Oh, and the Emersons, of course. Sheesh. Can’t believe I overlooked them.

Another outstanding chamber concert last evening. I think we may have another favorite quartet to invite back to Ann Arbor repeatedly, along with the Takács, Jerusalem, and St. Lawrence Quartets and following in the footsteps of the great Guarneri and Juilliard Quartets.

The Smetana was outstanding, and I’m very glad to have heard the Haas. I don’t really need to hear it again, but it’s always refreshing when we can get off the beaten path, repertoire-wise. Excellent program and performance.

Thanks very much to UMS for bringing this festival to Ann Arbor! If I can make a small request for a follow-up, now that we’ve had this excellent performance of the Concord Symphony let’s see if we can book Jeremy Denk to come back sometime soon with the Concord Sonata.

But, I hasten to add, I think it was one of the highlights of the season thus far, regardless of how it fit into UMS’s marketing strategy.

My educated guess: The Hagen Quartet was offering a small selection of programs on their tour, and UMS decided to cram this one into their “Mavericks” concept. I’d bet just about anything that the program offered by the quartet had nothing whatsoever to do with the maverick theme.

Indeed. Standing ovations should be reserved for truly outstanding performances — no more than ten percent at most, in my opinion. Just because I don’t stand doesn’t mean the performance was a failure, but when I do stand it really means something.

I enjoyed the performance more than the others here, apparently — in fact, more than Maurice Steger and Les Violons du Roy last week. (For me a little Baroque noodling goes a long way.) I thought the program was nicely assembled, and I had always wanted to hear a basset clarinet in person, since I’ve heard so much about how Mozart loved it.

I’m certainly more interested overall in string quartets and piano trios, etc., but I’m glad to have this in my portfolio of performances attended.

Although I agree with the general sentiment expressed here (wonderful performance of a 20th-century masterpiece though the film misfired), I’d like to thank and congratulate UMS for taking a programming risk. Please don’t be dissuaded from taking another similar risk in the future. I’ll be there!

Nicely put, X.Y.

Thanks — I wondered if the last one was an improvisation!

Best. Encores. Ever.

Friend of UMS Alex Ross was here too, apparently:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2012/01/these-are-the-days-my-friends.html

I love the picture he has on this post. UMS should see about acquiring it for the archives.

Oh — that wasn’t Titus Andronicus?

In all seriousness, Richard III was great. The much more traditional production that we saw at Stratford (Ontario) back around 2002 couldn’t hold a candle to this one in terms of dramaturgy, directing, or acting. A winner for sure.

Oh, and by "second-rate Bartok or Shostakovich" I mean distinctly not "third- or fourth-rate". My comment above doesn't really capture how much I enjoyed it, which was a lot.

Still love that Brahms intermezzo, though. Wow. I was just listening to the Amadeus Quartet's old recording of it from the 1960s, and it's okay, but the Jerusalem was just inside that music tonight. Wonderful.

The intermezzo from the Brahms is my early candidate for the highlight of the year.

Kudos also for touring with the Kopytman. I'd never heard of him before, but that quartet was worth hearing at least this once. Yeah, it's kind of second-rate Bartok or Shostakovich with a little klezmer thrown in, but it held up well in this program, I thought.

Congratulations to UMS for putting together such a great program over the past two evenings — very fitting for the original concept and interesting and rewarding in its own right as well. Let's get more recitalists who can put together an enlightening program and back it up with the musical chops as well. Great job.

Bravo! One of the highlights of the year so far, along with the Schubert program last month (honorable mention to the St. Lawrence String Quartet too). It seems that when Britten is on the program it usually turns out to be the highlight, and that was true here too. Wispelwey's Bach was, for me, a little too light of touch and too somber at the same time, but that's just my taste. The Britten — the first suite was new to me, the third wasn't — however, was spot on. And his verbal introductions were very helpful and informative. I dearly hope he agrees to return sometime despite how rudely he was treated by a segment of the audience midway through the second half.

Disregard the first two sentences in the original post above. My previous comment has been restored — and with a nice email from a UMS staff member explaining why it disappeared temporarily, which had nothing to do with censorship.

Arg — second question mark. To bed!

Sorry — Change the first question mark to a period. Maybe I need to hit the hay! 🙂

So is commenting on disruptive children — which is *not* to say that all children are disruptive; not at all — out of bounds here? My previous comment on that with regard to the Friday evening concert seems to have been deleted. I think it's a serious issue that needs to be addressed before other excellent performances are marred by children who shouldn't have been forced to try to sit through something they couldn't reasonably expect to? Can UMS do more to educate parents about what kinds of performances are best for their children — in other words, best for their particular family's interests and characteristics?

No such problems tonight, I'm happy to report — and we had another very good performance. I thought the end of the symphony was drawn out a little further than the music could bear, and it seemed a little on the tame, cautious side, but — wow — what detail MTT brought out throughout the piece. These folks are always welcome guests here in Ann Arbor.

Agreed — great performance. Too bad it was marred (for me) by some very disruptive kids in the row ahead of me who were way too young to be able to sit still through a concert like this. In fact, it seemed like there were a lot of kids there tonight. Did UMS do some sort of outreach to schools or something?