Live classical music

The advantage of a CD over a live performance is that you can listen to the music anytime you want in the privacy of your own home and can take a break and repeat it whenever you fancy. But despite this advantage a CD will never get close to the experience of a live performance. First of all you miss the visual aspects, because you can't see the orchestra, the conductor, the solist and the interaction between those three and the interaction between the audience, but a CD at home also can't get close to the atmosphere and acoustics of a (good) concerthall. Of course when you watch a DVD with a live performance then you also get the visual aspects, but then you have to do it with what the director and the cameramen show you. And you don't know if the music or parts of the music on a CD/DVD have been edited/brushed up afterwards.

I realised this again a little more than two weeks ago when N. and I went to a clasical concert in The Hague. We went to a concert of the Residentie Orchestra, abroad also known as The Hague Philharmonic, conducted by Neeme Järvi. A Japanese friend of N. is a member of this orchestra and she invited us to come to listen to one of their concerts. She plays first violin at the orchestra and she also played beautifully at our weddingceremony six weeks ago.

On the programme of the concert were The violin concerto from Jean Sibelius and the First Symphony of Gustav Mahler, one of my favorite composers. The performer at the violin concerto of Sibelius was Nikolaj Znaider, a violinist from Denmark born in 1975 to Polish-Israeli parents, so still a quite young (compare to me everybody younger than 41 is young) , but very virtuoso performer. In 1997 Znaider won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, considered as one of the most difficult and toughest music competitions in the world.

Nikolaj Znaider gave an excellent performance. I don't know if it was the case, but the virtuoso performance that Znaider gave, made it look to me as if it didn't gave him no trouble at all. Maybe that's the characteristic of a true virtuoso if they can make it look like it doesn't give any trouble at all.

I was not the only one who appreciated his performance. The enthusiast response from the audience made Nikolaj Znaider gave us an encore.

Then there was a coffeebreak and after the break the orchestra came back with the First Symphony of Gustav Mahler. I already knew the First Symphony, but this was the first time to hear it live. The orchestra gave a very good performance and it was enjoyable to watch and listen to the orchestra.

After the concert we met up with N.'s friend from the orchestra. We spoke out our appreciation for the nice concert and performance. We decided to have dinner together, so we went to a nearby Japanese restaurant with N.'s friend from the orchestra, her partner, her partner's mother and another colleague from the orchestra. We had a lovely and tasty dinner. It was an excellent way to finish off a nice and very enjoyable afternoon and evening out. N's friend also said that if there were other future concerts that would interest us, she cold get us cheap tickets (only 5 Euro). We checked the orchestra's seasonprogramme and we know for sure that we will go to a few more concerts this season.

I couldn't find any video footage of Nikolaj Znaider, so I've add some videos from the three movements of the violin concerto of Sibelius played by another violin meastro Maxim Vengerov. Enoy it!

Mahler

Sibelius

Maxim Vengerov

Nikolaj Znaider

Venice (the band, not the city)

Friday May 25th N. and I went to a concert from Venice at Tivoli in our hometown Utrecht. For those who are not familiair with the music of Venice, the band makes music in the best West Coast traditions with strong influences from Crosby, Stills and Nash (& Young), The Eagles, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Beach Boys and also a bit from the bands where Crosby, Stills and Nash came from before starting CSN, namely The Byrds, Buffallo Springfield (also with Neil Young) and The Hollies. With all these influences it's not so strange that their music is very vocal oriented with melodic close harmony.

The band is very popular over here in the Netherlands. I guess one of the reasons was their first excellent performance in the Netherlands in 1998 in the programme TweeMeterSessies (Two Metre Sessions) from host Jan Douwe Kroeske, who is two metres tall, so that's where the name of the programme came from. A programme that originally started as a radioprogramme, but later also was broadcasted on TV. The radioprogramme started accidentally 20 years ago in 1987 with an unplanned more or less spontaneous acoustic session of the Austalian/New Zealand band Crowded House, who performed their well known hit "Don't dream it's over", which was the start of the Two Metre Sessions. This whole concept was more or less copied later by MTV when they start their Unplugged programmes in the 1989/1990 season with artist like Eric Clapton, Nirvana, Neil Young and many other artists/bands. The difference with the Two Metre Sessions was that most of the MTV-unplugged sessions were recorded with an audience and the Two Metre Sessions were mostly recorded in a radio- or sometimes sound studio.

But let's go back to the concert. I've been to a Venice concert two times before and everytime I went there was a nice and friendly atmosphere with a very mixed audience from old to young and also families with children. So besides a different setlist there was not so much different from the previous two concerts. But that's probably also the reason why people coming back to their concerts, the pleasant atmosphere and the constant music quality, which has always been a guarantee everytime I went to one of their concerts. We had a great night out and also my wife N. who didn't know anything of Venice enjoyed it. She only knew the two covers they played at the end: Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" and Stealers Wheel "Stuck in the Middle With You".

Thanks to the camcorderfunction of the mobile phone I'm able to show you some videos I found on YouTube from the Utrecht concert of Venice we went to. The quality is quite good. Good enough to get a good impression. Enjoy it! We certainly did.

The first video is "Everybody's opium", the second "Back to the Well" and the last one was their final encore "Stuck in the Middle With You".

More videos of their Holland-tour you can find at the Venice-website.

Venice