Word: concertizing
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...Hyde Park gigs. The band are in absolutely phenomenal form, moving through a diverse greatest hits set that includes their most famous songs while featuring astonishing performances of lesser known tracks like “Oily Water” and “Trimm Trabb.” The concert is the perfect accompaniment for the documentary, proving once again how remarkable and joyous the reunion was. At the beginning of the encore at Hyde Park, Albarn tells the audience, “We feel privileged to be able to do nothing for so many years and then come back...
...conductor performing the masterworks of one of the greatest composers, strains to rise to the occasion with a reaction of appropriate greatness. When the quality of the composition and the technique of the performer are beyond dispute, the audience’s response is a foregone conclusion, and the concert becomes a set of protocols rather than a genuine performance...
...performers, then, the challenge of crafting a concert of canonical anchors like the Beethoven symphonies is to avoid easy recourse to the habit of flawless dignity. Consummate artistry involves not only the meaningful realization of a composition, but the further ability to destroy and then resurrect its grandeur—to connect with the inner greatness of the work while stripping away the pomp that surrounds it. The goal is for the audience to like it not because they are supposed to, but because they can’t help...
Levine is excellent at making Beethoven into less of a god and more of a human. He visibly and audibly revels in the symphonies, and one of the many joys of being in the concert hall rather than listening to a recording is in catching the gleeful brio Levine exudes. Sitting rather than standing at the podium (due to well-chronicled health problems over the past four years), he swivels fluidly back and forth like a six-year old left alone in a big office chair, dancing his feet across a wooden support bar like some frenetic organist pedaling...
...Fourth Symphony actually preceded the Third on the program, a decision that allowed the concert to end with the somewhat more invigorating finale of the latter—but also prevented the subtler charms of the less frequently performed Fourth from disappearing beneath the pyrotechnics of its younger sibling. Levine’s rendition of the Fourth danced ahead at a quicker pace than most performances, particularly in the second and third movements, but on the whole the sprightly tempo allowed a refreshing balance of line and punch where one is normally sacrificed for the other...