a virtual journal and blog of the classical music scene in Boston
Robert Levin, editor; Bettina A. Norton, executive editor; Lee Eiseman, publisher
News & Features
May 22, 2012
Dinosaur’s “Annex” in Beijing
by Vance R. Koven
BMInt invited Boston’s 37-year-old contemporary music group Dinosaur Annex, to submit articles on its tour in China at the Beijing Modern Music Festival. This is the first. The Beijing Modern Music Festival, for those like your correspondent who had no inkling, is an annual event that, having begun 10 years ago as a chiefly domestic operation, rapidly [...]
Of Pastiche and Profundity
by Joel Cohen
“What is truth?” – John XVIII:38 For all its flaws, the Metropolitan’s “Enchanted Island,” as seen locally on WGBH-TV last Friday, provided us with some interesting insights into the profound nature and meaning of that oddest of human enterprises, opera. It was a great A&R idea to have commissioned this pastiche of eighteenth century music, [...]
May 20, 2012
Let There Be Light on Haydn’s Creation
by Anthony J. Palmer
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, [...]
May 19, 2012
Journal of A Piano Juror
by Leslie Gerber
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 [...]
May 12, 2012
Full Week of Rachmaninoff and Russian Music
by BMINT STAFF
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, [...]
May 11, 2012
The First Pearl of Russian Opera
by BMINT STAFF
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 [...]
May 8, 2012
Monadnock Music Moves On
by Bettina A. Norton
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 [...]
Roman Totenberg Remembered
by BMINT STAFF
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 [...]
April 24, 2012
BSO Makes Concerts Available Online For Entire Year
by Lee Eiseman
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 [...]
April 23, 2012
Good Things Befall Fellner
by Lee Eiseman
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, [...]
Comments Off
April 21, 2012
Alex Ross Throws Light on 20th-C. Sacred Music
by Bettina A. Norton
“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 [...]
17 Different Conductors to Lead BSO’s 26 Concerts
by BMINT STAFF
The era of the guest conductor continues in the BSO’s 132nd season, with 17 conductors presiding over 26 concerts. BSO principal players and sections also once again will perform in a conductor-less program. Artistic Administrator Tony Fogg has put together a season with a fine variety of repertoire and soloists.
April 12, 2012
Bunyan and the Blue Ox at the Paramount
by BMINT STAFF
Paul Bunyan is a virtually unknown operetta by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by W. H. Auden. Exploring themes of nature vs. industrialization, it is full of musical delights, trenchant observation, and, yes, lumberjacks and a certain blue ox; it will receive its Boston premiere in a four-performance run at The Paramount Theater beginning this [...]
April 8, 2012
Alex Ross to Talk on 20th-Century Sacred Music
by Bettina A. Norton
Although Lent for 2012 will have passed, the last lecture of this year’s Price Lenten Lecture Series, funded by the will of an 18th-century Boston cabinetmaker, print-seller, and sometime organist, William Price, will occur nine days after Easter. Alex Ross, classical music writer for The New Yorker and author of the highly acclaimed The Rest [...]
April 6, 2012
Longy Gets New Structuring, New Debut Series
by Lee Eiseman
The conservatory founded in Cambridge by Georges Longy in 1915 has a new name and a new big brother. Hereinafter to be known as Longy School of Music of Bard College, “Longy will stay in Cambridge, but benefit from the resources of the much larger institution,” according to its President, Karen Zorn. “Longy has found [...]
April 2, 2012
New Fisk Organ for Memorial Church
by Christian Lane
April marks the inauguration of New England’s most notable new pipe organ of recent decades, The Charles B. Fisk and Peter J. Gomes Memorial Organ, Fisk Opus 139, in The Memorial Church at Harvard University. Beginning on April 8th with its “first hearing” at the 11:00 a.m. Easter Sunday service (the organ prelude begins at [...]
April 1, 2012
NEC Extends Ties with Venezuela’s El Sistema
by Lee Eiseman
New England Conservatory President Tony Woodcock and Eduardo Méndez, executive director of Fundacíon Musical Simón Bolívar (known familiarly as “El Sistema”) signed a new Friendship Agreement at a festive ceremony in Caracas. El Sistema founder José Antonio Abreu and officials of NEC attended along with the 10 Sistema Fellows from NEC who are just completing their [...]
March 27, 2012
Harlem Quartet Family Concert: Beethoven & Blues
by BMINT STAFF
Family activities for spring could include a productive trip to Concord, home of the Transcendentalists and Revolutionary War history, where a jazz-inspired program, including music from Beethoven to Marsalis, will be performed by the award-winning Harlem Quartet at the Emerson Umbrella Center for the Arts on Sunday, April 1st at 2:00 in the afternoon. BSO [...]
Comments Off
March 21, 2012
Bach’s Birthday 327 in the Back Bay
by Joyce Painter Rice
Lovers of J. S. Bach’s organ music will be convening again on Saturday at The First Lutheran Church in Boston’s Back Bay to hear local and international organists present free recitals of music by the master. Anyone who attended Boston Bach Birthday 324, 325 or 326 knows that a musical feast awaits. The magnificent “North [...]
Comments Off
March 20, 2012
Where Did Trajetta Go?
by Teresa F. Mazzulli
Filippo Trajetta, newly arrived in Boston from Italy, was one of the three founders, with Gottlieb Graupner from Germany and François Delochaire Mallet from France, of Boston’s first “Conservatorio of Music” in 1800. Located on Boston’s Rowe’s Lane, the new institution experienced a setback in mid-1801, when Filippo Trajetta, at the age of 24, left [...]
Comments Off
March 14, 2012
Russian-Israeli Duo In Ravel, Janácek & Chausson
by BMINT STAFF
The first US recital tour of famed Russian violinist Vadim Repin and noted Israeli pianist Itamar Golan will include a stop at Jordan Hall on March 18th. Their program, surprisingly without a Russian work, lists Janácek’s Violin Sonata, Ravel’s Violin Sonata in G Major, Grieg’s Violin Sonata No.2 in G Major, Chausson’s Poeme and Ravel’s [...]
Comments Off
March 12, 2012
The Prodigal Son by a Woman Composer
by Liane Curtis
La Donna Musicale, the Baroque ensemble that is devoted to recovering music by women, will present the oratorio The Prodigal Son by Camilla de Rossi on March 17 at Lindsey Chapel of Emmanuel Church in Boston, and on March 18 at the Radcliffe Institute Gymnasium, Cambridge. I went to the read-through of the piece by [...]
March 5, 2012
Why Debussy is France’s Greatest Composer
by Mark DeVoto
Montreal is only 320 miles to our north, but it is a significant foreign experience for American visitors; as the second-largest city in Canada and the second-largest Francophone city in the world, it is a big slice of Paris right in North America, with thriving bilingual culture, world-class universities, fine architecture, excellent cuisine, a wide [...]
March 1, 2012
“Period Essence” La Bohème from BOC
by BMINT STAFF
In an unusual gesture, Boston Opera Collaborative is granting free admission to its production of Puccini’s La Bohème for anyone displaying an unused season ticket to a performance of the late, lamented Opera Boston. For this 16th show since BOC’s founding in 2006, the familiar artists’ garret and Café Momus will be evoked on the [...]
Comments Off
February 26, 2012
Powerful Anti-War Poetry and Timeless Requiem
by Bettina A. Norton
When Britten’s War Requiem was premiered in the United States in 1963, it featured Chorus pro Musica performing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, under the direction of Erich Leinsdorf. Now, at the instigation of conductor Richard Pittman and his New England Philharmonic, Chorus pro Musica once again is taking part in a “coming together in an [...]