May 20, 2012

in: Reviews

Hong’s Missa Lumen: Lorelei’s Anchor

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In times of turbulence and change, we seem to become more conscious of the past, sometimes recognizing its lessons just a moment too late. But one of art’s most outstanding qualities is that it can be resurrected and given new life. Last night, Lorelei Ensemble’s all-women octet brought a revealing, interpretive program to Brookline, “A Mass: Revolution, Resistance, and Progress.”     [continued]

May 20, 2012

in: Reviews

Les Bostonades Lock in Rameau

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Les Bostonades locked in “Pièces de clavecin en concerts” of Rameau. Akiko Sato at a French-styled harpsichord blended in immaculately with Scott Metcalfe’s violin and Emily Walhout’s viola da gamba. All three appeared friendly, precocious, and unpretentious. Programming all five of Rameau’s instrumental gems was straightforward, but the five concerts were not played in the “right” order.     [continued]

May 20, 2012

in: Reviews

BMOP: Apollo’s Fire, Minus Dance

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Boston Modern Orchestra Project under Gil Rose presented “Apollo’s Fire” in Jordan Hall Friday night. The four works on the concert took their inspiration from Apollo and the Muses, either explicitly or implicitly; the other link in this program I found to be omnipresent was the idea of dance. I missed seeing the dancing – especially in the Carter and Stravinsky.     [continued]

May 18, 2012

in: Reviews

Power and Lyricism from Haimovitz’s Cello

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With incredibly flawless technique, Haimovitz displayed sheer raw power to sublime lyricism on selections from the Renaissance through contemporary American composers at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum last night. He held the audience spellbound in a program from Domenico Gabrielli, J. S. Bach, to Ned Rorem, Elliott Carter, and an arrangement of a Beatles’ song by Haimovitz’s wife, Luna Pearl Woolf.     [continued]

May 15, 2012

in: Reviews

Ciconia’s Music, Franco/Flemish Meets Italian

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“This isn’t Renaissance, it’s Medieval!” a perplexed audience member exclaimed during a concert of music by Johannes Ciconia given by Exsultemus at the University Lutheran Church, Cambridge, on Saturday. Known for their performances of Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, Exsultemus singers and accompanying instrumentalists reached back this time to around 1400, when Franco-Flemish traditions of learned polyphony encountered Italian traditions of melodious song.      [continued]

May 15, 2012

in: Reviews

Cantata Singers: Contemporary Choral & Piano

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Cantata Singers, led by David Hoose, and duo-pianists David Kopp and Rodney Lister presented “In Thoughts, Our Dreams” to a Jordan Hall audience last,Kim, Shapero, Lister (who all had or have important ties to greater Boston) had enunciation problems, but the final Copland In the Beginning was ecstatic.     [continued]

May 15, 2012

in: Reviews

Magical Debussy on 1877 Érard

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For her third appearance at the Frederick Collection’s series on Sunday, Hsia-Jung Chang played Debussy, the first half devoted to two earlier suites for piano and the second half to some of his earlier melodies, thus taking the opportunity to introduce soprano Deborah Berioli to the series. Chang felt that an Érard best offered the possibility of creating Debussy’s desired soundscape.     [continued]

May 14, 2012

in: Reviews

Chameleon’s Emotion from Difficult Pieces

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The Chameleon Arts Ensemble, with guest artists pianist Sergey Schepkin and soprano Elizabeth Keusch, presented a program entitled “and told in song” yesterday at Goethe-Institut Boston, featuring Enescu, Schumann,  and Shostakovich and contemporary works by Robert Sirota and Judith Weir. Both halves of the program ended with overwhelmingly powerful emotion.  “Zun mit a regn.”      [continued]

May 14, 2012

in: Reviews

BCMS: Delightful, Deeply Felt Playing

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The Boston Chamber Music Society offered a fine program last night that blended classic, romantic, and modern with the familiar and the seldom heard. Ravel’s less popular Sonata for Violin and Cello received an energetic, even fearless performance; Arensky’s Piano Trio, a deeply felt, fine one; and Schubert’s “Trout” was spirited, expressive, in every way delightful.     [continued]

May 13, 2012

in: Reviews

Sublimity from CMS of Lincoln Center

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This afternoon, the Gardner Museum’s Sunday Concert Series presented the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Music by Rolla and Schumann showcased four of the musicians in a concert that offered sublime moments of breathtaking beauty. The only sour note was the excessively long delay after the first movement of Rolla’s Duetto Concertante for the late seating of audience members.      [continued]

May 12, 2012

in: Reviews

Masterworks Chorale Resurrects King David

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Masterworks Chorale brought back more than just memories in its performance of Honegger’s King David., The performance Friday night at Sanders thoroughly reawakened that particular sense of religious fervor of a time gone by. A special kind of applause is due Music Director Steven Karidoyanes for pulling off such an evening.     [continued]

May 12, 2012

in: Reviews

Ax Shows Why “Celebrity” Means So Much

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Emanuel Ax’s appearance at the Celebrity Series of Boston last Friday was a reminder that fame and talent, not to mention modesty, don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Ax was lucid, powerful, and above all, moving; in others words all the things that should be celebrated in an artist.     [continued]

May 10, 2012

in: Reviews

Kinetic Energy, Sonorous Pleasure from Radius

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Radius Ensemble presented a comfortable program of old favorites and friendly newer works on May 5th at Longy. The evening progressed in reverse chronological order from a commissioned premiere to Beethoven’s Sextet in E-flat Major op. 81b for horns and strings. The players brought the extroverted, eager-to-please chamber pieces stylishly to life — no high-minded intellectual abstruseness here, just kinetic energy, sonorous pleasure, and fun.     [continued]

May 9, 2012

in: Reviews

COB Evoked Paris Spring in Boston

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An ensemble of roughly 10 performers produced a whirlwind tour of the sound of 20th-century France on Saturday evening in Boston’s First Church. Honegger’s Pastorale d’été seemed at home here, and Debussy and Fauré flourished in the hands of David Feltner’s Chamber Orchestra of Boston. Also impressive were the songs by Giraud, Louiguy and Poulenc, sung by baritone Paul Soper.     [continued]

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May 20, 2012

in: News & Features

Let There Be Light on Haydn’s Creation

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Creation Image by Joss Sessions

Chorus pro Musica with the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra will be offering a very unusual performance of Haydn’s Creation on June 2 in Jordan Hall  featuring synchronized projections designed by English videographer Joss Session. Some thoughts and conversations on the work and the presentation follow.

Human imagination gives us an amazing wealth of stories on the origin of the world. To the Chinese, the Yang and the Yin were One and when separated, the tension of their opposite qualities produced the world and all things in it. The Japanese say that Chaos reigned until the Three Creating Deities formed heaven and earth and all things in it. Hindu belief tells us that God and the universe are essentially one, and God manifests Himself as the world and all things in it. One African myth tells us that a god named Bumba created the sun and moon along with various creatures and finally, man. [continued...]

May 19, 2012

in: News & Features

Journal of A Piano Juror

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Frequent BMInt contributor Leslie Gerber became involved 25 years ago in the efforts to allow Vladimir Feltsman to leave the Soviet Union. Feltsman returned the favor by inviting Gerber to join the jury for the PianoSummer Institute and Festival’s Jacob Flier Piano Competition at its onset, 18 years ago. The following account, adapted from an article originally printed in the Woodstock Times, is presented here as a preview of the festival’s 18th season.

I was listening to a young pianist playing Bach, and I couldn’t hear anything interesting in the performance at all. Nervous, I glanced at the notes of the person sitting next to me. He had written, “Labored.” I was relieved. [continued...]

May 12, 2012

in: News & Features

Full Week of Rachmaninoff and Russian Music

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From May 20th through May 27th, the Second International Rachmaninoff Russian Music Festival will be presenting eight concerts in various Boston locations, from some usual venues such as New England Conservatory and First Congregational Church, Cambridge, to a synagogue in Brighton and the Somerville Museum. Named in memory of that one-time Russian émigré to America, Sergei Rachmaninoff, the festival will present a spectacular mix of performances with a special focus on the operatic and choral vocal traditions, though piano solo, organ, and chamber music will also be featured.

The opening concert on May 20th is to be a staged production of Tchaikovsky’s opera, Iolanta, the subject of an earlier article here. The remaining events present a large and varied roster of artists and ensembles, culminating in a Jordan Hall finale with three Russian choruses, a German youth orchestra, The Festival Orchestra, Juventas New Music Ensemble, pianist Vassily Primakov and numerous impressive vocalists.  [continued...]

May 11, 2012

in: News & Features

The First Pearl of Russian Opera

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Dina Kuznetsova, the Iolanta

The Second International Rachmaninoff Russian Music Festival opens on May 20th with a rarity, a staged performance of Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta produced by the Boston Vocal Arts Studio. “Our tightly-knit Russian community is rich in cultural events,” explained BVAS’s Executive Director Olga Lisovskaya, “so it was logical for our Artistic Director Alexander Prokhorov to team up with International Rachmaninoff Russian Music Festival’s titulaire, Irina Shachneva. They have been colleagues and friends for many years and are both living their lives for the music.

 “Iolanta is BVAS’s first major production of a full-length (1.5 hours) opera. It’s fully staged and costumed with great soloists. [Details are here.] We’re very fortunate that this project came together, rather magically, I would say, with the Rachmaninoff  Festival. We have some wonderful international stars in the cast including the Russian-American Met Opera soprano Dina Kuznetsova in the title role (on May 20th.) Count Vaudémont will be played by Met tenor Adam Klein. He does not have the advantage of Russian as his mother tongue but has benefited enormously from our talented language coaches and will sing like a native. Probably half of our soloists are Russian speakers, though!” [continued...]

May 8, 2012

in: News & Features

Monadnock Music Moves On

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Monadnock Music, headquartered in Peterborough, New Hampshire, has just announced a very strong season for this summer (detailed here). Clear from its direction is that both Executive Director Will Chapman and fairly-newly-named Artistic Director Gil Rose have ambitions to return to the popular summer concert series its former historic variety of programs and to instill a new sense of freshness. The focus of this coming season is the work of Virgil Thomson. Opera returns to the Monadnock offerings with two one-act chamber operas, The Boor and A Water Bird Talk, by American composer Dominick Argento, on July 29 at the Colonial Theatre in Keene. Performers will be soprano Heather Buck, baritone James Maddalena, tenor Frank Kelley, and baritone Aaron Engebreth. And it will be the directorial debut of Gil Rose (who, of course, will conduct). [continued...]

May 8, 2012

in: News & Features

Roman Totenberg Remembered

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Roman Totenberg died peacefully at 101 years old last night surrounded by family and friends. Many public tributes in the past few years have been held in Boston to honor him, and yesterday, several of his students individually played Bach sonatas and partitas at his bed side for several hours in a very touching and fitting homage to the Maestro according to Jacques Cohen. [continued...]

April 24, 2012

in: News & Features

BSO Makes Concerts Available Online For Entire Year

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Beginning with tonight’s concert of Beethoven’s First Symphony and Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (a re-transmission of last Saturday’s performance) , The Boston Symphony will begin hosting web streaming of its concerts on its BSO Media Center. These web broadcasts will continue to be produced by 99.5 Classical New England, and continue to be offered on the latter’s website as well. CNE will also continue its live Saturday-night BSO and weekend Tanglewood concert broadcasts on its network of radio stations.

Are the two outlets’ respective webcasts “duplicative services” similar to ones that audiences bemoaned after WGBH went all-talk at the end of 2009 and began to offer many of the same programs as WBUR? [continued...]

April 23, 2012

in: News & Features

Good Things Befall Fellner

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Viennese Pianist Till Fellner is the most sought-after protégé of Alfred Brendel and is very well known for a discography which includes what is for this writer the standard version of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier (Book I).  Fellner’s recent performances of the complete Beethoven sonatas in several important venues here in the States, in Canada, Europe and Japan have added to his luster. Though no stranger to Boston audiences, Fellner will just be getting around to making his BSO debut since celebrating his recent 40th birthday.  He has already played twice at the Boston Conservatory Piano Masters’ Series, once on WGBH radio, and three times for private concerts at The Harvard Musical Association.  But his debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (on April 26, 27 and 28 at Symphony Hall) will be the first chance for large local audiences to hear him.

BMInt: How did it come about that Bernard Haitink invited you to play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat, K. 482 with the BSO? [continued...]

April 21, 2012

in: News & Features

Alex Ross Throws Light on 20th-C. Sacred Music

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“Messiaen is the greatest religious composer since Bach,” The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross told the audience at a recent lecture held at Trinity Church in Boston on April 17. But, he demonstrated that there were, and still are, many more 20th-century composers with decidedly spiritual messages. The 20-odd musical examples Ross chose (played from his computer) were riveting, if not frustrating in their necessary brevity.

This large body of sacred composition, Ross contends, has a great deal of surface diversity. “But underneath, there is the common urge to present sounds as ‘other-worldly,’ with sacred connotations,” Ross stressed, “and the ability to unsettle us is why the compositions endure.” [continued...]

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