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
March 22, 2011
One Night, All Six Cello Suites from Lesser
by BMINT STAFF
Laurence Lesser, New England Conservatory’s Walter W. Naumburg Chair in Music and Artistic Director of First Monday at Jordan Hall, will perform the Bach Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello in a single concert, March 28 at 7:30 p.m. in NEC’s Jordan Hall. The concert, which is free and open to the public, will be preceded [...]
March 20, 2011
Sound Icon Debuts with Spectral Masterpiece
by David Dominique
An Interview with Joshua Fineberg Gérard Grisey’s Prologue, Périodes, and Partiels, the first half of his magnum opus, Les Espaces Acoustiques, were completed between 1974 and 1976, yet in Boston in the 35 years since, they have never been performed continuously, as intended. That will change on Saturday, March 26 when Sound Icon, a new Boston-based, [...]
Agnesi’s “Sophonisba” in first Modern Performance
by Liane Curtis
Maria Teresa Agnesi, an eighteenth-century child prodigy in Milan, attracted the interest of noble patrons, including another Maria Theresa, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1748, Agnesi wrote an opera that premiered in Vienna, and it was reported that the Empress herself enjoyed singing queen Sophonisba’s arias in the privacy of her chambers. The [...]
March 16, 2011
The Distinctive Lipkind Quartet to Debut in Dedham
by BMINT STAFF
On Sunday afternoon, March 20th, at 5 pm, the Lipkind Quartet, one of Europe’s newest and most exciting young chamber ensembles, will make its American debut in the first classical music concert in the auditorium of the new HMFH designed Rashi School in Dedham. This unusual string quartet, founded by cellist Gavriel Lipkind, who received [...]
March 14, 2011
“Grant me Heaven”: Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle
by BMINT STAFF
Precisely 157 years ago this month, on March 13, 1864, a twenty-year silence from Gioachino Rossini ended when his Petite Messe Solennelle was presented to the Paris musical elite in the grand salon of the home of the Commissioner and dedicatee of the work, Count Frederic Pillet-Willi. Neither short nor solemn, the Mass, a real [...]
WGBH and Union Near Impasse
by Lee Eiseman
Update as of March 16 WGBH management has imposed certain of the terms of its final and best offer which the AEEF-CWA Local 1300 union had rejected. That offer may be read here. Update as of March 14 Regarding recent developments in the six-month-old labor dispute, Jordan Weinstein, president of AEEF-CWA Local 1300 sent a [...]
March 1, 2011
Don Teeters Opines on Handel and Cecilia
by Lee Eiseman
Since Donald Teeters assumed the directorship of Boston Cecilia in 1968 (Then The Cecilia Society) he has brought 19 Handel oratorios to grateful Boston audiences. In his 43rd year, and with but one year remaining in his tenure, he has decided to return to his favorite, “Jephtha,” Handel’s last, perhaps greatest, oratorio, in a stylish, uncut [...]
February 27, 2011
To the Met: Don’t Ruin a Good Thing
by Bettina A. Norton
These Met HD performances are, as I say all the time, like dying and going to Heaven. Yet there is a trend that is increasingly bothering me, and, I am sure, other opera devotees as well. In its zeal to capitalize on the phenomenally successful telecasts of live performances of its operas, the Met management [...]
February 22, 2011
Conductor Lord Makes NEC Debut with Candide
by Lee Eiseman
Well remembered for his many years as conductor for Boston Lyric Opera, Stephen Lord will mark his arrival as New England Conservatory’s artistic director of opera studies on February 28 at the helm of a semi-staged production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide in Jordan Hall. Lord was appointed last spring as part of NEC President Tony [...]
February 17, 2011
Ken Radnofsky, Saxophone Citizen
by Vance R. Koven
Ken Radnofsky, who will perform in recital at NEC’s Jordan Hall at 8 pm on February 21, is one of Boston’s–indeed of the world’s–most upstanding musical citizens. Not only does he teach “classical” saxophone repertoire ubiquitously (he teaches at virtually every college-level music school in the Boston area, and has done at secondary music schools [...]
February 13, 2011
WCRB’s New Leader, Its Parent’s Old Problems
by Lee Eiseman
Benjamin Roe has been hired effective March 1 as Managing Director for Classical Services at WGBH/WCRB, to replace the recently retired Jon Solins. BMInt herein looks at what Roe is inheriting, what will be his task, and what will be the effect on classical-music broadcasting in Boston. A New Hampshire native, Roe is no stranger [...]
February 9, 2011
The Case for Two Organs at Harvard’s Chapel
by Jonathan Ambrosino
On Sunday, February 13 at 4:00 PM, Assistant University Organist and Choirmaster, Christian Lane, will be giving a free recital at The Memorial Church, Harvard University on the new/old Appleton Chapel Skinner. His program will include works of Elgar, Jehan Alain, Schumann and Bach. The article which follows explains the arrivals of new organs at [...]
February 6, 2011
The Legacy of Milton Babbitt
by Mark DeVoto
Milton Babbitt, an American composer particularly noted for his serial and electronic music, died on January 29, 2011. Retired Tufts Professor and BMInt stalwart reviewer Mark DeVoto gave us permission to republish his tribute that appeared in the American Musicologist Society Electronic Discussion List. (A link to a very interesting documentary video is here.) Milton [...]
February 2, 2011
A Far Cry’s Approaching “Storm of Guitars”
by Mary Lincoln
This weekend audiences will be treated to the Boston premier of the string orchestra arrangement of Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout by the young American (of Lithuanian, Jewish, Peruvian, and Chinese descent) composer Gabriela Lena Frank. She has been hailed as a “Peruvian Bartók.” Commissioned by the Chiara Quartet in 2001, the piece consists of six [...]
January 29, 2011
The After-Image for BLO’s Atlantis
by Joseph E. Morgan
Boston Lyric Opera commissioned a piece from Richard Beaudoin to accompany its historic production of Viktor Ullmann’s “The Emperor of Atlantis,” being performed from February 1 through February 6 at Boston Center for the Art’s Calderwood Pavilion. Beaudoin’s new chamber opera, “The After-Image” (Das Nach-Bild), is a tableau for two voices and ensemble, with a [...]
January 27, 2011
Back and Forward with Avante-Garde
by Vance R. Koven
The upcoming Alea III concert at Boston University’s Tsai Performance Center on Groundhog Day (February 2) may pit the audience’s prognostic powers against those of Punxsutawney Phil: if they run away, will that mean that the international avant-garde will stick around for a lengthy period? That, of course, is a trick question: “avant-garde” is, or [...]
January 25, 2011
Neuroscience, Healing, & Music
by BMINT STAFF
From Nero to Professor Robert Levin (editor of this journal), people of prominence have been intrigued with the effect of music on human emotions and development. Longwood Symphony Orchestra, whose aim goes beyond making fine music together to finding ways to aid the community, like donating concert proceeds to social organizations, has an additional role [...]
January 24, 2011
Dinosaur Annex, Encouraging Youth in Modern Music
by David Dominique
The approach the new music ensemble Dinosaur Annex takes towards immersing curious and talented youth in contemporary performance is critical to the future vitality of new music. It is all too common for the most gifted young performers to progress through advanced instrumental training with little or no inclusion of contemporary music in their repertoires. [...]
January 23, 2011
New Talent, New Work from Concord Orchestra
by BMINT STAFF
The Concord Orchestra and the town’s other music group, Concord Chamber Orchestra, are the exceptions to the rule of Boston Musical Intelligencer to contain our normal listing and reviewing in the regular season to venues within Route 128. This is because the Concord Orchestra was the first offering of the 2008-2009 season when we began, [...]
January 19, 2011
BCMS Offers Multi-Media and Discussion
by BMINT STAFF
The Boston Chamber Music Society can be counted upon to come up with interesting and exceedingly well-executed thematic programming. As a follow-up to their presentation last year, “Musical Time” here , here and here they will again be venturing into the realm of multi-media with a special event entitled “An Artistic Ménagerie: Collaborations of Mind [...]
January 17, 2011
Zelenka Revived
by Bettina A. Norton
Many music groups try to create names for themselves that make it abundantly clear what they do, even at the risk of its sounding pedestrian. Then there are the others, diametrically opposite, like the Boston Zelenka Project, that thrive on obscurantism. The idea is to be intriguing. The Boston Zelenka Project is just that. The [...]
January 14, 2011
There’s No Excuse To Stay Home
by BMINT STAFF
The pre-Christmas surfeit having been spent and the interregnum of recovery having ended, the 2011 classical music concert season fully revs up this weekend. There are fifteen concerts listed in BMInt’s “Upcoming Events.” (By contrast, there were three listings in the first weekend of the New Year and six in the second.) Reviewers from the Intelligencer are scheduled at eleven of this weekend’s events. They [...]
January 7, 2011
Telemann’s 72 Cantatas Run Jan. 8 to Christmas
by Virginia Newes
On Saturday evening at 8 pm at the Second Church, 60 Highland St. in West Newton, the early music vocal and instrumental ensemble Exsultemus will combine forces with the instrumentalists of Newton Baroque in the first of a series of sixteen concerts presenting Georg Philipp Telemann’s 72-cantata cycle Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst. After Saturday’s New Year and [...]
Longy Vs Longy in Split Decision
by Lee Eiseman
In a decision dated January 4th in United States District Court, Judge Patti B. Saris has ordered the reinstatement of eight fired members of the Longy faculty (who were eligible for union membership) whom she believes were terminated without proper process in a manner that caused them harm and also damaged the Longy Faculty Union [...]