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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…

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…

Photo: Veronyc Vachon.

The Nutcracker: A tale told by a Romantic, signifying everything

By Robert Kilborn on 12 December 2016 Concert Reviews, Dance, Romantic

Les Grands Ballets performs The Nutcracker with loving attention to detail and 53 years of experience. The author of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, Prussian storyteller, jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822), rebelled against Enlightenment excess, with its emphasis on rational philosophy and the curtailing of the imagination. He and his German Romantic confrères strove to honour nature, memorialize innocence, and reclaim an authentic way of living. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s the 1960s in a Nutcracker—er, nutshell. Hoffmann’s satirical and self-parodying tales pioneered the fantasy genre. His taste for the macabre combined with…

Lebrecht Weekly – The alternative record of the year

By Norman Lebrecht on 9 December 2016 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic, Violin

Most critics pick their album of the year from the ones they reviewed over the past 52 weeks. I’ve decided to choose from the ones I haven’t, the ones that for one reason or other failed to make the weekly cut. So much good stuff out there. Try Peter Donohoe’s new set of the Scriabin sonatas (Somm ****), the early ones especially showing where Rachmaninov might have gone if he had followed fantasy to the end of the flight. And Boris Giltburg’s account of the Rachmaninov’s Etudes-tableaux (Naxos ****) has not strayed far from my player all year long. I…

Lebrecht Weekly – Henselt: Piano works (Edition Peters)

By Norman Lebrecht on 2 December 2016 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

If there was an award for surprise of the year, this unpretentious release would win both the jury and the public vote. Adolph von Henselt, born 1814, was written off by music history as an also-ran, one of those stern faces in the back row of romantic group portraits, somewhere behind Chopin and Liszt. Unable to make his name or much of a living in Germany, Henselt went off to teach in St Petersburg, where the Tsar added a ‘von’ to his name. His influence on Russian pianism is considerable – he taught Zverev, Rachmaninov’s teacher – and he still…

Leah Partridge, Photo: David Andrako

Putting Opera on the Spot, with On Site Opera

By Charles Geyer on 26 October 2016 Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Interviews, Opera, Romantic

COMPANY REVIEW: On Site Opera (New York City); PERFORMANCE REVIEW: An Evening of Monodramas – La Morte de Cléopâtre by Hector Berlioz; and Miss Havisham’s Wedding by Dominick Argento; The Harmonie Club, 4 East 60th Street, New York, New York (September 29 and 30, 2016; viewed September 30). “Waiter! There’s a diva in my soup!” Actually, there wasn’t any soup – but a double helping of diva was definitely on the menu at Manhattan’s Upper East Side Harmonie Club on the evenings of September 29th and 30th. That’s when On Site Opera, a spry and peripatetic company that has been…

Lebrecht Weekly – Tchaikovsky: 6th symphony, Romeo & Juliet overture (Decca)

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 October 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Orchestral, Romantic

For a troubled London teenager in the 1960s there were three available sources of relief. One was illegal, one was immoral and the third was available every other week at the Royal Festival Hall. I took myself to hear the Tchaikovsky Pathétique more often than I remember, sitting in the backless choir seats, watching the wealthier part of the audience indulge in plush catharsis. Over time, the relief wore thin. Tchaikovsky gave way to Mahler and the Pathétique became a rare item, out of fashion, off the concert menu. Semyon Bychkov’s new Tchaikovsky series on Decca is well timed to…

Joshua Bell, Photo: Eric Kabik

Ottawa Previews: October 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 Choral, La Scena Spotlight, Orchestral, Piano, Romantic, Violin

NACO Opening The NAC Orchestra opens its 2016–17 season in the newly renovated Southam Hall with a very busy October, including several soloists not to be missed. On October 6 and 7, virtuoso Joshua Bell performs the Brahms Violin Concerto in a program that includes Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Music Director Alexander Shelley conducts after his 7PM pre-concert talk with music journalist Jean-Jacques Van Vlasselaer (Oct. 6 & 7, 8PM, NAC Southam Hall). www.nac-cna.ca Schumann and the Songwriters Angela Hewitt joins Shelley and the NACO for an evening of early Schumann and Beethoven for the first performance in the…

Review – Charles Richard-Hamelin: Beethoven, Enescu, Chopin (Analekta)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Classical, Piano, Romantic

Charles Richard-Hamelin: Beethoven, Enescu, Chopin Charles Richard-Hamelin, piano Analekta 2016. AN2 9129. 68 min 50 s. Since winning the Silver Medal and the Krystian Zimerman Sonata award at the 2015 Chopin Piano Competition, Montreal and Quebec at large have been gaga – for good reason – over Charles Richard-Hamelin. Recorded live in concert this past May at Salle Raoul-Jobin of the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City, this album may begin conservatively with Beethoven’s Two Rondos for Piano, Op. 51, but takes a turn with George Enescu’s Second Suite, Op. 10. With the Enescu, Richard-Hamelin digresses from clinical Classicism into the…

Review – Après un Rêve: Fauré, Debussy, Ravel (BIS)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 October 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Romantic, Violin

Après un Rêve: Fauré, Debussy, Ravel Christian Svarfvar, violin; Roland Pöntinen, piano BIS 2016. 2183. 61 min 8 s. French music has long held an essential position in a violinist’s repertoire, but with this new release by Swede Christian Svarfvar, the links between French melody and the French operatic tradition of the 19th century are brought into clear focus. The tool used is, of course, the violin, with its latent potential to mimic the expressiveness of the human voice. The disc runs in roughly chronological order, or rather, the way we like to think of the French compositional lineage: Fauré…

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