Feuermann Stradivarius Cello
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
Hear what the Feuermann Stradivarius cello of 1730 sounds like as Steven Isserlis plays it in a performance of a work by Saint-Saënsno, not “The Swan!”
During our first hour, the Argentine pianist Pablo Ziegler, the composer’s friend and long-time member of his quintet, joins the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra to play Astor Piazzolla’s “Suite Silfo y Ondine,” composed in 1968 on commission for a ballet. As the CD notes tell us, “tango is not merely a dance: it is an affirmation of life and love and romance.” Just a bit later, enjoy Mozart’s only Oboe Quartet, the one in F, K 370.
Crossing over into hour two: Camille Saint-Saëns’s Second Cello Concerto was written 30 years after his First, in 1902, and is not only beautiful but also fiendishly difficult to play. You’d never know that when listening to Steven Isserlis play it, since he makes it sounds gloriously easy. Christoph Eschenbach conducts the North German Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg. David Zinman conducts the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra in a zestful rendering of Beethoven’s delightful Symphony No. 8. And you won’t want to miss Trevor Pinnock’s direction of The English Concert from his harpsichord as they play Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1. Pascal Rogé is the pianist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, our last hour’s feature work—an audience favorite if ever there was one!
During our first hour, the Argentine pianist Pablo Ziegler, the composer’s friend and long-time member of his quintet, joins the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra to play Astor Piazzolla’s “Suite Silfo y Ondine,” composed in 1968 on commission for a ballet. As the CD notes tell us, “tango is not merely a dance: it is an affirmation of life and love and romance.” Just a bit later, enjoy Mozart’s only Oboe Quartet, the one in F, K 370.
Crossing over into hour two: Camille Saint-Saëns’s Second Cello Concerto was written 30 years after his First, in 1902, and is not only beautiful but also fiendishly difficult to play. You’d never know that when listening to Steven Isserlis play it, since he makes it sounds gloriously easy. Christoph Eschenbach conducts the North German Symphony Orchestra of Hamburg. David Zinman conducts the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra in a zestful rendering of Beethoven’s delightful Symphony No. 8. And you won’t want to miss Trevor Pinnock’s direction of The English Concert from his harpsichord as they play Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1. Pascal Rogé is the pianist in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, our last hour’s feature work—an audience favorite if ever there was one!
