The Classical Music Network (English) Thu, 17 May 2012 10:02:38 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/ http://www.concertonet.com/images/concertonet.jpg http://www.concertonet.com/
Trio Kandinsky (© Jordi Oliver)


The Schoenberg Center in Vienna is a real insider tip for those looking for music events off the beaten track. Established in 1998, it is a unique repository of Arnold Schoenberg’s archival legacy. The cultural center also hosts exquisite chamber concerts every month showcasing Schoenberg’s music and his influence on generations to come. It is remarkable what the center, with its limited budget, under its most competent Director Christian Meyer, offers to the public.


This event was dedicated to the Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge (1912 – 2002) marking the centennial of]]>... Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8445
E. Ax (© Henry Fair)


Concluding Koerner Hall’s piano series for this season was this substantial recital focused on pieces containing musical variations.


The program was presented chronologically with the exception of the first and newest piece, Aaron Copland’s Piano Variations of 1930. From the first notes it comes across as stark and challenging; the severity relents a bit in some lightly scored sections, and it ends with a hectic section spanning a large part of the keyboard. It gives an insight into Copland’s work - with a hard-edged self-conscious modernism - prior to the development of the distinctive ]]>... Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8447
H. Hahn (© P. Miller/Courtesy of DG)


Hilary Hahn took a break from the promotion tour for her new improvisation album Sifra and presented for one last time this season her unconventional recital program at the Great Hall of the Vienna Konzerthaus. With New York based pianist Cory Smythe as congenial partner she served a menu of well known staples of the violin literature interspersed with contemporary miniatures.



The encore, by definition, comes last on a concert program. Not so this time: Hilary Hahn opened her recital with encores from her project In 27 pieces – The Hilary Ha]]>... Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8440
H. Paredes (© Tony Hutchings)


It's been many years since I've been to a "Composer Portraits" concert at Miller Theatre, but fortunately things haven't changed. There is always a medium-sized but devout, attentive audience that is treated to extraordinary performances by leading composers from around the world. Tonight's performers, the excellent young Ensemble Signal, are a virtual compendium of members of many of New York's leading new music groups fleshed out by crackerjack freelancers. Brad Lubman, the exceptionally clear and precise conductor, and Irvine Arditti, arguably the greatest living violinist that specializes in new mu]]>... Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8435
Conductors and Nashville Symphony (© Nashville Symphony)


”In the Beginning were the ‘Incessant Myriads.’”


No Big Bang Theory for that crusty old Transcendentalist Charles Ives, though he doubtless would have affirmed that a Big Bang incorporates endless, eternal and still ensuing Small Bangs. Most of that cosmic creation process, in fact, was sounded, amidst the incessant myriads of music last night by the Nashville Symphony.

The Nashville Symphony, almost 70 years old, gave the finale of “Spring For Music”, a two-year-old Carnegie Hall Tradition, which hopefully will go on as lo]]>... Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8434
R. Gilmore & J. Boyd (© Cory Weaver/Portland Opera)


Imagine 40-plus scenes (some in 3-D), a jillion characters, actors singing multiple roles, and the inimitable Robert Orth as Voltaire, Pangloss, Cacambo and Martin.



Without Orth, a fabulously versatile actor and competent baritone who never seems to age, Portland Opera’s Candide would have been a hoot -- but not superb. He brought this tough-to-produce piece some well-deserved gravity. His multiple roles serve to narrate the opera, pulling us around the sordid world as Candide stumbles into one disappointment after another.

... Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8446
Vienna City Hall (© Mike Ranz)


Europeans follow the Eurovision Song Contest almost as passionately as Americans watch Super Bowl on TV. Less popular is the Song Contest’s sibling, the biennial Eurovision Young Musicians Competition, open to classical musicians under the age of 19. Organized by the European Broadcasting Union, each member country chooses their candidate in national preliminaries. For the fourth time, Vienna hosted this year’s Finale. This coincided with the inauguration of the Wiener Festwochen, a month long festival of music, theatre and arts. Against the splendid backdrop of the Vienna C]]>... Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8430
J. Brown (© Alabama Symphony)


Why should we have been so utterly surprised at the power of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra (ASO) last night? Yes, New York has its Juilliard School, Philadelphia has its Curtis Institute–but every village, town, hamlet and city in Alabama has high school football teams which demand the very best musicians for their marching bands.

After years of tramping up and down in every kind of weather, it must come as a relief for the elite of these terrific brass and wind players to sit down with the ASO. Their original training and experience which had been physically cha]]>... Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8427
A. McHardy & J. Archibald (© Michael Cooper)


Zhang Huan’s production of Semele, first seen in Brussels in 2009, is in many ways a dazzling presentation of the opera until towards the end it disappears into an abyss of directorial whimsicality. It could well be titled “Semele truncated, with additions by Mr Zhang Huan”.


The first warning sign that things might veer off course comes during the overture when we are treated to a documentary film about the set. Zhang Huan bought a 450-year-old temple which turns out to have had an eventful history. In the 1980s it was inhabited by a couple who had marital d]]>... Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8437
J. Lacombe (© Jean-François Bérubé)


Paris, Istanbul, Bangkok and Beijing are destinations rolling trippingly off the tongues of concert-going New Yorkers. But mention “New Jersey” at a dinner party, and miasmic clouds darken the room, tubercular wheezing and haunting cackles the only sounds piercing the gloom.

New Yorkers simply don’t see the point of New Jersey, outside of being the home of Springsteen, Jon Stewart, Bon Jovi and Walt Whitman. To actually go there is, compared to the Louvre or Topkapi or the Forbidden City, is inconceivable.

And I plead mea culpa to avoidin]]>... Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8425
W. Eddins (© Edmonton Symphony)


After last night’s “Spring for Music” second concert, I’ll never knock America’s chauvinism again. The enthusiasts of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada make the most right-wing American Firsters look like One-World pussy-cats.

Edmontinians (Edmontoners?) packed Carnegie Hall in the thousands, waving their red banners, greeting and saluting with wild congratulations. Before the concert, not only the Executive Director of the Orchestra, Annamarie Petrov, but two Royal Canadian Mounted Police persons, stood at attention. Would they burst (I asked myself) into a patriotic anthem, wit]]>... Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8421
H. Graf (© Courtesy of Houston Symphony)


If we title it (even with a second-rate double entendre), they will come.

Carnegie Hall’s yearly “Spring For Music” has enticed orchestras from the far corners of North America to come, perform, bring music that New Yorkers have never heard before. This year, orchestras from the dark ice-forests of Edmonton to the piston-packin’ plantations of Alabama are taking their instruments to Carnegie Hall. And just to guarantee a festive reception, gaudy scarves (or handkerchiefs) have been distributed to audiences to wave before the concert

As for notoriously blasé]]>... Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8417
(© Todd Rosenberg/Courtesy of CSO)


One of the joys of living in a major musical center is the prospect of sampling emerging talent through a variety of professional training programs for young musicians. Chicago is fortunate in having two of the world’s finest: Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the apprentice arm of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the Ryan Opera Center of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Opportunities to enjoy the former are plentiful due to the Civic’s popular concert series in Chicago’s Symphony Center, while the young operatic artists are seen throughout Lyric’s regular season in a plethora of supporting r]]>... Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8424
M. Tilson Thomas (Courtesy of NWS)


It no longer comes as a surprise when many willingly admit that it was not easy for them to appreciate Mahler. Many never get there and eventually stop trying. But for those of us who have uncovered the treasure, to experience the Ninth at the New World Center must be a particularly high moment in one’s concert going life. For some music lovers, attending all the Mahler symphonies might not be unlike seeing Wagner’s Ring in Bayreuth; it isn’t really honest to underestimate this event’s significance.



This was also the season’s last program. The las]]>... Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8422
J. Lowenthal at Bargemusic (© Coco. T. Dawg)


Dmitri Shostakovich was once queried about the “meaning” of the William Tell Overture quotes in his 15th Symphony.

He apparently seemed puzzled by the question.
“‘Meaning?’”, he asked. “I simply wanted the appropriate music. And that happened to be it.”

Methinks the late George Rochberg, like Shostakovich rarely looked for a “meaning” when he quoted, Brahms, Gershwin, Brahms, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington and Johann Sebastian Bach in his music. His Third Quartet with more than direct hints at Beethoven and Mahler was composed b]]>... Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8413
(© Ken Howard/Met Opera)



A too brief revival of John Dexter’s 1978 production of Billy Budd marked the end of the current Metropolitan Opera season. What a note to cast us out upon!


Dexter’s unit set presents the deck of a warship of Nelson’s navy, steeply raked like a ship on the high sea. The set cleverly rises and lowers to reveal various spaces below decks. The compartmentalized structure also serves to emphasize both the self-contained microcosm of such a ship and its rigid and immutable class structure.


Singing the title role, Nathan Gunn was an en]]>... Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8431
L. Lang (Courtesy of CSO)


Pianist Lang Lang is one of three creative directors guiding the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra this season (a leadership arrangement, including Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Philip Glass, initiated by the CSO board of trustees after former music director Paavo Järvi stepped down last spring)*. As such, he has been responsible for planning and overseeing five of the orchestra’s 20 subscription concerts. He has performed as soloist on two of them. The second, May 4 at Music Hall, was also the final concert of the CSO season.



In many ways, it was a typical symphony conce]]>... Fri, 04 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8416
The Walt Disney Hall (© Mathew Imaging)


While not quite a local boy, Sir Simon Rattle has certainly made good since his early days in Los Angeles. The former Principal Guest Conductor of the LA Phil returned with his wife, mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozená, to Southern California for four concerts with his old band. Much has changed since those days. Both the Phil and Rattle have gone their separate yet highly successful ways, achieving notoriety at the zenith of the classical music world. The reunion of these two artistic forces of nature was in no way disappointing, and in fact, was as thrilling as one could have hoped for. I]]>... Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8415
M. Lindberg (© Hanya Chlala)


”Now bid me run, And I will strive with things impossible.”
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Magnus Lindberg, celebrating his third year as Composer-in-Residence with the New York Philharmonic obviously “bade Bronfman run”, and those fingers did indeed strive with “things impossible.”

For after the last measures of this 30-minute world premiere (New York Philharmonic Co-Commission with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Gothenburg Symphony), the first word that came to mind for the soloist was “dangerous.” Specifically, Mr. Bronfman’s part ]]>... Thu, 03 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8409
A.Gilbert (© Chris Lee)


A puzzlement. Despite Gustav Mahler’s close affinity with the New York Philharmonic, it took 40 years between the composition of the Sixth Symphony and its premiere in New York. And for that, it took Dmitri Mitropoulos, a conductor as Titanic as Mahler himself, to offer it.

Why such a gap? Perhaps because the Sixth Symphony, while not the largest in duration or resources, is emotionally the most draining of all Mahler symphonies. The other symphonies have (sometimes grudging) angelic consolations, religious screeds or cheerful birdcalls. The A Minor is desola]]>... Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8407
S. Mancasola (Courtesy of AVA)


Academy of Vocal Arts’ production of L’elisir d’amore is set in 1945 Italy and features Peter Harrison’s very warm set with angled rows of books in dark wood frames. The props a trove of period items such as a black lacquer manual typewriter, a period hi-fi. All perfect backdrops for Val Starr’s costumes with the men decked out in film noir suits and the women in a colorful array of tight sweaters, wraparound skirts and liberation day pumps. A poster of Il Duce hangs on the back wall.



Director Nic Muni takes a risk updating Elisir to such a historically piv]]>... Tue, 01 May 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8408
Australian Chamber Orchestra (© Courtesy of the Artists)


Confined to a sparsely populated, predominantly scrubland atoll near the bottom of the planet, hounded by fierce koala bears and the sinister wallaby, it comes as no surprise that, even after 37 years, the Australian Chamber Orchestra has no idea about the protocol of Manhattan music-making.


How dare they begin a concert by layering an American Crumb cake with an filling of Austrian Webern? What gives their Music Director the right to orchestrate perfectly decent Schubert and Schumann lieder, or turning a Grieg string quar]]>... Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8402
G. Ohlsson (© Wojciech Grzedzinski)


Franz Liszt was a human Black Hole. Straddling Europe, spanning the 19th Century, he ceaselessly sucked in every passing line of poetry and drama, classical tomes, ancient music, eminent men, philosophies and creeds, literature and screeds, endlessly swooning over beautiful women, sighing over beautiful vistas...

Nothing escaped his absorption, and everything he absorbed was transformed into music.

Not that we were aware of this growing several decades ago. To us, Liszt was a tawdry uninhibited purveyor of showoff music. We heard Les Préludes, a Mephist]]>... Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8401
J. Reuter & K. Mattila (© Cory Weaver/Met Opera)


Just short of a year since the stunningly inventive production of Janácek’s The Cunning Little Vixen at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in 2011, the Metropolitan Opera has revived Elijah Moshinsky’s production of The Makropulos Case. Seventy years after its world premiere at the Brno National Theater, the opera came to the Met as the current production, first with Jessye Norman in 1996, and then revived in 1998 and 2001 with Catherine Malfitano as the 337-year old eternally young ]]>... Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8441
B. Bartók


To many Miamians the idea of this program would have been unthinkable even twenty years ago. Bartók? In Miami? This city has really grown up. Florida Grand Opera scheduled
Bluebeard’s Castle on a double bill with Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole during the 2003–2004 season. Double bills are generally not good for box office and this plan fell through. Somehow though, the timing couldn’t be more perfect now. This is a two-character opera without a lot of physical activity which could easily be lost in cavernous theatres. But here in the New World Center it gets the necessary large orchestra with an intima]]>... Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0200 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=8396