Your guide to classical music online
Vienna, Thursday, October 22, 2020—In dutiful adherence to the programmatic formula: Russian Conductor => Russian Composers, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra performed a Russian triptych consisting of Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, and Tchaikovsky. In the theatrical business, that sort of thing is called “type-casting”. In the music world it’s simply a tired cliché that raises the question: Do […]
Vienna, Konzerthaus; March 2, 2020—Martha Argerich is one of the very few classical music superstars that please both the hard-nosed aficionados and the broader public. She’s a Grigory Sokolov and Lang Lang rolled into one. If you don’t like Argerich, you also subscribe to “Curmudgeon Monthly”. Five decades into her career she increasingly resembles Mim […]
CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK, MARCH 2, 2020 OK, it wasn’t exactly THAT kind of premiere, but it was the first performance of the German Requiem in a new critical edition by Brahms scholar Michael Musgrave, who contributed a thoughtful note to the program booklet about how this version differs from the one we normally hear. […]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art – American Wing; New York, February 14, 2020—The famous quilt collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing is an apt metaphor for Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein’s 1947 opera The Mother of Us All. The quilts are the handiwork of women, often collectively stitched-together patchworks, made up of […]
Munich, Herkulessaal; January 13, 2020—Regime change is coming to the Bavarian State Opera and its orchestra when artistic director (GMD) Kirill Petrenko and intendant Nikolaus Bachler will leave at the end of the season, to be replaced by the duo of Vladimir Jurowski (for the pit) and Serge Dorny (for the corner office overlooking Munich’s […]
Munich, Gasteig; January 9, 10, & 12, 2020—The Piano Concerto of Swiss composer Dieter Ammann was supposed to have been premiered at Vienna’s Konzerthaus with the Vienna Symphony. It wasn’t ready, however, and the concert last April (reviewed for ClassicsToday) featured Bartók’s Third, instead. The actual premiere had to wait for the BBC Proms, which, […]
Andermatt Concert Hall, October 25, 2019 – The musical experience at the second concert of the inaugural Andermatt Music Autumn Festival was a gratifying one. That’s in part thanks to the concert hall. Wider than deep, because of the questionable requirement that it accommodate a 60-piece-plus orchestra, it is shorter than would be ideal for […]
Vienna, November 19, 2019; State Opera—It seems not so long ago that Simon Keenlyside was a young, virile singer, boldly physical, and for all his energy perhaps a touch anodyne. His Britten performances and releases like “Tales of Opera” or his 2009 Dichterliebe tell some of that tale at both ends of the spectrum. The […]
Vienna, November 6, 2019; Konzerthaus—Vienna was in an early-music mood this November: Christophe Rousset’s Les Talens Lyrique was performing Ariodante at the State Opera; the Musikverein hosted the fast declining Concentus Musicus as well as the endearingly chaotic but often exciting Vienna Academy Orchestra; and the Konzerthaus opened its doors to Jos van Immerseel and […]
Andermatt is not the prettiest Swiss village. Certainly not the most famous or even otherwise particularly notable in a country positively littered with gorgeous little alpine towns straight out of a kitschy re-make of Heidi. It had been an important trade post along the route connecting Milan and Zurich, Italy, and much of north-western Europe. […]
