I agree. There were impressive parts of the Concord Symphony, but Ives’s original version is amazing. I have heard it only once but would love to hear it performed again. Maybe since Emanuel Ax didn’t have a lot to do in the Feldman piece (which I loved), maybe MTT should’ve given the orchestra some time off and had Ax come back after the intermission to play the Sonata instead! 🙂

It looks like everyone here, including me (see my earlier comments), had both an enjoyable and mind-opening experience at the concert. You don’t have to wait for MT to return so you can keep on broadening your musical horizons, though; our own School of Music, Theatre and Dance regularly performs modern and contemporary music of all kinds throughout the school year. These are free concerts performed by extremely talented students and faculty. Here’s the website – take a look:
http://www.music.umich.edu/performances_events/event_display.php?f=m
And no, I don’t work in the SMTD! Just thankful I can take advantage of this wonderful musical resource.

One of the best concerts I’ve heard in a long time: the programming, the audience education (thanks also to the UMS for this) and of course the performance. Interesting, enjoyable, ACCESSIBLE modern and contemporary music. If such music were included in the repertoires of other orchestras, I would buy season tickets! Many many thanks to the UMS for presenting this wonderful series.

I realize that I may have sounded somewhat picky in saying that the quartets programmed lacked “maverickness.” Like some of you, I look for adventurous concerts, like the upcoming San Francisco Symphony series – which I am thrilled about – and usually purchase tickets accordingly. But Beethoven is in a class by himself, maverick or not, and it was a pleasure to see him perfomed so beautifully. This conert reminded me that there were several cycles of the quartets at Rackham over the years and I hope someone will do this again. The Hagen, maybe?

As this very enjoyable concert was included in the “Maverick” series, I’d like to have heard Beethoven quartets that filled the bill better. The F Major one was extremely familiar, played often on the radio, beautiful but not in the “maverick” category. The E-flat Major one was, to me, one of his less interesting ones. The F-Minor one, “Serioso,” did fit fine: fascinating, gnarly, risk-taking, a real pleasure musically speaking. This one was heading toward the great late quartets. Why not have included one of those, a true “maverick”?