completely oblivious to the crowd that is gathering at the front of the bus. Almost always the person plugging the aisle will not move and instead makes everyone else pull a swim move to get around to access the rest of the aisle space to let everyone else actually get on the bus. It's always interesting that people think their conversations are so important such that they'll endure 30+ people to swim around them in the not so wide aisle over several stops. It always feels that people are so unaware of their surroundings, though these days I'm never surprised anymore (even when cops show up and arrest someone off the bus).

Naturally, this problem will only get worse, as King County Metro is continuing to reduce service due to an increase funding gap, resulting in a lot more swimming around unaware self-important undergrads.

Revisiting Perlman.

This past Thursday I had the opportunity to see Itzhak Perlman perform for the third time (I believe) and conduct for the first time. Naturally I was very excited to attend this concert.

Itzhak Perlman with the Seattle Symphony

Thursday, January 15, 2015

7:30 PM

Violin Concerto No. 2 in E Major, BWV 1042 - Johann Sebastian Bach

Allegro

Adagio

Allegro assai

Itzhak Perlman, Violin

Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80 - Johannes Brahms

-Intermission-

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 55, "Eroica" - Ludwig van Beethoven

Allegro con brio

Marcia funebre: Adagio assai

Scherzo: Allegro vivace

Finale: Allegro molto

Previously when I had seen Perlman perform, he actually came onto the stage on his motorized scooter. This time, he chose to walk on stage supported by two forearm crutches. While it was great to see his resolve, it often took a lot of time for him to get on (and off) stage, and the audience wasn't particularly great at sustaining the applause either. That being said, he is still more than capable of playing the violin, and played the Bach with the same warmth and technical dexterity that we have all been accustomed to over the years. His conducting wasn't of much note and I didn't feel it added much to the performance (and I pay to hear soloists play, not dabble in other things). I left slightly disappointed in the overall performance, mostly due to my high expectations coming in to the performance.