Review: Heras-Casado, Beethoven and Petrushka

Music has a pulse.

This is not to say that it ticks along at the same tempo and never alters. A healthy pulse changes tempo moment to moment with the tempo of life.

When I stand up from this keyboard, my heart rate will rise. And every part of my heartbeat, all the little subdivisions, will rise together and in harmony. When I exercise today, it will rise some more.

But a heartbeat with arhytmia will not do that properly or naturally.

Saturday night's performance by the Houston Symphony with Pablo Heras-Casado and Jon Kimura-Parker showed the difference between pulse (with and without rubato) and arhythmia. When the orchestra or the soloist laid down the pulse it worked. When they did not, it didn't.

Aftere the jump, one person's take.

Preview: Meet Jon Kimura Parker; Meet Beethoven

Jon Kimura Parker is proof positive that a Canadian can survive in Houston, Texas without dying of spontaneous human combustion.

On second thought, I don't know if he stays here in July and Augus, so that undermines my hypothesis.

Anyway, Jon Kimura Parker is one of several authentically world class musicians who live and work in Houston. I've known of him since I was a child and he appeared on the cover of my piano-teacher/mother's Clavier Magazine. Now, in addition to performing the world over, he teaches at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.

He will join the Houston Symphony this week to perform Beethoven's First Piano Concerto. After the jump, a demonstration, by Mr. Parker himself, of 21st century tools put to great artistic use and a preview of the concerto.

Preview: Heras-Casado and Petrushka

Pablo Heras-Casado

Next up on the Houston Symphony's classical season is Pablo Heras-Casado.

The main event for the orchstra will be Petrushka, by Igor Stravinsky, another of the composer's collaborations with Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes during the first decades of the 20th Century. Like "The Right of Spring," Pierre Monteaux conducted the premiere.

This is a piece I've never had the chance to play, and alas there is no score available in the public domain to which I could link. But there is a fantastic, full length performance by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on Youtube. Even in that format you, can hear the accoustical magnificence of their hall.

(And you can become bitter about the musical sound suck that is Jones Hall. But I digress.).

After the jump, a few words about Petrushka and a chance to hear and see some amazing playing by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.