by Nicholas Stevens
As Yo-Yo Ma stood, wincing and stretching to applause after playing Bach’s Cello Suite No. 3, the wonder of the situation hit home. Well over 10,000 people — maybe twice that number, depending exactly how many picnickers had crowded onto the lawn — had gathered at an outdoor pavilion on a Sunday evening to hear a continuous 140-minute recital. These thousands of paying visitors had driven miles from their homes to hear a single musician play a single set of 300-year-old dance suites on a single instrument, alone onstage with nothing but blue lights as a backdrop. If anyone ever tries to tell you that classical music is dead or dying, then that person is trying to sell you their latest book. [Read more…]
Straightforward though the concert experience may seem, myriad issues can intervene between performers and their audience. Programming is an art unto itself, and vagaries of context, time of day, and location can obscure the great music-making at the heart of an event. The July 15th performance on the Kent Blossom Music Festival’s Student Concert Series, hosted by the Hudson Library and Historical Society, illustrated as much. Each of the fourteen string players showed exceptional skill and experience as they performed, but the repertoire — along with the venue — conspired against them.
