Music
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The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Brings Us Bach
John Harbison Selects Unfamiliar Cantatas
By: - Dec 07th, 2011John Harbison is familiar to Bostonians as the conductor of Emanuel Music, which has a commitment to perform all of Bach's 200 cantatas in cycles. At Alice Tully Hall, four of them were presented for an unusual and exciting evening.
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The Barra MacNeils at Clark Art Institute
A Celtic Holiday Concert
By: - Dec 05th, 2011The Barra MacNeil band from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia has performed and recorded for the past 25 years. They returned to the Clark Art Institute after a lapse of seven years. The sold out audience delighted in a traditional Christmas celebration. Now and then we joined in with the merry singing.
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Occupy Wall Street Occupies the Metropolitan Opera
OWS Shouted Out Over a Dozen Times Before Act III of Faust
By: - Dec 04th, 2011Occupy Wall Street was banned from the Lincoln Center Plaza, city owned property leased to Lincoln Center, on December 1, as Philip Glass read from the Ghandi libretto in front of the Met. On December 3, a protester succeeded in getting into the house and calling out his message, by and large favorably received by audience claps, but quelled by Met staffers.
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Stephanie Blythe Joins the New York Festival of Song
Stephen Blier's Humorous and Touching Take on Goyishe Christmas
By: - Dec 02nd, 2011Assimilation is not the point. Celebrating a national holiday that is more culture than religion is something all Americans do, some with more angst and guilt than others. Noel anxiety was part of this evening's fun.
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The Collegiate Chorale Performs Moise et Pharaon
An Unexpected and Glorious Rossini Opera on the Exodus
By: - Dec 01st, 2011This not often performed opera brought down houses in Naples and Paris when it was first put on in various versions. Stendhal, who hated Biblical subjects and the lead soprano, attended to laugh and ended up extraordinarily moved. So was the audience at Carnegie Hall.
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Ian Bostridge and Thomas Ades at Carnegie Hall
Blissful Music Making
By: - Nov 29th, 2011Taking on the challenge of the dark and painful places of life, tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist (composer and conductor) Thomas Ades presented an evening of wrenching beauty.
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Opera Notes: Jesus Christ Superstar and More
Rodelinda at Neighborhood Theaters on December 3
By: - Nov 29th, 2011It is heartening to think that people who love and make opera, even if they don't know what they are doing or saying, come up with dramas that heightened our every day. Rodelina at the Clark and Mahaiwe December 3rd, followed by Faust on December 10. Both poperas are bound to be fun.
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Orpheus Doesn't Look Back
Boston Early Music Festival Presents French Rarity
By: - Nov 28th, 2011Marc-Antoine Charpentier wrote an adaptation of the Orpheus myth, but the third act is missing. The BEMF's Gilbert Blin shot-gun weds it to another work, and the result is delightful.
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The Guthrie Family Rides Again at the Colonial
Thanksgiving Tradition Continues in Pittsfield
By: - Nov 22nd, 2011At one point I counted 13 Guthrie Family members on stage all at the same time. There may have been more, but some were small and scampered around a bit. The first time I and most of the audience heard Arlo, was also the first time we heard Alice’s Restaurant. Within a short time, Arlo had the entire room in the palm of his hand.
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Opera Notes from New York and Chicago
What is Opera? The Metropolitan and Lyric Operas Disagree
By: - Nov 22nd, 2011A new production of Faust is coming up at the Met, and the company held a discussion on Monday with the artists responsible. It was very revealing. In the heartland, Ariadne Auf Naxos, the great Strauss opera about the role of music in life, spelled out in every detail that music drives the form. Why should this even be a subject for debate?
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Santyagraha by Philip Glass
Gandhi Inspired Opera Sung in Sanskrit
By: - Nov 21st, 2011The genius of Philip Glass, viewed as our greatest living composer, is to create transformative, trance inducing meditations on the greatest figures in our history and culture. Mahatma Gandhi, and his twenty year non violent struggle against racism in South Africa informs the opera Satyagraha. This past weekend we experienced an absorbing but frustrating experience of the opera Live in HD at the Clark Art Institute.
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Sam Amidon at Alt Cabaret
Indy Rock at Mass MoCA
By: - Nov 20th, 2011Mass MoCA's B-10 is an intimate stage in a tall room, and Amidon flooded it with good-natured whimsy and the haunting voice of a gen-something folk balladeer in full command of his instruments, his idioms and the philosophical logic of the non-sequitur.
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Tanglewood 2012
Summer Schedule Released by BSO
By: - Nov 17th, 2011Tanglewood, one of the world’s most beloved music festivals and the famed summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra located in the beautiful Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, celebrates its 75th anniversary season, June 22-September 2, with a spectacular lineup of musical guests and programs that spotlight Tanglewood’s rich tradition of presenting summertime concerts at their best since 1937.
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Remembering WBCN The Rock of Boston
25th Anniversary Album February, 1993
By: - Nov 15th, 2011In the process of scanning a vast archive of vintage jazz and rock images we came upon a album shot during the 25th anniversary party of the now off air WBCN. It jogged rusty rock memories. On hand were a heady mix of music celebrities from a golden age.
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Mile High with the Denver Philharmonic
Kolaty, Effinger and Brahms Delight
By: - Nov 14th, 2011Community orchestras when they are successful,and Denver's, started by the great conductor Antonia Brico after she was cast off for being a woman, has thrived by bringing classical music to old and young alike.
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Satyagraha by Glass Live in HD
Clark Art Institute Nov. 19
By: - Nov 11th, 2011Philip Glass’s twentieth-century masterpiece Satyagraha comes to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute on Saturday, November 19 at 1:00 pm, live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera. Don’t miss this “profound and beautiful work of theater†(Washington Post). Glass is widely regarded as among the foremost living composers.
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Nico Muhly's Dark Sisters in World Premiere
A Moving Performance by the Gotham Opera
By: - Nov 10th, 2011Some say critics are waiting to take Muhly down a peg or two, but his new opera doesn't even give them a chance. It is wonderful. The world premier of Nico Muhly’s eagerly anticipated chamber opera, Dark Sisters, was held at the Gerald Lynch Theater in New York last night.
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Angela Gheorghiu Triumphs at Carnegie
The Opera Orchestra of NY's Adriana Lecouveur
By: - Nov 09th, 2011A highly anticipated evening delivered the goods. With a stellar cast, the OONY put on the best opera performance in New York this year. Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, whose improbable and confusing plot is often noted, has beautiful music that more than makes up for over-threading the plot needle. Cilea rivaled his contemporary Puccini as a master of melody. His orchestration is subtle and yet full of drama.
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Boston Lyric Updates Macbeth
Production Set in a Timeless Nowhere/ Everywhere
By: - Nov 07th, 2011This "Macbeth" is visually and dramatically commanding, but the soloists, with one exception, are not stellar. Blessed with the work's two great numbers, Lady Macbeth dominates the action, but in his single aria the exiled Macduff steals the show.
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Opera Notes: Siegfried at the Met in HD
Jay Hunter Morris Steps in to Triumph
By: - Nov 02nd, 2011Everyone in haute opera was whispering, "Why is Morris, the cover, singing this role?" Morris answers, "I can do it and I will." And the good news is that he delivers. Siegfried will be screened Live in HD on Saturday at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington and the Beacon in Pittsfield.
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The Budapest Festival Orchestra at Carnegie Hall
Andras Schiff Delivers a Schubert Piano Concerto
By: - Oct 31st, 2011Europeans clearly have an edge in presenting music anyone can love, because they understand it, and do not hold back in performance. We have the beautiful sound of Carnegie and the new Disney, Fisher and Helzberg Halls whose sound is designed by Yasuhisa Toyota. Now they can begin to figure out how to bring an audience in.
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In Durance Vital - Part IV
Notable Music From Musical Notables
By: - Oct 28th, 2011Once again I have a batch of some new and some almost new goodies by real oldies almost all of whom are still putting out music worth listening to. I address these descriptions mostly to those of you who survived the ‘60s and the decades that followed, but if you were not around then, here is recent music by some of the best who may have made daily life for your parents and grandparents if not joyous, a bit more bearable.
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Opera Boston's Beatrice et Benedict by Berlioz
A Scintillating Production Restores Faith
By: - Oct 28th, 2011Beautiful sets and costumes and a young and vibrant cast who sang Berlioz's enchanting music with real verve combine to create a real hit. Beatrice et Benedict, an opera-comique with spoken dialogue as well as sung arias, ensembles and choruses, was Berlioz’s last work, and you get the feeling that he was tired of the battles he had waged as a young man against the establishment to create a new, modern and identifiably French music.
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Live from the Metropolitan Opera, Don Giovanni in HD
Arrives in the Berkshires October 29
By: - Oct 26th, 2011Find it at Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, the Clark in Williamstown.
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Angela Meade's Glorious Anna Bolena at the Met Opera
Comparisons to Joan Sutherland
By: - Oct 25th, 2011Meade make her mark in the Berkshires singing excerpts from Norma and I Lombardi last summer. If you hear her, you will never forget her. A big, glorious voice full of all the complex detail the style requires.
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