A pile of terrific recordings coming in the mail these days … the latest courtesy of the good people at the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra: it’s the Metropolitan premiere performance, with the CYSO under the direction of Allen Tinkham, in Orchestra Hall last month. This is an absolutely fantastic performance, and you, gentle notebook readers, get to hear it here. The piece sounds great, the hall sounds great—I’m just kvelling over here.
Next Tuesday evening the CYSO performs the work again, at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic. It’s a bit of an odd venue, really. Well, it’s less of a venue, and more of a carpeted hotel ballroom. Let’s just say we’ll be concentrating on the music-making, not the aesthetics. And the audience will be a captive one, dedicated educators from around the country, and my sincere wish is that while enjoying the work, the piece bores a hole and plants the seed of rhythmic gymnastics in our country’s music curriculums. One can dream.
The program is chock-full—the Sibelius and Smetana carry over from the last concert, but now we add in Massenet and Rimsky-Korsakov. A little sprinkle of French dressing (Russian music is French, too, don’t let anyone tell you different) to lighten up the salad.
And I didn’t forget about the new Avenue X recording I mentioned early—a mastered version to tickle your ears is forthcoming…
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