The Esoterics are back this Sunday with the same program as the Carter/Messiaen concert canceled last month because of snow. Even though Elliott Carter and Olivier Messiaen’s centenary has come and gone, this is still a concert worth checking out. Of the pieces on the program, Messiaen’s Cinq Rechants is for me the programs main draw. People who have sung the Rechants confess it is one of the hardest but most rewarding pieces in the choral repertoire.
Sunday is busy with the Seattle Philharmonic playing Khachaturian’s 2nd Symphony. Unlike Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Khachaturian was an enthusiastic communist. Even his zeal for the ruling party in the Soviet Union couldn’t keep him from being dubbed a “formalist” and “antipopular.”
Elisa Barston, the SSO’s principal second violin, kicks off the orchestra’s new chamber series. It is good to see the orchestra members given a chance to shine in recitals they put together. It is also good to see chamber music is becoming a sustained presence at the Nordstrom Recital Hall. First, there is the complete Beethoven string quartets, and now a series of chamber recitals running through the middle of June.
There is even still time to catch the Seattle Opera’s last few performances of George Bizet’s Pearl Fishers. You can’t help but like Bizet and if you think you can just pick up a recording of the opera at Silver Platters you will be disappointed. The Pearl Fishers, unlike, Carmen, is not well represented on CD. Go and hear the Pearl Fishers now!
The San Francisco Symphony scored high in Grammophone’s recent ranking of the world’s orchestras. Michael Tilson Thomas brings two programs that have their high points as well as their low points. On Tuesday, Brahms’s 1st Symphony and Alban Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra. Wednesday, Thomas programs his own piece along with Prokofiev’s 5th Piano Concerto. Wrapping it all up is Tchaikovsky’s sternly resolved 5th Symphony. Given the orchestra’s recent recording success with Mahler, I am little surprised MTT didn’t pack up the score to say Mahler’s 5th or even 7th Symphony. There are still seats available to both of these concerts.
