Thursday, November 11, 2004

Sir James Galway... yet again

Ok, Galway isn't as good as I thought now.

First of all, he should just stick doing what he do best, performing on flute. Please stay away from conducting!

His conducting was simply disastrous. There was no musical idea in it and they might as well have a metronome at the conductor's podium because all he did was to wave his baton around in strict regimental style. It reminds me of the way our Senior Director of Music conducted the NDP. Conducting a parade and concert are very different!

And what was he doing? Turning around when he has nothing to play on his concerto to conduct the orchestra? It's so apparent that no one was looking at him. In fact, I thought he looked rather silly. It looks like he was following the orchestra, instead of the orchestra following him.

Even in the case of the Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, it seems that the orchestra had a better of the music than him. The Serenade, by the way, was very good! Even if he was the one who shaped the music, which I doubt, it wasn't seen in his conducting.

His attire also reflects on his egoist and show-off nature. He was wearing a luxurious red coat over what looks like yellow or gold vest. How flamboyant is that? He's already 65 for goodness' sake!

I just found out from my teacher that he has a reputation for being arrogant and proud. Well, it really does seem so after his performance.

His playing was still good, despite the fact that it was already marred by his horrendous conducting.

I, however, have a big problem against his interpretation of Mozart. Sir James, face it, you are just not a Mozart player. Why don't you just stick to playing pieces like Poulenc? I really think you played really well for Poulenc.

Firstly, your interpretation is not classical enough. Secondly, his cadenzes are just too show-off!

Take the slow movement of the Mozart in D for example; he started off with a low tonic note which was very good. However what he played after that completely spoiled the whole cadenze. He launched himself into this frenzy of running notes to end on a trill to restart the music into the final phrase. I'm sorry but it just didn't make any musical sense at all!

Furthermore, Mozart's music is very well known and his writing style is quite homogenous in every form of his music, be it a sonata, quartet, concerto or symphony.

To top it off, the Mozart in D is something which I know very well and had heard countless soloists perform on before so I really expected something really good from him! It is, by the way, actually the Mozart Oboe Concerto in C which was transposed to D for flute and orchestra. There's a story behind perhaps on which I shall blog about some other day to prevent digression.

To be fair, the Cimarosa double concerto played with his wife, Lady Jeanne, was very good. The two of them have obviously very good rapport with each other. Ok, what am I saying? They are husband and wife, duh!

The encore performed by them was good too; they played Mozart's Turkish March rearranged for two flutes and orchestra. This time round, I didn't have much to say about his interpretation, it was fine. If you actually closed your eyes to listen to the music, you would have thought that the music was being played by the same person but it wasn't.

The melody was broken into a question and answer form played by Galway and wife in alternation. It was quite interesting. Their sound were almost identical!

It would have been a perfect concert if not for the un-Mozart-ish Mozart, his terrible conducting and the mediocre first piece.

Perhaps for most people it would have a very good concert I guess. Sheesh, I'm getting too fussy. But it's Mozart! =P

All right, it's time to enjoy my super-long weekend! I'm on holiday till Tuesday!

Woohoo!

Oh yes, happy Deepavali!
fjozn at 10:25 AM