Associated Musings

Happy New Year, everyone – I hope 2010 is off to a terrific start for all of you!

This coming Friday and Saturday, the 8^th and 9^th, the ISO’s series of popular classics, Symphonic Hits powered by Lilly, returns to the Hilbert Circle Theater stage, and of course, that also means the return of Sound Off, the preconcert event that I host one hour prior to each concert (AKA 6:30pm).

This week’s concert program is full of spectacular music, including a suite of excerpts from my favorite work by Sergei Prokofiev, his ballet music for Romeo and Juliet.  The excerpts for this suite were chosen by this week’s conductor, Andrew Litton, and I believe that these will be the first-ever performances of this particular combination of movements.  The concert also features Tchaikovsky’s warhorse Violin Concerto, with soloist Vadim Gluzman, and Tchaikovsky’s Coronation March.

The first couple editions of Sound Off have been a lot of fun, thanks in large part to your terrific participation and questions for me and my guests.  If you have a burning question about orchestras or symphonic music that you’d like to see me answer during our The Audience Wants to Know segment, please submit it by commenting on this blog post, posting it on the ISO Facebook page, or emailing it to soundoff@indianapolissymphony.org.   In the next few days, I think the ISO staff may be even posting a special free concert ticket offer on our Facebook page for the best question submitted, so be sure to check for that.

Here are some videos to kindle your interest in this week’s repertoire.  I couldn’t resist starting with what is probably the most novel performance of music from the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto that I’ve ever heard.  This is a young accordion virtuoso from Ukraine, Alexander Hrustevich, performing the 3^rd movement of the concerto, and playing both the solo part and accompaniment himself - it’s quite breathtaking:
 

And to balance that, here’s a classic “normal” performance of the first movement with the legendary David Oistrakh as soloist.  (This is only the first part of the movement, but the remainder of the movement, as well as the rest of the concerto, are easily accessible on YouTube).
 

Here is a performance by the famous Bolshoi Ballet of the scene ‘Romeo at Juliet’s Tomb’ from Romeo and Juliet.  This scene will not be included in this weekend’s performances, but I thought you would enjoy it.

And finally, here is a concert performance by Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic of the devastating ‘Death of Tybalt’, which will conclude the Romeo and Juliet suite in this weekend’s performances.
 

(These last two YouTube videos have "embedding" disabled, which means I can't post them inline here at the blog entry, but be sure to check out the links to view them directly on YouTube - they're both fantastic.)

See you at the symphony!