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
January 2, 2011
Update on Longy Labor Dispute
by Lee Eiseman
On January 24th, the amended consolidated complaint issued by the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board against the Longy School of Music will receive a formal hearing before an NLRB administrative law judge. Early in December BMInt began its coverage of disputes within the Longy School of Music faculty and between the Longy [...]
December 29, 2010
Emphasizing the BSO with Underscore Fridays
by Bettina A. Norton
Ever interested in ways to encourage more attendance at its concerts, and in an atmosphere that encourages post-performance discussion, the Boston Symphony Orchestra in mid-January is inaugurating a new three-concert subscription series, “Underscore Fridays.” Starting at 7 pm, each concert will include comments of that evening’s pieces by the guest conductor and will be followed [...]
December 23, 2010
BMInt on Boston Phoenix 10-Best List
by BMINT STAFF
The Boston Musical Intelligencer is deeply honored to have been awarded one of the year’s “10 Best” by Lloyd Schwartz, Pulitzer-Prize-winning classical music critic of The Boston Phoenix (December 24, 2010). He credits us with reviewing “…more concerts than any other venue in town” and for running a serious discussion panel on the WGBH classical radio changes a year ago, which he called “a thoroughly commendable act of civic responsibility.” With our growing pool of highly credentialed reviewers and our dedicated editorial staff, we will endeavor to continue meeting Mr. Schwartz’s high standards.
December 15, 2010
Professor Robert Levin Defines Mozart’s Methods
by Robert Levin
When BMInt began this website in the fall of 2008, we interviewed our editor, Harvard Professor Robert Levin. During the session he spoke eloquently on Mozart — his passion and expertise. In this continuation of that interview we deliberately maintain Professor Levin’s distinctive conversational style. Mozart uses a lot of task-oriented material — like no [...]
December 9, 2010
Enigmatic Legacy: Music of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
by David Schulenberg
David Schulenberg will be the harpichordist in the Music at First Church series at the First Church in Boston, on Dec. 16. Here, he offers a validation of including music of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach in the program. The details are here. As the year 2010 draws toward a close, lovers of keyboard music will remember [...]
December 4, 2010
Longy Faculty Divided
by Lee Eiseman
What happens when a 95-year-old conservatory with a dedicated and long-serving faculty finds itself with a large deficit and a new leader? Change. And when change happens there are inevitably some who embrace it and others who resist— with principled motives in both camps. For a good many years under presidents Roman Totenberg and Victor [...]
December 1, 2010
East Meets West at Longy
by BMINT STAFF
The Boston Camerata will celebrate Chanukah with one of their most significant programs: The Sacred Bridge, an interfaith collaboration among Jewish, Christian and Muslim musicians on December 5 at Pickman Hall, Longy School of Music, Cambridge, at 3:00 pm. The program, led by Music Director Emeritus Joel Cohen, features Jewish and Christian liturgical song, minstrel [...]
November 27, 2010
Spano, Conductor of Atlanta Symphony, to be Pianist in Bach Concerto
by Bettina A. Norton
Atlanta Symphony’s multi-talented Music Director Robert Spano is also a gifted pianist, a role he will assume at Jordan Hall with New England String Orchestra on December 5 in the Bach D Major Concerto, BWV 1054. Other pieces in the program are Idyla for Strings by Leos Janacek, Soul Garden by Derek Bermel with solo [...]
November 19, 2010
Happy Birthday, Gunther
by BMINT STAFF
The celebrations for the indispensable Gunther Schuller’s birthdays continue apace. On the occasion of his 85th, readers might enjoy two interviews we did with him on his 84th, when this photo was taken. The first interview deals with Gunther’s harmonic language and his relationship to the Borromeo String Quartet while the second interview discusses Gunther’s [...]
November 16, 2010
Roman Totenberg’s 100th Birthday Concert, Video, and Speeches
by Bettina A. Norton
What better event to feature the first-ever live video streaming of a concert from Boston’s venerable Symphony Hall than a tribute to a long-time, venerable violinist Roman Totenberg on his 100th birthday. He will be honored in the Hall where he appeared as a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in January, 1955, for the [...]
November 11, 2010
Violist Launches Music For Food For Music
by BMINT STAFF
For a donation of non-perishable food or a check to Greater Boston Food Bank, an ensemble of violists Kim Kashkashian and Mai Motobuchi, violinists Yura Lee and Kristopher Tong, and cellist Narek Hakhnazaryan will perform a Bach Cello Suite and Mozart’s Viola Quintet on Friday at 6:00, at Emmanuel Church in Boston. Benjamin Zander will be interlocutor.
Connecting the Old with the New: Stravinsky’s Petrushka at the Paramount
by Elizabeth Erenberg
When old masterpieces get revived, expectations are high. Stravinsky’s two-piano version of the ballet Petrushka, with puppets, has been widely viewed across America and in parts of Europe. Now it is being presented at Boston’s newly revived Emerson Paramount Center from November 11 until November 21.
November 7, 2010
One Year After Change: Is WGBH/WCRB Working?
by Lee Eiseman
“Accountability and transparency are two of our watchwords. . .” according to the WGBH website, except seemingly when management doesn’t like BMInt’s questions. Within the last few days, according to sources I believe to be knowledgeable, WCRB station manager Jon Solins resigned (effective next month). He was one of the prime architects of the new [...]
October 29, 2010
BLO Presents Scottish Opera’s Tosca with Boston Accent
by Bettina A. Norton
Thirteen years after Victorien Sardou’s 1887 play La Tosca appeared, Giacomo Puccini’s opera debuted at Il Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Countless performances have been heard since. Famous Toscas—Scacciati, Callas and Tebaldi. . . Famous Scarpias—Scotti, Gobbi, and Milnes. . . Famous Cavaradossis—di Stefano, Corelli and Pavarotti. All this, a hard act to follow. But opera-goers [...]
October 28, 2010
Rededication of Expanded FLC Organ on Sunday
by Christopher Greenleaf
This coming weekend, on Reformation Sunday (October 31), Boston will have a first chance to hear First Lutheran Church re-dedicate their newly expanded (and now complete) Richards, Fowkes organ. Bálint Karosi will play a half-hour Präludium at 3:30, before the 4:00 PM service. During the summer just past, the instrument’s builders installed and carefully voiced [...]
October 22, 2010
Sensations of Tone Explores Physics and Music at Harvard
by Lee Eiseman
Thus spake Pythagoras: There is geometry in the humming of the strings…there is music in the spacing of the spheres. It is commonly accepted that science and music first intersected in the work of Pythagoras about 2,500 years ago. In analyzing vibrating strings, looking at ratios of vibrations and considering what intervals were pleasing and [...]
October 18, 2010
Upcoming Choral Premières: Karosi and Newly Edited CPE Bach
by Cheryl Ryder
Boston audiences may be interested to learn that distinguished British conductor Simon Carrington, founder and director of Yale’s Schola Cantorum, will be here in Boston to lead the small choral ensemble Canto Armonico in concert on Sunday, October 24th at 3 pm at First Lutheran Church. The program features two premières: a world première of [...]
October 15, 2010
Plenty of Clues Yet Secrets Remain: Brendel’s Beethoven Lecture at Harvard
by David Patterson
One of the world’s most revered pianists presented The Louis C. Elson Lecture at Paine Concert Hall, Harvard University, Thursday afternoon, October 14. Wearing a jacket and shirt without a tie, Alfred Brendel spent the better part of an hour and a quarter reading from his prepared notes and playing excerpts mostly from memory. His [...]
October 11, 2010
Fellner Completes Beethoven Sonata Survey at BCM
by BMINT STAFF
Till Fellner’s Boston Conservatory concert on Tuesday, October 12, has been a sellout for quite some time now —so unless our ticket-less readers deal with scalpers they’ll need to look to BMInt’s forthcoming review for a vicarious experience of the concert. Mr. Fellner, who is Austrian, lives in Vienna. Recipient of first prize in the [...]
September 24, 2010
No-Name Theater Debuts at the Boston Conservatory
by BMINT STAFF
The Boston Conservatory of Music will be opening a new building including a yet-to-be-named 325-seat theater and major additional studio and rehearsal space. A three-day celebration, from October 13 to 16, will feature all three of their departments — dance, theater, and music, and especially of interest to BMInt readers, a performance by Joseph Silverstein [...]
September 20, 2010
Links with Classical in Tanglewood Jazz Festival
by Fred Bouchard
Descending from summer’s brilliant white heat reflected in the White Mountains to autumn’s bosky, drizzly glens of the Berkshires was the slap we needed. Like Kurt Elling’s Herculean yawp climaxing “Nature Boy”, the tail of a gale (Earl) buzz-sawed through curved air, transcending time and moods. After a stop in the buffer zone of Mass [...]
September 19, 2010
Roving Reviewer: Chopin et Son Temps à Lausanne
by Christopher Greenleaf
Some few years back, Suisse-Romande pianist Pierre Goy set about crafting an international setting for a spirited exchange of ideas, informed opinions, and in-depth information touching on music for and with keyboards. Each even year since 2002, his Rencontres harmoniques have conferred total immersion in the theme at hand on performers, professionals in the field, [...]
September 16, 2010
Audience Tours Dark Comic Opera
by Bettina A. Norton
Audience members will be standing and walking throughout the theater amidst intermittent strobe lights while a scientist’s experiments of implanting human glands into the bodies of animals prove overly successful, in a new production of the opera, Heart of a Dog. An original work by composer and Guerilla Opera’s Artistic Director Rudolf Rojahn, it is [...]
September 14, 2010
Levine Scheduled to Return to BSO Podium in October
by BMINT STAFF
According to management, BSO Music Director James Levine is scheduled to return to the podium on Oct. 7 with Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony — No. 2. It will feature the same performers as the performance conducted in Levine’s absence this summer by Michael Tilson Thomas, which was reviewed here. Returning for this performance are soprano Layla [...]
September 9, 2010
Grand Launch of Emmanuel Music, New Leader at Helm
by Bettina A. Norton
When an organization so intimately associated with its director takes on the task on continuing under different leadership, it is tricky business. The death almost three years ago of Craig Smith, Emmanuel Music’s founder and charismatic leader for 37 years, left this organization with one tough act to follow. After considerable thought, Emmanuel took a [...]