Bass Blog

Michael Hovnanian formerly played bass with an orchestra located in a large midwestern city.

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Tuesday, November 07, 2006

No Muti

The coming week of CSO concerts suddenly became less of a happening when Ricardo Muti cancelled his appearance due to illness (apparently the flu). There has been a lot of buzz about Muti as a candidate for music director here. However, he has not conducted the CSO in over 30 years (1974?) so it is more based on hype than first hand knowledge. Still, Muti is probably the ‘biggest’ name circulating about as heir to Barenboim. Missing his only scheduled opportunity to conduct us this season must throw a monkey wrench into the whole search process.
So the program this week has changed from Muti conducting

BRAHMS Symphony No. 2
INTERMISSION
HINDEMITH Nobilissima visione
SCRIABIN The Poem of Ecstasy

to Ludovic Morlot conducting

SCHUMANN Overture to Manfred
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 21 (Jonathan Biss)
INTERMISSION
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4

Click here for some ruminations on fingerings for the Tchaikowsky

In addition, a special ‘non subscription’ concert on Thursday evening has been cancelled. Evidently whoever arranged the concert wanted Muti or nothing so we get the night off. I can’t remember anything like that happening before. In fact this has turned into one of the lightest workweeks at the CSO I have ever seen – only four services.


My work week


Monday
9:30 – 2
Bass Quartet recording session

Tuesday
11 AM teaching

Wednesday
1:30 – 3:30
4:30 – 7
CSO rehearsals

Thursday
10 – 12:30
CSO rehearsal

Friday
11 AM
teaching
2:15 – 3:45
Bass sectional(Roosevelt)
5 PMteaching
8 PMCSO concert

Saturday
and Sunday off


The bass quartet is the Chicago Bass Ensemble, a new group with no website yet that I know of. The other members are Jacque Harper, Doug Johnson, and John Floeter, all Chicago area freelancers. We are recording a demo with the first movement of Bass Quartet #2 by Jan Alm, some arrangements of choral pieces by Hindemith, and a couple Renaissance pieces. I think the sectional at Roosevelt will cover Beethoven 5 and Stravinsky Pulcinella although I suppose I should look into that before Friday.

2 comments:

Karajan fan said...

Nice, very interesting.

Anonymous said...

Hey Michael: thanks for the Chicago Bass Ensemble plug. I've just begun to get the website up: www.chicagobassensemble.com .

-Jacque