Music
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Annual Piccolo Spoleto Festival
Fever Was Red Hot in Charleston
By: - Jun 03rd, 2016Piccolo Spoleto Festival is officially the outreach arm of Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Spoleto Festival USA, and thirty-eighth year of Piccolo Spoleto.
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Yannick Nézet-Séguin Appointed by Met Opera
Questions Remain about Gelb's Control
By: - Jun 02nd, 2016Nézet-Séguin, the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra where he will continue, assumes the role at the Met Opera in the 2020-21 season. He is a wonderful conductor of opera. What remains to be seen is Peter Gelb's role as "artistic director" of the opera company. Many first-rate conductors have not accepted the role because Gelb has insisted on control. The Board may not allow Gelb to continue to assert himself in artistic matters.
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Marsalis Marches and Gilbert Honors with Brahms
A Dirge for Kurt Mazur
By: - May 31st, 2016The annual New York Philharmonic concert at St. John the Divine in New York was started a quarter century ago just as Kurt Mazur took the helm of the orchestra. The conductor was honored today in a wonderful New Orleans Funeral March led down the long aisle of the Cathedral by Wynton Marsalis and also a performance of Brahms' Second Symphony led by Alan Gilbert.
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Robertson Leads Majestic NYPHil
Alan Baer, Tuba, Superb in John Wiliams
By: - May 29th, 2016Music of all genres and spirits is overflowing the halls of David Geffen Hall and embracing the citizens of New York. Gustav Holst's The Planets brought amateur astronomers to Lincoln Center's Plaza for a viewing of Jupiter and its moons after we had heard the composer's interpretation. Wow!
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The Met Orchestra at Carnegie
Christine Goerke Is the Go-To Soprano
By: - May 26th, 2016James Levine is gloriously winding down his tenure as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera. The man who brought us the full Ring Cycle at the Metropolitan Opera may have aged, but he is blossoming still and the stage of Carnegie Hall is the perfect venue to display his monumental talents.
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Sondheim on Sondheim as Putting It Together
Stage Door Theatre in South Florida
By: - May 24th, 2016Unlike in another Sondheim revue, “Side by Side by Sondheim,” has no narrator to link the songs. Rather, a dramatic framework exists in which two couples are attending a cocktail party at an upscale residence. This allows the characters to sing nearly 30 Sondheim songs outside the context for which he composed/or wrote the lyrics.
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World Premiere Noir Musical Thriller Hollywood
By Tony Winners Joe Di Pietro and Christopher Ashley at La Jolla Playhouse
By: - May 23rd, 2016La Jolla Playhouse has the best track record of any West Coast theatre when it comes to sending their original theatrical productions to Broadway (over 30 of them to date). Their 2008 musical production “Memphis”, written by Joe Di Pietro and directed by Christopher Ashley went on to Broadway winning a 2010 Tony Award for Best Musical. “Hollywood”, again written by Di Pietro, and helmed by Ashley, is looking to pull off a Tony Award-winning ‘Daily Double’ coup.
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NY Philharmonic Performs Chaplin's City Lights
Classic Movie with Superb Score
By: - May 19th, 2016Alan Gilbert, Music Director of the New York Philharmonic has an uncanny knack for programming. Extending the ideas of where music does and does not belong in the classic/classical repertoire and how it should be produced. He has brought us semi-staged operas, adventuresome new music and live performance of film scores that were written to be heard live while the film is screened. City Lights, quintessential Chaplin, was accompanied by Chaplin's own score, played by the Philharmonic. The score had been restored and reconstructed by the conductor, Timothy Brock.
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Beautiful: The Carole King Musical
Road Company at Florida's Broward Center for the Performing Arts
By: - May 12th, 2016If the audience at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts’ Au-Rene Theater was any indication, people pull for King not just because of her music. They want to see her succeed in this bio-musical. She comes across as an ambitious, yet humble, talented, yet insecure underdog.
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Mannes Produces Adamo's Little Women
Joseph Colaneri Conducts
By: - May 07th, 2016Little Women is Mark Adamo's first opera, and its spirited presentation of the Marsh family of Concord captures perfectly the struggle of a young woman to move from the warmth and support of her family home into the world of a woman. Simone de Beauvoir loved this book, as has the feminist community. Little Women seemed a perfect choice for Mannes, and composer Adamo, taking bows and hugging the cast, seemed to agree.
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Eve Queler Reprises Classic Parisina
Angela Meade Thrills in Donizetti
By: - May 05th, 2016Donizetti wrote this opera on an unusually tight schedule. Whether its differences from his other work are deliberate or accidental we will never know. The catchy arias we associate with the composer are missing, but the music is still delightful. Eve Queler introduced the opera in 1974 and reprised it at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater. A remarkable evening.
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Mocktoberfest Features the Polka Brothers
Annual Fundraiser Berkshire Country Day School on May 7th
By: - May 03rd, 2016If you missed Octoberfest, you will have a second chance this Saturday, May 7th. Berkshire Country Day School will hold its annual Mocktoberfest fundraiser at 6:45pm. Auction items include photographer, Gregory Crewdson's artist proof and a trip to attend Octoberfest in Munich.
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Utah Symphony Celebrates at Carnegie Hall
Thierry Fischer Conducted 75th Anniversary Performance
By: - May 02nd, 2016The Utah Symphony under Thierry Fischer gave an exciting and moving evening of music in celebration of their 75th anniversary. The Utah Symphony Orchestra was built by promoting 20th century American and European music. This priority was established by Maurice Abravael, the conductor who led the orchestra for 30 years. He retired to work at Tanglewood for another 10 years.
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Master Voices Presents Dido and Aeneas
Kelli O'Hara and Victoria Clark Star
By: - Apr 29th, 2016Kelli O'Hara can sport a delightful, rich opera voice and Victoria Clark, looking like a combination of Lynn Redgrave and Camilla Parker Bowles camps it up as a Sorceress bent on doing evil. A new prologue by Michael John LaChiusa has chorus members collapsing and hints of history being made.
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Manhattan School of Music's Superb Opera
Ibert and Ravel Entrance
By: - Apr 28th, 2016Persée and Andromède by Ibert and L'Enfant et Sortilèges by Ravel with a brilliant libretto by Colette, her only opera, are staged by the Manhattan School of Music Opera Theater. This school's productions are among New York's finest. The singing is of professional calibre. The productions are considered from sets to costumes to a first-rate orchestral accompaniment. Year after year you can count on MSM for an evening of operatic pleasure.
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BSO Ends Season with French and Russian Program
Kristine Opolais Sang Tatiana's Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin
By: - Apr 25th, 2016The BSO seems to love working with its new music director Andris Nelsons, who was ending his second season with this concert, which, BTW, featured his glamorous wife, Kristine Opolais, as the soprano soloist. In addition to the Tchaikovsky, the program included Debussy's "La Mer," Ravel's "La Valse" and Dutilleux's "Metaboles."
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Elektra is Galvanic
Murder and Revenge without Intermission at the MET
By: - Apr 23rd, 2016A remarkable non-stop performance by Nina Stemme – who never leaves the stage in this 110-minute production – sets the tone for a magnificent interpretation of Strauss’ devastating opera.
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Boston Baroque Does Mozart's The Magic Flute
Production Brought Out Its beauty
By: - Apr 19th, 2016Boston Baroque strayed from its central focus on Baroque music to play Mozart's eternally popular "The Magic Flute." I don't like its quasi-religiosity, but Mozart's music proves irresistible. Martin Pearlman played his Baroque band with style, and the vocal cast was (mostly) excellent.
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Jeremy Denk at Carnegie Hall
Poet of the Piano Rocks With Ragtime
By: - Apr 18th, 2016Jeremy Denk is a formidable writer and pianist. While a man of such iconoclastic and apt thoughts might let 'intent' dominate performance, Denk succeeds in melding his ideas into the keyboard and creating music of seamless satisfaction.
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Tilson Thomas Leads SFO at Carnegie
Sasha Cooke and Simon O'Neill Evoke Mahler
By: - Apr 17th, 2016Sasha Cooke and Simon O'Neill singing Mahler's Song of the Earth gave ravishing performances with the San Francisco Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas. Woodwinds and brass also stood out in Schubert and Mahler.
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James Levine Resigns as Met's Music Director
Tenure Ended by Chronic Illness
By: - Apr 16th, 2016Speaking to the Maestro about chocolate in February, it was clear that he had not found the answer to uncontrollable hand and arm movements, although his mind was as a sharp as ever. We agreed that Mondel's was the best hand-made chocolate in New York, but he also likes Mrs. See's chocolates in Los Angeles. It would be encouraging to hear that he will continue working with young talent at the Met and at the Juilliard School.
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ACJW Ensemble at Carnegie
Weill Hall Setting for American Composers
By: - Apr 14th, 2016Charming ACJW pianist Michael James Smith told us that when Carnegie first opened 125 years ago, no American music was played. Now we had an American evening, from Copland and Ives to an early Glass chamber piece and the stunning Carnegie premier of Steven Mackey's Micro Concerto. Cellist Caleb van der Swaagh explained tongue-in-cheek how hard it is to be a cellist and how easy it is to play 35 different percussion instruments, many of them featured by Mackey.
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American Academy Awards to Vocal Composers
Kate Soper and Lewis Spratlan Honored
By: - Apr 12th, 2016Contemporary music is alive and well in America and two special composers have been honored by the VIrgil Thomson Award and the Charles Ives Prize.
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BMOP Revives David Del Tredici's "Child Alice"
Neo-Romantic masterpiece gets second outing in 30 years
By: - Apr 08th, 2016Back in the '70s, David Del Tredici was the hottest composer in town. Then he and the movement he led, neo-Romanticism, faded from view. His obsessive, rapturous works based on Lewis Carroll's "Alice" deserve to be heard. Gil Rose and his Boston Modern Orchestra Project obliges. The result - two and a half hours of lush music - was largely satisfactory. We want to hear more.
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Alexandre Tharaud Performs Bach
A Crypt Session at the Church of the Intercession
By: - Apr 05th, 2016Alexandre Tharaud is more than a musician's musician. His heart-rending performance of the Bach Goldberg variations put him at the same pinnacle of pianists as the Bach work is for music afficiandos. In a concert series performed in an intimate acoustic marvel, the crypt of the Church of the Intercession in upper Manhattan, Tharaud delivered a mesmerizing take on this crown jewel of compositions.
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