Ballet of the Dolls
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
In what ballet do tourists purchase two mechanical dolls from a French toymaker, only to have all the dolls revolt so none of them has to leave the shop?
In 1918, Diaghilev asked Ottorino Respighi to orchestrate some music by Rossini for the Ballets Russes; the result was “La boutique fantasque” (known in English as “The Fantastic Toyshop”). And fantastic is the word for the performance by the Cincinnati Symphony under Jesus Lopez Cobos. But you’ll hear that after the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony brings us a revelatory performance of George Rochberg’s “Transcendental Variations” under conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee, who writes: “[It] has everything to do with Rochberg’s vision of time, or rather timelessness; ...Whilst toying with ancient mysticisms, it is in the end enclosed in its own impenetrable mystery.”
It’s Antonio Salieri’s birthday (1750), so we celebrate by listening to his Concerto in C played by fortepianist Andreas Saier and the Concerto Koln. Richard Goode, another fantastic (to reuse a word) performer, brings us Schubert’s Piano Sonata in D, D 850.
Our last hour brings us “Rapture” indeed—as we hear Michael Torke’s eponymous percussion concerto, featuring Colin Currie. Torke says the transcendence he means to invoke through brutal and ritualistic drumming involved is “a kind of rapture that unites the religious with the sexual.” Wow!
In 1918, Diaghilev asked Ottorino Respighi to orchestrate some music by Rossini for the Ballets Russes; the result was “La boutique fantasque” (known in English as “The Fantastic Toyshop”). And fantastic is the word for the performance by the Cincinnati Symphony under Jesus Lopez Cobos. But you’ll hear that after the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony brings us a revelatory performance of George Rochberg’s “Transcendental Variations” under conductor Christopher Lyndon-Gee, who writes: “[It] has everything to do with Rochberg’s vision of time, or rather timelessness; ...Whilst toying with ancient mysticisms, it is in the end enclosed in its own impenetrable mystery.”
It’s Antonio Salieri’s birthday (1750), so we celebrate by listening to his Concerto in C played by fortepianist Andreas Saier and the Concerto Koln. Richard Goode, another fantastic (to reuse a word) performer, brings us Schubert’s Piano Sonata in D, D 850.
Our last hour brings us “Rapture” indeed—as we hear Michael Torke’s eponymous percussion concerto, featuring Colin Currie. Torke says the transcendence he means to invoke through brutal and ritualistic drumming involved is “a kind of rapture that unites the religious with the sexual.” Wow!
