Contemporary - my/maSCENA

Lebrecht Weekly – Boris Giltburg Plays Shostakovich

By Norman Lebrecht on 13 January 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

What is remarkable about both piano concertos is that neither was intended for virtuoso performers. Shostakovich wrote the first in 1933 for himself to play with the Leningrad Philharmonic and the second in 1957 as a birthday present for his son Maxim, who was intent on a conducting career. The lack of flash effects in the score intensifies the directness and sincerity of both works. Listen with eyes closed and you can imagine the state-harassed composer playing the first concerto in some remote corner of the Soviet empire, sharing the limelight with the local trumpet player and Kazak strings. Shostakovich’s…

anatomy theater, Photo: James Daniel

They Sing the Body Dissected: anatomy theater

By Charles Geyer on 10 January 2017 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Interviews, Opera

OPERA REVIEW: anatomy theater, a new opera by David Lang and Mark Dion, part of the 2017 Prototype Festival, New York City (New York premiere, viewed January 7, 2017). INTERVIEW: Composer David Lang. She’s been hanged for murder – but men still can’t keep their hands off her. Signs posted at the entrance to Brooklyn’s BRIC Arts | Media House for performances of anatomy theater warn of “simulated hanging” and “nudity” featured in the show. And, yep, both appraisals prove quite true (with nothing “simulated” about the latter, by the way). But no tipoff can adequately prepare one for the…

Maalouf © JF PAGA Grasset

Amin Maalouf: Up-Close with the Man from “Afar”

By Charles Geyer on 31 December 2016 Contemporary, Interviews, Opera

INTERVIEW: with Amin Maalouf (Kaija Saariaho’s librettist-collaborator on L’Amour de loin and other works) The opera L’Amour de loin – or Love from Afar – premiered to conspicuous plaudits in Salzburg in 2000, and has enjoyed numerous productions around the globe. It also signaled the beginning of a remarkably fertile, ongoing collaboration between composer Kaija Saariaho and then first-time librettist Amin Maalouf. Maalouf has since partnered with Saariaho on three more musico-dramatic works, all of them sharing certain distinctive features: strong female characters, epitomizing a generative, rancorless strain of feminism; an elusive, gossamer air of mysticism; a usually gentle, ultimately…

Lebrecht Weekly – Last Album of 2016

By Norman Lebrecht on 30 December 2016 Art Song, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Pictures of America: Natalie Dessay (Sony Classical) News of a Natalie Dessay release always stirs me to a fevered expectation. The French soprano, now retired from the opera stage, has an extraordinary ability to find character between the lines of a song, even one that is overly familiar or resistant to shades of interpretation. Why, she once won me over to choose a Debussy set as my album of the year… So my curiosity was well and truly piqued when Ms Dessay announced an album of American songs based on her reaction to well-known American paintings by Edward Hopper. What…

Eric Owens as Jaufré Rudel in Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin. Photo by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

So Far! So Good! L’Amour de loin Comes to the Met

By Charles Geyer on 9 December 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Opera

OPERA REVIEW: L’Amour de loin by Kaija Saariaho and Amin Maalouf – Metropolitan Opera debut (December 1, 2016) Meditative, poised, sly, and slow-burn, L’Amour de loin oh so gradually grows to dramatic ripeness. Its music glimmers, undulates, bewitches – as fluid in its variety and moods as the play of sun and moonlight on the Mediterranean. But the opera hangs full fire until, ultimately, it knocks you back with its hidden emotional and existential wallop. This elegant and profound French-language work by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, with libretto by Lebanese novelist Amin Maalouf, has been accruing international kudos through more…

Tamara Mumford as the Pilgrim, Eric Owens as Jaufré Rudel and Susanna Phillips as Clémence in Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de Loin. Photo by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Met Premiere: L’Amour de Loin by Kaija Saariaho and Amin Maalouf

By Xenia Hanusiak on 6 December 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Opera

The Metropolitan Opera’s production of L’Amour de Loin, by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho, shines on the most trailblazing composer of the 21st century. It has been a limelight month for Saariaho in New York. Ensembles from the New York Philharmonic to educational institutions such as the Mannes School of Music have given Saariaho’s music a highlight in their programming calendar. These dedicated performances together with the house premiere of L’Amour de Loin at The Metropolitan Opera have not only addressed Saariaho’s stellar status but have inserted a post script on the position of female artists in opera. While Saariaho frequently…

Lebrecht Weekly – Elgar, Martinu: Cello concertos (Sony Classical)

By Norman Lebrecht on 18 November 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Strings

The Argentine-born Sol Gabetta, now in her mid-30s, made her first recording of the Elgar concerto six years ago in Denmark, an impressive performance stressed ever-so-faintly at the edges by the long shadow of Jacqueline Du Pré. In this live concert with the Berlin Philharmonic and Sir Simon Rattle, Gabetta is more languorous and, one suspects, more herself. The opening phrases are so leisurely you can imagine half the orchestra taking an illicit sip of tea from an under-chair flask, knowing there is plenty of time before they have to come in. But her tempo is immediately convincing and musically…

McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble to Perform Leroux’s “Apocalypsis”

By Newswire on 11 November 2016 Contemporary, Newswire

McGill’s Schulich School of Music takes part in the Canadian Opera Company’s Free Concert Series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre with the brightest and best in classical and jazz from November 22 through December 1. TORONTO: Friday, November 11, 2016 – As part of the 2016/2017 season of the Canadian Opera Company’s (COC) Free Concert Series in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre, The McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble will perform Philippe Leroux’s Extended Apocalypsis at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on November 22. Montréal’s McGill Contemporary Music Ensemble – a high level chamber orchestra entirely dedicated to 20th…

Lebrecht Weekly – Shostakovich plays Shostakovich (Praga Digitals)

By Norman Lebrecht on 11 November 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

If the print on this review goes blurry on your screen it’s because I’m still rubbing my eyes at the cast list on this astonishing trove of archive finds, unobtainable anywhere on line. The composer Dmitri Shostakovich was a capable pianist who sometimes participated in his own premieres. The people he played with were the elite of Russian music. The song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry, unplayable in public while Stalin was waging his anti-Semitic purge, existed as samizdat between Shostakovich and his friends, sung quietly in his apartment and theirs. The public premiere in January 1955 was sung by…

Lebrecht Weekly – Schoenberg and Shostakovich (CSO.Resound)

By Norman Lebrecht on 4 November 2016 Choral, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Two composers in despair, reaching deep into their souls. Arnold Schoenberg, a penniless refugee in Los Angeles in 1938, was commissioned by a liberal temple to make a modern version of the Yom Kippur introductory prayer. Dmitri Shostakovich, dying of lung cancer in 1974, wrote a song cycle for bass singer and piano from Michelangelo’s battle between public expectation and personal need. Together, the two works contains some of the darkest moments known to music. Schoenberg, unexpectedly, delivers confidence, hope and consolation. Without yielding to the temptations of simple faith or melody, he conjures serenity out of musical austerity by…

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