The orchestra’s stuck in traffic? Leave it to the soloist
NewsOur correspondent Dan Yakir reports from Tel Aviv:
The Israel Philharmonic is a travelling orchestra. On top of performing in their home base at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv each subscription concert is usually played also in Jerusalem and Haifa.
On Monday evening the orchestra travelled by bus from Tel Aviv to Haifa (100 km) but the bus got stuck midway. The soloist of the concert Gil Shaham, who arrived early to play the Barber concerto, stepped up to give a 25-minute solo recital that included Bach Partita No. 3 for Solo Violin and an encore he played the night before in Tel Aviv. It’s a piece that was written especially for him during lockdown: Isolation Rag by Scott Wheeler.
After intermission, the orchestra arrived safe and sound and played under Andrés Orozco-Estrada the opening piece of the concert – Candide Overture by Bernstein – and the concluding piece: Symphony no. 5 by Shostakovich.
Gil is such a class act. Phenomenal violinist and one of the nicest and most genuine people in the business. Bravo!!
He really is.
He might be the only A-list soloist who regularly appears with regional orchestras. I’ve seen him play at some pretty random places and he gives the same level of commitment as he does when playing with the Cleveland Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, for example.
I’m glad to read that evaluation of Mr. Shaham. That his persona matches what is the real-world case is refreshing. Glad he’s NOT one of those persons who seems to be a pleasant person on stage but in real life is like an after-midnight-fed Gremlin. (LOL!) Makes me want to search out his next New York concerts just to hear him again.
It was a magnificent concert. Gil Shaham was on top form- fresh and youthful performances , full of inspiration and joy. And the IPO is in glorious form these days, working with top conductors and soloists.
the original concert (played in Tel -Aviv the night before) was sensational with a wonderful reading of the Barber violin concerto in the first half.
BTW do we know who was the horn player that inspired the composer to write this amazing solo at the beginning of the second movement (played amazingly by IPO’s deputy principal Dalit Segal)?
If we assume Barber wrote the Concerto with a premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra in mind (a fair assumption given who commissioned it), then the problem is the principal chair was undergoing transition around the time of the composing and the premiere. Perhaps Barber was thinking of Arthur Berv, who was lured away by Toscanini to join the NBC Symphony in 1938. Perhaps Mason Jones who served as principal horn 1939-41 until he had to serve in the Army. It is likely and perhaps certain the Mason Jones played the premiere with Albert Spalding and Ormandy conducting. Of course Jones had a long and storied career with the Philadelphia Orchestra after his military service was over.
But perhaps Barber also had the sound in his ear and mind of Anton Horner who also played in the Philadelphia, taught at Curtis, and was Mason Jones’s teacher as well as the teacher of many famed horn players in America.
Excuse me chaps, don’t you mean oboe solo?
that too…..beautiful writing for both
It did interest me, Gerry, to rhapsodize about the horn playing in the Barber Concerto slow movement but Oded was there and it must have struck him as wonderful enough to wonder.
Nobody asked but again assuming Barber was thinking of the Philadelphia Orchestra for the premiere of the concerto, that principal oboe was of course the matchless Marcel Tabuteau.
thank you so much.
I have been to the same concert, and agree. Gil Shaham’s playing was first rate, warm and colourful. The shostakovich 5th sometimes somber to the point of pain, always emotionaly powerful. Greate performance.
Given that it is an oboe solo in the slow movement of a violin concerto, Sam Barber was no doubt inspired not by an oboist but by Johannes Brahms.
Very probably. There is a story that Kriesler (?) missed his first entry in the Brahms slow movement on one occasion because he was captivated by the beauty of Leon Goossens’ oboe solo!
Interesting the fact that Orozco-Estrada was practically fired from the Vienna Symphony and gives great performances with the Israel Orchestra, according to the comments.
How bizarre! Gil Shaham played the Barber – and the first movement of the E major partita, as his encore – at a prom I attended, back in 2010: the one in which the world premiere of the Turnage/Beyonce Knowles piece ‘Hammered Out’ took place. His interpretation of the Barber was very heartfelt.
Good save, by him!
The next day in TLV a ravishing rendition of Barber in Shaham’s masterful hands and a spectacular performance of Shostakovich greeted by a thunderous standing ovation.