Japan to Accept Britten Score, 70 Years after its Commission

The Consul General of Japan in Boston, Masaru Tsuji, will be at Boston Philharmonic concert at Jordan Hall this evening to receive a copy of the Benjamin Britten score, Sinfonia da Requiem. Originally commissioned by the Japanese government in 1940 for a celebration of the 2600^th anniversary of that country, the composition was, according to Ben Zander, rejected because of its Christian movement titles and was never performed there.

Benjamin Zander, music director of the Boston Philharmonic, notes, “We are deeply moved by Britten’s composition and by the grace of Japan’s esteemed diplomatic representative in receiving the score 70 years after the event.”   [Click title for Ben Zander's Letter]

March 10, 2010

in: Reviews

Musica Viva’s “Ocean Crossings”

by Mary Wallace Davidson

Richard Pittman’s disparate but ultimately organic program for the Boston Musica Viva performance in the Tsai Performance Center on March 5 was the last before the group leaves to perform American music in Kings Place, London. California composers Donald Crockett and Rand Steiger crossed the country from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans to speak briefly about their works.

Crockett’s The Cinnamon Peeler is a powerful setting of the sensual poem by Michael Ondaatje (author of The English Patient) for mezzo-soprano, piano, viola, violoncello, flute, and clarinet. Pamela Dellal sang beautifully, standing in the same semi-circle as the instruments; it emphasized that the voice part is on equal footing with them but caused the text to be almost unintelligible until the last two verses.

Steiger’s Elliott’s Instruments (2010), a world première honoring Elliott Carter on his 100th birthday, was commissioned by the Musica Viva with support from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. Steiger draws on all of the solo and chamber music that Elliott wrote for these six instruments since 1948. The work emphasizes the individuality of each instrument in turn and in ensemble, using hocket-like techniques to sustain long “melodic” lines; it builds to a fortissimo climax and ends on a beautiful chord you wish to hear a little longer.

The concert also included Twilight Colors (2007) by Chou Wen Chung, for a string trio and two wind trios (flute, oboe, clarinet — the second formed by the same players doubling on different instruments), and the British composer Nicholas Maw’s Ghost Dances (1988), for violin, violoncello, flute, clarinets, and piano, all doubling on folk instruments.

Performers included Ann Bobo, flute, Nancy Dimock, oboe, Bayla Keyes, violin, Peter Sulski, viola, and Robert Schulz, percussion. all superb musicians.                   [Click title for full review.]

March 9, 2010

in: Reviews

Beethoven’s Humor, Despair from Artemis String Quartet

by Larry Phillips

The Artemis String Quartet had a triumphant debut when they played in Jordan Hall on March 5 as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston. They presented a nearly ideal program, quartets from the early, middle and late periods of Beethoven, to a near capacity house. With the cello seated on a platform and the others standing, forming a semi-circle in the middle of the stage, the quartet sounded better and more balanced than other similar ensembles in this acoustic. Although they are German, they played in the Viennese fashion — less severe, say, than the Julliard approach

First up was the second quartet of Op. 18 (actually the third to be composed in this set.) The finale, “Allegro molto quasi Presto,” is a rondo in which humor is predominant. The Quartet in F-Minor, Op. 95 offered an extreme contrast to this exuberance. By then Beethoven was experiencing deafness, financial difficulties and an unhappy love life.

A late quartet, the A Minor, Op. 132, sounds very fragmented at first, but Beethoven manages to keep it organic by motivic ornamentation. The long slow movement is the emotional heart of this quartet. The score is fascinating with Beethoven’s markings, not only the Heiliger Dankgesang but also in the Lydian mode reference. This is key to the movement’s religious tone.

Although Celebrity Series audiences expect encores, Artemis wisely resisted.         [Click title for full review.]

March 9, 2010

in: Reviews

Mostly Magnificent Music Making from Perlman

by Mark Kroll

Itzhak Perlman is considered one of the great violinists of this or any era, and his recital before a packed house at Symphony Hall as part of the Celebrity Series of Boston last Sunday, March 7 reminded us exactly why.

Mozart’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in F major, K. 376. Mozart’s violin sonatas, which come out of the 18th-century tradition of “keyboard sonatas with violin accompaniment,” were conceived as small-scale works, and they may be just a bit too small for Perlman’s big style of playing. Perlman played Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major with all the intensity of an excited groom, a romantic-era one at that. There were some delicious 19th-century slides in the second movement, and the superb communication and ensemble between the violinist and his pianist de Silva made this performance of the Franck as good as it gets.

Perlman gave a virtuoso performance of the Sonata, but like in the Mozart, he was sometimes too rough for this elegant French confection. For example, some passages in the first movement were taken at such a fast tempo that much detail got lost and the intonation suffered. Quibbles aside, this was a masterful performance given by two masters of their instruments, both perfectly attuned to each other.   [Click title for full review.]

March 8, 2010

in: Reviews

Ambrosial Perfection, Simmering Fury from Borromeo

by Michael Rocha

The Borromeo String Quartet, faculty quartet-in-residence at the New England Conservatory, shared the Jordan Hall stage Sunday evening, March 7, with three 2010 student Guest Artist Award recipients. The concert also was the Borromeos’ third of an eight-part series featuring the complete string quartet cycle of local contemporary composer Gunther Schuller.

String players Kristopher Tong, violin, Mai Motobuchi, viola, and Yeesun Kim, cello played Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370 delicately and expressively, providing a perfectly balanced accompaniment. The overall effect was one of gentle precision. Schuller’s powerful String Quartet No. 3 (1986) was a jarring and riveting musical antithesis of the Mozart, an emphatic yang to Wolfgang’s yin; we had definitely entered film noir territory. Passion and gravitas were dripping all over the stage, tensions built and erupted. This music was dark, sinister, low-pH, and high-energy, and the Borromeo members played with a simmering fury.

From the shimmering tones and soothing triple meter of first movement to the busy, urgent phrases of the final Poco Allegro, Johannes Brahms’s Sextet in G Major, Op. was performed with ambrosial perfection. It featured three Borromeo members juxtaposed with their Guest Artist Award winner/special guest counterparts (Nicholas Kitchen and winner Audrey Wright, violins; Mai Motobuchi and guest Dimitri Murrath, violas; Yeesun Kim and winner Holgen Gjoni, cellos); the round, full-bodied tones of guest cellist Holgen Gjoni were especially notable. In the inordinately rich and vibrant musical scene of Boston, the Borromeo String Quartet is a true stand-out. Is            [Click title for full review.]

March 8, 2010

in: Reviews

Concord Chamber Players with Dicterow, Barker Offer Treats and Trifles

by Vance R. Koven

Concord Chamber Music Society closed its season on March 7 with a program at Concord Academy’s Performing Arts Center, featuring guests Glenn Dicterow, violin, and Edwin Barker, contrabass, with members of the Concord Chamber Players.

Michael Reynolds, cello, and Edwin Barker,  BSO principal bass, played Rossini’s Duo for Cello and Double Bass, written, it is said, for a bibulous dinner party in London, for laughs, but this was high-class clowning on the order of the Harlem Globetrotters: the technical challenges were real enough, at any rate, to put some apparent stress on Mr. Reynolds’s articulation.

The second “little” piece, the Miniatures, of Dvorák, were charming, beautifully played by Dicterow—for 30 years and still counting the New York Philharmonic’s concertmaster, adeptly supported by CCP members Wendy Putnam, violin and Karen Dreyfus, viola. Granted, the D major Duo for two violins by Spohr, op. 67 no. 2, does not plumb vast depths, but it more than justifies its place on a program. Dicterow and Putnam brought it off with style and grace.

The main event on the program was the Dvorák G major Quintet for string quartet and bass. We are happy to take issue with Mr. Ledbetter’s program notes; written in 1875, when the composer was 34, this is not juvenilia, even assuming Dvorák was something of a late bloomer. The performance was spirited, cohesive, and persuasive, though—could this have been an acoustic artifact, since we had the same sense in the Rossini?—the cello, especially in the high range, seemed a few cents short.     [Click title for full review.]

March 8, 2010

in: Reviews

Boston Modern Orchestra Project: Strings Attached

by Peter Van Zandt Lane

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) presented its third full concert of the season at Jordan Hall on March 6 in an extensive, fairly eclectic program of music for string orchestra. Nathan Ball’s Stained Glass, a world premiere, an amalgam of American post-minimalist and European spiritual minimalist styles, was quite enjoyable, though limited by a rather strict, at times uninventive harmonic language; it developed musical ideas successfully despite being on the short side.

Israeli composer Betty Olivero’s Neharót, Neharót was beautiful, disturbing, comforting, mystifying, and alien all at once– and without doubt the most impassioned performance of the evening. The most effective moments of Scott Wheeler’s Crazy Weather came in the more freely composed Adagio, as the music slowly and mysteriously gained a sense of motion from its suspended, frozen beginning. The third movement, “Steadily Driving,” at times seemed lacking in the motivation and intensity that the piece required – a very rare symptom for an ensemble with the versatility and performance standards of BMOP.

Hartke’s Alvorada, Three Madrigals seemed to press some of its most intriguing moments into the second movement, with overt melodiousness both strange and familiar. The third movement, “Bailada,” developed a wonderfully elaborate dance out of very simple materials, culminating in a surprising and pleasantly awkward coda reminiscent of Hindemith.

No easy feat, Gil Rose and BMOP were able to breathe life into Milton Babbitt’s Correspondences, among some of the most difficult (both practically and conceptually) music written in the 20th century and a piece that is most often interpreted with cold precision. The program closed with a fantastic performance of Bartók’s Divertimento, one of the finest compositions of the period.     [Click title for full review.]

March 8, 2010

in: Reviews

Spectrum Singers, Comfortable in Any Century, Live Up to Their Name

by Tom Schnauber

On March 6, in the First Church Congregational, Cambridge, the Spectrum Singers, a remarkable ensemble of “amateur singers” founded and led by John Ehrlich, presented music by three composers, each from a different country and time period. The Singers were at their finest with four Latin motets by Anton Bruckner: “Locus iste,” “Os justi,” “Ave Maria,” and “Virga Jesse.” They are works that reveal his depth without suffering from his often overbearing sense of timing and radiated the wide and seemingly contradictory emotional range in these works with stunning power and sensitivity.

The Singers presented a solid and colorful performance of Benjamin Britten’s fascinating and technically challenging work, Rejoice in the Lamb, for choir, soloists, and organ, despite the occasional stumble over mouthfuls of words in some faster phrases.

In the “Gloria” portion of Latin Mass by Vivaldi with the Orchestra of Emmanuel Music, Ehrlich seemed reticent to indulge in the more deliberate tempi needed in some of the pieces, resulting in a slightly cut-up, hurried feel overall. “Laudamus te” was sung with light, sprightly verve by sopranos Susan Consoli and Kathi Tighe, whose vocal character and sonorities were well matched. Consoli’s sweet, clear voice also blended beautifully with the solo oboe in the lovely “Domine Deus.” Alto Elaine Bresnick’s steely, slightly husky voice gave the intense “Qui sedes” a strange and dramatic flair. And in all cases, the melodic lines were creatively ornamented in the best Baroque tradition, hardly surprising from an ensemble that is so clearly comfortable in any century.     [Click title for full review.]

March 8, 2010

in: Reviews

Thrilling Tchaikovsky from Boston Civic Symphony

by David Patterson

The Finale of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony performed by the Boston Civic Symphony at Jordan Hall on Sunday March 7 thrilled—simply put, it was a spine-tingler all the way. Conductor Max Hobart encouraged a full symphonic orchestra of players representing a range of experience to play full-out at the right time, sweeping gestures at the right moment, dialogues with natural expressivity, and a terrific palette of color. It is very rare for me to be carried away as I was with these musicians who should not at all be thought of as amateurs, semi-professionals, and the like.

Boston-based violinist Irina Muresanu puts forward a sound and a style altogether sumptuous and smart. Had some of the expressive moves she so brilliantly shaped in a lovely performance of Paganini’s Cantabile for Violin and Orchestra taken just an ounce of spontaneity, her interpretation would have taken us over the top.

The Boston Civic Symphony gave the world premiere of Violin Concerto, op 129 (2009) composed for Irina Muresanu by Boston composer Thomas Oboe Lee. If there was anything redeeming about it, it was Muresanu’s virtuosity and sensitivity, though at one point in the second of two movements she seemed to have been forgotten by the composer for minutes on end.

Oboist Andrew Price, clarinetist Kristian Baverstam, and bassoonist George Mueller were outstanding as soloists in Rossini’s light and playful Overture to L’Italiana in Algiers.             [Click title for full review.]

March 7, 2010

in: News & Features

Explanation of Clarity versus Reverberation in Concert Acoustics

by David Griesinger

In his review here in the Intelligencer of the recent recital by violinist Thomas Zehetmair at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Christoph Wolff mentioned that the acoustics in the Stephen D. Bechtel Auditorium, designed primarily for symposia and lectures, “…was remarkably good in every respect. ” Wolff’s comment deserves some expansion on the whole question of acoustics.

The Bechtel auditorium is very well designed for its purpose. The audience sits in semicircles around the podium, forming a wide fan. There is ample space behind the performer, and the back of the stage is filled by a moderately sound-absorbing projection scree. The seats are upholstered with sound-absorbing fabric, and there are carpets in the aisles. The high ceiling gives an unusually large internal volume for a speech auditorium, and the extra volume increases the reverberation time sufficiently that there is a noticeable, although quiet, reverberation — under one second. Reverberation is audible, but at a low enough sound pressure that it does not obscure the music in any way. The music, even eight rows back, is as clear as if one were standing next to the performer. The net result is an exciting, highly engaging, concert experience, increasingly unusual in concert venues. [continued...]

March 5, 2010

in: News & Features

Emmanuel Church Celebrates Institution of New Rector with Special Offering from Emmanuel Music

by BMINT STAFF

BMInt  interviewed composer and Emmanuel Music director, John Harbison, and the Rev. Pamela L. Werntz, who is to be instituted as rector this Sunday. The 10:00 AM regular service will include Bach’s Cantata No. 163 in English, and a motet by James Primosch.  The 3:00 PM special service of institution will feature a repeat of the Primosch. Your correspondents also recalled the Rev. Al Kershaw, Emmanuel Church’s rector enthusiastically encouraging the  founding of Emmanuel Music. The incoming rector is also deeply committed to music, especially the music of Bach.

The interview with John Harbison:

BMInt: We recall that a former rector, the Rev. Al Kershaw, presided over Emmanuel when Craig Smith conceived the idea of the special music program.

Craig was a tenor in the choir at the time. The music director faltered, radically, and Craig took over the choir. And within a few weeks, he went to Al with the idea of doing a Bach Cantata series.

He had been coming to Cantata Singers concerts — back when I was conducting, and I had just gotten to know him because he lived across the street from me. …

He got the series going in ‘70 or ‘71. At the first performance, Rosie [Harbison's wife] and I both played. Jane Bryden sang… It was in a period when much of the time, the congregation was meeting at Lindsey [Chapel], very small-scale. Quite soon, I think the second year, Craig decided to do it every week. Al was fine with it.  Then Craig augmented the chorus quickly with some other singers.

BMInt: Do you think the Bach Cantatas have helped increase the congregation?

I think they did, I think Al thought they did, very much so.  Bach cantatas, and the Jazz ministry, were very beneficial.

BMInt: Al was a jazz musician, right? [continued...]

February 28, 2010

in: News & Features

The Monteverdi Orfeo Film: Spectacular, Surreal, Stylish

by Bettina A. Norton

A film presentation of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, directed by René Jacobs and staged by the Trisha Brown Company at the Auditorium of the Louvre au Dimanche 21 février was sold out, my husband and I were told, but a quickly presented card from Boston Musical Intelligencer worked magic. The staff was delighted at the offer to write up something for Boston classical-music lovers.

So I was nonplussed to discover that this presentation was hardly au courant; it originally was seen at Théatre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels under artistic director Bernard Foccroule in 1998, followed with a performance at the festival in Aix-en-Provence. Nonetheless, as it turns out when we returned to Boston and asked more than a dozen local music lovers (so far), almost no one even knew of it. Quelle domâge. [continued...]

February 22, 2010

in: News & Features

A Birthday Note

by Mark DeVoto

On February 22 I celebrate Chopin’s birthday, not George Washington’s.  Two hundred years ago today, one of the greatest Romantic geniuses was born near Warsaw, of French and Polish parentage.  His amazing talents were already apparent when he was eight years old.  By the time he was 16 he was writing music of permanent value, and the best masters in Poland said they had no more to teach him.

Chopin’s style was influenced by those he adored most — Bach and Mozart — and by Polish folk music, but in every sense is uniquely his own,  Its classical refinement resulted in a higher proportion of excellence and a lower proportion of inferior work than in the case of any other great composer.  Though he could not match them in output, Chopin had a melodic gift as great as Mozart’s or Schubert’s.  Of all the major composers his arena was the most limited: except for 6 solos with orchestra, some chamber music and some songs, his entire corpus consists of about 250 pieces for solo piano.  These works form the core of the Romantic piano repertory and include much of the most poetically subtle music of all time.  The unparalleled originality of Chopin’s harmonic language influenced a centuryful of composers from Schumann and Wagner to Rachmaninoff and Debussy and continues to be felt today.

Chopin said that he didn’t understand Beethoven, but on the evidence of his successful struggles with the sonata form, he understood enough.  The process of “symphonic” development by relentless application of repeated motives suited the Austro-German tradition, but it didn’t suit Chopin.  It sufficed him to devise his own approach to narrative structure that is perfectly original, idiosyncratic, and valid.  He achieved triumphs in the larger genres fully as well as in the miniatures for which he was most famous in his own time.  The vivid pianism of his youthful concertos (he wrote both at age 19) completely overcomes their orchestral weaknesses.  The improvisatory qualities of the scherzos and ballades define a visionary world that no later composer could approximate; the sui generis forms of the F minor Fantasy, the Barcarolle, and the Polonaise-Fantaisie, mighty monuments from Chopin’s last years, show that he was at the height of his powers when he died of tuberculosis at 39.  We are still learning from his example, singing his nocturnes, and dancing with his 56 mazurkas.  Happy 200th Birthday, Fryderyk Chopin, beloved master and greatest of composers for the piano.

February 16, 2010

in: News & Features

Is Classical Music Radio A Dying Technology?

by Richard Buell

WGBH’s spokesman, John Voci may be unintentionally right according to a BMInt commenter. The future for classical music broadcasting may be on the internet rather than from 100,000 watt radio towers, which, because of their cost of operation, require lowest common denominator programming. Richard Buell, a former Boston Globe critic, has a comprehensive website on streaming classical music here. His comment, which follows, is part of a lively discussion at the end of an earlier article .

Have you ever wondered what can classical music radio be like far, far away from dear provincial little Boston? If you’ll give me your attention …

Across the Channel from France Musique — which Joel Cohen rightly praises — you hear such offerings as BBC Radio 3’s CD Review, whose regular Building a Library feature amounts to a vivid critical discography in sound. Whose recording, say, of Schumann’s Kerner Lieder is THE one to have? One Saturday morning a few months back that wonderful writer Hilary Finch (of Gramophone and the Times) was on hand (and for an hour!) to go through the whole lot of available recordings.

There is nothing remotely like this on U.S. radio stations, and to the best of my knowledge there never has been. [continued...]

February 13, 2010

in: News & Features

Metropolis with Original Music, at the Berlin Film Festival

by Trobador

A Report from Europe: Will success spoil Gottfried Huppertz?

This was the question running through Trobador’s mind as he, along with a certain number of other European spectators, tuned in to an unusual television program last Friday on the Franco-German channel Arte. It transmitted the “première” of a legendary film, Metropolis (1927) of director Fritz Lang, restored to its original two-and-a-half hours. This was shown before a live audience, with a full, well-rehearsed orchestra performing from the original Gottfried Huppertz (1887-1937) score, edited by the German conductor-musicologist, Bernd Heller. Given the short run of the original film with its original score, in 1927,  more people have probably heard the music this week than at any time since its composition (although I am told on good authority that the score can be heard on two-year-old DVD produced by the Murnau Stifftung.) [continued...]

February 10, 2010

in: News & Features

Davies Develops Young People, New Music at NEC Festival

by Mark DeVoto

The last weekend in January brought the 20th Annual Festival of Contemporary Music at the New England Conservatory, and this year’s guest composer was an old friend of Boston, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen’s Music in the United Kingdom and at 75 the most illustrious living British composer. I can only report on some Saturday afternoon events, and regret that I wasn’t able to come to the big schedule on Sunday, but what I saw and heard is strong evidence that good music for and by young people is going strong at NEC. Most Saturdays at NEC are likely a madhouse of bustling kids, teachers, and groups; there are, I was told, some 1,400 students of elementary through high-school age in NEC’s preparatory programs. Brown Hall, in the basement adjacent to Jordan Hall, was host to the first program, and it was filled to overflowing, with every chair occupied and 100 students and parents in standing-room-only. [continued...]