bemf round 4-8: concerts @ Jordan Hall

After Ulisse I pretty much camped at Jordan Hall for the rest of the week attending some SUPERB concerts!! Here’re some bullet-format comments, with some updates coming later today once I retrieve photos from the camera (Edit 24.jun.2015: now photos added:)

Thursday 11/Jun/2015 at 5pm: 20 lutes! great fun!! check out a glimpse of their encore 🙂

Thursday 11/Jun/2015 at 8pm: Monteverdi Vesper 1610
– This was the first concert i contemplated skipping due to irrelevant reasons.. And of course stern Stray friendly suggested I shouldn’t.. Indeed it turned out a GREAT evening, loads and loads of arrangements of all sorts of voices with various instruments in the orchestra. At first I was clueless, thinking it was a form of mass.. until a friend mentioned it’s a series of “evening songs”, which entirely made sense the constant musical-chair rearrangements of singers (the fact that the pieces are not connected but rather somewhat independent, and one just need to rearrange to get the proper number + type of singers and instruments in the same corner). Superb singing, in many occasions almost a-cappella.

Saturday 13/Jun/2015 at 2.30pm: Royal Academy of Music and Juilliard415 playing Bach:
– I was late for this one, because the weather was gorgeous outside and there was a pride parade going on!! After dragging Stray along to see some floats and contemplating skipping the concert, Stray sternly recommended that I not skip :-). And it would have been a HUGE mistake! Given my listening background, it was the BEST concert. Finally i get it: if you want to listen to Bach, this is the type of orchestra and singers you need!! It makes a huge difference! You realized immediately why Bach music is so powerful! I *love* duets between voices and oboes. Also memorable was 1 duet with the horns. Post concert I was on my walk out when overheard our soprano is from Belgium and that it’s a very international orchestra + chorus.

Saturday 13/Jun/2015 at 11pm: BEMF Chamber Ensemble and Dark Horse Consort:
– superb _whatever_ you call the fancy woodwind instruments next to the lovely baroque horns (I LOVE those horns too, sounds so low key), and also fantastic drums! They brought out the dancers in generic period costumes so I spent my time enjoying the violinists instead..

Sunday 14/Jun at 12:30pm: Michael Form and Friends playing Vivaldi(ana)
– How about a bassoon solo!! and bassoon – recorder duet! the entire concert was great but i must say the best piece is Vivaldi RV 86 which gave full lines of music to the bassoon — Mélanie Flahaut, our bassoonist played several trills!! She then joyfully duetted with the recorder, simply superb. They received very loud and well deserved applause and hollers from the audience.

This was to be my last concert.. until I decided to walk next door to purchase a ticket for Poppea.. But let’s summarize here: it was a superb week with top quality music! Am happy to finally get a hang of this to understand which concerts / groups I should see. The only regret is the missing of Jordi Savall.. the things we learn :-).