Favorite or most memorable classical concerts you've attended

RBFC

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Apr 20, 2010
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Don't remember seeing a thread where we can all discuss the "best" classical concert(s) we've attended. I'll start:

1. 1969 George Szell (RIP) conducting the Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Severance Hall, Cleveland. This is the one that started it all for me.

2. Rudolph Serkin (RIP) playing Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph Von Dohnanyi conducting. The concert wasn't well attended, as there was concern that Serkin would cancel due to failing health. We were seated in the front row center of the dress circle (closest balcony with exceptional view & sound). Serkin came out after the "intro" pieces (including Beethoven's Fourth Symphony) and the place erupted like you were at a Van Halen concert. He put on a great performance, and I still get chills thinking about the energy in Severance Hall that night.

3. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra. Blew the roof off of the place, staggering performance.

4. Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert. Pinnock's rendition of the famous harpsichord cadenza in Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto was amazing. Bach had solicited the Margrave of Brandenburg for funds to purchase a new harpsichord, and wrote this to show off his new acquisition. Wow!

5. Christopher Hogwood (RIP) and The Academy of Ancient Music playing all sorts of early music. The Purcell piece was such an audience favorite, they came back out and reprised it as an encore. It was the Rondeau from Abdelazar: The Moor's Revenge.

6. Itzhak Perlman and Samuel Sanders playing duets at Severance Hall. We were sitting about 20 feet from them and it was a mixture of many composers, the Sarasate being a favorite.


There were many more, as my close friend at the time was sales manager for Warner Bros record division, and had left Telarc to take that job. I was fortunate enough to attend about 200 concerts over the years there. I'll post more as I get time (and manage to remember them....)

WHO'S NEXT???

Lee
 

Simon Moon

Well-Known Member
Apr 24, 2015
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Not the best, but the most memorable.

Every Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, there are some wonderful free classical concerts in an excellent venue, that go under the title "Sundays Live". They are a combination of performances by world class soloists, UCLA students, various youth performers, including from the Colburn School.

My girlfriend and I go often.

A couple of years ago, Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra gave a performance of Stravinsky's "A Solder's Tale". I love the piece, so I was really looking forward to this performance.

Little did we know, that the Solder was being played by none other than Jack Black, and the Devil was being played by the great veteran character actor, Michael Lerner (loads of movie and TV credits).

Not only did the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra kill it on the performance of this somewhat difficult piece, but Black and Lerner were extremely entertaining in their parts. There was also a great dance group performing the other parts, but I can not remember who they were. I believe they might have been from UCLA's dance school.
 

LL21

Well-Known Member
Dec 26, 2010
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Wow! that is some serious live entertainment! My wife and I went to listen to Endellion Quartet at Wigmore Hall...one of them was playing so ferociously at one point,
the string broke which was quite cool to see it hanging it out there while he kept on furiously playing away.

Was in Budapest for Easter, and managed to get box seats for the Mass in B at the Opera House which was an experience, if nothing else because it allowed my wife and I to compare to the versions we have at home.

Per RBFC, probably need to find a few more powerhouse productions to go listen to...because as your notes remind us, some of the greats will not be around forever (Bernstein, Hogwood, etc)

Don't remember seeing a thread where we can all discuss the "best" classical concert(s) we've attended. I'll start:

1. 1969 George Szell (RIP) conducting the Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Severance Hall, Cleveland. This is the one that started it all for me.

2. Rudolph Serkin (RIP) playing Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra, Christoph Von Dohnanyi conducting. The concert wasn't well attended, as there was concern that Serkin would cancel due to failing health. We were seated in the front row center of the dress circle (closest balcony with exceptional view & sound). Serkin came out after the "intro" pieces (including Beethoven's Fourth Symphony) and the place erupted like you were at a Van Halen concert. He put on a great performance, and I still get chills thinking about the energy in Severance Hall that night.

3. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra. Blew the roof off of the place, staggering performance.

4. Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert. Pinnock's rendition of the famous harpsichord cadenza in Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto was amazing. Bach had solicited the Margrave of Brandenburg for funds to purchase a new harpsichord, and wrote this to show off his new acquisition. Wow!

5. Christopher Hogwood (RIP) and The Academy of Ancient Music playing all sorts of early music. The Purcell piece was such an audience favorite, they came back out and reprised it as an encore. It was the Rondeau from Abdelazar: The Moor's Revenge.

6. Itzhak Perlman and Samuel Sanders playing duets at Severance Hall. We were sitting about 20 feet from them and it was a mixture of many composers, the Sarasate being a favorite.


There were many more, as my close friend at the time was sales manager for Warner Bros record division, and had left Telarc to take that job. I was fortunate enough to attend about 200 concerts over the years there. I'll post more as I get time (and manage to remember them....)

WHO'S NEXT???

Lee
 

bonzo75

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Feb 26, 2014
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My first classical concert was in 2000 (or 2001), my first year in the UK out of India. We went to Royal Opera House to watch Swan Lake - completely blown away. Since then have watched it many times including by Bolshoi, but no one does it as well as Royal Ballet. Have to watch Kirov.


Bach's St Mathews Passion seen this Easter at Manchester is probably my favorite, unfortunately it is played only on Good Friday.

Next will be the best renditions of Beethoven's 9th, done mostly at Barbican, with Haitink and Michael Tilson Thomas having done the best. At Royal Albert Hall it is awful.

Next are probably two of the best operas I have seen, Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman at Royal Opera House, and Purcell's Indian Queen (though here we had the best seats. Opera in London is very expensive unlike other classical concerts so good seats are tough to manage).

I would place these alongside my concerts at the Sheldonian in Oxford, which to me is the concert hall with the best sonics. While I cannot go there often due to the distance, everything I have seen there by their resident orchestra is great. It just has dream tone and acoustics and fluidity and everything that will make you want to go and get a SET horn. And for even as low as 10 quid though as Larry Toy found out the seating is tough on your back.

One of the best piano concerts I saw was by Nobuyuki Tsuji at Wigmore Hall, he is a blind Japanese pianist, and I have seen many piano concerts there but the sound and music he was producing was way more enthralling for me. Please watch him if you get the chance.
 

astrotoy

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May 24, 2010
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I started attending classical music concerts seriously when I was in college in the Boston area in the mid-60's. Many of the great performers would make annual visits to Boston to give recitals.

1. I made it a point to hear Rubinstein and Serkin each year that they performed, always in solo recitals.

2. Cliburn's recital in the Spring of 1966 was particularly memorable. I had been in a serious auto accident earlier that day and broke my glasses. Fortunately one of my roommates guided me to Symphony Hall for the concert. We immediately had to stand up (didn't take a knee) when Cliburn began his concert with the National Anthem (which I later found out was his normal practice.)

3. We had studied the Brahms f minor Piano Quintet in our freshman year - Music 1, Intro to Music. I bought the Columbia recording of the Rudolf Serkin and the Budapest SQ. A year later, 17 yo Peter Serkin (Rudolf's son) played the Brahms Quintet with the Budapest SQ who were then in their '60's. They played in Jordan Hall, part of the New England Conservatory, not far from Symphony Hall. Little did I know that they would disband within the next 3 years, with the death of Boris Kroyt, their violist.

4. My single most memorable concert was in Boston in 1965, seeing the Bolshoi (on one of its rare trips ourside the Soviet Union) perform Swan Lake with the incomparable "prima ballerina assoluta" Maya Plisetskaya. I went with 3 of my roommates, and we (and the audience) let out an audible gasp as she floated off stage at the end of Act II - moving her arms like the wings of the swan. I was fortunate to meet and talk briefly with Maya a few years ago in London. She was in the audience listening to a talk by her husband, composer Rodian Shchedirin. After the talk, I went up to her - and we chatted a bit - no one in the audience seemed to know who she was. Maya was about 85 or so - still with great posture, carrying herself as the great ballerina she was. She died in 2015 at the age 89. Look her up in wiki about her fascinating life. Also there are many youtube videos of her dancing. Too bad Kedar is too young to have seen, most probably, the finest female ballet dancer of all time.

5. The same year, the Royal Ballet also visited Boston. We saw another "prima ballerina assoluta" (there have been only 12 in the world in the history of ballet), Margot Fonteyn, dancing with the most famous male ballet dancer of the last half century, Rudolf Nureyev. Nureyev had defected from the Soviet Union in 1961 and this was about 4 years after he had come to the West. They danced a series of pas de deux, not a single ballet.

6. The Boston Opera company was directed by the eccentric Sarah Caldwell. The casts were mostly local singers, but Caldwell would bring in the occasional superstar. The performance I remember most was with Joan Sutherland singing Donna Anna in Mozart's "Don Giovanni." We were all waiting in the lobby for the doors to the hall to open - it was already past curtain time, when a large woman in a fur coat whizzed by me. It was Sutherland, obviously late for the performance. With Donna Anna appearing at the beginning of the first Act, they had to wait for her.

7. When I came for graduate school to Berkeley in 1967 (the summer of love - now being celebrated in its 50th anniversary year), I was given a ticket to the San Francisco Opera in the early Fall. It was my favorite opera, La Boheme, and I saw a young Italian tenor making his official US debut, Luciano Pavarotti, along with Mirella Freni as Mimi. Six years later they would record for Decca/London a wonderful La Boheme with Karajan conducting. Having never heard of Pavarotti at the time, I came out thinking that he was very good (and not as heavy as he later became.)

8. In 1985, on our first visit to London we heard two wonderful concerts. One was a solo piano recital by Vladimir Ashkenazy, and the second was a violin recital by the marvelous (and I think underrated) Kyung-Wha Chung.

9. We were able to hear the great pianist Ivan Moravec twice. Once in a solo concert in San Francisco (unusually it was at the Masonic Auditorium). Later, while in Prague, we stumbled upon a concert he was giving at the Rudolfinum with the Czech Philharmonic.

10. The summer of 1987 was very special. It was our first and only visit to the Salzburg Music Festival. There we heard Maurizio Pollini playing the Debussy Etudes, Frederica von Stade in a solo recital, Jame Levine conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in a performance of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" and many other great concerts. The highlight of the trip, however, occurred when we dropped off our daughter in Connecticut with my parents to babysit her while we were in Europe. My brother took us to visit Dave Brubeck and his wife Iola at their home, not far from my parents home. This was not a jazz event, but a classical one, since Dave spent much of the afternoon talking about and playing excerpts from the Mass that he had been commissioned to write for the visit of the Pope to San Francisco later that year. He explained how he was doing the composition, using the techniques that he had learned studying at Mills College with Darius Milhaud (for whom Dave named his oldest son.) My wife also got a chance to play Dave's 9 foot Baldwin grand.

Bonus. The last memorable concert was more for the extracurricular events than the concert itself. The date was January 24, 1982 in San Francisco. The date may bring back memories for SF football fans. It was the first superbowl for the SF 49ers. There were many returns for the Itzhak Perlman recital at Davies Hall (and the SF Opera going on next door) and the 49er Faithful wanted to see their team rather than Perlman. We easily got great tickets. What made the concert interesting, was that after every two or three pieces, when there was a break for applause, Perlman would go off stage and then return with the score, including the details of what had happened! So even non football fans were kept up to date.


That is enough for now. Since we attend about 70 classical music concerts a year these days, we get to hear many (most?) of the great performers either in the SF Bay Area or London. Next weekend we have three concerts with the Chicago Symphony and Muti. Locally we are lucky to have three world famous ensembles - The SF Symphony, the SF Opera and the Philharmonia Baroque- which we heard last Saturday.

Larry
 
Last edited:

miniguy

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Dec 18, 2013
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This is an easy one. May 2013. Davies Hall, San Francisco Symphony. All Stravinsky concert in celebration of 100th anniversary of scandalous premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps in Paris. Michael Tilson-Thomas conducting Agon, Violin Concerto with Gil Shaham and Le Sacre. Sat first row center. Earth-shattering experience.
 

RBFC

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Apr 20, 2010
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Albuquerque, NM
www.fightingconcepts.com
This is an easy one. May 2013. Davies Hall, San Francisco Symphony. All Stravinsky concert in celebration of 100th anniversary of scandalous premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps in Paris. Michael Tilson-Thomas conducting Agon, Violin Concerto with Gil Shaham and Le Sacre. Sat first row center. Earth-shattering experience.

I'll bet that was amazing!

Lee
 

Bachtoven

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May 10, 2015
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I go to at least 30 a year, and after a few decades, it's hard to remember some, but these stand out:

1979 or '80: Lazar Berman playing Liszt, Schumann, and Scriabin.
1988: Ivo Pogorelich playing Bach, Beethoven, and Ravel (that "Gaspard" might have been even better than his LP/CD!).
1990: Pogorelich playing the original version of Rachmaninov's Sonata No.2 (among others) and Balakirev's "Islamey" as an encore.
2010: Guitarist Jorge Caballero playing Bach and a transcription of Dvorak's "New World Symphony."
2012 (I think) Denis Matsuev playing the Rach 3 with Gergiev and the Marrinsky Orchestra.

Sometime during the 80s I heard Birgit Nilsson perform scenes from Wagner and Strauss...quite hair-raising!
 

RBFC

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
5,158
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1,225
Albuquerque, NM
www.fightingconcepts.com
I go to at least 30 a year, and after a few decades, it's hard to remember some, but these stand out:

1979 or '80: Lazar Berman playing Liszt, Schumann, and Scriabin.
1988: Ivo Pogorelich playing Bach, Beethoven, and Ravel (that "Gaspard" might have been even better than his LP/CD!).
1990: Pogorelich playing the original version of Rachmaninov's Sonata No.2 (among others) and Balakirev's "Islamey" as an encore.
2010: Guitarist Jorge Caballero playing Bach and a transcription of Dvorak's "New World Symphony."
2012 (I think) Denis Matsuev playing the Rach 3 with Gergiev and the Marrinsky Orchestra.

Sometime during the 80s I heard Birgit Nilsson perform scenes from Wagner and Strauss...quite hair-raising!

Wow!

Lee
 

bach_king

Member
Mar 10, 2018
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Northampton , England
In the Late 1970’s I worked for a large brewery and they sponsored a series of 6 concerts at the Royal Albert Hall with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in London. As an employee I could by tickets for 50 pence (approx one US dollar) anywhere in the house. I heard many memorable concerts there over the years but the standout ones were a live performance of Messiah with the LPO and chorus which was truly electrifying. This was a full bodied old fashioned performance with large forces not at all in the modern slimmed down period instrument style. The large choruses were truly mind blowing and took me to another place.

In the same series I heard Noel Rawsthorne, then organist of Liverpool Cathedral, playing Saint Saen’s 3rd Symphony once agin with the LPO which was magnificent. The organ is a Father Willis Instrument with 10,000 pipes and it was an experience that has stayed with me. A year or two later I heard Jane Parker-Smith play the same piece. She was a very attractive lady and she tended to wear dresses that were low cut at the back. That one too was very memorable but for different reasons. Very unfair of me to say that because she is a very fine organist.

More recently I went to hear the Mozart Reqiuem with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Northampton Bach Choir another superb experience. I find with really great concert I get lost in the music and don’t notice the passage of time. One minute the piece is starting and the next its over concert.

In 1989 I did my first consulting assignment at a food company on the south bank of the river Mersey. There I met a very pleasant chap who was a volunteer in Liverpool Cathedral. We were chatting no one day about music and particularly organ music and he told me that they had the finest organ in the UK and probably one of the very finest players - a then young man, called Ian Tracey. Eventually he persuade me to go to the cathedral to hear Ian Tracey play. I had to concede that he was right. It was the finest organ and organist I had ever heard. As a result I joined ‘Patrons of the Organ’ and I spend the next 25 years attending 5 or 6 times a year to hear Ian Tracey play. I estimate that I drove over 30,000 miles attending concerts in Liverpool.

I had better sign off now. I could bore for England on this subject.

David
 

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