REVIEWSHector Berlioz Les nuits d'été / Harold en Italie (viola: Antoine Tamestit; mezzo-soprano: Anne Sofie von Otter; Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble; Marc Minkowski)January 31, 2012 Harold in Italy was commissioned from Berlioz by the virtuoso violinist Paganini, who wanted something to show off his fine new viola. Actually, that’s not quite true; Paganini thought he was paying for a flashy concerto, but what he got was a symphonic poem. The viola plays the part of Byron’s Childe Harold, while Berlioz relives his own happy memories of travelling the wilds of Italy, meeting the locals in the mountains, encountering priests, brigands, and travelling musicians. Paganini was disappointed, and never played it… and despite an enthusiasm for most Berlioz, I’ve tended to agree with Paganini, and never quite hit it off with Harold. Until now.
Natalie Dessay’s Soulful Manon Starts Paris Homage to Massenet January 24, 2012 France is celebrating the centenary of Jules Massenet, its most successful Belle Epoque composer. The country’s reigning diva, Natalie Dessay, has the title role in “Manon,” one of his two masterpieces, at the Bastille Opera. There’s also a charming exhibition at the Palais Garnier, “La Belle Epoque de Massenet.”
Survivor, Barbican Theatre January 17, 2012 We all know what a Gormley looks like: gazing straight ahead with his arms limp by his sides, he’s been placed by his creator on bleak seashores, on the roofs of high buildings, and anywhere else you’d least expect to find him, so it was no surprise to be confronted by the back view of a Gormley who remained motionless at the front of the Barbican stage for so long that one was driven out of boredom to read the programme.
Janacek For Voices: The Choral Side Of An Unusual Composer January 12, 2012 There was nothing ordinary about Czech composer Leos Janáček. He set one opera in a barnyard and another on the moon. He fell for a married woman more than 30 years his junior, proceeding to write more than 700 love letters. And in his mid-60s, he churned out piece after amazing piece in one of classical music's most impressive late surges.
The Angry Birds Theme Gets An Orchestral Makeover December 22, 2011 The game's theme song, a catchy march with more than a bit of Eastern European flavor, is as malleable and distinctive as Angry Birds' game play. A quick scan of YouTube shows sound designer Ari Pulkkonen's tune reinterpreted by anonymous string quartets, shredded by guitar virtuosos and remixed by aspiring house DJs. But still the tune's jaunty melody remains unscathed, no matter how radical the treatment. One of the most elaborate but respectful interpretations to date has been that of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Andrew Skeet, included on the ensemble's new album The Greatest Video Game Music.
The Best of 2011: Classical Music and Opera December 20, 2011 As 2011 comes to a close it's time to reflect on the year past and what a year.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Flute and Harp Concerto / Sinfonia Concertante for Winds (Orchestra Mozart; conductor: Claudio Abbado) December 15, 2011 Claudio Abbado's excellent Mozart series with his hand-picked Orchestra Mozart continues with this sunny album of concertos written during the 22-year-old composer's 1778 visit to Paris, where works for groups of soloists with orchestral backing were all the rage.
From Mozart To Michael Jackson: Classical Contenders December 13, 2011 As we're thinking about the best music of the year, All Things Considered host Melissa Block spoke with Performance Today host Fred Child about more recent classical releases. From an indie-minded ensemble and a piano duet of "Billie Jean" to a set of Mozart quartet pieces, here's what tickling Child's fancy.
Christoph Willibald Gluck Ezio (Il Complesso Barocco / Alan Curtis) Review December 06, 2011 Christoph Willibald Gluck is celebrated today as a great reformer of opera. His most famous work, Orfeo ed Euridice, was the first of a clutch of radical operas that took the form in a more naturalistic direction with lasting influence on its future development. Ezio is not one of those works. Written in 1750 (more than a decade before Orfeo) it is one of many ‘pre-reform’ operas for which Gluck was justly renown in his time, and which are now largely overlooked in favour of his subsequent trailblazers. This is a shame because they contain a wealth of delightful music.
Classical Lost and Found: Branco's Laudable But Overlooked Sonatas December 01, 2011 Francophile romantics, and fans of violin sonatas, will discover a pleasant surprise in this new album of music by Luis de Freitas Branco, a Portuguese composer, teacher, musicologist and critic.
Revolt, Knee Drops, Sick Tenor Disrupt Verdi’s ‘Forza’: Review November 29, 2011 The autumn season at the Paris Opera is off to a bad start. A strike by stagehands turned the premiere of Gounod’s “Faust,” the first new staging, into a concert without sets. The premiere of “La Forza del Destino,” the second new production, had to make do without the star, Marcelo Alvarez, who left center stage to his stand-in, the seriously overtaxed Serbian tenor Zoran Todorovich. The audience reaction was more polite than boisterous.
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/ Chailly, Barbican Hall November 22, 2011 The venerable and venerated Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra gave the first ever complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies and Riccardo Chailly, their 19Kapellmeister, was impatient to renew that sense of revelation and surprise in an age when each of the nine has grown so familiar that restoring the elusive shock-of-the-new factor can and does separate the sensation-seekers from the scholars.
Earthy Elizabethan Elegance From William Byrd November 21, 2011 Phantasm is an instrumental ensemble that plays Renaissance viols, the forerunners of today's modern strings such as violins, violas and cellos. The group has a new CD of music by the English Renaissance composer William Byrd — and it helps clear up some musical misconceptions about what that music sounded like in the 16th century.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London November 14, 2011 Man of letters, man of the world, man (almost) of the cloth. Visionary, virtuoso, vulgarian. Eleven months into Franz Liszt's anniversary year, the lavender fumes of legend still obscure the music.
Nico Muhly’s new opera ‘Dark Sisters’ explores polygamy November 10, 2011 Five women singing together: That’s an opera fan’s idea of heaven. And though Nico Muhly’s “Dark Sisters” doesn’t quite reach celestial heights, Wednesday’s premiere offered the promise of an exciting new composer’s voice.
Tarik O'Regan Acallam na Senórach / An Irish Colloquy (National Chamber Choir of Ireland; guitar: Stewart French; Paul Hillier) October 24, 2011 Young composer Tarik O'Regan's star is now rising at such a velocity that to describe him as "up and coming" feels decidedly passé. His compositional style, a captivating extension of the English choral tradition, coloured by American minimalism and set within a largely tonal and modal harmonic language, has the quality of being both accessible to the masses and complex enough for the cognoscenti.
Mozart Quartets Fit For A King October 20, 2011 You might suspect that after more than three decades together, the men of the Emerson String Quartet — violinists Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker, who alternate their chairs, violist Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel — might have run out of things to say, particularly when it comes to works by such staple composers as Mozart. But that couldn't be further from the truth, as their latest recording of Mozart's three "Prussian" string quartets demonstrates.
Dead Poet Brightens Met’s ‘Don Giovanni’ October 18, 2011 An Italian Jewish priest who ended up selling vegetables and teaching at Columbia University before he died in New York in 1838 is the real star of the new production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” at the Metropolitan Opera.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Dissonances – String Quartetes KV 421 & 465; Divertimento KV 138 (Quator Ebene) October 13, 2011 The Ebene Quartet won the Gramophone Record of the Year in 2009 for their collection of quartets by their compatriots Faure, Debussy and Ravel. The extraordinary fluidity of their playing and the sense of wonder they bring to their music making, noted at the time, are present once more in this compelling coupling of two of the six quartets that Mozart dedicated to Haydn, his old friend and fellow freemason. Mozart and Haydn were joined by fellow composers Vanhal and Dittersdorf as the instrumentalists for the first performance of these quartets.
Classical Lost And Found: Ferrara's Laments and Surprises October 11, 2011 Italian-born and trained, Franco Ferrara (1911 – 1985) was one of Italy's most promising conductors. But his concert hall appearances ended in 1946 when he began suffering from what may have been a psychosomatic disorder. He then turned to the more intimate confines of the studio to conduct recordings of some of Italy's legendary soundtracks for films like Fellini's La strada and La dolce vita. However, he made an even greater contribution to the music world when in the early 1960s he began giving conducting classes. He became the "maestro dei maestri," whose students included Riccardo Muti, Andrew Davis and Riccardo Chailly.
|
