Yoshi Kato December 16, 2020Updated: December 17, 2020, 7:06 am
When Sarah Hicks took to the podium on the stage of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas during Labor Day weekend, the San Francisco-based conductor became one of the first musicians in the U.S. to lead an indoor orchestral performance during the pandemic. It was a subscribers-only program featuring members of the brass and percussion sections of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, plus concert organist Bradley Hunter Welch as the guest soloist.
“It was really interesting,” Hicks recalls, talking to The Chronicle by phone back home in Pacific Heights. “It was a reduced ensemble, and there were between 50 and 75 people in the audience completely spread around the hall, which holds over 2,000 people.”
Yoshi Kato December 16, 2020Updated: December 18, 2020, 7:09 am
Sarah Hicks with the Minnesota Orchestra in 2017. Photo: Courtney Perry
The challenges musicians face to keep their skills sharp and make a living during the pandemic have been well-documented. But conductors have an extra set of obstacles.
Unlike their comrades who play within the symphony, they can’t spend their sheltered-in-place hours practicing their instrument, which is the orchestra itself. The technology is still being perfected for fluid remote performances by just two musicians, and those multi-panel viral videos of classical instrumentalists playing a piece together are marvels of digital editing as much as of performance. The postproduction combining of individual instrumentalists, while its own art, is the antithesis of live conducting.
3 pm ET: London Philharmonic Orchestra presents
All the World’s a Stage. The LPO celebrates Brett Dean, their new Composer in Residence, with the UK premiere of
The Players. The scene is Elsinore, setting of Dean’s opera
Hamlet, with the solo role played by accordion player James Crabb. The concert begins with Bach’s
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and ends with Stravinsky’s mock-Baroque
Pulcinella. View here.
6 pm ET: Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presents
Mark Steinberg, Marcy Rosen, and Jonathan Biss play Beethoven. Celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday as three chamber music luminaries play a program of early masterworks: Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 5 No. 2, Violin Sonata in A, Op. 30, No. 1, and Piano Trio in G, Op. 1, No. 2. View here. LIVE
Minnesota Orchestra will live stream concerts through March
In-person concerts at Orchestra Hall through March have been canceled or postponed.
Author:
The Minnesota Orchestra will continue to live stream its concerts through March 2021, with all in-person performances canceled or postponed.
The orchestra announced on Friday a revised concert calendar for January-March 2021, which will offer four Friday night concerts designed for at-home viewing that will air live on TV, radio and available to stream online.
Music Director Osmo Vänskä will conduct three of the four concerts (Jan. 15, Jan. 29 and March 19), while guest conductor Juraj Valčuha will lead the Orchestra on March 5.
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