Contemporary - my/maSCENA

Lebrecht Weekly – Ustvolskaya, Silvestrov & Kancheli: Works for Piano & Orchestra

By Norman Lebrecht on 2 September 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

The late Soviet system created damaging monopolies in the arts as much as they did in state industry. The big brands – Shostakovich, Khachaturian – flourished at the expense of all others. A young composer who wanted to get ahead would offer clever imitations. Others found a voice and kept it largely to themselves. The three composers in this intriguing album each tackled the hegemony from a different aspect. Galina Ustvolskaya, the student closest to Shostakovich (he wanted to marry her), retreated into a form of religious meditation that was all the more unusual for its occasional bursts of fury.…

Giordano Bruno Comes to Dublin in Roger Doyle’s Electronic Opera “Heresy”

By Newswire on 1 September 2016 Contemporary, Newswire, Opera

Heresy is the world premiere and first opera by renowned Irish composer, Roger Doyle. Mr. Doyle, considered “The Godfather of Irish Electronic Music,” speaks of his vast body of compositions as “a celebration of the multiplicity of musical languages and evolving technologies.” Based in Dublin, META PRODUCTIONS was founded in 2013 by Roger Doyle & Eric Fraad. It is committed to exploring new forms of opera for the 21st century & creating works that live within the best traditions of opera & reformulating these in innovative & unique ways. META PRODUCTIONS has assembled a dazzling team of artists for this unique operatic extravaganza:…

Review – Overtures to Bach: Matt Haimovitz (Pentatone Oxingale)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 September 2016 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Strings

Recently named Pentatone’s Artist of the Season, Matt Haimovitz has never shied from making waves in performance or recording. The Montreal-based cellist has already proven his Bach chops over and over throughout his career, most recently with the 2015 Pentatone release of the Suites based on a copy by Bach’s second wife Anna Magdalena played on period instruments. This new disc explores six new commissions by Haimovitz, each an Overture to the Prelude from each Suite. The structure of Overture followed by Prelude makes the Bach a comment on the future, a kind of sonic time machine. Opening with Phillip…

Review – Alfred Schnittke: Works for Violin and Piano (Quartz)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 September 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Contemporary, Violin

Alfred Schnittke is a name we often shy away from on this side of the Atlantic. His style of unabashed dissonance is not solely reliant on serialism, but rather an understanding of the latent dramatic potential of atonality, an understanding that is made possible by his awareness and appreciation of the music that preceded him. Instead of breaking with the past, Schnittke aimed to show the connections between past and present in his so-called “polystylism”; this is no more evident than in his chamber output for the violin. The two-CD set opens with the late Third Sonata (1994), darkly opulent…

Bozzini Quartet, Photo: Michael Slobodian

La Rentrée Musicale: Contemporary Music

By An-Laurence Higgins on 1 September 2016 Chamber Music, Contemporary, Experimental Jazz, La Scena Spotlight, Orchestral, Scena Jazz

As always, the new season in Montreal offers a rich array of concerts as well as new and contemporary musical experiences. Whether you love digital art or sound installations, instrumental or mixed music, the creative community has concerts and festivals to satisfy everyone. Have your calendars ready! This year the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) celebrates its 50th season with the kind of programming that has been its hallmark since its foundation. The 2016-17 season begins with a free concert on September 30. Entitled Broadway Boogie-Woogie, it’s a tribute to the Mondrian painting of the same name, which…

Filumena, Banff Centre, Photo: Don Lee

New Opera Productions in Canada

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 September 2016 Canadian Music, Classical, Contemporary, La Scena Spotlight, Opera, Romantic

The 2017–18 season is shaping up to be a milestone for new opera productions by Canadian companies. In celebration of the country’s 150th birthday, several works with Canadian themes will get their world premieres in Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto. Furthermore, Vancouver Opera has a watershed season with the inaugural year of the Vancouver Opera Festival. If you missed its triumphant opening run in Montreal last spring, Opéra de Montreal’s production of Les Feluettes (Lilies) travels to Pacific Opera Victoria this April. The Lost Operas of Mozart City Opera of Vancouver, 27 to 29 October, 2016 It’s a little-known fact that…

Lebrecht Weekly – Elgar Remastered (Somm)

By Norman Lebrecht on 26 August 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

My instant reaction to this 4-CD box was that it’s strictly for audio buffs and English music devotees, whose lives will be infinitely enriched by rummaging through the disused takes of Sir Edward Elgar’s recordings of his own works between 1919 and his death in 1934. My second response, on reading Lani Spahr’s nerdish essay on the masters in Elgar’s private library is that only the golden-ears, acoustic-era brigade would get much out of this. How wrong I was. Before I describe the contents of the box, it’s important to know that Elgar dried up as a composer after the…

Aleksey Bogdanov (Baron Scarpia), Tosca, Opera North, Photo: Lisa Morrison

Review: Putting Puccini in His Place

By Charles Geyer on 19 August 2016 Art Song, Choral, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Opera, Orchestral, Romantic

CONCERTS: Puccini “Beyond Verismo” at Bard SummerScape 2016 OPERA: Tosca at Opera North Puccini qua, Puccini là! Arguably the most popular and successful opera composer in history has been enjoying his typical ubiquity this summer, as a single weekend’s sampling around the Northeast United States will demonstrate. Friday, August 12 saw the closing performance of the maestro’s Tosca as rendered by Opera North (Lebanon, New Hampshire) in a taut, handsome production. And at Bard College’s final weekend of SummerScape 2016 (Dutchess County, New York), three full days of programming (August 12 through 14) were dedicated to winding up an exploration of…

Lebrecht Weekly – Martinu: Ariane (Supraphon)

By Norman Lebrecht on 19 August 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Orchestral

I am beginning to wonder if posterity will ever place Bohuslav Martinů where he justly belongs, as the last in a quartet of Czech geniuses, after Smetana, Dvořák, and Janáček. With each passing year, Martinů (1890–1959) seems to recede further into the mists, his 16 operas unstaged, his six symphonies unperformed. Czechs find him too cosmopolitan – he lived most of his life in France and the US – while others are daunted by his mountainous output. There are more than 400 recorded works by Martinů, all of high proficiency. When the innocent ear catches Martinů for the first time, it recognises a …

Lebrecht Weekly – Bruno Walter: Violin Sonata / Piano Quintet (Naxos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 5 August 2016 Chamber Music, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

The most successful and elusive of Gustav Mahler’s inner circle, Bruno Walter was ranked among the foremost conductors of his time, esteemed equally by the jealous and mutually hostile Toscanini and Furtwängler and showered with offers when he arrived in the US as a Hitler refugee in 1939. Mahler had taken Walter on as his assistant in Hamburg when he was barely out of school at 18, guided his career path to Vienna and entrusted him with the first performances of Das Lied von der Erde and the ninth symphony. Walter, for his part, kept an objective distance from his…

Browsing: Contemporary