Experience an art installation at EMPAC.
Check out a comedy show at Proctors.
See a play at Curtain Call Theatre (pictured).
Hear an indie rock icon at Valentine's.
Or hear a singer-songwriter at the Egg,
Or some Canadian rockers at the Upstate Concert Hall.
Or some electronic sounds at MASS MoCA.
Go to the movies.
Prep for Sunday night's Oscar-cast by reading our preview and picks.
Or just stay in bed all day.
More famous in his lifetime for his virtuosity as a performer than his genius as a composer, Franz Liszt was widely regarded as the greatest pianist the world had yet heard. Given Liszt’s popularity, it seemed appropriate three decades ago when filmmaker Ken Russell titled a Liszt biopic Lisztomania (though casting Roger Daltry as Liszt remains a head-scratcher), and remains appropriate now, when Capitol Chamber Artists decided to dub this weekend’s Liszt bicentennial birthday concert Lisztomania, too.
Combining the music of Liszt with works by those he influenced, the program will include Liszt’s Tristia, the composer’s transcription of his La vallee d’Obermann for piano trio; Robert Volkmann’s Piano Trio in B Minor; Eugene Ysaye’s Bercuse; Cecile Chaminade’s Celebration of the Stars; Rodolphe Kreutzer’s Sonata for Violin and Cello; Joseph Joachim’s Hebrew Melody; and more, all performed on period instruments.
Pictured is pianist Aniko Szokody. Other performers will include Mary Lou Saetta, violinist; Irvin Gilman, flutist and Andre O'Neil, cellist and pianist.
Capitol Chamber Artists will perform tonight (Saturday, Feb. 26) at 8 PM at the First Congregational Church (405 Quail St., Albany). A preconcert recital begins at 7 PM. Tickets are $16 general admission, $8 students. For more info, call 458-9231.
East Coast Chamber Orchestra
Union College Memorial Chapel, Jan. 9
Once you begin doing something for a living, that occupation can achieve an other-ness that may make it seem a little less appealing. It’s nice to know that the musicians who comprise ECCO, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, enjoy getting together to play for fun. That’s a great thing for an artist’s personal benefit, offering a low-pressure forum for enriching one’s playing and exploring new repertory.
And, like most professional performing artists, they’ve parlayed this into a money-making opportunity with public concerts—and that proved a great thing for our benefit when they gave a concert at Union College’s Memorial Chapel last weekend, their third appearance in the venue’s venerable concert series.
Alicia Solsman
Saratoga Chamber Music Festival founding director Chantal Juillet said goodbye in August after 20 years at SPAC.
As the over-eager “crossover” nonsense simmers down, we suffer through fewer attempts at audience-pandering. Aside from Sting singing “Dowland” a few years back, which was terrific, I have heard much that seemed truly sincere.
Until getting my hands on Bruce Wolosoff’s Songs without Words (Naxos). It’s a set of eighteen miniatures for string quartet, played by the commissioning ensemble, the Carpe Diem Quartet. They asked the composer for “rock and jazz based music,” and he hit on the idea of improvising along with the 30-second samples you find online to familiarize himself with the sounds they sought. The resulting pieces aren’t rewrites, and they’re rarely even pay recognizable homage to their sources. Wolosoff produced an engaging and, dare I say, literate piece that does what classical music is supposed to do: give a more formal voice to the music of its day. And it’s a very fun disc to listen to. It’s at the top of my own gift-giving list.
Beethoven had no trouble working in the tunes he heard around him, and quotes and little jokes abound in his Ten Violin Sonatas, well served in a new recording by violinist Renaud Capuçon and pianist Frank Braley (Virgin Classics). Only a couple of these are ever heard in concert with any regularity, so it’s a treat to go through them all. What distinguishes this recording is what the artists don’t do: they don’t try to stamp the works with distracting over-interpretation. They serve the music well. And they share an easy-to-perceive excitement.
They can’t resist the lure of Schenectady.
Recently, the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra played one of only two U.S. dates in the Electric City. Now, internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn (pictured) and pianist Joseph Breinl will give one of only three U.S. recitals in Union College’s Memorial Chapel. (The other two are at Middlebury College and some joint called Carnegie Hall.)
Stotijn is a European favorite, having won the 2008 Dutch Music Prize and this year’s BBC Music Magazine vocal award for her recent Tchaikovsky recording. We presume she has sung for all remaining crowned heads of Europe, too. For this performance, she will sing works by Greig, Brahms, Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff.
Christianne Stotijn and Joseph Breinl will perform Saturday (Nov. 27) at 8 PM in the Union College Memorial Chapel (Schenectady). Tickets are $20 general admission, $8 area students. For more info, call 388-6080.
It’s probably safe to move Trio Cavatina from the “up and coming” category to the “fully arrived” category; they’ve been around for five years now, and they won the 2009 Naumberg Chamber Music Competition. Their performance tonight in Glens Falls, as part of the deBlasiis Chamber Music Series, is a regional return engagement, having received good notices for a performance at Union College.
The program for Monday night is pleasingly varied. Along with Clara Schumann’s Trio and Robert Schumann’s Trio in G-minor, they will perform contemporary works by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz Torres (Trifolium) and New Yorker—OK, Long Islander—Augusta Reed Thomas (Moon Jig, a work the composer calls “a kind of cross” between 20th century classical music and jazz).
Trio Cavatina will perform tonight (Monday, Nov. 15) at 7:30 PM at the Hyde Collection’s Helen Froehlich Auditorium (161 Warren St., Glens Falls). Tickets are $20, $10 students. For more info, call 793-0531.
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