Concert in Leeds Town Hall

This Saturday, one of the last concerts of the Leeds International Concert Season took place. I really have enjoyed this season, attended many great concerts. This one today, the Budapest Symphony Orchestra under conductor Tamás Vásáry played four "war-horses" of concert pieces, that is very well known popular music which did not pose any risk of the audience not being receptive. The Leeds Town hall only had a few empty seats, it was almost fully booked.

The term "war" would apply to the first piece in a bit of a negative sense: Liszt's "Les Preludes" is a wonderful music as its own, but it has in my mind a negative connection: the joyous victorious fanfare theme that appears twice in it, was used from 1941-1945 in the German Wochenschau (weekly news reel) as the introductory "theme music" of the war against the Soviet Union. And since I have been very interested in history, this music theme creates in me an uneasiness, whenever I hear it. Poor Liszt - had he only known what his music had been abused for...

The 2nd piece in the concert program was the "Cello Concerto" by Antonin Dvorak, one of my all-time favorites. I never had heard it in a live concert before, I only knew quite well since the early 1990s the recording with Cellist Mischa Maisky and the Israel Philharmonic. When cellist Nina Kotova started to play her solo after the orchestral introduction, it seemed as if the acoustic properties of the Leeds Town Hall were not really supporting the sound of a cello - compared to the orchestra, her Stradivarius cello sounded a bit faint and had trouble to stand out on its own. However, the brilliant and emotional play by Nina was shining through anyway. Once I got used to the quieter than expected sound, it was a pleasure to listen to her phrasing, the vibrato, the wonderful singing music written by Dvorak for this instrument. At some times, the orchestra had a hard time to catch up to her interpretation.

During the break, a CD was sold with a recording of that Cello concerto (with the Philharmonic Orchestra under Andrew Litton), and Nina did sign the CD and concert programs. I briefly mentioned to her my interest in computer music and the integration of human artists with synthesizers - maybe there could be a joint work some time in the future...?

After the break another popular piece: Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. I knew this piece quite well, during my days in high school I had played some of it on piano in a transcription. The part "In the Hall of the Mountain King" was one of my more successful computer-synthesizer-based MIDI renditions back in 1999.

Then the last piece was Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite". I never had heard this piece in a live performance, but I knew it very well since more than 25 years. A splendid work, colorful, dynamic, with quiet and melancholic parts, and then with outbursts of energy. The orchestra translated the score very well into sound, and the conductor did his part on energizing the orchestra with intense gestures.

After the performance, three encores were given, the last one from Dvorak's Slavic Dances. In 1981 I had played this piece with my music teacher, on 4-handed piano. And in the years after that, I had also played it with my grandmother on her piano, when her hands were still a bit more flexible than now.

A great concert evening, with many memories for me back in time!