Classical Music - my/maSCENA

Browsing: Classical Music

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…

Lebrecht Weekly – Pietro Mascagni: Guglielmo Ratcliff (RTE Lyric)

By Norman Lebrecht on 6 January 2017 Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Romantic

Whenever I watch any opera by Mascagni and Leoncavallo other than ‘Cav’ and ‘Pag’ I have no trouble understanding why the two composers went down in history as one-hit wonders. True, there are those who make claims for Leoncavallo’s La Boheme (Mahler deemed it vastly inferior to Puccini’s) and others are thrilled by Mascagni’s sex-slave Iris, but neither work has struck me as more than a barrel-scraping of the short-lived 1890s verismo craze, deservedly occupying the fringes of musical memory. All the more reason, then, to eat a few of my words on this first encounter with Guglielmo Ratcliff, a…

Discovery CD: Jean-Michel Dubé

By Camilo Lanfranco on 3 January 2017 Canadian Music, Classical Music, Discovery CDs, Piano, Quebec Music

Download the complete Discovery CD Jean-Michel Dubé – André Mathieu ! Jean-Michel Dubé is the youngest in a family of five children, four of whom are pianists. At the age of three, he started studying piano at home with his mother who was herself a pianist. At age seven, he entered the Conservatoire de musique de Québec. In 2015, he was awarded the grand prize at the Concours Hélène-Roberge, which allowed him to record, with the help of Espace XXI and Aramusique, the works of André Mathieu. Mathieu’s complete piano works have never been recorded before, making this disc…

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…

Informusic: A Music History Resource

By Ian Cochrane on 30 December 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music

Informusic is an app that includes biographies, sheet music, and audio examples of roughly 30 renowned composers. Laudably, female composers Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Clara Wieck Schumann are among the composers profiled in this resource. Users may refer to a timeline that runs from the 15th century through to the early 20th century. This delineates momentous events in the lives of eminent composers as well as significant events in European history. We are able to discern if masterworks were composed in a period of peace or war. Information is provided about the literary masterpieces that were published at the same time…

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…

NYFOS Next: Christopher Cerrone & Friends

By Xenia Hanusiak on 21 December 2016 Art Song, Concert Reviews

In the same week that the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) presented a contemporary art song program entitled “Christopher Cerrone & Friends” at National Sawdust (viewed December 8, 2016), Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize. The legitimacy of granting the prize to a singer-songwriter received the public auditing the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences anticipated, but also produced an opportune moment to shine a spotlight on the art of song. As part of his acceptance speech, Bob Dylan stated, “Not once have I ever had the time to ask myself, ‘Are my songs literature?’” Dylan’s response politely rebuked…

Photo: Robert Altman

Brooklyn, Beer, Bleachers…and Macbeth!

By Charles Geyer on 21 December 2016 Opera, Romantic

REVIEW AND COMPANY PROFILE: LoftOpera’s unique, found-site production of Verdi’s Macbeth (viewed December 14, 2016) The production has run its course, the drums are silent. But a rising subterranean tattoo of enthusiasm for the vibrant LoftOpera brand of alt-opera experience goes on, and it’s well worth logging a memoir of the company’s most recent happening. A Drum, a Drum! Macbeth Doth Come! Fate has calendared a rendezvous for you in the wilds of Brooklyn. You trek through hell and high water – not to mention some of the borough’s more recherché endroits – to get there. Witches gambol and do…

Lebrecht Weekly – J. S. Bach: The complete keyboard works (Erato)

By Norman Lebrecht on 16 December 2016 Baroque and Early, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

Amid the seasonal rock fall of weird-shaped box sets and unopenable recorded turkeys, one project stands out as indispensable in both musical and moral dimensions. In 1965, a little-known harpsichordist began recording the Bach keyboard works for a niche French label. By the time she finished ten years later, Zuzana Ruzickova and Erato had received every French record award, wresting harpsichord Bach away from deadhand American academics back to a middle-European vivacity. Ruzickova, resisting celebrity, Communism and the temptations of the music world, taught the next three generations of leading harpsichordists from her home in Prague. A survivor of four…

Previous 1 … 273 274 275 276 277 … 333 Next

Current Issue

PDF HTML

Next Issue : June/July 2024

Ad Deadline : May 24, 2024

Past Issues, Subscriptions, Advertising