STAFF FAVORITESRenee Fleming Sings 'Lucrezia Borgia'August 31, 2010 When we think of opera's biggest stars and greatest hits, we tend to think of solo arias. But that overlooks another operatic goldmine: duets.
Brian Wilson Takes On George Gershwin August 23, 2010 Imagine the opening chords of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" sung by an ethereal chorus of spot-on Beach Boys-style harmonies. Or don't imagine it: Just play the new disc by the impresario behind The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson...
Quaver or not … should orchestras use vibrato? August 18, 2010 Let me begin this post by emphasizing in the strongest possible terms how much admiration and gratitude I have for all of those who have investigated and uncovered principles of performance practice over the past fifty years. Finding accurate source material, learning how to read it properly, taking to heart and hand composers’ markings, and looking behind the notes on the page to the historical context in which they first sounded has revolutionized the way musicians play. All of us today stand on the shoulders of people such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Malcolm Bilson, Christopher Hogwood, Sir Roger Norrington, and so many others.
How Vaughan Williams captured a country with strings August 10, 2010 In 1906, a clergyman called the Rev Percy Dearmer – his name will be familiar to many of you who have, in moments of boredom in church, read the small print of your hymn book – turned up at the Chelsea house of Ralph Vaughan Williams. “I had heard of him as a parson who invited tramps to sleep in his drawing room,” the composer recalled many years later, “and I feared he was going to ask me to do the same”. In fact, Dearmer had come to ask Vaughan Williams, then in his mid-thirties and still starting out as a composer, to help him with the musical side of The English Hymnal, a book that was to become the staple of Anglican congregations throughout the country, and is still used by some today.
Schumann At The Source: 'Genoveva' At The Gewandhaus August 03, 2010 Robert Schumann often seemed to live his creative life in spurts, spending a year or so concentrating on one particular kind of music and then abruptly moving on to something else.
Selling Sex And Symphonies: The Image Of Women In Classical Music July 30, 2010 Our Hey Ladies: Being a Woman Musician Today series continues with NPR Music classical producer Tom Huizenga's new interview with classical violinist Lara St. John. St. John has been accused of using physically revealing album covers to help sell her music, but says she had full control over her representation and marketing strategies, although discussions about her body have often overwhelmed discussions of her body of work.
Swansea artists' lament for the bees July 22, 2010 Artists Owen and Fern are worried about honey bees. So they have formed a choir to sing a specially-commissioned piece of music, based on bee sounds, in an 'act of shared concern' for bees.
John McCormack: The Charming Irish Tenor July 20, 2010 Irish tenor John McCormack captured the heart of my father and many music-lovers around the world. Because Daddy loved McCormack, I, naturally, did not. Every time he put his scratchy McCormack records on the phonograph, I rolled my eyes and went off to read a book. I preferred Sinatra and Broadway musicals; later, I got into jazz, but McCormack never quite won my affection.
Choir sings musical notes based on their own genetic code July 15, 2010 Scientists and composers joined forces to produce the choral work, which translates singers' own genetic code into music.
New Opera Focuses on Bill Clinton's Life July 13, 2010 If any recent president's life is the stuff of operas, it's Bill Clinton's. There's been comedy, drama, back-stabbing, shouting, crying, death, and many miraculous comebacks. But that's real life. Now art will be imitating life in a project coming together in Little Rock and meant to show how his struggles as a kid raised by a fun-loving mother influenced the making of the 42nd president.
20 (PLUS) QUESTIONS WITH: Pianist Kirill Gerstein July 01, 2010 Kirill Gerstein, recently named the sixth recipient of the Gilmore Artist Award, took time to lend his thoughts to our question and answer series. The young dynamo will make his Boston Symphony debut on July 30 at the Tanglewood Festival.
A Deal Undone: Smetana's 'The Bartered Bride' June 28, 2010 Bedrich Smetana wrote music so clearly rooted in his Czech homeland that it would be easy to define him — narrowly — as a musical nationalist. But in fact, his achievement goes far deeper than that.
Music and speech share a code for communicating sadness in the minor third June 24, 2010 Here's a little experiment. You know "Greensleeves"—the famous English folk song? Go ahead and hum it to yourself. Now choose the emotion you think the song best conveys: (a) happiness, (b) sadness, (c) anger or (d) fear.
Verdi's 'Il Trovatore': Profound Or Preposterous? June 19, 2010 Opera fans who also love comedy — or at least fans of "a certain age" — may well know the names of two legendary but very different performers: Anna Russell and Florence Foster Jenkins.
The Sounds of Violence June 16, 2010 Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" turns 50 this week, but to this day it retains its jagged modernity and jolting terror. Much of its power comes from Bernard Herrmann's music, a score as iconic as the film itself. The shrieking dissonance of "The Murder," surely the most imitated and instantly recognizable film cue, is the cinema's primal scream. It is deeply embedded in our movie-going subconscious, instantly evoking Norman Bates's stabbing knife and Marion Crane's helpless cries.
Anna Crusis Women's Choir still singing with a sting June 10, 2010 Jacqueline Coren never scoffs when people ask who Anna Crusis was and why a nationally known feminist, lesbian-friendly Philadelphia women's choir bears her name.
Garsington Opera's tenure goes out with a flourish with Rossini's most exotic opera June 03, 2010 This is the last year of Garsington Opera's tenure in its quirky medieval manor – next year it moves to the Getty family's home at Wormley. And it's going out with a flourish, giving one of Rossini's most exotic operas its first British staging. Indeed, Armida was long regarded as uncastable, so great are its vocal demands. Rossini wrote the title role for the star Neapolitan soprano Isabella Colbran, who had become his wife; he also included six tenor roles, of which three are famously hard to sing.
Frank Huang's the new violinist in town June 01, 2010 There was a time when Frank Huang, the Houston Symphony's new concertmaster, would rather have been playing basketball.
Gustavo Dudamel can't conduct himself as the savior of classical music May 28, 2010 I've been amused, and I'm not the only one, to read all of the critical backlash against Gustavo Dudamel on his recent American tour with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia, the discovery has been made that Dudamel does, in fact, have feet of clay. His conducting can be uneven, superficial, moment-to-moment.
Independent Classical podcast: Janina Fialkowska May 25, 2010 Canadian born pianist Janina Fialkowska has an extraordinary story to tell: she's battled cancer in the muscle of her left shoulder, endured ground-breaking muscle-replacement surgery, and even, in another bizarre twist of fate, had her work "stolen" in the notorious Joyce Hatto recording scandal.
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