Thursday, April 26, 2007

Lloyd Schwartz, the lost Australian Chamber Orchestra review

Australianchamber
The Australian Chamber Orchestra

It took a little digging, but I finally came up with Lloyd Schwartz's complete Boston Phoenix column from this week. The print edition was edited and his review of our Australian Chamber Music concert (with cellist Pieter Wispelwey) didn't make the cut - except online. So after wandering around the Phoenix cyber-forest a bit (ok, a lot), I found it. Here's a clip before I give you the link:



"The ACO doesn’t limit itself to earlier music. The second half was devoted to Tchaikovsky’s large-scale Souvenir de Florence, a string-orchestra arrangement of the composer’s late string sextet. This got an exuberant performance, alternating between melancholy, very Russian folk music and scampering, will-o’-the-wisp evanescence, with one of Tchaikovsky’s prettiest tunes in the slow movement. Everywhere there’s lots of pizzicato. The Debussy encore, a transcription of the piano prelude La fille aux cheveux de lin (“The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”), ended with Tognetti’s tone disappearing into the stratosphere. Another transcription, a movement from William Walton’s String Sonata (which Tognetti informed us had its premiere in Perth), couldn’t have been a more energetic and energized conclusion."



The audience was thrilled to find they had a celebrity in the audience. As Lloyd describes:

"Also garnering enthusiastic applause was a member of the audience, soprano Dawn Upshaw, who’d had to cancel her February recital and couldn’t be rescheduled. She was introduced from the stage by Celebrity Series president and executive director Marty Jones, and she looked radiant. "

Lloyd Schwartz's complete ACO review (I've skipped ahead to page two for you)



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