Miscellaneous

February 12, 2012

Emmanuel Music “Connected” Not Moved by Bach

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The line of composers connected to Johann Sebastian Bach grows larger with every score and sample, yet Emmanuel Music’s “Connected by Bach” program centered on more overt links between Bach and Igor Stravinsky. Bach and his contemporaries were galvanizing influences on Stravinsky, yet the orchestra and vocalists sounded less than energized by these composers last night.     [continued]

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January 22, 2012

Quatour Zaïde: A Must Hear

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The plucky and intrepid concert series, JP Concerts, featured the Quatour Zaïde from Paris. The QZ are visiting Boston in an exchange program (established in 2003), co-sponsored on the French side by ProQuartet-European Center for Chamber Music (ProQuartet-CEMC) and on ours by New England Conservatory (NEC). They were joined by pianist Yannick Rafalimanana.     [continued]

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December 29, 2011

Zamir Explains Haute-Contre in St. John’s Series

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As part of Beacon Hill’s Church of St. John the Evangelist Wednesday evening concert series, Yakov Zamir engaged in a brief, albeit necessary, lecture prior to his recital on December 28. Presenting a sound simultaneously formidable and affable, Zamir engaged a rapt audience with his understanding of the French haute-contre voice in 12 arias from 12 French operas.        [continued]

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December 8, 2011

Spirited HRO and Violinist Mitnick

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Fans of student violinist Ariel Mitnick, winner of the Yannatos Concerto Competition, packed the upper reaches of Sanders Theater in anticipation of her performance of Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, op 14 (1939). The second Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra concert of the season, conducted by Federico Cortese, was dedicated to the memory of former longtime conductor, James Yannatos, who died in October.         [continued]

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November 1, 2011

The Russians are Coming. . . Eventually

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The Borodin String Quartet has been performing with various personnel for over sixty-five years. Their strangely presented performance at First Church in Cambridge, Congregational on October 28 is the subject of a brief dispatch.    [Click title for full review]

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July 22, 2011

Marriage of Music and Silent Movie

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On July 21 a large movie screen was set up in the chancel of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul (Episcopal) on Tremont St. for an audience of the participants in Pipe Organ Encounters. Peter Krasinski, at the organ, provided improvised accompaniment for Buster Keaton’s classic The Cameraman. To evoke memories of movie palaces, Krasinki began with an overture, Bernstein’s Candide, in a bravura though not immaculate performance. For the film, Krasinski was very effective, and by using thoughtful and evocative registrations, he even got the 1950 Æolian-Skinner “American Classic”  to sound like a Wurlitzer.          [Click title for full review.]

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June 11, 2011

Wow! Playing by Ikarus for Rockport Opening

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Were we in for a treat on Thursday, June 9, opening night of the 2011 Rockport Chamber Music Festival, with the Ikarus Chamber Players, — Anna Elashvili, violin, Margaret Dyer, viola, and Julia MacLaine, ‘cello. The Beethoven String Trio in G major, Op. 9, No. 1 had precise articulation and beautiful balance of tone — just a high level of musicality. David Alpher’s Song Without Words, a piano quartet, was touching and effectively delivered by Ikarus with the composer at the keyboard. In the third movement, we hoped for the emergence of some extended, transcendent lyrical line to consummate the lyricism. Andrés Díaz joined violinist Anne Akiko Meyers in the wonderful Mendelssohn Piano Trio in d minor, Op. 49. Wendy Chen substituted; as a ringer: wow, what playing.    [Click title for full review.]

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May 1, 2011

Shining Waves of Song from Upshaw

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Dawn Upshaw’s recital in Jordan Hall on April 29, presented by Celebrity Series of Boston, presented a beautiful array of familiar songs fresh anew with some lesser-known gems. By combining songs in the same or relative key, progressing by intervals with some thematic pairings tossed in, Upshaw circled back throughout the program as chronologies of music history, from Dowland to Guettel, rolled backwards and forwards in waves. She sang beautifully with wonderful articulation – precise, carefully placed consonants, wide, open vowels – in all selections. My one issue was with her pronunciation, notably in French. Stephen Prutsman proved the perfect accompanist though I did find distracting his flourishes and arabesques with his hands at various points — cavils which hardly diminish a truly wonderful recital.      [Click title for full review.]

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March 18, 2011

Emotion Comes, Goes, in Discovery Ensemble

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Courtney Lewis’s Discovery Ensemble romanticized while raising the roof and raising questions at others in “Three Faces of Romanticism” at Sanders Theatre on March 17. The final movement of Schumann’s Symphony No. 3, the “Rhenish,” danced as directed; the orchestra found Schumann’s off-beat pulsing and quicksilver, always catchy, quirkiness, and gave it everything they had. The orchestra came fully to life in the Schreker Chamber Symphony. Harp and string strumming set the tone for the winds in their attractive, childlike playfulness. In Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll Lewis over-achieved the softer dynamic markings, denying richness to the strings; it kindled little emotion in but a few of the exuberant passages. Much of the time, poetics often missed that edge that raises listening to feeling.            [Click title for full review.]

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January 25, 2011

Menagerie in Ballet and Song

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“An Artistic Ménagerie: Collaborations of Mind, Hand and Imagerie, Paris1900-1926″, a joint effort of Boston Chamber Music Society and the MIT Music and Theater Arts Faculty at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium on Saturday afternoon, January 22, presented musical and visual works for Ballet Russes and Ballets Suédois and such, along with song collections by Poulenc and Ravel. Those who enjoy art lectures loved the informative slide show from Ann Allen, at both the MFA and MIT. Jonathan McPhee, music director of Boston Ballet, was all ebullience and charm, telling tales of Stravinsky. The performances of Randall Hodgkinson, Mihae Lee, and baritone David Kravitz were completely engaging. For this listener, the music was a powerful enough experience.       [Click title for full review.]

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December 4, 2010

Young Haochen Zhang’s Boston Debut

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Twenty-year-old Chinese-born pianist Haochen Zhang, youngest winner of the 2007 China International Piano Competition at seventeen, took the stage at Jordan Hall on December 3, his Boston debut recital presented by the Celebrity Series of Boston. He has  a commanding technique not only high-speed and of near perfect accuracy but extraordinarily powerful and seemingly unlimited. His is an immense control, the envy of anyone who has ever played the piano. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the other side of Zhang, his personality; and, except for flashes of brilliance, nearly all of his playing of Chopin, Brahms and Ginastera was, for me, cold. One wonders if it might just have been an off night for this emerging artist.    [Click title for full review.]

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Good Blend: Wine and Neapolitan Songs

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A large crowd was drawn to the Community Music Center of  Boston last evening, Dec. 3, for a concert, “Italy – Italian,”  in the wine-and-music series — a clever idea. The songs were grouped into three sets of four: Triste Canzoni (Sad Songs), Commedia Canzoni (Comical Songs), and Canzoni d’Amore (Love Songs), with wine-tasting in between. The interaction between the artists Carmen Marsico, voice teacher at CMCB, and guitarist Björn Wennås, ensured that the emotional content of the music came across — helped by the fact that the two artists are married to one another. The only thing better than wine and music is wine and music together, and the concert provided a warm, cozy, and enjoyable evening.         [Click title for full review.]

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November 15, 2010

Too Much Beethoven

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“All Beethoven,” Boston Civic Orchestra’s concert at Jordan Hall, with Max Hobart, conductor, Andrew Price, oboe soloist, and David Deveau, piano soloist, on November 14, was too much Beethoven for the BCO as a whole, but not for the soloists, who carried the day with outstanding performances. Overture to Egmont Op. 84 and Symphony No. 6 in F, “Pastoral,” met with tuning problems. Andrew Price’s unbending, highly focused, and attractive playing was one of two highlights, with plenty of solos given him in other works on the program. The other highlight was David Deveau, whose pianism curiously somewhat echoed the qualities in Price’s playing.     [Click title for full review.]

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October 24, 2010

New Golijov Work Coming to NEC

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NEC Philharmonia’s  upcoming concert on October 26 will include the east coast premiere and second performance overall of Osvaldo Golijov’s Sidereus, conducted by returning NEC alumna Mei-Ann Chen, who led world premiere at Memphis Symphony, Oct  17. The work was commissioned to honor Henry Fogel, a leader in the field of orchestral management and advocacy [...]

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July 19, 2010

Musical Just-Rightness in Aston Magna’s Artemisia

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On  July 17,  Aston Magna Festival closed this summer’s season with 17th-Century Italian Art and Music: What Artemisia Heard, centered around projected works by Artemisia Gentileschi and her teacher Caravaggio, at Simon Rock College in Great Barrington. Reflecting Artemesia’s mobile life, the program was divided into five parts: Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, England, and finally, Tutta L’Italia, altogether a splendid array of multi-faceted music, ordered to provide both continuity and contrast, by first-rate musicians. There were groans from the audience at repeated close-ups of the most brutal details of three paintings on  subject “Judith Slaying Holofernes”  two by Artemesia. Looking away, however, the music was glorious.                        [Click title for full review.]

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June 14, 2010

Less Commonly Heard 15th-Century Polyphony Well Delivered by Blue Heron

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In its concert on Saturday, June 12 at the First Church in Cambridge, the Renaissance choir Blue Heron presented a sampling of sacred and secular music by three generations of Franco-Flemish composers of the 15th century.

For most of the 15th century, the singing schools of an area comprising parts of present-day Belgium, southern Netherlands, and northern France supplied the courts and cathedrals of Europe with a highly sophisticated repertory of sacred and secular music along with the skilled performers capable of doing it justice.

Director Scott Metcalfe’s tempi throughout seemed about ideal: fast enough to preserve the sense of horizontal line so important to this music, yet leisurely enough to do justice to the many rhythmic subtleties that are the hallmark of 15th-century polyphony, still less known to most audiences than 16th-century polyphony, but richly rewarding in its wayward and sometimes angular beauty. Despite the occasional jagged entrance, and the need for better projection of the texts, particularly in French, this was virtuoso ensemble singing, lovingly prepared and convincingly presented. [Click title for full review.]

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May 31, 2010

Shuann Chai Shows Frederick Collection Érard’s Tonal Expression

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For her fourth appearance on the Frederick Collection’s Historical Piano Concerts Series on May 30, Chinese-American pianist Shuann Chai chose to perform on the 1840 Érard. It is less powerful than the 1877 “Extra-grand modèle de concert” heard in the previous two recitals, but what it loses in power, it gains in tonal expression. Chai’s program was tailor-made to show off this richness and to showcase the year’s two bicentennial luminaries: Chopin and Robert Schumann, with a few short showpieces by their contemporaries and one of their successors, some now forgotten, others now rarely performed, thrown in. Her performance was as competent as her comments, and as sparkling as the compositions. All of this was eminently apparent in her masterful exploiting of the full potential of the 1840 Érard.           [Click title for full review.]

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May 18, 2010

Concord Pops Concert Worthy of the Genre

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The Concord Orchestra Pops concerts on May 16 in at 51 Walden in Concord was not easy-listening pablum, but real music on a diverse menu, showing the Concord Orchestra in great shape after a busy season. Pittman’s conducting brings out exuberant, crisp, full range of dynamics and phrasing from his orchestra.

A classic opener, the Russlan and Ludmilla Overture of Glinka, set the virtuosic tone for the concert. We also heard the world premiere of a classy new brass and percussion piece, Fanfare for Dick, by Bernard Hoffer, written in honor of Richard Pittman’s 40th anniversary with the Concord Symphony Orchestra, parent of the Concord Pops. Arthur Foote’s 1918 A Night Piece was given a clear and lyrical performance by principal flutist Susan Jackson and the orchestra strings. The light touches of the cymbals were effectively discreet. Soprano Karyl Ryczek sang Zerlna’s “Batti, batti” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni beautifully and with perfect diction, as well as leading the Arlen, Rodgers and Duke sing-along; the arrangements were quite lush and elegantly underplayed. The audience singers faded quickly from her rendition of April in Paris, however, and let her beautiful tone carry the day.        [Click title for full review.]

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October 23, 2009

Yeghishe Manucharyan worth noticing in Tancredi

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Excitement is building about the production of Tancredi from Opera Boston, being held tonight (October 23) and on October 25 and 27. Boston opera fans by now know Amanda Forsythe, and recent media coverage had touted Eva Podles. For good reasons. But Yeghishe Manucharyan is also a singer who is, or certainly should be, eliciting [...]

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