The Classical Music Network (English) Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:19:18 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/ http://www.concertonet.com/images/concertonet.jpg http://www.concertonet.com/

Dolora Zajick (Courtesy of Arizona Opera)



With opera season winding down (The Barber of Seville will mark the end of 2009/2010 in April), Arizona Opera has gathered a top notch cast for a program that unfortunately does not wander off the beaten trail. All arias, duets and overtures, as stunningly beautiful as they are, have been heard over and over again and no place was made for pieces, not even one, from a less frequented repertoire. But let us not deny ourselves a good thing: the music is superb and artists, in most cases, meet the requirements.



Selection]]>... Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6361
The Ying Quartet (© Adam Fenster)


Until last year, Ying Quartet was literally a band of brothers. (Or three brothers and one sister!). Retiring First Violin Timothy Ying was replaced by Frank Huang, but these four still play like a dream team. They are energetic, imaginative and have worked for nearly a decade in programming contemporary works.


Actually, their “modern” music should not be a compliment. Nobody thinks that the Budapest Quartet was avant-garde for playing Bartók. Nor is the Juilliard Quartet praised for playing Elliot Carter. Since chamber-music audiences are more rarefied ]]>... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6358
V. Gergiev (© Jennifer Taylor)


Whenever I encounter Les Troyens, I think of how lucky we audience members are. After all, its composer, Hector Berlioz, never had the pleasure of seeing the work performed. There are so many Trojan stories to tell, but let’s confine ourselves to but one.


Berlioz was the only significant personage to read the score of Die Walküre before its publication or first performance. Wagner valued his opinion highly and thought of Roméo et Juliette as a consummate work of music – fitting since the German master learned his leitmotif technique from his French ]]>... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6359

P. Eötvös (© Priska Ketterer)


This performance was shockingly pleasurable. It was beautiful and thorny, but it was also simply accessible. The program appeared to be challenging bristly music coming out of a tradition of off-putting thorniness.


There is so much background information on this music, a huge amount to learn, if you so desire. If you read too much about it you almost would not want to go. It would seem bitter medicine that is good for you because it is high art and intensely intellectual, an “acquired taste”.


But it is all so unnecessary, if you just sit do]]>... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6360
M. Pearlman (© Eric Antoniou)


Like the Testaments, both Old and New, from which 13 sections are taken, Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers, published in 1610, are sensual, exciting, reverent, graceful, poetic and, in the best sense of the word, hallowed. (Yet, like the miracles of the Holy Book, nobody can confirm that the Vespers were actually performed by the composer. Published in 1610, we have no record of its performance.)


Like the aggregate of every religious text, the Boston Baroque, under Martin Pearlman, in the vast spaces of St. John the Divine Cathedral, transformed those singular]]>... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6353
H. Graf (© Christian Steiner)


The Houston Symphony's current repertoire is a revelatory juxtaposition of two contrasting masterworks that exemplifies the glorious thread that runs through the history of Western music. Late in both their careers, Mozart and Bartók conflated their extremely personal rhetoric with Baroque models, and both infused their final works with motivic manipulations and fugal writing that come directly down the timeline from J.S. Bach. Hans Graf's programming of Béla's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta alongside Wolfgang's Requiem was a stroke of genius, and he was joined by his orch]]>... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6352
A. Schiff (© Sheila Rock)


The great Hungarian pianist András Schiff has been making the rounds these past two weeks, but not in the usual venues. Instead, he has played and given lectures on Franz Josef Haydn at the 92St. Y, attracting audiences which wouldn’t ordinarily care about that composer.


When Mr. Schiff finally appeared in Lincoln Centre last night, he didn’t have to “explain” Johannes Brahms, although both he and Haydn had a long-term relationship with Mr. Schiff’s native land. Haydn unhappily toiled away in a grand palace which was in the most rural hinterlands of Hungary. Bra]]>... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6350
V. Danchenko-Stern, I. Mozyleva (© Micaele Sparacino)


The Shakespeare Theater Company at The Harman Center for the Performing Arts has for the last two years sponsored a mid-week, noontime concert series entitled Happenings at the Harman. Featuring performances by Washington-area artists, the series endeavors to connect community audiences with today’s leading artists. The series also explores the synergy between performances on Washington’s stages and the events that shape the DC community and the world. Modern Dance Ensembles, Ballet Companies, Bach Consorts, Jazz Ensembles, Choruses, Films, Pianists, Instrumen]]>... Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6347
J. Wang (© Elena Torcida)


“Shanghai people” wrote Stella Dong in her eponymous classic of that city, “have always seen themselves as more stylish and, frankly, more theatrical than any other Chinese.” Jue Wang, the young Shanghai-born pianist making his New York debut last night, exemplifies that Shanghai flair.


With one exception, his choices were glittering, shining, glistening, and his performance matched his music. Thankfully, Mr. Wang does not have the physical flamboyance of the “old” Lang Lang. No hands thrown up in the air, no 19th Century-style leaning back and hunching forward to make his poin]]>... Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6348
L. McCawley (© Sheila Rock)



‘Gentlemen hats off, [here is] a genius!’ - the famous sentence by Robert Schumann. Two hundred years ago, on 1 March 1810, one of the greatest composers in the music history was born. Throughout the two centuries, none of the great pianists could eschew the charm and appeal of his music. From Liszt and von Bülow in the Romantic era, through Rachmaninov and Horowitz in the Golden Age, to Pollini and Zimerman at our time, his music, through these pianists’ fingertips, have tenderly soothed the souls of hundreds of thousands of music aficionados . The name of this man is … Fryd]]>... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6338
O. Vänskä (© Richard Termine)


That powerhouse conductor Osmo Vänskä came to New York with his Minnesota Orchestra and did what he does best. He took a pair of well-known composers, a pair of very rare works and gave them both such personal propulsion that one didn’t have a chance to reflect on the value of the music until minutes after the applause.


Actually, it wasn’t difficult to gauge each work on its own merits. Mr. Vänskä began with an extraordinary performance of Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge arranged for full string orchestra by the late Michael Steinberg, who also provided the program notes. The ]]>... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6339
C. Tetzlaff (© Alexandra Vosding)


Leipzig’s orchestra was the favorite of Mendelssohn and Schumann, and they were playing in Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium last night. But Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt are favorites of this century, and they were playing next door in Zankel Auditorium. So the chamber music was the very difficult decision to make.


Besides that, Tetzlaff and Tanja Tetzlaff are part of that very distinguished brother-sister team which, over the centuries, has included Wolfgang-and-Nanerl, Felix-and-Fanny, Yehudi-and-Hepzibah, as well as Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine. Quite]]>... Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6329
P. Oundjian (© Hasnain Dattu)


The second concert of the 2010 New Creations Festival began with Peter Lieberson’s Suite from Ashoka’s Dream, the opera he wrote for the Santa Fe festival in 1997. The suite is a joint commission from the Aspen Music Festival and School (where it was premiered last year) and the TSO. In two movements, each with four linked sections, it traces the action of the opera. Lieberson works have been performed by the TSO over the years; I recall his piano concerto (with Peter Serkin) as a gnarly, clotted work that demanded a sort of muscular listening from the audience. Judging from this suite, he c]]>... Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6332
L. Golan (Courtesy of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra)


Since its founding in 1947 by an occasional group of musicians performing a handful of concerts each year, the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra has developed into a major formation serving 300,000 patrons annually with almost 200 concerts. With Music Director Michael Christie at the helm since 2004, PSO, which operates on an $11 million budget, presents an annual season from September through the beginning of June, offering full-length classical and pops concerts.


And what a thrilling idea to have programmed those two performances of Salute to ]]>... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6337
G. Shahan (© Boyd Hagen)


Gustav Mahler said, “My music is the sound of nature.” Had Mahler been referring to New York’s “nature” tonight, his music would have been slushy and mushy, the darkness barely shadowing people sliding and slipping, the rain turning to snow, the snow turning to rain, the sidewalks turning to hazardous cold waste material.


Conductor David Robertson had no silly Mahlerian ideas. He kept his musical nature firmly inside Avery Fisher Concert Hall. Instead of slush and rain, he led the Philharmonic through enchanted gardens. Rather than ice glazing hard concrete, Mr. Robertson generate]]>... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6324
O. Golijov (© Sébastien Chambert)


The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s annual program is dotted with new compositions (newly commissioned, new to Toronto, etc.) but for several years a portion of its season is declared to be the New Creations Festival, with a focus on (but not limited to) the works of one living composer who will ideally be in attendance. This year it is Argentinian Osvaldo Golijov.


The first of the three concerts opened with a piece by Canadian Kelly-Marie Murphy, Through the unknown, unremembered door (a line from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets). It was commissioned for the National]]>... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6328
Pacific Opera Victoria was founded in 1980 and a crucial decision was made early on to explore operatic repertory beyond the “top twenty”. Under Artistic Director and chief conductor Timothy Vernon, the results have been successful – in fact other companies took note and have chosen a similar policy. The current venture off the beaten track is Richard Strauss’s “conversation in music” in its first full staging in Canada.


The venue is the ornate Royal Theatre (capacity 1400), dating from 1913. Its undersized pit has prompted Timothy Vernon to devise a version for 40 players (a move with positive budget results as well). Wallowing in hyper-caloric Straussian lushness is always a guilty pleasure, but the slimmed-d]]>... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6357
Leon Botstein (©American Symphony Orchestra)


From dozens of composers who came out from the political closet into the open air of the Russian Republic, having been ignored or banned during the Soviet times, how did Leon Botstein choose the three composers who inhabited his program “After the Thaw?”


One story I heard is that Mr. Botstein had a meeting with Mstislav Rostropovich a few months before the conductor’s death, and was given a list of works which the cellist-conductor wanted to hear played in America. From this, Mr. Botstein chose three–ignoring, for some reason, wonderful choices like Kanchelli and ]]>... Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6323
M. Perényi (© Andrea Felvegi)


The rarity of a solo performance by Miklós Perényi in New York is inexcusable. He is well known as a long-time collaborator with András Schiff (who will be giving his own recitals this month at the 92Y). But to hear this most distinguished cellist play a program of solo music–literally solo cello music–is to go back to a different era in cello performances.


Not that Mr. Perényi is an old-timer. But these past decades have generated the Personality Cult of the cello, not the classical cellist by itself. Nobody regrets the Promethean gestures of Rostropov]]>... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6319
V. Gergiev (© Jennifer Taylor)


The history of Western music from Schütz to Bruckner or Monteverdi to Puccini is a sweeping but surprisingly logical arc. To say that J.S. Bach literally begat C.P.E. Bach who figuratively begat Mozart may seem a cliché but is such because of its veracity. In fact, the entire story line has a very comfortingly correct feel, like returning to the home key at the end of a peripatetic piece.


Only one famous composer does not fit into the pigeonholes and that is Hector Berlioz. A Frenchman who wrote like a German, a guitar player who rejected the piano, Berlioz literally mar]]>... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6336
The Takács Quartet (© Ellen Appel)


The very accomplished James MacMillan has a tendency to give long, usually liturgical titles to his music In fact, three of his four string quartets have fairly long titles, ranging from the mystical to intimations of the Jewish Passover .


The New York premiere of his Third String Quartet, played by the splendid Takács Quartet last night, was the rare “anonymous” work, so may I suggest two titles, from Walt Whitman’s When Lilacs Last In The Dooryard Bloom’d?


One title would be “For fresh as the morning–thus would I chant a song for you,]]>... Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6306
J. Cornelius & C. Bolduc (© Paul Sirochman)


Aside from an occasional Ariadne auf Naxos or Salome, Philadelphia audiences have had little opportunity to hear the operas of Richard Strauss in recent decades. Following up his successful performances of Elektra for the Academy of Vocal Arts several years ago, Luke Housner has prepared a delectable production of Capriccio that drew enthusiastic approval on opening night from a capacity audience in the Helen Corning Warden Theater. Presiding at the keyboard, Housner revealed the lyrical beauty of Strauss final opera, or “conversation piece f]]>... Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6310
(© Cory Weaver)


By 1840 he had experienced personal tragedies with the death of his wife and two children. It would be difficult for anyone to stay focused on his professional career. Prior to these misfortunes, Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, Oberto (1839), was successful enough for La Scala impresario Bartolomeo Merelli to offer the budding artist a contract to produce three more operas. Despite the abysmal failure of the comic work, Un giorno di regno (1840), the young Verdi would find it a learning curve and a launching pad that resulted in creating a most favorable Nabucco that showcased in 1]]>... Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6314
J. Ford, M. Cannaday II (© Washington Savoyards)



American “Ragtime” composer Scott Joplin remains known primarily for his delightfully rhythmic and melodic piano rags. The Entertainer, a rag composed by Joplin in 1902 was used in the soundtrack of the 1973 Hollywood film The Sting, which starred Paul Newman and Robert Redford. This adaptation of The Entertainer Rag by composer/conductor Marvin Hamlisch became so popular it climbed to a number three position on the Pop Charts of 1974.


The opera Treemonisha was composed by Joplin in 1911. Unfortunately, it was never pro]]>... Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6342
D. Robertson (© Michael Tammaro)


A fishing-rod reel is rarely called for in an orchestra, though it is not unprecedented. Fishing-rod reels were prominent in Haydn’s “Salmon” symphonies, operatic Bass arias, Mendelssohn’s Clam Seas and Prosperous Voyage, and most prominently in Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet.


With George Benjamin’s Dance Figures, the tool is part of the orchestra, but alas, I could spot it only in one of the nine dances. A great waste. (The second waste being that Mr. Benjamin offered as replacement “a very quiet ratchet”, which I believe was used.) Still, at first her]]>... Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=6303