a virtual journal and blog of the classical music scene in Boston
Robert Levin, editor; Bettina A. Norton, executive editor; Lee Eiseman, publisher
Reviews
January 25, 2012
Common Tones: Two Takes on Eternity
by Ben Houge
The program for the Cantata Singers’ “Astonished Breath” on January 21 at First Church in Cambridge, filled the sanctuary with an enthusiastic audience who had braved the first serious snowfall of the season to experience the Concerto for Choir of iconoclastic Russian composer Alfred Schnittke and the Berliner Messe by Estonian Arvo Pärt. [continued]
January 24, 2012
BSO Chamber Players Let Down Hair in Brahms
by Lee Eiseman
The BSO Chamber Players are always certain to make music on a very high level. Their execution is never less that super-refined. This year their programming is geographically themed, and on Sunday in Jordan Hall, we were serenaded in Austro-German style by works of Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms — not much of a geographic stretch! [continued]
Acoustics Vs Performance: Claremont Trio at ISGM
by David Griesinger
Last Sunday afternoon a sold-out crowd eagerly listened as Claremont Trio played in the new Calderwood Hall at the Gardner Museum. This article relates my experience listening to the performance from the first balcony in front of the musicians. My experience there was good – not great. Listeners in other areas of the first balcony had a much more variable experience, and on the whole they were disappointed. [continued]
Dinosaur Does Contemporary Aesthetics
by Stefanie Lubkowski
Dinosaur Annex’s ninth annual Young Composers Concert, on Sunday, at the Goethe-Institut, presented a curious cross-section of contemporary aesthetics. The concert began with Michael Ippolito’s Nocturne for flute, violin, and piano. From its initial chromatic rise and fall to its sparkling conclusion, his Nocturne traversed the various moods of night, from tranquility touched by dark dissonance to a scurrying, striving activity, accented by trills, and back to a heavy melancholy. [continued]
January 23, 2012
NEC Youth Phil Inspired Through Difficulties
by John Ehrlich
Difficult? Well, this January 20th concert’s breadth of challenges would faze almost any orchestra, but this wonderful NEC Youth Philharmonic soared past almost all of its technical issues. Inspired playing abounded. The difficulty was the missing presence of their mentor, the person who had rehearsed, encouraged and ultimately inspired them, their long-time leader Benjamin Zander. [continued]
Blowing Dust off Outcast Composers
by Geoffrey Wieting
Devotés of unjustly neglected music were given a belated Christmas present by the Boston Chamber Music Society at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium with Exiled to Hollywood: Outcast Artists in Southern California, featuring works by five such composers. The significant migration of artists and scholars who fled Fascism in Europe in the 1930s has been a hot topic of the last 20 years. [continued]
BYSO Shines in Verdi’s Shakespeare
by Mark DeVoto
Yesterday’s performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge was one of the most exciting musical events I’ve attended in years. All parts of this operatic performance were scintillating, but the most astounding aspect was the accomplishment of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras under Federico Cortese’s direction. [continued]
Shanghai Quartet Rewards Devoted Audience
by Cashman Kerr Prince
The Foundation for Chinese Performing Arts presented the Shanghai Quartet with pianist Hung-Kuan Chen in concert at Jordan Hall on Saturday 21 January at 8pm. The innovative program spanned Beethoven, Penderecki, and Brahms; a devoted audience braved the newly fallen snow and enjoyed the reward of a fine evening of music. [continued]
Pianist Le Transports Audience to Sunnier Climes
by Michael Rocha
On Saturday evening, January 21, a hardy band of music lovers trudged through a blanket of freshly fallen snow to take in a solo recital performed by the young American pianist Alexandria Le in the warm confines of Longy School’s Pickman Concert Hall. Less hardy souls had another option: this concert was also streamed live on the Web. Very 2012. [continued]
Emmanuel Music Delivers
by Susan Miron
For the fourth and last of this year’s concerts dedicated to Beethoven’s chamber music, Emmanuel Music presented some quite rarely heard works, all of which deserved a hearing. Four string players, two horn players, a baritone and a pianist took turns entertaining the full hall, and brought this series to an unusually delightful end. [continued]
January 22, 2012
Kings Chapel Choir Leads Tour
by Rebecca Marchand
The King’s Chapel Choir treated a healthy-sized audience to what they billed as “A Baltic Cruise” — a musical tour through choral works by composers hailing from Estonia, Sweden, Latvia, Denmark, Poland, Russia and Finland. Led by the energetic and always musical Heinrich Christensen, the choir showcased their stylistic flexibility and rhythmic panache. [continued]
Expressive Improv in Mozart and Bartók from BAE
by David Patterson
Sunday afternoon, January 22nd with the Boston Artists Ensemble at Trinity Episcopal Church in Newton provided the rare opportunity of hearing one of Mozart’s last string quartets (one that he troubled over) and one of Bartók’s six quartets (one that takes instruments further into idiomatic techniques and musical expression). Certainly, the group took on some of the most difficult quartets in the repertoire. [continued]
January 21, 2012
Phenomenal Discipline, Boredom at Seully Hall
by David Patterson
The Ludovico Ensemble, made up of young and highly proficient musicians, performed at Boston Conservatory’s Seully Hall on Thursday, January 19th. Flute and percussion pieces from France’s André Jolivet and two Boston composers, Marti Epstein and Mischa Salkind-Pearl, ran the gamut from exciting to boring. [continued]
Handel and Haydn’s Varied, Visceral Four Seasons
by Andrew Sammut
Playing the most recognizable work by a composer who “wrote the same concerto five hundred times,” the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra demonstrated the sheer power of an individual at Symphony Hall on Friday night. The line between Artistic Director Harry Christophers’ gripping yet balanced conducting and soloist Aisslinn Nosky’s inflammatory direction was clear. [continued]
January 20, 2012
Creative Upheaval at BSO
by Joel Schwindt
There was no riot at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s most recent concert, held on January 19 at Symphony Hall. Despite this reprieve from civic disorder, the concert did include upheaval in the usual order of things: the first half of the program was given without a conductor, and the second half featured one of the most raucous pieces in the classical canon, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. [continued]
BCC Celebrates MLK’s “Beloved Community”
by Zoe Kemmerling
In celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the Boston Children’s Chorus presented a tribute concert on January 16 in Jordan Hall with a spirit of indefatigable optimism and hope. The slick, well-choreographed program was mixed with student recitations on the subjects of love, justice, empowerment, and Dr. King’s vision of a “Beloved Community.” [continued]
January 18, 2012
Songs Ring in Bell’s 60th
by Tom Schnauber
On January 16th in First Church Boston, composer Larry Bell celebrated both his 60th birthday and the release of his latest CD with performances of music form the new album. Almost more a soiree than a concert, the 40-or-so audience members seemed to consist mostly of friends and admirers who had turned out to spend time with a talented and respected teacher and mentor. [continued]
January 17, 2012
BMInt Editor and Publisher Attend Gardner Gala
by Lee Eiseman
In the run-up to its public opening on January 19, the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum has been inviting contributors and press to a series of events over the last few days. BMInt’s executive editor, Bettina A. Norton, and I were invited to a gala for members of the Friends of Fenway Court. featuring a performance in the new Calderwood Hall by Paavali Jumppanen, piano and Corey Cerovsek, violin. [continued]
January 16, 2012
Zhou Shining Star in Awesome Constellation
by Susan Miron
The Concord Chamber Players under the direction of BSO violinist Wendy Putman consistently puts on great programs with great soloists, certainly the case on Sunday, January 15 at Concord Academy Performing Arts Center. The program was fascinating; the guest soloist Jessica Zhou, spectacular. The capacity audience, who battled frigid temperatures, was thrilled. Two of the pieces were by composers rarely associated with composing chamber music. [continued]
January 15, 2012
BSO Premieres Harbison’s Sixth
by Vance R. Koven
The Boston Symphony Orchestra brought its two-season survey of the symphonies of John Harbison to a conclusion this week (we made the January 12 performance) with the premiere of No. 6, which, along with No. 5, the BSO had commissioned. The Harbison premiere came in the middle of a nicely varied program under the baton of David Zinman. [continued]
January 13, 2012
Weill-esque Well Done at CMCB
by Elisa Birdseye
Vanessa Schukis has a voice, and she knows how to use it! On Thursday Jan. 12, as part of the John Kleshinski Concert Series at the Community Music Center of Boston, with the estimable Scott Nicholas on piano, and with additional help from Noralee Walker on violin, Schukis presented a program entitled “Weill-esque.” [continued]
January 10, 2012
Emmanuel Music’s Early Beethoven Banquet
by James C.S. Liu
Emmanuel Music continued the second year of their Beethoven chamber series at Emmanuel Church on Sunday, January 8 with another program exploring Beethoven’s creative output in his earliest years. All in all, this was a sumptuous banquet, with a small number of players — three string players, a pianist, and a soprano. [continued]
January 8, 2012
Mr. Green Mountain’s Vespers of 1640
by Joel Schwindt
“Whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think on these things.” It is a fitting sentiment for the Green Mountain Project’s most recent artistic venture, which was hosted by St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Cambridge. Jolle Greenleaf founded the Green Mountain Project in 2010 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Monteverdi’s (Mr. “Green Mountain” himself) 1610 Vespers with performances of the well-loved work. Their current project is a re-creation of a Vespers service as it likely would have been performed at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice. [continued]
January 6, 2012
Youth, Renewal, and Dark Ecstasy at BSO
by David Patterson
Boston Symphony Orchestra Assistant Conductor Marcelo Lehninger stepped in for Andris Nelsons for the orchestra’s series of concerts beginning Thursday, January 5. The youthful Brazilian with boyish face and heaps of get-up-and-go rounded up quite a show of appreciation. It truly was an upbeat evening at Symphony; an evening of renewal, also featuring Swedish trumpeter Hakan Hardenberger. [continued]
January 3, 2012
From the Editor
by Bettina A. Norton
The two performances from Boston Baroque that end one year and bring in the next have become a tradition; and this year, as the second one, on New Year’s Day, was to be broadcast by WGBH with announcer Cathy Fuller, I decided to send reviewers to both performances. My second reason is that live performances of the same program, even within days of each other, vary — as BMInt readers know from discussions herein of WGBH’s controversial decision to eliminate a second broadcast of the subsequent Boston Symphony Orchestra concert. A third reason is that reviewers might offer complementary, even somewhat contradictory, viewpoints. To keep the enterprise “honest,” neither reviewer knew there was to be another one. I do find that the following two reviews complement each other, to the readers’ benefit. Let us know what you think of the practice of multiple reviews of concerts.