Latest

September 9, 2019 The Great French Organ Tradition: Three Concerts on Three Organs by Paul Jacobs
September 2, 2019 A Crop of Recordings XXVIII: Elgar, Holst, Tchaikovsky, Debussy…and Karl Weigl
August 27, 2019 Berlioz and Wagner Were Right about Spontini: Olimpie in a Stupendous World-Premiere Recording of the Paris 1826 Version
August 22, 2019 Under Siege by Yang Liping Contemporary Dance at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival
July 25, 2019 DAN ROSE DRAWINGS wins 2019 AIGA Award

August 2019

Opera

After the 2016 performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

Berlioz and Wagner Were Right about Spontini: Olimpie in a Stupendous World-Premiere Recording of the Paris 1826 Version

August 27, 2019Ralph P. Locke

This world-premiere recording of the 1826 Paris version of Gaspare Spontini’s Olimpie makes a powerful case for a composer much admired in his own day and for a work that forms a link between Voltaire and the French Grand Operas of Meyerbeer, Halévy, and Verdi.

Dance

A Scene from Under Siege. Photo-LI-Yi-Jian.

Under Siege by Yang Liping Contemporary Dance at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival

August 22, 2019Mari S. Gold

Hundreds of silvery scissors hang above the stage in rows, gently swaying and giving off a tinkling metal sound. These scissors have a life of their own, rising and descending, sometimes in voluptuous swoops. On the right a woman sits amidst a pile of white material, cutting the fabric into Chinese characters which she holds aloft. Each time she does this the English translation of the characters appears on screens, introducing a segment of the performance.

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TUNDI’s remarkable Tristan und Isolde at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro, Vermont

With the extraordinarily high standards of conservatory graduates today, performances of Wagner’s music dramas have fled beyond the precinct of the very largest opera houses, and we may well forget how difficult it was only a couple of generations ago to cast and stage Tristan und Isolde at, say, the Metropolitan Opera, which once had to cast one Tristan per act, when the billed tenor was indisposed, and the two available replacements were also under the weather. Already by then the aging devotees of Flagstad and Melchior grumbled about just how far their standards would have to sink, before they stopped going to hear Wagner in New York. I still hear that today from long-time Wagnerians.

A Singer’s Notes 154: Johann Pachelbel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and Heitor Villa Lobos

The Aston Magna concert of July 27 in Saint James Place in Great Barrington featuring music of Johann Pachelbel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and Heitor Villa Lobos was a feast of beauty. The variety of works by these composers gave the ensemble and featured soloists opportunities to display their virtuosity and their admirable expressiveness. Aldo Abreu delighted the audience with brilliant skill in Vivaldi’s Concert for Sopranino Recorder in A minor. He and Christopher Krueger, also on recorder, were then featured in a performance of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major, along with violinist Edson Scheid who commanded his solo part with tremendous skill and playfulness.

A Singer’s Notes 153—Shakespeare and Company: Two Outdoor Performances: The Taming of the Shrew and The Merry Wives of Windsor

In Williams Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, the Bard baits us at every moment. We all long for a sweet love-life. Finding this requires, in this play, a whole lot of passionate listening, and in Shakespeare and Company’s outdoor production in the Dell at the Mount, director Kelly Galvin gave it to us.

A Singer’s Notes 152: National Youth Orchestra of the United States at Tanglewood, Sir Antonio Pappano conduction, with Isabel Leonard, Mezzo-Soprano

Conductor Antonio Pappano led the young players of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States in a spectacular performance of Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony on August 1st in Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood. The Alpine Symphony is well-known to be one of the most difficult orchestral pieces in the symphonic repertoire. To watch the intensity of these instrumentalists was almost as wonderful as hearing them. The hall vibrated with exuberance as well as tenderness. Conductor Antonio Pappano has every right to be proud of this superb young group of players.

Wagner’s Die Walküre and Verdi’s Requiem under Andris Nelsons at Tanglewood

Opera has been a significant presence at Tanglewood since the 1940s, whether in concert performances at the Koussevitzky Music Shed or fully-staged in the Theater—among the first structures to be built at Tanglewood, but disused since the Levine years—and I’ll confess a certain fondness for it, in spite of its spartan grimness, uncomfortable seats, and less-than-ideal acoustics. There, TMC Vocal Fellows and the TMC Orchestra could flex their muscles with sets and costumes, often producing superb results, above all in Mozart. The high points of opera at Tanglewood include performances of rarities under Leinsdorf and Ozawa, and I should mention Dutoit’s superb performance of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust in the Shed, as well as Szymanowski’s great Król Roger in Symphony Hall. Verdi’s Don Carlo and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, both with the TMC Orchestra were also outstanding events at Tanglewood.

A Singer’s Notes 151: Giancarlo Guerrero leads the TMC Orchestra in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 at Tanglewood is what I have been waiting for throughout the summer. A while ago I had the privilege of hearing this magnificent work in the Musikvereinsaal in Vienna. Though it may seem childish to say so, the slow movement of the great piece is almost frightening. So powerful it is when the first chord sounds in the third movement, it is as if a spirit has entered your body, is opening your ears, is finding and knowing more about being human than comes from any other work of art. This great movement produces a catholic music so sublime, it engulfs all my passions.

A Singer’s Notes 150: Tchaikovsky at Tanglewood

The July 15 performance by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra of the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 “Pathétique” was a highlight of my listening this summer. Conductor Stefan Asbury led a performance I will never forget. Thank you to the many wonderful young players who achieved it!

Latest

September 9, 2019 The Great French Organ Tradition: Three Concerts on Three Organs by Paul Jacobs

September 2, 2019 A Crop of Recordings XXVIII: Elgar, Holst, Tchaikovsky, Debussy…and Karl Weigl

August 27, 2019 Berlioz and Wagner Were Right about Spontini: Olimpie in a Stupendous World-Premiere Recording of the Paris 1826 Version

August 22, 2019 Under Siege by Yang Liping Contemporary Dance at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival

July 25, 2019 DAN ROSE DRAWINGS wins 2019 AIGA Award

August 2019