Today's Birthdays

Leopold Auer (1845-1930)
George Szell (1897-1970)
Ilse Wolf (1921-1999)
Philippe Entremont (1934)
Neeme Järvi (1937)
Sir Tom Jones (1940)
Jaime Laredo (1941)
Prince (Prince Rogers Nelson) (1958-2015)
Roberto Alagna (1963)
Olli Mustonen (1967)

and

Paul Gaugin (1848-1903)
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973)
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024)
Orham Pamuk (1952)
Louise Erdrich (1954)

Today's Birthdays

Sir John Stainer (1840-1901)
Siegfried Wagner (1869-1930)
Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978)
Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987)
Iain Hamilton (1922-2000)
Serge Nigg (1924-2008)
Klaus Tennstedt (1926-1998)
Louis Andriessen (1939-2021)
Paul Esswood (1942)

and

Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)
Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
Maxine Kumin (1925-2014)
Julian Mayfield (1928-1984)
Robert Pirsig (1928-2017)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1931, Henry Cowell's "Synchrony" received its premiere in Paris, at the first of two concerts of modern American music with the Orchestre Straram conducted by Nicholas Slonimsky and funded anonymously by Charles Ives. On the same program, Slonimsky also conducted the Orchestre Straram in the European premieres of works by Adolph Weiss ("American Life"), Ives ("Three Places in England"), Carl Ruggles ("Men and Mountains"), and the Cuban composer Amadeo Roldan ("La Rehambatamba").

Today's Birthdays

Arthur Somervell (1863-1937)
Robert Mayer (1879-1985)
Eduard Tubin (1905-1982)
Daniel Pinkham (1923-2006)
Peter Schat (1935-2003)
James Dick (1940)
Martha Argerich (1941)
Bill Hopkins (1943-1981)

and

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936)
Alfred Kazin (1915-1998)
David Wagoner (1926-2021)
Margaret Drabble (1939)
David Hare (1947)

Review: Vancouver Symphony delivers spirited Prokofiev, Adams, and Glass

Inés Issel Burzyrńska

A very full house lit up the Skyview Concert Hall on May 31 for the Vancouver Symphony’s season finale. Laughter added to the vibe during the introductory welcome when VSO Board Chair Carol Van Natta jokingly noted that she wakes up to All Classical’s Warren Black, who was emceeing the concert. Then an audience member shouted “You’re not the only one!”

Laughter from all corners of the hall erupted, and after things calmed down, Hal Abrams, the orchestra’s Director of Development, pitched the Vancouver Art and Music Festival (August 7 through 9), which will be adding quartet music at the waterfront to its schedule. With the addition of a sold-out concert on Sunday afternoon, things continue to look promising for the Vancouver Symphony.

Guest artist Inés Issel Burzyrńska highlighted the evening with an exceptional performance of Prokofiev’s “Concerto No. 2 in G minor for Violin and Orchestra. The 24-year-old Spanish violinist, who is pursuing studies at the New England Conservatory, coaxed a lovely singing tone from instrument. She executed numerous filigree passages with elan and her the final, high note at the end of the second movement shimmered enticingly. For the third movement, she dug in and exchanged dance-like passages with the orchestra, bringing the concerto to a fast, exciting finish.

The audience erupted into a standing ovation, and Burzyrńska responded with a wistful encore, “The Song of the Birds” by the great cellist and composer Pablo Casals.

Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, (From the New World) occupied the second half of the program, and it was conducted impressively from memory by Brotons. The first movement got off to a smashing start with crisp sforzandos and sharp attacks from the orchestra, although the trumpets entered too loudly. The lovely, melancholy melody in the second movement, enhanced through the English horn of Karen Strand, infused the hall with calmness and comfort. The horns struggled a bit in the third movement and that reduced the stirring quality of the music. The orchestra romped through the fourth with gusto, but again some intonation issues marred the impact of the finale. Overall, the spirit of the performance won out and the audience rewarded it with enthusiastic applause.

Brotons clearly loves the piece, conducting with great animation. But most of the dynamics were in the medium forte to double forte range. True pianissimos were few and far between. More dynamic contrast would have helped greatly.

John Adams “The Chairman Dances” (Foxtrot for Orchestra) opened the concert. It is an orchestral segment excerpted from Adams’ opera “Nixon in China” in which Richard and Pat Nixon reminisce with Mao and Madame Mao over earlier times. The minimalist style of the piece used a lot of repetition interrupted by shifting keys. The piece started fine with the strings fashioning a silky sound, but about halfway through it began to plod along rather than dance

When Brotons returned to the stage in the second half of the concert, he mentioned that he could have easily gotten lost in the score because of the repetitive style of the music; so that if he turned back two pages instead of one page on the repeat, he could have gotten easily get lost. The Vancouver Symphony is fortunate to have a top-notch conductor – who also composes fantastic music – who knows how to avoid such pitfalls.

Today's Birthdays

James Hewitt (1770-1827)
Evgeny Mravinsky (1903-1988)
Alan Shulman (1915-2002)
Robert Merrill (1917-2004)
Irwin Bazelon (1922-1995)
Oliver Nelson (1932-1975)
Anthony Braxton (1945)
Cecilia Bartoli (1966)

and

Josef Sittard (1846-1903)
Karl Valentin (1882-1948)
Robert Anderson (1917-2009)

Today's Birthdays

František Jan Škroup (1801-1862)
Charles Lecocq (1832-1918)
Jan Peerce (1904-1984)
Valerie Masterson (1937)
Curtis Mayfield (1942-1999)
Greg Sandow (1943)
Lynne Dawson (1956)

and

Josephine Baker (1906-1975)
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)
Larry Jeff McMurtry (1936-2021)

Today's Birthdays

James Cutler Dunn Parker (1828-1916)
Felix Weingartner (1863-1942)
Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Jozef Cleber (1916-1999)
Samuel Jones (1935)
Marvin Hamlisch (1944-2012)
Mark Elder (1947)
Neil Shicoff (1949)
Michel Dalberto (1955)

and

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

and from The New Music Box:

On June 2, 1938, Amy Beach began work on her Piano Trio while in residence at the MacDowell Colony. She finished the composition fifteen days later (June 18th) and published it as her Op. 150. It was to be her last major work.

Today's Birthdays

Georg Muffat (1653-1704)
Ferdinando Paër (1771-1839)
Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857)
Werner Janssen (1899-1990)
Percy Whitlock (1903-1946)
Nelson Riddle (1921-1985)
Yehudi Wyner (1929)
Edo de Waart (1941)
Richard Goode (1943)
Frederica von Stade (1945)
Arlene Sierra (1970)

and

John Masefield (1878-1967)
Charles Kay Ogden (1889–1957)
Albert Starr (1926-2024)
Naguib Surur (1932-1978)
Colleen McCullough (1937-2015)
Sheri Holman (1966)
Amy Schumer (1981)