Music
-
Susanna Phillips Shines as Agrippina
Boston Baroque Does Popular Handel Opera
By: - May 01st, 2015Based on the most dysfunctional family in ancient Rome, "Agrippina" shows title character's drive to crown her son Nero, Emperor. This witty production features brilliant singing by an excellent cast.
-
Martha Reeves & the Vandellas Rocks P’Town
Payomet Launches 2015 Season
By: - Apr 25th, 2015The Payomet Performing Arts Center got a jump on the season with two performances of the vintage Motown group Martha and the Vandellas. In mid April it was still chilly on the lower cape but the group caused a Heat Wave at Town Hall in Provincetown.
-
Tenor Joseph Calleja Wows Crowd at Jordan Hall
Maltese Tenor Heralds Return of Romantic Singing
By: - Apr 23rd, 2015Although he stuck primarily to Italian and French arias and songs, Calleja showed his range, singing in Russian, Spanish and English. A true entertainer, he cracked jokes while delivering heart-stirring vocal thrills, despite suffering from a cold.
-
Röschmann and Uchida Captivate Carnegie
Sleeping Songs Arise
By: - Apr 22nd, 2015The poet who provides the lyrics for Schumann's Liederkreis which opened this extraordinary program at Carnegie Hall speaks of song sleeping in all things. Song came alive in concert with Dorothea Röschmann with the heartbeat of the piano in Uchida's hands.
-
Martha and the Vandellas in Provincetown
Payoment Performing Arts Center April 18 & 19
By: - Apr 16th, 2015Martha and the Vandellas will have them dancing in the streets. Commercial Street in Provincteown this weekend. Actually, inside Provincetown Town Hall for an early launch of the season. Saturday night is sold out but there are tickets available for the Sunday performance. Other upcoming events include Loa Lobos and Spuyten Duyvil.
-
Les Violons du Roy Loft Purcell at Carnegie Hall
Dorothea Röschmann, A Dark and Pure Dido
By: - Apr 13th, 2015Before Bach and Purcell don't instantly call to mind slapstick, but there is was, and marvellously done, onstage at Carnegie Hall. Purcell's The Fairy Queen was written to please: we missed the singing monkeys, but had two delightful fairies sung by Lesley Emma Bouza and Sheila Dietrich to tease a bumbling, drunk Stephen Hegedus until he collapsed in a heap. So much for the warm-up.
-
New Hampshire Music Festival
Progrtam from July 7 to August 6
By: - Apr 09th, 2015The New Hampshire Music Festival (NHMF) has announced its 2015 summer season to be held from July 7 through August 6 in Plymouth and the surrounding communities of New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. With a theme of “American Landscapes,†the festival’s 63rd season will explore and celebrate American music and the great outdoors.
-
Boston Symphony Orchestra 2015-16
Under Conductor Andris Nelsons
By: - Apr 03rd, 2015BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons will lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra in thirteen extraordinarily wide-ranging programs in the 2015-16 BSO season.
-
Gotham Chamber Opera
Excerpts from Shakespeare's Musical
By: - Mar 28th, 2015Ever innovative and daring, yet pleasing to audiences young and old, the Gotham Chamber Opera is a go-to company for an ear-tingling, eye-catching experience. The Tempest Songbook stretches its limits in unusual ways. Composer Kaija Saariaho joins Purcell. Martha Graham dancers give us characters dead and aive. Neal Goren and his musicians pull it all together.
-
Piotr Anderszewki Revels in Bright Tones, Dark Hall
Bach and Schumann Entrance at Carnegie
By: - Mar 20th, 2015Twas a concert at Carnegie and all through the house, was quiet and darkness and nary a noise. From out of the dark came tones silvery and bright. They might have been struck by stars this night. But at the piano sat the Polish pianist and composer, Piotr Anderszewski, lofting Bach and Schumann. The beauty of Bach shone in a new light. Schumann's love messages to his future wife have never been more persuasive.
-
Boston Lyric Opera's Katya Kabanova
Leon Janacek Music Not Heard Often Enough
By: - Mar 18th, 2015Janacek’s work has been slow to come to Boston, so one can only praise Boston Lyric Opera for bringing, arguably, his masterpiece to town. (In my view, its rival for that honor is “Jenufa.â€) In “Katya†Janacek tells a rather simple tale of a young woman (Katya) in the Russian provinces married to a wimp (Tichon) dominated by his sadistic mother (Kabanicha), who treats her as little more than chattel. She longs to escape and falls in love with another man (Boris) with whom she has exchanged glances only once, who remarkably returns her infatuation.
-
Jennifer Warnes' Legendary Album Jennifer
Her 1972 Third Album Reissued
By: - Mar 13th, 2015In 2013, Reprise Japan finally released Jennifer Warnes 1972' third album, Jennifer, on CD. With the album having been locked in the vaults for forty years and only recently made available again, I wish to share some thoughts on why this brilliant collaboration between Warnes and John Cale has brought me so much gratification over the years.
-
Boston Lyric Opera
Announces 2015-2016 Season
By: - Mar 13th, 2015With a distinct French flavor, spiced by influences from New Wave films to student revolutionaries, Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) announces its productions for the 2015/2016 Season, the company’s 39th. The four operas – Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème, Philip Glass’ In the Penal Colony, Jules Massenet’s Werther and Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow – comprise all-new BLO productions of both popular classics and works not seen often in Boston.
-
King Roger by Karol Szymanowski
Conductor Charles Dutoit Leads the BSO in Neglected Masterpiece
By: - Mar 10th, 2015Karol Szymanowski's "King Roger" is the classic hot-house flower of an opera, featuring a huge orchestra and chorus, dominated by shimmering strings. The BSO assembled a dream cast of Eastern European singers, headed by Mariusz Kwiecien, one of the hottest baritones on the world's stages today. You could feel the heat and humidity of a Sicilian evening.
-
Handel's Semele at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
Zhang Huan's Version Suggests Semele as HornRimmed Moon Goddess
By: - Mar 10th, 2015Handel's Semele is perfectly beautiful. When Handel wrote the Oratorio, he needed money and composed a piece suitable for the Easter season which was coming up soon. The work immediately sank into oblivion. That was almost three centuries ago.
-
Wilco Returns to Mass MoCA
Solid Sound Festival June 26-28
By: - Mar 04th, 2015The Solid Sound 2015 lineup features Tweedy (which features Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and his son Spencer), Mac DeMarco, Real Estate, Parquet Courts, Shabazz Palaces, Richard Thompson Trio, King Sunny Ade and His African Beats, Taj Mahal, Cibo Matto, Jessica Pratt, Luluc, William Tyler, Bill Frisell, The Autumn Defense, NRBQ, Stained Radiance (Nels Cline + Norton Wisdom), Glenn Kotche and Jeffrey Zeigler, and many others.
-
Gatti and Vienna Philharmonic's Brahms' Requiem
Damrau, Gerhaher and Westminster Choir at Carnegie Hall
By: - Mar 02nd, 2015Brahms' German Requiem is closer to tone poem than the dramatic opera of Verid's Requiem. In the hands of Danniele Gatti, off book on a very complicated score, the Requiem moved and mesmerized. Soloists and choir were reverently perfect. The sound lofted into Carnegie Hall, and, as Brahms wrote, how lovely is that dwelling place.
-
A Joyce Di Donato Master Class at Carnegie
Four Young Artists Blossom
By: - Feb 22nd, 2015Di Donato's opera performances are perfection. One day I rushed down to the AMC near Navy Pier in Chicago, because a friend had called to tell me about di Donato's last Cinderella. An encore HD performance was all I could catch, but it was sublime. What we have come to think of as a di Donato performance is perfection. Now I might be able to see perfection in action. I did.
-
Stefano Gervasoni at the Miller Theatre
A Moving, Challenging and Delightful Portrait
By: - Feb 20th, 2015Stefano Gervasoni was at Julliard as a very young man, but he is not well-known stateside and deserves to be. His work makes experimentation 21st century style accessible and humane. Delighttful statements about timbre and texture and also us.
-
Jamie Barton Transfixes at Zankel Hall
Winner of the Prestigious Cardiff Singer of the World
By: - Feb 17th, 2015Barton is a Berkshire fixture. She received extensive training as a recitalist at the Tanglewood Music Center, where she was a Fellow in Vocal Studies for two summers. There she worked with such artists and coaches as James Levine, Dawn Upshaw, and Phyllis Curtin.
-
Renée Fleming Love-Fest at Symphony Hall
Braving Boston Blizzards to Hear People's Diva
By: - Feb 12th, 2015The love for Renée Fleming seemed to pour in both directions. On one of the many miserable days in recent weeks, the audience went to considerable trouble to get there - “ I witnessed an elderly woman using a cane stopped by a snow bank at the corner of Mass Ave and Saint Stephen’s Street lifted by two strangers to the other side. And Symphony Hall was close to full. Before she began to sing,
-
James Levine in Command at Carnegie
Netrebko a Luxury Substitute
By: - Feb 08th, 2015An orchestra like the Met, which nightly accompanies singers, is understandably appreciative of melody. But this was more than melody, It was dialogue and trios, to and fro, forcing a pleasurable attention to the music.
-
Muti and Chicago Symphony at Carnegie
Colors for the Ear from Mendelssohn, Debussy and Scriabin
By: - Feb 01st, 2015Muti can masterfully give the big picture. Yet in finding the trees in the forest, he makes the melodic and harmonic parts of a musical work shine like the facets of a big Hope diamond. Understanding better how Muti works the magic only makes hearing his music making with the great Chicago Symphony all the more enjoyable.
-
Muti and the Chicago Symphony Part Two
Russian Tribute at Carnegie Hall
By: - Feb 01st, 2015Riccardo Muti is passionate about the place of music in human lives. To him, bringing music to tortured souls is imperative. So his selection of Scriabin's First Symphony, an Ode to Art, and Prokofiev's Cantata based on his film score for Alexander Nevsky is in tune with his mission. The very survival of the Russian soul was on line for both composers. Under Muti's baton, hundreds of superb musicians carried the message at Carnegie Hall.
-
Ildar Abdrazakov Seduces Carnegie
Superb Mzia Bakhtouridze at the Piano
By: - Jan 30th, 2015Ildar Abdrazakov made his Carnegie Hall debut in a program that would test any singer's mettle. The evening's pro0gram was divided into two parts. In the first, Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Mussorgky provided a pot pourri of songs and arias that often echoed the keys and tones of the Volga Boat song. Very Russian in color. Sometimes surprisingly un-Russian in brightness and lightness.
<< Previous Next >>