Music
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Aspect Re-Introduces Arensky and Taneyev
Superb Chamber Music in Tchaikovsky's Shadow
By: - Feb 08th, 2018The Bohemian National Hall was the setting for a glorious chamber music program which gathered together six superb artists to play, what first violin Philippe Quint declared might be the future of 21st century performance programs. We would do well to look and listen carefully to the under-exposed Russian composers Anton Arensky and Sergei Taneyev.
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Muti and Chicago Symphony at Carnegie Hall
Samuel Adams New York Premier
By: - Feb 11th, 2018New York eagerly awaits the annual visits of the superb Chicago Symphony Orchestra and its iconic conductor, Riccardo Muti. At Carnegie Hall they did not disappoint. The second program began with the Overture to I vespri sicilliani. Verdi is a specialty of the Maestro's and he brought forward drama from hidden places.
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Opera Philadelphia Mounts Written on the Skin
A Stunning Production at the Academy of Music
By: - Feb 12th, 2018The tall grey walls which harbor the rotating rooms of a medieval manor are striking. They contain the action in the manor and offer opportunities for hide and seek. The Lord is known here as The Protector. Oddly in the medieval time, one of the King's services to the Lord was protection. The use of this word is one of the deliciously ambiguous elements of George Benjamin's opera, Written on the Skin, which has arrived in the US in Opera Philadelphia.
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L'Elisir d'Amore at the Metropolitan Opera
A Swig and A Miss
By: - Feb 13th, 2018The soprano Pretty Yende is one of the more sensational discoveries at the Metropolitan Opera this decade, wowing audiences with her sweet tone and superlative bel canto technique since making her debut in the company’s January, 2013 revival of Rossini's Le comte Ory. This month, she sings Adina in the revival of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore, a charming love story that maintains its front rank among the most popular Italian operatic comedies.
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Opera Parallèle's Trouble in Tahiti
Leonard Bernstein’s Modest One-act Opera
By: - Feb 17th, 2018The always innovative Opera Parallèle has taken Leonard Bernstein’s modest one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti from 1952 and framed it with complementary wrapper to produce an exciting entertainment. This evening of opera is not traditional in many ways, but it is delightfully sophisticated and well executed
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Jaap Van Zweden Conducts Wagner
NY Phil Ignites
By: - Feb 17th, 2018When Jaap van Zweden was announced as the new music director of the Philharmonic, he was seen by pundits and punters alike as a firm, conservative voice designed to return America's oldest orchestra to its role as guardian of the standard European repertory of the 19th and 20th centuries. This week, he confirms that hope with a performance of Act I of Wagner's Die Walküre.
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Nadine Sierra and Bryan Wagorn
Singing for Marilyn Horne at Park Avenue Armory
By: - Feb 18th, 2018Nadine Sierra has won the prestigious Marilyn Horne Foundation Vocal Competition and recently the Richard Tucker Award. It is said she will soon become a fixture on the international music stage. She certainly fits in with the beautiful, warm fixtures of the Officers’ Room at the Park Avenue Armory.
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Recalling Carol Channing at Lulu White’s
Boston’s Golden Era of Jazz and Cabaret
By: - Feb 19th, 2018Printing four decades of images for, Heads and Tales, an exhibit at Gallery 51 in North Adams this summer has kicked up a treasure trove of memories. A series of photos of Carol Channing with Craig Russel who impersonated her evoked the ambiance of a fabulous night at Boston's jazz club Lulu White's.
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Philip Glass at Carnegie Hall
Music with Changing Parts
By: - Feb 20th, 2018Is there a point, in the creation of art for the entertainment of others, where the value of that creative act has to be weighed against the limitations that the human body can endure? That question applies to both the audience and performers attending Friday night's concert at Carnegie Hall featuring the first New York concert performance in 38 years of Philip Glass' 1970 composition Music With Changing Parts.
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Lawrence Brownlee at Opera Philadelphia
World Premiere of Cycles of My Being
By: - Feb 21st, 2018What is it like to be a black man in America? Lawrence Brownlee was haunted by this question. He wanted to answer it in his art form, the classical song and aria. Joining forces with two MacArthur fellows, composer Tyshawn Sorey and poet Terrance Hayes, Brownlee, the artistic advisor to Opera Philadelphia, developed six songs, "Cycles of My Being." Its stunning world premiere was on stage at the Kimmel Center this week.
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The Flying Dutchman
Produced by Opera San José
By: - Feb 21st, 2018Suffering on a tumultuous ocean voyage, Wagner conceived of an opera based on a man eternally condemned to the sea. Eternal punishment as a literary theme is broadly established, but the libretto for The Flying Dutchman drew largely on Memoirs of Mr. von Schnabelwopski, by Heinrich Heine, who in turn had adapted folk tales of the Wandering Jew.
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Jerry Springer, the Opera at The New Group
Smash London Hit Transfers to New York
By: - Feb 22nd, 2018An obsession with the Jerry Springer show grew into Jerry Springer, the Opera. The show was a smash hit on London’s West End over a decade go. Tentative stabs at transfer across the pond are now fixed in a production by The New Group. Scott Elliott, artistic director of The New Group sensed that the time was now. After all, we have a reality show host in the White House.
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Dudamel Leads Vienna at Carnegie
Circumstance Without Pomp
By: - Feb 24th, 2018The Vienna Orchestra's horns and low brass displayed their customary control in the opening phrases before the strings took the lyric theme. They were answered by the horns, which, true to their conservative manifesto, still play the narrow-bore instruments in F with the antique pumpenvalve system, invented (like the Vienna Philharmonic itself) in the 1840s. Gustavo Dudamel led the piece dutifully, knowing full well that the Vienna players are the masters of this music.
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NYCity Opera's Anna Caterina Antonacci
A Rare Appearance in New York
By: - Feb 23rd, 2018Anna Caterina Antonacci is a chanteuse supreme who rarely performs in New York. Michael Capasso, the General Director of the New York City Opera, induced Antonacci to give two concerts at Carnegie Hall. Perhaps she will come here to perform in an opera soon.
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Live Streaming a Chamber Music Master Class
Associated Chamber Music Players Spearheads the Drive
By: - Feb 26th, 2018The Associated Chamber Music Players (ACMP) live streamed a master class from the Opera Center in New York. Aspiring chamber music performers across the globe were invited to watch, learn and participate by asking questions.
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Dudamel Conducts the Vienna Philharmonic
Carnegie Hall Hosts
By: - Feb 26th, 2018Sunday's matinee concert, the third of three this weekend at Carnegie Hall, the great Vienna Philharmonic eschewed the Mozart and Beethoven for a refreshing focus elsewhere. For this concert, the orchestra and current guest conductor Gustavo Dudamel agreed to play symphonies by Charles Ives and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose only common thread was the unconventional and innovative nature of their work.
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Christine Goerke Unleashes Elektra
Hezet-Seguin Leads the Metropolitan Opera Production
By: - Mar 03rd, 2018There comes a time in the career of an opera singer when they are the artist of the moment. For Christine Goerke, the American dramatic soprano who sang the title role of Elektra at the Metropolitan Opera, that time is now. Goerke has sung the role on other stages to great acclaim, both here and elsewhere. However Thursday night was a watershed: the dramatic soprano's long-awaited return to singing major Strauss roles on America's largest operatic stage.
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New York Philharmonic Plays Brahms and Prokoviev
Jaap Van Sweden Offers Pavorites
By: - Mar 06th, 2018The New York Philharmonic just went on tour. However, before the orchestra caught a Saturday flight to Japan last week, they played four evening concerts under its new music director Jaap van Zweden. The program, heard Friday night, eschewed the usual tripartite musical evening for a pairing of heavyweight favorites: the D minor Piano Concerto by Johannes Brahms, and the Fifth Symphony of Serge Prokofiev.
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Orpheus and Oedipus Meet at Emmanuel Music
Three Modernist Works Investigate Myths
By: - Mar 07th, 2018Stravinsky's "Oedipus Rex" is a bizarre hybrid, an opera-oratorio set to a text by Jean Cocteau. Emmanuel Music paired it with two works about Orpheus, another denizen of the land of the Green myths. In their works, both Matthew Aucoin and John Harrison, composers with local connections, showed their debt to Stravinsky.
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Pierre Aimard at Carnegie Hall
A Slew of Interesting Piano Works
By: - Mar 10th, 2018There is no question that the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is among the most innovative and forward thinking masters of the keyboard working today. Carnegie Hall was the stage for a recent performance.
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Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
Ryan H. Walsh’s Landmark Study of the Counter Culture in Boston
By: - Mar 12th, 2018For most of 1968 the then struggling Irish musician and composer, Van Morrison, was on the run from his mobbed up New York manager. Living on Green Street in Cambridge, with local musicians he performed gigs and worked on what became the iconic album Astral Weeks. This is the focus of an enthralling book by Ryan Walsh fleshed out in the context of a meticulously researched account of the vibrant counter culture of that year of living dangerously. Through what evolves as a page turner we learn about Mel Lyman and his Fort Hill Cult, their paper Avatar, founding of WBCN FM as the rock of Boston, the Boston Tea Party, the Bosstown Sound, and Boston After Dark/ Phoenix. Along the way we encounter films, The Boston Strangler and Titicut Follies,as well as LSD gurus Tim Leary and Baba Ram Dass. Long overdue this fiftieth anniversary book sets the record straight.
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Met Opera Fires James Levine
Who Knew About Levine's Escapades and When
By: - Mar 12th, 2018The Verdi Requiem was James Levine's final performance at the Metropolitan Opera.
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Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball)
Verdi Opera Produced by Livermore Valley Opera
By: - Mar 14th, 2018Ballo is striking and the score compels from beginning to end with highly melodious arias, ensembles, and orchestral interludes. What it lacks is any “Top 40” type hits, but it really doesn’t matter because every element thrills without being overly familiar. Yet, highlights do exist, and they are spread widely among the roles.
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Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall
Toast of Two Cities
By: - Mar 14th, 2018There is no question that the Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin is the big man on the New York classical music scene at the moment. The music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra was in town with his troops on Tuesday night, for his first Carnegie Hall appearance since being appointed the music director of the Metropolitan Opera.
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Cosi Fan Tutti at the Metropolitan Opera
Coney Island is the Setting
By: - Mar 16th, 2018How do you solve the problem of presenting an opera that forces men and women into the stereotypes of the 18th century to a 21st century audience? If you're director Phelim McDermott, whose dazzling new Cosí fan tutte arrived at the Metropolitan Opera on Thursday night, you roll the score in glue, dip it in glitter, and hope for the best.
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