| Jan. 4th, 2003 @ 09:27 pm Rusty. Not. |
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New Year's Concert in De Doelen. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra was conducted by HK Gruber, well-known for promoting modernistic composers, especially Kurt Weill. February 3rd was also Gruber's birthday, another motivation for Gruber; in the programme notes he promised real musical fireworks.
Like I noticed before, Gruber had to enthuse the orchestra because the first two works by Stravinsky (Feux d' Artifice) and Hindemith's seldomly performed Ragtime, op. 20 were a little bit tame. Antheil's definitively modernistic dadaist A Jazz Symphony, started tiresome too, but then out of the blue Gruber got the upper hand, giving the audience something that matched the performance of the same work on Ensemble Modern's Antheil CD (conducted by him). And then it only got better, with Stravinsky's Tango, Johan Strauss jr's Perpetuum Mobile, interesting only because it was performed well and followed by Gruber's mockery of this piece in Charivari. The last piece before the break was an early jazz piece by Bernstein - an accessible piece; like the Strauss piece to attract a larger audience. Not my cup of tea, but well conducted and performed nonetheless.
After the break, only pieces by Weill were performed. Most of the pieces were original dance band arrangements from the twenties, mostly scored by Weill himself. Quite interesting to see and hear a philharmonic orchestra playing the Weill "tunes", a pot pourri of Dreigroschenopersongs (sung by Gruber himself - with a great off-tune saxophone howling Moritat von Mackie Messer), Berlin Im Licht, two American songs (Speak Low and Green-up Time). I haven't listened my Weill recordings much lately, which I especially regretted when the ouverture and "Der Backer backt ums Morgenrot" of Weill's Silbersee opera were played. Der Silbersee, Weil's last German opera, is a parable on the Nazi system and shortly after its first performance, it was quickly branded by the German Kultur Gestapo as "Jewish", "Bolshevist" and "Degenerate art". Gruber also did an encore of presumably a lost Weill piece. Or it may have been a composer influenced by Weill, because I didn't understand Gruber's funny English.
Next concert is Mahler's Symphony No. 7. |
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