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2015

Berkshire Review
Jonathan Berman Conducts, Photo Hilary Scott.

Tanglewood in Wonderland: The 2015 Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music

August 17, 2015Lloyd Schwartz

This year’s Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood was celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding, by legendary BSO Music Director Serge Koussevitzky, of the Tanglewood Music Center, one of the great arts educational projects in this country and still going strong. Curated by composers and Tanglewood gurus John Harbison, Michael Gandolfi, and Oliver Knussen (who couldn’t attend or conduct as scheduled because of a visa problem), it was on the whole one of the livelier festivals—more focused if not quite as eclectic.
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Bard Music Festival
Neal Cooper (Mark) in the Bard SummerScape production of Ethel Smyth’s 'The Wreckers.' Photo by Cory Weaver.

Summer Operas: Opposite Poles at Bard SummerScape and Boston Midsummer Opera

August 14, 2015Lloyd Schwartz

If I were one of those opera aficionados who thrives on adding unusual operas to a list, I’d be in heaven. I saw two opera productions this summer — not by Puccini, Verdi, Wagner, or Mozart, but by Friedrich von Flotow and Edith Smyth — and I’d never seen either of them before. One of them was typical summer entertainment, a light and charming comedy, in a modest, stripped down production; the other just the opposite — a grim tragedy that looked as if a lot of money had been thrown at it.
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Bard Music Festival
Carlos Chávez by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, ca, 1930-40. © Colette Urbajtel/Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo

The Bard Music Festival 2015: Carlos Chávez and His World, a Preview

August 8, 2015Michael Miller

This is the first Bard Music Festival, Carlos Chávez and his World, to be devoted to music from south of the border. Up here, Central and South Americans were much more prominent in the classical music world in Chávez's time (1899-1978) than they are in the present. Today most concert-goers see this music through the window of Gustavo Dudamel and all his good works, and El Sistéma from which he emerged, is all the rage among music educators, possibly destined to become something like a Suzuki method of the twenty-first century.
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Opera
Cover of Gillian Cross’s adaptation of The Odyssey, ideal for young readers

Making Child’s Play of Homer

August 1, 2015Seth Lachterman

The work progressed from heroic numbers like “Sing to me of Odysseus,” to the blunter plaint, “Face it, he’s never coming home!” Engaging young audiences has become essential for classical music to survive in a world where digital immersion of immediacy of effect raises the aesthetic threshold.
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Theater
Kathleen Wise as Margery and Bill-Army in Jack-in-Vinegar Tom.

Judith & Vinegar Tom, a Double Bill by PTC/NYC (Potomac Theater Project); through August 9

July 30, 2015Mari S. Gold

Judith: A Parting from the Body by Howard Barker, is based loosely on the Biblical tale of this woman's heroism as depicted by artists through the ages including Artemesia Gentileschi, Botticelli, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Gustav Klimt. In Barker's rendition, Judith, played by Pamela J. Gray, comes to the tent of Holofernes, wiry Alex Draper, accompanied by The Servant, brought to life by the excellent Patricia Buckley and garbed somewhat like a modern Orthodox Jewish woman in black hat and pearls. In this version, the fatal encounter is a complex duel of seduction and deception that requires the audience to stay alert as the narrative is challenging. We know how the story ends but, at times, aren't sure it will move along the traditional directions as the actors lie to one another often leaving truth in doubt.
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Music
Elena Urioste. Photo Alessandra Tinozzi.

The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra at Davies Hall gets ready for its European tour

July 22, 2015Steven Kruger

I had the good fortune of catching the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra by the tail last month, just as they set out on their tenth European tour. The orchestra has been wowing audiences at the Philharmonie, the Concertgebouw and the Mariinski ever since 1986. I suspect they will make a similar impact this time, under the baton of Donato Cabrera, who also stewards the Las Vegas Philharmonic and California Symphony these days.
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Music
Jeannette Sorrell. Photo Roger Mastroianni.

Jeannette Sorrell, Music Director of Apollo’s Fire: The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, talks to Michael Miller

July 9, 2015Michael Miller

Just yesterday I had the pleasure of talking with Jeannette Sorrell, Music Director of Apollo’s Fire, the highly acclaimed period orchestra based in Cleveland, where she founded it twenty-three years ago. Today, rather like the venerable Cleveland Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire tours extensively in North America and Europe, bringing Ms. Sorrell’s warm, expressive vision of Baroque playing to both seasoned and neophyte audiences. Tomorrow, July 2, she will lead them at Tanglewood in a program called “Bach’s Coffee House,” referring to the Café Zimmermann in Leipzig, where first Georg Phillipp Telemann and later Johann Sebastian Bach organised free public concerts. The program will include excerpts from Telemann’s incidental music to Don Quixote, Bach’s Fourth and Fifth Brandenburgs, and short pieces by Handel and Vivaldi.

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Berkshire Review
Andrew Rangell. Photo David Shriver.

Emmanuel Music, with Andrew Rangell, Piano, at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival

July 3, 2015Charles Warren

It is always a pleasure to be in the Cape Ann harbor town of Rockport and to attend musical events in the beautiful Shalin Liu recital hall with its glass wall looking out to sea. The June 26th concert provided a striking contrast in styles of Baroque era music, with works of Bach and Handel, respectively, in the two parts of the program. The listener was invited into an emotional journey from darkness to light.
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