Music
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Boston Goes Gaga for Handel
The BEMF Reprises Acis and Galatea
By: - Dec 09th, 2015Handel lovers were in heaven this Thanksgiving. Local reigning early music superstar, soprano Amanda Forsythe set the First Church in Cambridge on fire with her vocal pyrotechnics, while across the river, the BEMF assembled a number of her colleagues to repeat its delightul "Acis and Galatea." What more could you want?
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Diana Damrau at Carnegie Hall
A Range of Dramatic Power and Grace
By: - Dec 06th, 2015Diana Damrau attends every detail of her performance. A gifted programmer, she started small and moving, with a Schubert song and ended vamping Dvorak.
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Norma by Bellini Ignites LA Opera
Angela Meade and Jamie Barton, Luxury Casting
By: - Dec 01st, 2015Bellini died young, but like Mozart and Schubert, will never be forgotten. Norma is the all-time great Bellini opera. In the age of Lena Dunham, it comes as a shock that women in antiquity could choose friendship over boyfriends. Even the Roman consul is shocked when one of his lovers upends him. For great singing, rush to the LA Opera's Norma.
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Jake Heggie's Moby Dick at LA Opera
Jay Hunter Morris a Magnificent Avenger
By: - Dec 01st, 2015Moby Dick, the opera by Jake Heggie is inspired by Melville, but not the tale as we know it. As the librettist points out, since most people who think they have read Moby Dick haven't, the audience is not left wondering, for instance, where is "Call me Ishmael." Instead the extraordinary music conducted by James Conlon and the video projections which are the heart of the set sweep you up and carry you off on the obsessive chase for revenge.
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Dudamel Conducts LA Philharmonic
Roberto Bolle and ABT Dancers Add to Musical Thrills
By: - Nov 28th, 2015When Frank Gehry was asked to design Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles, he made one condition: that Yasuhita Toyota be hired as the acoustician. He was not going to build a hall for musical performance that did not have fabulous acoustics. Disney Hall is an acoustical dream and its warm, intimate seating encircling the musicians and performers is mirrored perfectly by real surround sound. Under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, the LA Phil shines.
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Buddy and Junior
Black and Blue on Saturday Night
By: - Nov 27th, 2015Blues men Buddy Guy and Junior Wells blew in from the windy city for a week at Sandy's in Beverly. There was a slow start early in the week but they tore the roof off on Saturday night.
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Tony Winner Fun Home
Poignantly In and Out of the Closet
By: - Nov 25th, 2015As the closeted father Bruce, Michael Cerveris won a Tony as the lead in the compelling musical Fun House. The story of his suicide and his coming out in small town Pennsylvania is narrated his his forty something lesbian daughter Alison. She is portrayed at thre age levels by Beth Malone, Emily Skeggs and as young Alison the simply adorable Gabriella Pizzolo.
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White Light, Concentric Circles, Thomas Adès
Sadler's Wells Helps Us See Music
By: - Nov 22nd, 2015Four dance pieces set to the music of Thomas Adès were performed as the finale to a magnificent White Light Festival presented by Lincoln Center. Adès is a provocative yet pleasing composer whose seeming idiosyncracies suit choreography. The Sadler's Wells ballet company, clearly rooted in classical techniques, springs out organically to suggest additional layers of meaning.
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Rattle's Berlin Philharmoniker at Carnegie Hall
Beethoven Sunny-side Up
By: - Nov 20th, 2015The Berlin Philharmoniker has a sound and texture of its own. Smooth, but richly-textured, their performance of Beethoven's 6th and 8th Symphonies was a revelation at Carnegie Hall.
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Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony
Dystopian Production at Boston Lyric Opera
By: - Nov 19th, 2015Glass's opera is based on the Franz Kafka story of a prison colony where prisoners discover their crimes only as they are slowly killed. A true believer is the Executioner, and the failed execution is witnessed by the Visitor, a representative of liberal society. With only two singing actors, the work is dependent on the performances, which in this case were excellent.
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First Night Saratoga 2016
Celebrating the New Year
By: - Nov 06th, 2015Every New Years Eve different cities and towns host celebrations of varying caliber, but Saratoga outshines them all. This year marks their 20th anniversary.
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Breaking Through at Pasadena Playhouse
World Premiere Musical
By: - Nov 06th, 2015The world premiere of “Breaking Through”, a musical with a book by Kirsten Guenther and music and lyrics by Cliff Downs and Katie Kahanovitz, is now on stage at The Pasadena Playhouse under the direction of Playhouse Artistic Director Sheldon Epps.
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Christine Brewer and Paul Jacobs at Alice Tully Hall
Lusty Prayers Presented by the White Light Festival
By: - Nov 02nd, 2015Paul Jacobs, head of the organ department at the Juilliard School, and a magnificent performer invited Christine Brewer, the huge-voiced soprano of great delicacy, to join him in concert. Their alliance is for the ages.
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William Christie Conducts at Lincoln Center
Handel's Theodora is Heavenly in White Light Festival
By: - Nov 01st, 2015William Christie's Les Arts Forissants performances in New York are eagerly anticipated. Theodora, a late oratorio of Handel, delivered in spades. Listeners got the music, the story, the orchestra and chorus and magnificent individual singers.
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Van Zweden at New York Philharmonic
Inon Barnatan Joins the Magic-Making
By: - Oct 30th, 2015While listeners do not always agree with Jaap van Zewden's take on the classics, everyone is thrilled to listen. Taking the music in long arcs, permitting interpretation by individual artists in the orchestra and accompanying soloists, van Zweden is a passionate and generous music-maker. The New York Philharmonic was alive with the sound of music.
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Muddy Waters
Got His Mojo Working
By: - Oct 28th, 2015Young British rockers Stones, Yardbirds, Clapton, Beck lapped up Muddy's licks on those iconic Chess Records. Copped his tunes some morphed from Robert Johnson King of the Delta Blues. Always a thrill when he came to town and held court.
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Gil Shaham and David Michalek Translate Bach
Extraordinary Music and Visuals at Zankel Hall
By: - Oct 26th, 2015Having attended William Kentridge’s illustration of Schubert’s Winterriese cycle sung by Mathias Goerne, the first image projected for the video accompaniment of Solos for Violin by Bach came as a shock. A small baby, lying on his back, seems to be listening to the Bach, as Gil Shaham begins to play the first Sonata. A revelation followed.
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The BSO Plays Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff
Ice Cracks and Violins Dance at Carnegie Hall
By: - Oct 24th, 2015For the third evening of their triptych at Carnegie Hall, conductor Andris Nelsons presented the Russians at their bipolar best: dark battles and wild dances. Nelsons introduced himself at Tanglewood two years ago with a performance of the Symphonic Dances. He and the Boston Symphony exceeded themselves at Carnegie.
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Goerke as Elektra at Carnegie Hall
Nelsons Conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
By: - Oct 21st, 2015In 2014 Nelsons conducted Strauss' Salome at Carnegie. What a reprise Elektra is. Experience at Bayreuth may give the Maestro the ability to bring out the Wagner in Strauss, and then go far beyond to the condensed emotional pitch of Strauss and to his sheer beauty. Christine Goerke, fresh from her triumph in Turandot at the Metropolitan Opera, gave a performance for the ages.
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Christine Goerke as Elektra at the BSO
Boston Audience Bonkers Over Performance
By: - Oct 20th, 2015Strauss's early operatic masterpiece follows its Greek model closely to reveal the neurosis at the heart of modern life. Andris Nelsons led a white-hot BSO performance of a lurid, fin-de-siecle masterpiece. The cast, led by Christine Goerke, Jane Henschel and Gun-Brit Barkmin, was stellar.
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Mark Padmore, Tenor and Kristian Bezuidenhout
White Light Festival Presents An Evanescent, Everlasting Schubert
By: - Oct 18th, 2015Lincoln Center's innovative White Light Festival offered a delicious treat in their presentation of the Winterreise Song Cycle. Tenor Mark Padmore and Kristian Bezuidenhout on a fortepiano led us through a journey as the protagonist of the Muller poems trudges through his own. The fortepiano was used by Schubert and has a light touch, and a softer sound, with fewer overtones than a piano forte. For this performance, the singer and pianist were very much a partnership of equals.
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The Passion of Joan of Arc with Live Music
Donald Greig Devises a Score Presented at the Miller Theatre
By: - Oct 17th, 2015Silent films of the 1920s began when the theatre lights dimmed and a conductor marched down the aisle He raised his baton, the curtains opened. On flashed the film accompanied by the orchestra. At the Miller Theatre, five singers entered the stage and as the film started, they sang.
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No Beast So Fierce Adapts Richard III
Chicago's Oracle Productions
By: - Oct 14th, 2015The number of characters played by the cast of eight has by necessity been reduced to 14 from the 35 to 40 in Shakespeare's version. Cramming all of Richard III into 90 minutes means eliminating some nuances and character motivations.
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Nezet Seguin, Musician of the Year, Conducts The Philadelphia Orchestra
Lofting a Trifecta at Carnegie Hall
By: - Oct 14th, 2015The Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin is well served by Carnegie Hall. Carnegie announced that this concert would be recorded and later available worldwide. Watch for it. An extraordinary evening of music-making was offered. It would be disingenuous not to mention succession at the Metropolitan Opera. When James Levine cancelled conducting an important production of one of 'his' operas, Nézet-Séguin's name was the first to emerge as the new music director.
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BLO's "La Boheme" Reset in '68 Paris
Period Change Does Not Diminish an Iconic Opera
By: - Oct 09th, 2015We always love bohemians - or at least we used to - but most of us wouldn't want to live the lives of poverty and disease they endured for our entire lives. The classic story of the poet Rodolfo and the doomed seamstress Mimi has jerked tears from audiences since its premiere in 1896. The BLO's production hit all the necessary points without reaching the highest peaks.
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