I’ll admit it. I’m one of those people for whom the internet has almost replaced television. Other than sports and the occasional Discovery Channel binge, I spend way more time watching video online these days than I do in front of my high-def TV. For a while, this perplexed me – my TV boasts a considerably higher picture quality than my Dell laptop, and the screen on my computer is 1/3 the size of the TV. So how had I arrived at a place where I’d rather click through an endless series of YouTube clips than check out the latest AMC drama that everyone’s talking about?
The answer seems to come down to music, as it usually does with me. TV has always (in my lifetime, anyway) been averse to showing live concerts on anything approaching a regular basis (no, the musical guests on Letterman and SNL do not count as “concerts,”) and the advent of online video has unearthed a gold mine of performances old and new, across every conceivable genre. And since musicians tend to be the type to immediately pass a particularly cool clip along to literally every other musician they know, I’m usually awash in clips that someone else thinks I have to see.
Usually, I don’t bother posting them here – after all, it’s a good bet that, if I’m being sent that clip by a dozen friends, you’ve probably seen it too. But a combination of professional awe and viola pride is telling me to post this one. It’s a live performance of Bach’s 6th Brandenburg Concerto (the one every violist knows and loves – no violins!) by something called Orchestra Mozart, which I confess I’d never heard of. They’re based in Bologna, Italy; their leader is the esteemed (and seemingly ageless) Claudio Abbado; and based on the playing of Danusha Waskiewicz and Simone Jandl, they have a viola section to be reckoned with!
Here’s the last movement. Cue 95% of you public radio listeners slapping your foreheads and exclaiming, “Oh, that’s the music they play just before Garrison Keillor’s show starts every week!”
Honestly, that performance makes me want to go practice. And as any professional musician will tell you, that’s saying something…
(Hat tip to Margot Schwarz of the Milwaukee Symphony for bringing these to my attention…)
Absolutely! Great performances, and the highest compliment I’ve ever gotten was after I played through my repertoire for an audition a few months back, and my principal (and stand partner) said that he really felt like he needed to practice. Another person in our section also likes to say “it didn’t suck” as his palm d’or.
I’ve been known to use that last one myself…
Was having a rough night, but no longer – Bach always makes me smile!
Wonderful performances! What instruments are the two seated players to the left of the stage playing? I thought they were cellos at first but at least one of them has five, if not more, strings.
(And it’s good they were allowed to finish unlike these poor folks in Rome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Nx-LA8QdZc )
RN, those are viole da gamba, which were already somewhat anachronistic in Bach’s time, but still in use. The viola da gamba family (there were several sizes/registers) was the forerunner to the modern string family.
These days, most performances of Brandenburg 6 would use cellos for the gamba roles, but with the period music explosion of the last few decades, good gamba players are again available in many cities. Bologna obviously has some…