a virtual journal and blog of the classical music scene in Boston

About the Intelligencer

Many of us today rue the general decline in musical culture and literacy. In a small way we believe we are reversing that trend with this online virtual journal and blog. If you have looked in the Boston Globe or Boston Phoenix calendars for guidance on what concert to attend, or looked in those papers for a review of a concert you have attended, you will no doubt share our frustration. Although what coverage there is in these papers is estimable, there is not enough of it. Due to  limitations of staff and ink, probably fewer than 10 percent of the area’s concerts are reviewed and probably fewer than one half are listed.

Our aim with The Boston Musical Intelligencer is to list every classical music concert in greater Boston (within Route 128) for the regular season, and in summer to expand coverage to include venues throughout New England. We also review as many concerts as possible, especially those our editors deem most unjustly neglected by the print media. Our reviewers are drawn from Boston’s most distinguished musicians, composers, music academics and musically literate listeners. Reviews and articles are professionally edited before publication. We invite participation from readers in our moderated but un-edited comment area.

Our modest undertaking could not have begun without generous support from The Harvard Musical Association and Professor Robert Levin.

Since its founding in 1837, The Harvard Musical Association has sought to advance the intellectual-musical life in the city. Among the Association’s accomplishments are the first professional chamber music series, the erection of the great Boston Music Hall, and the formation of the orchestra which ultimately gave rise to the Boston Symphony. HMA for many years also subsidized the most learned and influential periodical on classical music in the history of the U.S.—Dwight’s Journal of Music, which was issued from 1852 to 1881. Nothing quite like it has been in print since then.

F. Lee Eiseman, publisher

Our email: info [at] classical-scene.com

Editors and Contributors

Robert D. Levin, a world-wide acclaimed classical performer, composer, and musicologist, is professor of music at Harvard University, from which he received his A.B. magna cum laude with highest honors in 1968. In 1994, he was named Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor of the Humanities. Levin’s academic career combines teaching and tutoring, especially on keyboard instruments; conducting; and music theory, with an emphasis on the classical period. He has completed and reconstructed a number of classical works, especially unfinished compositions by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach. His Mozart completions, including the Requiem in D minor and the Mass in C minor, are considered his most important achievements. Levin is also President of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig and Artistic Director of the Sarasota Music Festival.

Bettina A. Norton is a retired museum professional. She has published widely in her field, American historical prints, and in later years, was editor and publisher of The Beacon Hill Chronicle. She lives in the house in which she grew up, in Boston, and has been attending classical music concerts “since the waning years of World War II.” She is author of Edwin Whitefield: Nineteenth-Century North American Scenery , History of the Boston Naval Shipyard, Trinity Church: Story of an Episcopal Parish in the City of Boston, ‘To Create and Foster Architecture: History of the Boston Architectural Center, Prints at the Essex Institute, and over 60 articles. She also founded Hill House, the community center on Beacon Hill.

F. Lee Eiseman has been making important things happen in Boston for many years.

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Adam Baratz is a composer and pianist living in Cambridge. He grew up near Boston and received a BA in Music from the University of Rochester in 2007. He doesn’t think art is a substitute for life, but it should at least point people in the general direction. His website is www.adambaratz.com

Jeffrey S. Berman is Professor of Medicine at Boston University. He is also a clarinetist in the Longwood Symphony Orchestra and a member of several music boards in the Boston area.

Laurence E. Berman, retired professor of music, is also an active pianist. A graduate of Harvard College, from which he also received his PhD., he studied with Nadia Boulanger.

Constantine Finehouse has performed extensively in the US and abroad, including in Trieste, London, St. Petersburg and Odessa and has been praised by Rhein Main Presse Allgemeine Zeitung for his “interpretations of depth and maturity. His latest CD, “Backwards Glance,” features music of Brahms and Richard Beaudoin. “The Bolcom Project” made in collaboration with with his American Double partner, violinist Philip Ficsor, included an Albany Records CD and a national tour with concerts in Boston, New York, Denver, Santa Barbara, Spokane and at Yale  University. Fanfare praised the recording as “indispensable to any serious collector with an interest in later 20th-century duo repertoire for violin and piano.” Finehouse is currently recording William Bolcom’s piano solo works for Naxos Records. His upcoming CD with Sebastian  Baverstam will feature works by Brahms and Tony Schemmer. During the 2010-2011 season he will perform at Merkin Hall, Weill Recital Hall and Emory and Elmira colleges, among many others, as soloist and duo partner.

Dorothy Crawford, musicologist, is author of Evenings on and off the Roof: Pioneering Concerts in Los Angeles, 1939-1971 and Expressionism in Twentieth-Century Music (with her husband, John C. Crawford). Her latest book is A Windfall of Musicians.

Keane Southard (b. 1987) writes music that is an amalgamation of his many musical influences, from medieval chant to 70′s rock, Bach to the Blues, and German romanticism to Latin dance forms.  His compositions have been performed by ensembles such as the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Longfellow Chorus and Orchestra, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Tesla Quartet, Playground Ensemble, Encore Wind Ensemble, and Ars Nova Singers.  He has been a recipient of many awards including the Lee Goldstein Composition Award from Baldwin-Wallace College, the Cecil Effinger Composition Award and George Lynn Prize from The University of Colorado-Boulder, and First Prize in the Longfellow Chorus International Composers Cantata Competition.  Keane earned his M.M. in composition at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and his composition teachers include Kenneth Girard, Loris Chobanian, Daniel Kellogg, Carter Pann, and Richard Toensing.  As a pianist, Keane is dedicated to the performance of unknown/under-performed piano works.

Liane Curtis (Ph.D. Musicology) is President of The Rebecca Clarke Society, Inc., and Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy; and Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University.  The collection she edited, A Rebecca Clarke Reader (2004), is the first book on this increasingly recognized composer.  She has taught at institutions including Wellesley College, Harvard, Ohio State University, and Brandeis.  As a music critic she wrote for Bay Windows (the leading New England newspaper of the GBLT community) from 1998-2004, and has also written for the San Francisco Examiner, Curve Magazine, Women’s Enews, and many other publications.  With the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail (on whose Board she serves), she worked to have Amy Beach’s name added to the 87 names of male composers that decorate Boston’s Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade.  It was unveiled in 2000.  Liane’s blog, Feminist in the Concert Hall, is at http://wophil.blogspot.com/

Lyle Davidson, composer, studied at New England Conservatory and Brandeis. He is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory where he teaches Solfege, 16th-century Counterpoint, and Music in Education courses.

Mary Wallace Davidson has directed the music libraries at Radcliffe, Wellesley, Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University. She now lives in the Boston area.

Tom Delbanco is the Koplow-Tullis Professor of General Medicine and Primary Care at Harvard Medical and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. A clinician, educator, and researcher, he has long focused on learning from patients and working with them to improve care. Currently, he is immersed in a national demonstration program in which doctors invite patients to read and contribute to their visit notes online. An avid violinist since age nine, Tom studied with Wolfe Wolfinsohn, Robert Koff, Emanuel Borok, and Bernard Greenhouse. When Tom was a teenager in New York, Rembert Wurlitzer, then perhaps the leading expert and violin dealer worldwide, responded to Tom’s fascination with string instruments. Examining and playing many of the great violins that passed through the Wurlitzer shop fueled a passion that continues to grow.

Mark DeVoto, musicologist and composer, is an expert in early 20th-century music.  A graduate of Harvard College (1961) and Princeton University (Ph.D., 1967), he is professor emeritus of music at Tufts University.  In 1997 he edited the /Altenberg Lieder/, op. 4, for the new edition of Alban Berg’s complete works, and wrote the revised fourth (1978) and fifth (1987) editions of /Harmony/ by his teacher Walter Piston.  In 2004 he published  /Debussy and the Veil of Tonality: Essays on his Music/ (Pendragon Press). His most recent book is Schubert’s Great C Major: Biography of a Symphony. His website is here.

David Dominique is a composer living in Somerville, Massachusetts.  He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

John W. Ehrlich, founder and Music Director of The Spectrum Singers, has been active as a singer and conductor in the Boston and Cambridge areas for more than thirty-five years. Son of a concert pianist and a microbiologist, Mr. Ehrlich was born in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan, and prepared for higher education at Grosse Pointe University School and the New Hampton School. He studied music and conducting while attending the Hartt School of Music, Trinity College, and both Harvard and Boston Universities. His teachers were Robert Shaw, Gregg Smith, G. Wallace Woodworth, Nathan Gottschalk, and Vytautous Marijousius. Also a singer, Mr. Ehrlich has sung with Hartford Chamber Choir, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Cambridge Society for Early Music, John Oliver Chorale, Boston Baroque, Cantata Singers, and Boston’s Emmanuel Church choir. For eight seasons he was Music Director of the Master Singers of Worcester. This is Mr. Ehrlich’s 29th season as Music Director of The Spectrum Singers.

Virginia Eskin, a California native and long-time Boston resident, is a solo pianist, chamber player and lecturer known for both standard classical repertoire and ragtime, and a long-time champion of the works of American and European women composers.

Sandra Fallon-Ludwig holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Brandeis University. She currently teaches at Boston College and is a member of the New Philharmonia Orchestra.

Leslie Gerber was born in Brooklyn in 1943 and graduated from Brooklyn College with a useless degree in Creative Writing. In 1970 he started Parnassus Records, which publishes classical recordings and formerly sold used and rare recordings. He has written for The American Record Guide, Fanfare, and “Performance Today,” and reviewed well over 1500 classical CDs for Amazon. Currently he writes for Classic Record Collector and for the Woodstock Times. He was “Classical Music Director” of WDST-FM, in Woodstock, New York, from 1980 until 1991. He produced the series “The Grand Piano” for WMHT-FM. He has written program notes for CBS Classics, RCA, for his own Parnassus label, and for the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. He also writes and performs poetry; as part of the Goat Hill Poets, he performs every summer at the Woodstock Fringe. His writing website is here. He lives in Woodstock, New York, with his companion of 26 years, Tara McCarthy, herself a successful and prolific writer of educational materials.

Tamar Hestrin-Grader, harpsichordist, divides her time between performing and completing her A.B. in musicology at Harvard College. Her solo repertoire ranges through the Renaissance and Baroque periods. She is an avid continuo player in both chamber groups and orchestra, and has a particular interest in Baroque techniques of improvisation. Since coming to Boston, Tamar has been studying piano with Ya-Fei Chuang, and harpsichord with Peter Sykes. She has participated in masterclasses with John Kitchen, Arthur Haas, Jesper Christensen, Francis Fitch, Sarah Freiburg, Robert Levin, Gonzalo Ruiz, Judy Tarling, Paul Simmonds, Alison Crum, and Jane Hershey, and has attended the Amherst Baroque Academy, the Sommerakademie at the Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, and the Piccola Accademia di Montisi. She is also President of the Harvard Organ Society and Co-General Manager of the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra. In her free time, Tamar enjoys playing clavichord, organ, fortepiano, and viola da gamba.

Christopher Greenleaf is a veteran recording engineer who collaborates with chamber, early, and keyboard musicians in natural acoustic venues on both sides of the Atlantic. He is active as a writer, translator, photographer, and acoustic consultant

David Griesinger is a physicist who works in the field of sound and music.  At Harvard, he worked as a recording  engineer, learning the tremendous importance of room acoustics in recording technique. After finishing his PhD in Physics (the  Mösbauer Effect in Zinc 67) he developed one of the first digital reverberation devices, which eventually became the Lexicon 224 reverberator. He also is the designer of  the LARES reverberation enhancement system. His website is   http://www.davidgriesinger.com/

Brian Jones is Emeritus Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church, Copley Square, Boston, where he directed an acclaimed program from 1984-2004. He is active as an organ solo artist and guest conductor, and has performed widely in the United States, Canada, England, Mexico, and Bermuda. He is Director of the Copley Singers, a Boston-based chorus, and his work with the Trinity Choir may be heard on the London-Polygram, Dorian and Gothic labels.

A native of Davis, California, violist Zoe Kemmerling is a recent graduate of the Boston Conservatory and holds degrees in music and creative writing from UC Davis. Her principal teachers have been Ellen Ruth Rose, Patricia McCarty, and Lenny Matczynski.Her musical travels have taken her from the Adriatic coast of Italy to the pacific coast of British Columbia and from Fontainebleau, France, to Apple Hill, New Hampshire.Recent collaborations to which her eclectic tastes have led her include a puppet show based on the music of Louis “Moondog” Hardin, a Roy Orbison cover band, and frequent premiers of her colleagues’ compositions.She has also studied baroque violin for several years and performs regularly with period ensembles.She is an active orchestral and chamber musician in the Boston area and teaches a string class at Choice Thru Education, a non-profit program devoted to college-bound inner-city students.

Robert Kirzinger, annotator and lecturer for the Boston Symphony Orchestra for the past 10 years, is also a composer.

Mark Kroll’s distinguished career as a harpsichordist, pianist, scholar and educator spans four decades. Professor Emeritus at Boston University, Visiting Professor at Northeastern University and harpsichordist for the Boston Symphony, Kroll has taught and performed throughout the world and published numerous books, articles and editions.  He is currently writing a biography of Ignaz Moscheles and editing Geminiani’s Sonatas for Violin, opus 4 for the complete edition of the composer’s works. His website is www.markkroll.com”

Vance R. Koven studied music at Queens College and New England Conservatory, and law at Harvard. He is a composer and practicing attorney, and was for many years the chairman of Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble.

Seth Lachterman lives in Hillside, New York. While dividing his past academic career between music (composition and musicology) and mathematics, he has been a principal at Encore Systems, LLC. He regularly writes for Berkshire Review of the Arts and writes for BMInt in a collaborative venture.

Peter Van Zandt Lane is a composer and bassoonist who performs regularly in the Boston area. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Music Composition and Theory at Brandeis University.

Steven Ledbetter was musicologist and program annotator for the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998, and previously at NYU (where he received his doctorate in musicology) and Dartmouth. In 1991 his BSO program notes received an ASCAP/Deems Taylor award, given for “distinguished print and media coverage of music.” He created his own program note service in 1998 and has written notes for many musical institutions throughout the United States Europe, and Asia, and some 300 recordings. He also gives frequent preconcert lectures in the greater Boston area. His scholarly specialties include the 16th-century Italian madrigal, American music, and musical theater (particularly the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan and of Victor Herbert).

Alex Ludwig holds a Ph. D. in Musicology from Brandeis University and is the Secretary of the Haydn Society of North America.

Rebecca Marchand is a native Californian with a New England soul and enjoys wearing many musical hats as a musicologist, music history professor, mezzo-soprano, occasional blogger, and avid concert-goer. She is on the faculty at Boston Conservatory and Longy School of Music.

David McMullin is a Boston-based composer whose works have been performed by major ensembles in the United States, Europe and Asia. With degrees from Yale (BA) and NYU (PhD), he teaches music theory at New England Conservatory, directs the New England chapter of the American Composers Forum, and serves on the executive board of the International Society for Contemporary Music.

Steven P. Marrone is a Professor of History at Tufts University.  Once trained in voice, he sometimes still yearns for the life of a musician.  His scholarly specialization lies in medieval and early modern Europe.

Susan Miron, a harpist, has been a book critic and essayist for the past two decades for The N.Y. Times Book Review, The Wall St. Journal. The American Scholar, Partisan Review, and many other newspapers and literary magazines. While she wrote on a wide range of subjects, including music, her specialty was East and Central European literature. She holds Masters degrees in both harp performance and Judaic Studies. Susan has recorded two CDs of harp and voice music, and two recent CDs devoted to her transcriptions of the keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti. She has performed for thirty-two years with her favorite chamber music partner, her husband, violist Burton Fine.

Michael Miller, a writer and photographer based in Williamstown, MA, is editor and publisher of the Berkshire Review for the Arts, an online magazine which covers classical music, opera, theater, cinema, art, photography, architecture, travel, and food and drink, wherever they may be found.

Joseph E. Morgan is a husband, a father and a musicologist. He received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University (2009) and has served on the music faculties at Brandeis University, The Walnut Hill School for the Arts and Montgomery College.  His primary research focuses on the dramatic music, theory and aesthetics of Germany in the early 19th century.  He has written and presented papers on E. T. A. Hoffmann, Robert Schumann, and Carl Maria von Weber. His article on the latent thematic organization of dramatic works by Weber and Schumann will appear in the next issue of the Indiana Theory Review (Volume 28, 2010) and is currently preparing a monograph on Weber and early German Romanticism.

Elizabeth Morse, principal harpist of the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra and formally principal harpist of Rhode Island Philharmonic, is on the faculty of Williams College.

Eli Newberger studied music theory and reviewed classical music for the Yale Daily News. Performing music, he wrote in “Medicine of the Tuba” in Doctors Afield (Yale University Press, 1999), helps him to care. That chapter and other writings on music and medicine may be found on his website, here.

Virginia Newes lives in Cambridge, and was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

David Patterson, Professor of Music and Chairman of the Department at U. Mass Boston for the past 15 years, was recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award in Teaching and the Chancellor’s Distinction in Teaching Award. Also a composer, he lives in Watertown.

Elizabeth Perten is a doctoral student in Musicology at Brandeis University and also is pursuing a Joint MA in Music and Women’s and Gender Studies. She graduated from Barnard College, Columbia University, with a BA in Music. Elizabeth’s research interests include 19th century piano music, music criticism, women in music, historiography and the 19th century composer’s role as music critic and its subsequent effect on music history.

Larry Phillips studied music at Harvard, the Montreal Conservatory, and at New England Conservatory. In 1974 he was a prizewinner at the International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges, Belgium.

Richard Pittman, founder of Boston Music Viva, is also conductor of the New England Philharmonic and the Concord Orchestra. He is a recipient of an ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award.

Howard Pollack is John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Music at the University of Houston, where he has taught since 1987. He is the author of five books, including Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man (1999), which received the Irving Lowens Award from the Society for American Music and a Deems Taylor Award from ASCAP, and which the New York Times deemed “the definitive study of Aaron Copland’s life and work;” and George Gershwin: His Life and Work (2006), which also received a Deems Taylor Award as well as an Award from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, and which has been called “endlessly fascinating” (New York Times) and “a gripping read” (Charleston News and Courier), with “some of the best musical analysis you’re likely to find anywhere” (Toronto Globe and Mail). His biography of Marc Blitzstein is due out in 2012.

Laura Stanfield Prichard is the Director of Fine Arts for the Arlington Public Schools and a member of the music faculty at U Mass-Lowell. She is a regular pre-concert speaker for Boston Baroque, the Berkshire Choral Festival, and the San Francisco Symphony.

Michael Rocha is a self-described “long-ago” music teacher, a long-time music enthusiast and pianist, and short-time Web designer: http://www.cobaltocumulus.com. He graduated first in his class of 2,800 from UCLA, and with an MA in Meteorology from MIT.

Seda Röder is a young concert pianist from Istanbul who performs in the United States and in Europe. She is currently a piano instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a teaching assistant and Fellow at Harvard University, where she is conducting research on “Piano Music in Vienna in the context of Alban Berg and Arnold Schönberg.

Gillian Rogell, a violist, is chair of the Chamber Music Department of the New England Conservatory School of Continuing Education, and also teaches at NEC Preparatory School, the Rivers School Conservatory, and Walnut Hill School. She is the creator of the award-winning DVD, “At the Heart of Chamber Music” which was aired on WGBH TV and won two “Telly” awards. She maintains a private chamber music studio in Brookline. (www.MusicAlchemy.net)

Andrew J. Sammut studied philosophy as an undergraduate at Boston University, and music during every free moment of his life.  When all of his friends were tuning into the local KISS station and turning up their amps, he was shopping for 78’s and leading a Dixieland sextet.  Andrew is especially interested in late Baroque, Galant and early Classical periods, and historically informed performance that doesn’t forget its existence on the modern stage.  As a devotee of the pop of yester-century, Andrew also writes for Early Music America, All About Jazz (where you can find his column “Jazz That Scratches, Swings and Pops”) and on his blog at clefpalette.wordpress.com.  He also plays clarinet.  Originally from Brooklyn, NY, Andrew now resides in Cambridge, MA.

David Schulenberg is author of The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach and The Instrumental Music of C. P. E. Bach, as well as the textbook Music of the Baroque. His newest book, The Music of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, will be published before the end of 2010 by the University of Rochester Press. He performs on harpsichord and other historical keyboard instruments and has recorded chamber music of Quantz and King Frederick the Great with flutist Mary Oleskiewicz. Professor and chair of the music department at Wagner College in New York City, he lives in Dorchester and is vice-president of the Boston Clavichord Society. His website (http://www.wagner.edu/faculty/dschulenberg/) contains recordings and editions of music by J.S. and W.F. Bach, a chronological index of the music of C.P.E. Bach, and other things of interest to musically inclined readers.

Tom Schnauber is a Boston-based composer and is currently serving as Chair of the Performing Arts Department at Emmanuel College. He holds a Ph.D. in composition and Theory from the University of Michigan.  He is also co-founder and co-Director of the arts organization WordSong.

Joel Schwindt is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in musicology at Brandeis University. In addition to performances as a vocalist and conductor, his writings have been published by the Baerenreiter-Verlag publishing house and the Choral Journal.

David Shengold A Philadelphia-based arts critic, David Shengold has written for Opera News, Opera (UK), Opéra Magazine (France), Musical America Online, Playbill and Time Out New York among many other venues. He has contributed program essays to the Metropolitan, New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Covent Garden and Wexford Festival programs and lectured for the Glimmerglass Festival and Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre. Educated at Amherst and Berkeley, he has taught courses on opera, literature and cultural history at Oberlin, Mount Holyoke and Williams Colleges. He trained and performed with Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, MA and has been a Guest Critic at the Chautauqua Festival

Marvin J. Ward holds a Ph.D. French/English in Medieval Studies (UNC-CH), A former editor of professional newsletters and former officer/board member in various professional and cultural organizations, he is also a singer in choruses, former announcer for a classical music radio station, former board member of presenter and performer organizations, former classical CD store buyer and salesperson. He co-founded Classical Voice of New England, serving as its President and Founding Executive editor.

Janice Weber is a member of the piano faculty at Boston Conservatory. Her latest CD, “A Cascade of Roses: Piano Bouquet” will be out on Valentine’s Day.

Geoffrey Wieting holds Bachelor’s degrees in organ and Latin from Oberlin College and a Master’s degree in collaborative piano from New England Conservatory. Currently, he sings in the choir of Trinity Church and accompanies the Boston Choral Ensemble under Miguel Felipe.

Reba Wissner is in the Doctoral Program in Musicology at Brandeis University.

Christoph Wolff is Adams University Professor at Harvard University. Born and educated in Germany, he studied organ and historical keyboard instruments, musicology and art history at the Universities of Berlin, Erlangen, and Freiburg. His website is here.