The Latin Way
Zukunft@BPhil

BPO On The Cheap

LogoFor all those who aren't able to make it to the BPO's bi-annual concerts at Carnegie this week (yes, they do come every other year, not just when Carnegie decides to put on a festival), WNYC (93.9FM) is broadcasting tonight's concert live. (For those not in NYC, you can pick up the webstream here.) On the program is Thomas Adès' Tevot and Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. Rattle often does this sort of program: new, somewhat challenging work followed by established masterpiece. I remember the first time I saw him was in 2003 in Vienna, where he programmed Varese and HK Gruber on the first half, Ein Heldenleben on the second. One Viennese patron in her 30's approached me at intermission and said: "That music was really quite terrible. But the Strauss, it is very beautiful." Guess it all depends on your perspective...

I'll be in the house on Friday for the BPO's final concert, featuring György Kurtág's Stele and Mahler's 10th Symphony, a piece that Rattle and the orchestra have recorded and pretty much own. Kind of a short concert for a $102 Dress Circle ticket, but I guess it's slightly cheaper than what it would cost to fly to Berlin...

P.S. (9:20p) During the intermission feature, WNYC had a taped segment with Rattle, which made note of his practice of admonishing his audiences for coughing. (He gave a death stare to one particularly-croupy patron on Monday during the Shostakovich.) When asked about it, he basically ripped us a new one:

"Nowhere are audiences more abmoniable than in New York. It's a loud city, and people bring that loudness into the concert hall. I know they don't really have a vendetta against us - but it sure sounds like they do."

Amen to that.

P.P.S. (10:02p) Ok, we redeemed ourselves (somewhat) by leaving a long silence after the Mahler ended.   

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