Love the Sorcerer, and the Witch Mezzo

I went to the Houston Symphony on Thursday evening, for a concert that had a Spanish theme throughout: De Falla's El Amor Brujo (which was translated in the program as "Love the Magician," although I think that "Love the Sorcerer" better conveys the ambiguous and sometimes malevolent tone of the piece); Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez; De Falla's Nights in the Gardens of Spain; and Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol. Altogether a long and rich concert, one that I would still recommend to people who read this early enough to be able to catch the Sunday matinee performance (tomorrow).

The only sour note (so to speak) came from the first piece, strictly because of the singer. I know that photos in programs are always dated, but this was so extreme that it makes Elizabeth II look positively age-sincere on UK stamps. I'm talking about someone looking 30 in the program, and being 60 in reality. She did look like a witch, which is actually quite appropriate for this piece, but was clearly not intentional. Her voice did not carry well (and I was in the middle of the fourth row). She sings opera, and that's perhaps why she kept taking dramatic poses and making exaggerated faces to convey the emotions of the gypsy girl, but it just looked absolutely ridiculous when just standing by herself in front of an orchestra. And her red-and-black gown must have been badly tailored at home (or else she needs to get a refund), because the left strap kept falling off. Believe me, any "wardrobe malfunction" would not have been very pretty to witness in her case!

While this was a shame, the next piece obliterated this bad experience quite nicely. The solo guitarist, Eliot Fisk, was amazing... and the audience recognized this so well that he played two encores: a transcription for the guitar of Paganini's Caprice n° 24, and a piece by Francisco Tárrega (it might have been Recuerdos de la Alhambra, but I'm not sure).

After the intermission (I told you it was a long concert) Shai Wosner was the pianist in De Falla's Noches en los jardines de España, which I found a little long and discursive, less packed with tense emotion as the rest of that composer's œuvre. And finally, as befits this sometimes very loud and brassy orchestra, Rimsky-Korsakov provided the sonorous (some would say "noisy") finale.