a virtual journal and blog of the classical music scene in Boston
Robert Levin, editor; Bettina A. Norton, executive editor; Lee Eiseman, publisher
Reviews
April 16, 2012
Love, Death & Seasons with Eldredge, Levinson
by Cashman Kerr Prince
Last night, Boston Conservatory’s String Masters Series presented a recital of 20th-century Russian sonatas performed by Allison Eldredge, cello, and Max Levinson, piano. Hacker’s Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons serves as an apt summary of this recital. The music is freighted with large, existential questions of love and death. More’s the pity about the temperamental wolf-tone in Eldredge’s cello. [continued]
El Dorado Honors Traveling Italian Composers
by Rebecca Marchand
El Dorado Ensemble’s “Capricious Italians: A 17th-century Musical Journey” at the Somerville Museum explored repertoire by Italian composers who traveled as far north as Denmark and Sweden, exporting the best of instrumental composition to princely courts. The history of contributions of Italian composers to Austro-Germanic music is no secret, but groups like the El Dorado Ensemble are doing much to honor it. [continued]
Music Only, Mercifully, in Tito
by Andrew Sammut
Mozart’s penultimate opera La Clemenza di Tito K. 621, (The Mercy of Titus) is often described in terms of its dramatic shortcomings. On Saturday night Emmanuel Music simply and powerfully relied upon Mozart’s music. Their concert version sold a work that is often a tough sale for contemporary audiences. Ryan Turner applied musicianship and sincerity to Mozart’s score. [continued]
April 13, 2012
Esa-Pekka Salonen at the BSO
by Mark DeVoto
Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen exhibited his accomplishment as a composer at the BSO last night. His three-year-old Violin Concerto was written for Leila Josefowicz, whose performance was electrifying. The Firebird was a significant demonstration of what Salonen can do as a conductor, and the audience reacted with well deserved enthusiasm. He conducted Le Tombeau de Couperin expertly without a stick. [continued]
Gagaku Concert Celebrates Centennial
by Anthony J. Palmer
Kitanodai Gagaku Ensemble offered a rare hearing of the court and shrine music of Japan at Symphony Hall on April 9. Gagaku is the oldest and longest continually performing orchestral art in the world. On the centennial of Japan’s gift of cherry trees to Washington, members of the BSO joined in with classical music from the Western repertoire, enriching the tradition between Boston and Japan. [continued]
April 12, 2012
Golden Glow from Balcony of Memorial Church
by Peter Sykes
Perhaps no organ dedication can rival the drama of the 1863 Boston Music Hall recital at which the Great Organ was literally unveiled, but rise to its feet and cheer indeed did the audience listening to David Higgs on April 10, as C. B. Fisk Opus 139 was publicly inaugurated at Harvard’s Memorial Church. Higgs’s distinguished, eclectic program superbly reflected the organ’s scope and abilities. [continued]
April 10, 2012
The Mighty Fisk Speaks at Harvard
by David Griesinger
The new Fisk organ (opus 139) in The Memorial Church in Harvard Yard gave its first public performance on Sunday as a lengthy prelude to the Easter Service. Christian Lane, Assistant University Organist and Choirmaster at Harvard University, played a one-hour program selected to show off the many voices of this fabulous instrument. [continued]
April 9, 2012
Quite A Journey with Filjak
by Lee Eiseman
Zagreb’s most famous young pianist, Martina Filjak, made her Boston recital debut at the Gardner Museum yesterday in a dramatic manner. The piano was on a diagonal axis to the square room, but turned 90 degrees from where I had observed it in previous events. The result was toe-tingling. Her playing exploited the varying styles of the pieces offered. Troubles began after intermission, but they were not Filjak’s. [continued]
Many Curtain Calls for Charles Strouse
by David Griesinger
The honored guest artist at the Nadia Boulanger Memorial Concert at Longy was Charles Strouse, one of America’s most well known composers for musical theater, who serenaded us with his favorite songs, after participating in a delightful conversation with Longy Dean Wayman Chin. After intermission we were treated by Longy students to some of Strouse’s early classical chamber works. [continued]
April 8, 2012
Minimalist Directness, Mystic Purity
by David Patterson
A most uncommon acknowledgment of Good Friday recalling the crucifixion of Jesus Christ occurred at Jordan Hall. It involved the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, a slate of guest soloists, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. Two reenactments of the passion, one allegorical, by David Lang and the other, from Biblical texts, by Arvo Pärt, adopted a similar, now familiar musical language of minimalism. [continued]
April 7, 2012
Sensitive, Totally Expert Pierrot at Tufts
by Mark DeVoto
The Music Department at Tufts, under chairman Joseph Auner and pianist Donald Berman, put forward a “Pierrot Project” in honor of Schoenberg’s masterpiece Pierrot Lunaire through a course (with 12 students), an exhibition, a composition of new works in honor, and a fine concert on April 5 (with the real moon becoming full today). The concert even had a title: “Moondrunk Madness, Transgression, and Transcendence.” [continued]
April 6, 2012
Moving, Sublime Moments in BSO Brahms Requiem
by Joel Schwindt
“Blessed are those who hear!” Christoph von Dohnányi, led the BSO, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and soloists Anna Prohaska and Hanno Müller-Brachmann, in Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem in a sensitive, supple interpretation of the work’s varied textures and temperaments, highlighted by chorus’s remarkable rendition of the Lutheran texts conveying Brahms’s humanistic spiritualism. [continued]
April 5, 2012
Viola, Piano, and Poetry
by Elizabeth Oka
One might expect levity from a viola recital on April Fool’s day, yet the program, part of the String Masters Series at Boston Conservatory with Lila Brown (viola) and Judith Gordon (piano), was all business. One section, “Music and Poetry — Conversations,” combined selections from J. S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5 and Kurtág’s Signs, Games, and Messages with an eclectic array of poems. [continued]
April 4, 2012
BU Orchestra’s Fine Shostakovich, Rachmaninov
by Vance R. Koven
Together with BU’s Symphonic Chorus, the BU Symphony Orchestra, under conductor David Hoose, presented a whopper of a program on April 2, comprising Rachmaninov’s The Bells, op. 35, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 in G minor, op. 103, thoroughly justifying their presence in Symphony Hall, though they far from filled it. [continued]
Primary Source Needs More Balance, Cohesion
by Elizabeth Oka
Primary Source, the new chamber music concert series at Goethe-Institut Boston, presented an all-Schubert program on March 30. Pianist Tanya Blaich and tenor Gregory Zavracky began with well-sung lieder based on poems by Goethe. Violinist Gabriel Boyers joined pianist Tanya Blaich for the relatively little-played Sonatina in A minor, which had balance problems. Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet had engaging moments. [continued]
April 3, 2012
Dueling Fiddlers in Front of Waves
by Tom Delbanco
The concert by the acclaimed St. Lawrence String Quartet on April Fool’s Day in Shalin Liu Performance Center was a vivid mix of triumph and tragedy, with Haydn suffering grievous harm, but Golijov and Beethoven emerging triumphant. A short encore, the Menuetto from Haydn’s Op. 74, No. 1, was a fine end to an engrossing concert. [continued]
Splendor of Hapsburg-Burgundian Court Music
by Virginia Newes
The splendor of the Habsburg-Burgundian courts in the early 16th century provided the context for a concert by Blue Heron Renaissance Choir, Scott Metcalfe, director, on Friday evening, at the First Church in Cambridge, Congregational. Joining Blue Heron’s roster of eleven singers were three instrumentalists: Michael Collver, cornetto, and Mack Ramsey, Renaissance trombone, with director Scott Metcalfe playing a vielle (fiddle). [continued]
April 2, 2012
Aloft Yet Grounded in Debussy’s World
by Fred Bouchard
On a brisk and bright April Fools’ Day with Harvard Yard dotted with daffodils and crocuses, The Boston Conservatory Orchestra brought French rhapsody into focus, illuminating the Gothic halls of Sanders Theatre with two brief Debussy rhapsodies for solo winds, a lengthy fantasy for piano, and capped the afternoon with Ravel’s explosive Rapsodie Espagnole. [continued]
April 1, 2012
A Far Cry’s Protean Talents
by Cashman Kerr Prince
A Far Cry, the resident chamber orchestra at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, gave a wonderfully eclectic concert in Calderwood Hall. The program ranged from mid-17th-century Schmelzer to Berg and Schoenberg, with pianist Markus Schirmer joining in for a Mozart piano concerto. The proximity of musicians to listeners returns us to the experience of chamber music in salons and private spaces. [continued]
Fair Ophelia, Well Sung When from Memory
by Marvin J. Ward
The eighth edition of The Shakespeare Concerts, this time devoted primarily to vocal music surrounding Ophelia from Hamlet, was held in Jordan Hall last night. Cambridge-based composer Joseph Summer’s coherent and well-sequenced program included works from past and present, some fairly well known, others less so. The singers seemed wedded to their scores, making the performance a bit too static. [continued]
Music for Renaisssance Pageantry
by Virginia Newes
Sponsored by the Boston Early Music Festival at St. Paul Church in Cambridge, the Tallis Scholars last night took as its theme the famous meeting held in June 1520 with Henry VIII, the French king Francis I, composers Jean Mouton and William Cornysh the Younger, and their musicians. [continued]
Electroacoustic Experiences at Harvard
by David Patterson
This past weekend was Hans Tutschku’s second “festival” of the year, where space and technology would share the limelight. Last fall, he curated “Sound in Space Festival: The Art of Interpretation of Electro-acoustic Music.” This spring, he has been curator of a two-day festival “Jour, Contre-jour”held in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall Friday night and last night. [continued]
March 31, 2012
H & H St. Matthew Passion Challenged by Venue
by Cashman Kerr Prince
Last night Handel and Haydn Society presented J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Three hours of thrilling music drew on the combined forces of vocal soloists, double orchestra, double choir and two organs, hearkening back to Handel and Haydn Society performances of 1871 (Boston première) and 1879 (first complete American première), while looking forward to the society’s upcoming bicentennial. This concert will be repeated on Sunday afternoon. [continued]
Les Bostonades: “That Was Fun!”
by Andrew Sammut
Les Bostonade’s “The Lure of Paris” program was ostensibly centered on France and French-inspired music. Their concise, invigorating performance on Friday night at First Church in Boston highlighted composers from several cultures. After one sprightly piece, a small child offered: “That was fun!” [continued]
Edge-of-the Seat Berg, Harbison, Korngold Gems
by Zoe Kemmerling
The concert by Chameleon Arts Ensemble last Sunday at Goethe-Institut fittingly featured much weighty Germanic music — not the usual fare, however. Artistic Director and flutist Deborah Boldin has a particular interest in programming works that “for too long have stood in the shadows,” and the result was a varied and substantial offering that certainly engaged many. [continued]