“Consider this equation: three orchestras, three conductors, arrayed on three sides of the audience,” writes Richard Duckett in Thursday’s (11/7) Worcester Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Mass.) “The occasion will be a rare performance of the 20th-century avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ‘Gruppen’ (‘Groups’),” a free concert on November 10 at Mechanics Hall in Worcester, by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Orchestra and the Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra of Milford. “ ‘Gruppen’ comprises a synthesis of orchestra, chamber and solo music, and is a very mathematically based work. The concert will be in three parts. The first performance, lasting approximately 25 minutes, will be followed by a brief lecture on the work by Jeffrey Means, a conductor and professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston. The work will then be performed again, and audience members will be encouraged to change their seats in order to have a different audio experience. The orchestra, totaling 109 musicians, will be arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, with the audience sitting in the middle.”
Posted November 8, 2013
