The Clifton International Festival of Music—22nd – 30th of June, 2013— joins the vibrant festival culture of the South West with its inaugural festival, comprising inspirational music to invigorate, intrigue and delight both established classical music-loving audiences and those looking to experience this music for the first time. The festival plays host to an array [...]
Telemann’s Surprising, Rare “Orpheus” from NYCO
El Museo del Barrio, New York; May 15, 2012 For its last presentation of the ...
New York Philharmonic and Music Director Alan Gilbert to Present New CD on Dacapo Records
May 2, 2013—A significant new recording by the New York Philharmonic and its Music Director Alan Gilbert will be released by the Danish recording label Dacapo Records this month, featuring works by the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg, who was the New York Philharmonic’s Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence from 2009-2012. In Europe, the release is set to [...]
“La Antonacci” and Accademia degli Astrusi
Teatro Morlacchi, Perugia, Italy; April 17, 2013—A vacation trip to Italy’s Umbrian hills took a Renaissance/Baroque turn at Perugia’s Teatro Morlacchi, a jewel of a venue from 1781 that seats about 1,000. The Bolognese chamber string ensemble, the Accademia degli Astrusi (15 strong) under Federico Ferri, along with soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci offered a program [...]
Colin Davis, 1927-2013
Music lovers all over the world will join in sadness at the news of the death of conductor Colin Davis. Sir Colin passed away on Sunday evening, 14th April, at the age of 85, after an illness. He will be remembered for his long association with the London Symphony Orchestra, which began in 1959, and [...]
Stunning Giulio Cesare At The Met
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; April 9, 2013—Director David McVicar’s production of Handel’s greatest opera, Giulio Cesare, originally mounted for England’s Glyndebourne Festival (and released and widely appreciated on DVD), has arrived at the Met, replacing the ho-hum, 1988 show by John Copley. McVicar gets everything there is to get out of the opera—love, [...]
Gotham Chamber Opera’s Wild Night with Cavalli
The Box, 189 Chrystie Street, New York; March 19, 2013—Francesco Cavalli (1602-76) was the 17th century’s most popular composer. His Giasone of 1649, a humorous take on the Jason/Medea story (yes, the same Medea who murdered her husband) was played more than a thousand times before the end of the century. Seeing as how he [...]
Incoherent Otello from Cura, Hampson
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; March 11, 2013—Elijah Moshinsky’s production of Otello on Michael Yeargan’s gigantic sets has returned to the Met for a handful of performances after its initial run last fall, with an entirely different cast and conductor. And a strange lot they are. It is difficult to assess the work of [...]
Everest Returns; Verdi Revived on 75 CDs
Serious collectors will want to take note of two press releases we recently received, the first from Countdown Media, the second from Decca: “Countdown Media, a subsidiary of BMG Rights Management plans to reissue all early classical music recordings of the American “Everest Records” label from the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Everest catalog [...]
Britten’s Creepy “Screw” Wonderfully Turned
Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N.Y.; February 26, 2013—Benjamin Britten’s 1954 The Turn of the Screw is a masterpiece on the level of Henry James’ 1898 novella of the same name. A “ghost story” of an odd sort—James preferred, as he put it, “the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal [...]
Puzzling, Bleak Parsifal, Gorgeously Sung
Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NY; February 18, 2013—What is Wagner’s Parsifal about? Ritual? Prayer? Salvation/redemption? Nature depicting inner life? The Metropolitan’s new production, by François Girard, certainly avoids the latter. This landscape (sets by Michael Levy) consists of arid land and small mounds of earth, with a fissure of running water that runs from [...]
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All great works offer a range of interpretive possibilities, and if you already own Munch's hallucin... Continue Reading
Martinu's pre-Paris output remains virtually unknown, unpublished, and unperformed. There is a lot o... Continue Reading
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In spite of its title (and the serene scene of repose on the CD cover), don't think you're going to put your darling little one to sleep with this latest recital from violinist extraordinaire Rachel B... Continue Reading
In Matthias Goerne's Volume 7 of his ongoing Schubert Edition he offers a program of 19 songs, its title derived from perhaps the most famous of them, Schubert's daring and dramatic setting of Goethe'... Continue Reading
These two symphonies were both composed in 1919 and reflect the composer's response to the First World War. Musically they have a lot in common, save that the "War" Third Symphony features a lengthy f... Continue Reading
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Here is what amounts to an SACD upgrading of Sviatoslav Richter in Prague Volume 4, featuring the celebrated pianist in live broadcast performances of Beethoven’s Op. 110 sonata (June 2, 1965) and D... Continue Reading
Wagner was 20 years old when he composed Die Feen (The Fairies), and it is worth a listen. Here’s a bit of Weber (Oberon and Freischütz); a hint of Mozart (Zauberflöte); an effect from Beethoven... Continue Reading
I may have missed it, but I don't recall seeing a line of people creeping down Fifth Avenue waiting to be the first to own Steven Isserlis' second recordings of Schelomo and Oration. Mind you, he's an... Continue Reading
