Matt Ingenthron's Stream of Consciousness

Sunday November 26, 2006

Dvorak 7 and new John Harbison work at LA Phil

Saturday the 25th brought another in the LA Phil concert series. At first I was thinking of trading the ticket, but a performance of a new John Harbison piece was compelling enough to keep it. I'm not a huge fan or anything, I just like to tickle the synapses with something different more often than not.

I did enjoy the Harbison Bass Concerto. Yes, I did say Bass Concerto. It was hard to hear the bass during particularly subtle moments, but in general, it was a nice diversion from some of the other concerts. I did attend the pre-concert lecture, where the soloist and Mr. Harbison spoke about the thoughts behind the piece and solos for such an instrument. There was a bit of an in-depth disucssion of how different musicians tune the instrument (in 4ths or 5ths) and how people hold the bow that was interesting, but not as interesting as other topics from these folks could have been I'm sure.

I have to say, the Dvorak was better than I thought. I could live without the first two movements, but I very much liked the third, and the fourth was a good closer.