Category: Music

It’s always a treat to witness virtuosity, and Emanuel Ax’s performance with the Ann Arbor Symphony last Friday night was certainly no exception.

Mr. Ax’s performance of Johannes Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 was, in addition to being both bold and musically sensitive, was technically pristine. The piece opens with a serene conversation between solo horn and the piano, with woodwinds and then strings joining. Soon, however, the placid part in the piano transitions into a churning display of technical skill – and there couldn’t be a better vehicle to display Mr. Ax’s skill. In my opinion, the truest measure of his piano-playing prowess was his ability to play the most arduous technical passages without sacrificing even the slightest bit of musicality or sense of ease. I can assure you that last Friday, no notes were pounded out of the piano in Hill Auditorium – each note was given its due and the treatment it deserved, no matter how many notes were surrounding it.

The solo cello at the start of the slow third movement, Andante was also one of the piece’s most beautiful movements. The audience, as it turned out, agreed with this point, and Mr. Ax, along with principal cellist Caroline Kim, were called back for an encore duet together after several standing ovations at the piece’s conclusion.

Besides the Brahms concerto, the Ann Arbor Symphony also performed Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland and Dances of Galánta by Zoltán Kodály. I was particularly excited for the performance of Appalachian Spring. While the piece was originally written in 1944 for chamber orchestra for a ballet for Martha Graham, Copland wrote an eight-sectioned suite one year later for orchestra based on the original version. It isn’t hard to imagine a world waking up from the icy frost of winter in the piece’s sparsely orchestrated introduction (in the ballet, the introduction introduces each of the characters). Starting with just solo clarinet, more wind instruments gradually join in, until the audience is left with, once again, only the clarinet. Then, suddenly, the piece bursts forth. Later in the piece, if you are familiar with the song “Simple Gifts,” you’ll recognize this theme in the piece’s seventh section.

Despite my love for the piece Appalachian Spring, however, I still would have to say that Emanuel Ax’s performance of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in the second half of the program was unequivocally the highlight of the evening.

Join the GRAMMY-nominated pianist Emanuel Ax and the Ann Arbor Symphony on Friday, September 13 for a night of great music! The headline piece on the program is Brahm’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83, and it is preceded by Copland’s quintessentially American composition Appalachian Spring, as well as Kodály’s Dances of Galánta. A playlist of the pieces slated for the Ann Arbor Symphony’s 91st season is available on their website.

This concert is on the Passport to the Arts, meaning that with the voucher, you can go for free! Simply pick one up (they are available at many locations across campus) and redeem at the door. Otherwise, student tickets are available online for $10 using the code STU_SPEC10.

I was familiar with the South Carolina-based soft rock band’s music, but NEEDTOBREATHE’s concert last Monday at the Michigan Theater was not the kind of event that I usually would go to. That said, I enjoyed the performance for that very reason.

I couldn’t help but be excited as I stood in the buzzing line on the sidewalk to get in to the concert, under the marquee sign lit with NEEDTOBREATHE’s name. It was clear that there were many loyal fans in attendance, and so that was surely a good sign!

After an opener by singer-songwriter Trent Dabbs, the concert began with golden lights onstage turning on one by one, like lanterns in the dark. The band then entered, and launched right in to several songs. One thing that was very fascinating to me about this concert was the set: the background consisted of many twinkling lights, like stars in the sky, with a wave of vertical lines of light at the bottom. The color and intensity of the lights changed according to the mood of the song they were playing, and the bars of light would move at times and turn off completely at others. I thought that it was very well-done in that it was interesting and added to, rather than distracting from, the music.

It was quite a long concert (almost 3 hours with the opener and an intermission), and NEEDTOBREATHE played a host of songs, of which a few of my favorites were “Wasteland,” “Difference Maker,” and “Multiplied.” However, the one thing that I didn’t like was that I found that the music was generally too loud. I expected it to be a rather loud concert, but it was their acoustic tour after all, and so I thought that it would be a little more manageable (I can only imagine how loud their non-acoustic tour concerts must be!). The volume was distracting from the actual music, though, I found that to be frustrating.

On that note, the best part of the concert was hands-down the last songs, during which NEEDTOBREATHE disconnected entirely from the sound system and came to the front of the stage. No microphones, and no amps – just human voices, two guitars, and a single drum. I didn’t want it to end, and I wished that they had performed the entire concert like this! It was in this configuration that they concluded the concert with their hit song “Brother,” to wild applause. After what seemed like a long time filled with shouts of appreciation and unabated applause, NEEDTOBREATHE returned to the stage for an encore of their song “More Heart Less Attack.”

I had a great time at this concert, and it showed me that it’s good to get out of your artistic comfort zone every once in a while!