Your guide to classical music online
Rough Ideas–Reflections On Music And More; Stephen Hough (Farar, Straus and Giroux; 2020) The Little Bach Book; David Gordon (Lucky Valley Press; 2017) However one manages life in a pandemic, I suggest that the disruption of former routines and the disorienting effects of ongoing uncertainty can be at least partially ameliorated by the transporting power […]
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 […]
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. […]
Vienna, October 5, 2019; Musikverein—When Christian Thielemann stands in front of the Vienna Philharmonic, you can be sure of one thing: The orchestra does what he wants. Famous for simply ignoring or not caring about who stands in front of them or how they are conducted, the finicky Vienna Philharmonic likes and listens to the […]
