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| Music and Recordings |
The Rake's Progress
by Igor Stravinsky
Libretto by W. H. Auden
Royal Opera House
, Covent Garden
Thomas Adès, conductor
Robert Lepage, director
Anne Trulove - Sally Matthews
Tom Rakewell - Charles Castronovo
Nick Shadow - John Relyea
Mother Goose - Kathleen Wilkinson
Baba the Turk - Patricia Bardon
Trulovep Darren Jeffery
Sellem - Peter Bronder
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| Huntley Dent |
July 24, 2008 |
| Dashed expectations...
At The Rake’s Progress last night I was taken aback when my seat mate growled “terrible libretto” at the intermission. I practically know the Augustan pastiche cobbled together by W.H. Auden by heart. Its witty gilded poetry meshes perfectly with the score’s witty plays on Handel. Auden generously included the name of his unruly lover Chester Kallman on the libretto, but I have my doubts. Stravinsky’s opera has long been a pet of mine – I even own a dim radio air check of the premiere from Venice in 1951. That first night was a shambles. The composer couldn’t keep the ragtag orchestra together, and ruin quickly followed. The Rake pleases music lovers but rarely audiences – Rudolf Bing staged it at the old Met, one of his few gestures toward modernism, and he later claimed that infuriated patrons spat on the box office. The more fools they. 
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BBC Proms, July 20, 2008
BBC Symphony Chorus
BBC Concert Orchestra
Paul Daniel conductor
Andrew Kennedy tenor
Nigel Kennedy violin
Bax, The Garden of Fand
Finzi, Intimations of Immortality
Elgar, Violin Concerto
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| Huntley Dent |
July 21, 2008 |
| Trailing clouds of glory. From the American side of the Atlantic, it’s hard to see how Nigel Kennedy pulls it off. To be a bad boy at 41, affect a working-class accent and ghetto handshake, wear a Chinese smock and fringed chemise onstage, and publicly denigrate the formal trappings of classical music – for all this Kennedy has earned the love of the wider British public, regular blokes who ogle the bare breasts on Page Three. He’s a pop hero in a Mohawk as much as a violin virtuoso. I went last night to hear Kennedy play his signature piece, the meandering Elgar Violin Concerto. Not exactly showboat material. You wouldn’t have known it form the swooning crowd, however. Royal Albert Hall (the Wembley Stadium of classical music, with benign Prince Albert sitting in gilded splendor across the road like a Victorian gentlemen strapped in for takeoff in a Gothic rocket) was packed, the crowd cheering when Kennedy pulled a little trick but hushed when he played [at his first Proms appearance in 21 years.- ed.] |
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Tanglewood: The Haitink Weekend
Friday, July 11, 8:30 p.m., Shed
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, conductor
Jonathan Biss, piano
Julia Fischer, violin
Daniel Müller-Schott, cello
All-Beethoven Program
Triple Concerto for piano, violin, and cello, Op. 56
Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral,” Op. 68
Saturday, July 12, 8:30 p.m., Shed
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, conductor
Heidi Grant Murphy, soprano
Christianne Stotijn, mezzo-soprano
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, conductor
Mahler, Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection”
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| Michael Miller |
July 20, 2008 |
| It is worth remembering that Bernard Haitink became the chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, one of the most prestigious positions in the musical world, in 1961 at the incredibly young age of thirty-two. Since even before then, up to the present day, he has continued to grow as a musician in his own discreet way, always maintaining a traceable thread back to the values of his early work—clarity, balance, and restraint—qualities, which in the end often proved much more affecting than the excesses of more histrionic conductors. He also showed a particular knack for long, complex symphonic works, working wonders in clarifying their texture and form. His performances of Bruckner’s symphonies on tour and on record made them accessible to a much broader audience outside Austria and Germany. Leonard Bernstein may have popularized Mahler with his intense but sometimes unbearably showy performances, but it was Haitink who made their best qualities more accessible by focussing on coherence in structure and in orchestral sound—a very handsome sound, which has often been described as the “burnished” Concertgebouw sound. It is really Haitink’s sound. None of his successors or predecessors have cultivated it to quite the same extent, and this burnished sound is what he brings to the BSO, especially in their present, improved condition. I still have a vivid recollection of his magnificent Eroica which closed the 2006-07 season in Symphony Hall. The BSO was able to produce that rich, homogeneous sound to perfection. With a full complement of strings there was both mass and fine detail: nothing was lost. The loudest tutti were as clear as the extraordinary pianissimi Haitink can extract from the orchestra. |
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Christianne Stotijn (mezzo-soprano)
Isabelle van Keulen (viola)
Joseph Breinl (piano)
at Wigmore Hall, Monday, July 14, 2008
Tchaikovsky, The Sun has Set Op. 73 No. 4; It was in the early spring Op. 38 No. 2; The mild stars shone for us Op. 60 No. 12; If only I had known Op. 47 No. 1
Duparc, L'invitation au voyage; Chanson triste; Extase
Brahms, Gestillte Sehnsucht Op. 91 No. 1; Geistliches Wiegenlied Op. 91 No. 2
Fant de Kanter, 3 Songs on poems by Ingrid Jonker
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| Huntley Dent |
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| I just came from a vocal recital at Wigmore Hall that featured the rising Dutch mezzo, Christianne Stotijn, who is tall and has flowing pre-Raphaelite hair down her back (the last syllable of her name rhymes with ‘fine’) except to offer that Stotijn is young, vibrant, and emotionally generous with her voice. After thinking so much about Death, it’s a relief to encounter a maiden. I first heard Stotijn on a CD of early Mahler songs and felt a connection. Live, in an intimate setting, she made the same connection with several hundred Wiggies. They greeted her opening set of Tchaikovsky songs warmly and grew steadily more enthusiastic, until by the end they showered her with bravos. Stirring up listeners with Tchaikovsky and Duparc is no mean trick, especially when Stotijn’s voice was in full sail and swashed her French pronunciation overboard. At moments one heard echoes of a beloved mezzo who was a Wigmore favourite, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (the CD of one of her recitals from here can be found online – it’s at once heartbreaking and a treasure). |
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Schubert Songs
Thomas Meglioranza, baritone
Reiko Uchida, Piano (Pleyel, “Palatial” Grand Piano, ca. 1907, courtesy Klavierhaus, New York)
recorded in early June 2007 at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City; Judith Sherman producer and engineer; available through Thomas Meglioranza's Web site and CD Baby (CD $15. Mp3 download $9.99) or Amazon.com.
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| Michael Miller |
July 16, 2008 |
| I’ve wanted to write about this wonderful recording for some time now, but one thing or another got in the way. Recordings, for better or worse, are not as fugitive as a concert performance. Now, however, the time is more than ripe, since the outstanding young baritone featured in this recording is about to appear at Tanglewood in Harbison’s Fifth Symphony, replacing Nathan Gunn, who sang at the Boston premiere only a few months ago. Thomas Meglioranza’s approach should be quite different, so anyone who heard the premiere will want to come back for another point of view on Harbison’s rich and dramatic setting of Milosz’ bizarre retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. |
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Mozart, Così Fan Tutte
The Garsington Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Steuart Bedford conductor
Barbican Hall, Mostly Mozart, July 11, 2008
Erica Eloff - Fiordiligi
Anna Stéphany - Dorabella
Ashley Catling - Ferrando
D'Arcy Bleiker - Guglielmo
Riccardo Novaro - Don Alfonso
Teuta Koço - Despina |
| Huntley Dent |
July 11, 2008 |
| Smiles of a summer night...
Few at home know about the Garsington Opera, an outdoor company that sounds like an idyll. Situated outside Oxford, their productions are tailored to balmy evenings in a c garden attached to a Jacobean manor. One imagines white lawn dresses draped on willowy ladies redolent of heliotrope. (On second thought, idyllic doesn’t begin to describe it.) Or is this an abreaction, a word invented by Freud for an episode of strong emotional release or catharsis? I needed a release after attending the Garsington’s Cosi fan tutte, which moved indoors to the unbalmy clime of the Barbican in north London. Mozart in a concrete bunker more or less defines cognitive dissonance, but we’ll let that be.
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| Imogen Cooper, Piano, All-Schubert Program
Tanglewood, Seiji Ozawa Hall, July 10, 2008, 8:00 PM
Franz Schubert
Sonata in C, D.840, Reliquie
Four Impromptus, D.935 (Opus Posthumous 142)
Sonata in A, D.959
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| Michael Miller |
July 15, 2008 |
| Imogen Cooper has played Mozart and Beethoven (No. 1, No. 3) concerti with the BSO on several occasions over the past few years, both at Symphony Hall and at Tanglewood—always with outstanding success. She balanced a strong comprehension of the formal and harmonic structures underlying the compositions with a great range of touch and color, as well as a sensitivity to shifting moods with a certain authoritative detachment—all fine qualities. I wish I could say that her all-Schubert recital last week in Ozawa Hall achieved the same satisfying completeness. Although the evening was full of brilliant ideas and exquisite moments, Ms. Cooper failed to grasp the organic framework of the works, above all the late sonatas, in which it is such a crucial element. This was surprising, since one of her teachers, Alfred Brendel, excels at this aspect of interpretation, and her concerto performances showed her to be an apt pupil. |
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| Preview of Tannery Pond, Saturday, July 12, 8 pm: Soojin Anjou, Piano
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata In E-Major, K.332
Maurice Ravel, Sonatine
Johann Strauss Jr. / Leopold Godowsky, Concert Paraphrase "Die Fledermaus"
Olivier Messiaen, La Colombe
Isaac Albéniz, Triana
Maurice Ravel, Le Tombeau De Couperin
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| Michael Miller |
July 11, 2008 |
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I don't intend to offer a review of a private concert preview, but I would like to express my most enthusiastic recommmendation of the upcoming Tannery Pond recital by the young pianist Soojin Anjou, a native Korean who now resides in Berlin. This afternoon I had the great pleasure of hearing her play in a home setting. Her program shows extraordinary sensitivity to subtle relationships among the works, which emerge only cumulatively as the listener absorbs them in succession—beginning with one of Mozart's most popular sonatas, which laid the groundwork for Ravel's Sonatine. There followed a striking contrast in Godowsky's moody and whimsical paraphrase of tunes from Die Fledermaus. Messaien's otherwordly short piece, La Colombe, Albéniz exotic Triana, and finally one of Ravel's finest works, Le Tombeau de Couperin—all played with impressive technique, insight and nuance by this extraordinary young woman at the beginning of her career. Her performance of Le Tombeau de Couperin showed the highest mastery, revealing aspects of the work I never knew existed. With Soojin Anjou's sharply etched technique the more delicate passages never lost their strength and rigor, and she did full justice to the grander passages, never compromising the basic lucidity of her playing. This is an event not to be missed.
I should add that this private preview was presented in connection with The Tannery Pond Concerts. Its organizer, Christian Steiner, was present, but he ceded his usual role of host to his Sealyham Terrier, Nikolai, who fulfilled this duty with a graciousness worthy of his master, scuffling enthusiastically around the piano before each piece, and barking once discreetly to support the applause. Nikolai is obviously a seasoned concert-goer, and many Tanglewood visitors would do well to take a page from his etiquette book.
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Gustav Mahler: Symphony No 8
St Paul's Cathedral, 10 Jul 2008 8:00 PM
London Symphony Orchestra
Valery Gergiev conductor
Victoria Yastrebova soprano
Ailish Tynan soprano
Liudmilla Dudinova soprano
Lili Paasikivi mezzo soprano
Zlata Bulycheva mezzo soprano
Sergey Semishkur tenor
Alexey Markov baritone
Evgeny Nitikin bass
The Choir of Eltham College
London Symphony Chorus
The Choral Arts Society of Washington
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| Huntley Dent |
July 11, 2008 |
| Back from Elysium. St. Paul’s cathedral is a dicey venue for classical music, but even when the gold-banded dome is swallowing up the sound of the chorus like the yawning gulf in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, the church itself overawes. Music turns into a paean to architecture. God looks in through the clear, unstained windows (This is Protestantism.), cherubs comport with English admirals and generals on the periphery, some of whose statues are jauntily posed, and the white-and-black checkerboard floor reminds one of a plain Dutch parish church magnified in excelsis. |
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Dame Felicity Lott (soprano)
Graham Johnson (piano)
Wagner, Wesendonck Lieder
Berlioz, Villanelle; Le spectre de la rose
Duparc, Lamento; Au pays où se fait la guerre
Hahn, Infidélité
Chausson, Les papillons
Falla, Trois Mélodies
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Sir Thomas Allen (baritone)
Malcolm Martineau (piano)
Members of the Aurora Orchestra
Poulenc and Courtly Love
Debussy, Trois ballades de Villon
Poulenc, Songs from Poèmes de Ronsard
Duparc, L'invitation au voyage; Soupir; Le manoir de Rosemonde
Ravel, Don Quichotte a Dulcinée
Poulenc, Le bestiaire; Le bal masqué
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| Huntley Dent |
July 11, 2008 |
| Hooray for Wigmore Hall. To American ears the name sounds funny, and some of the bag-toting habitués who come for a concert every day may qualify as wiggy. But no other venue offers more great music in an intimate setting than here. As crowds devour the summer sale at Selfridge’s around the corner on Oxford Street, a few hundred listeners repose in the beauty of chamber music and song inside the jewel-box Wigmore. Dappled sun peeks in through the skylights – or the tap-tap of rain – while for half the price of tea at the Ritz some of the best performers in the world play for your pleasure. |
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Opening Night at Tanglewood:
Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens
Boston Symphony Orchestra
James Levine, Conductor
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Berlioz, Les Troyens, Part 1 (The Capture of Troy)
Saturday, July 5, 8:30 pm
Marcus Haddock, Tenor (Aeneas)
Anna Caterina Antonacci, Soprano (Cassandra)
Dwayne Croft, Baritone (Chorebus)
Clayton Brainerd, Bass-Baritone (Pantheus)
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano (Ascanius)
Jane Bunnell, Mezzo-Soprano (Hecuba)
Ronald Naldi, Tenor (Helenus)
David Kravitz, Baritone (Trojan Soldier)
Gustav Andreassen, Bass (Ghost Of Hector)
Kirk Eichelberger, Bass (Greek Captain)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, Conductor |
Berlioz, Les Troyens, Part 2
(The Trojans at Carthage)
Sunday, July 6, 3 pm
Marcus Haddock, Tenor (Aeneas)
Anne Sofie Von Otter, Mezzo-Soprano (Dido)
Kristinn Sigmundsson, Bass (Narbal)
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano (Ascanius)
Christin-Marie Hill, Mezzo-Soprano (Anna)
Matthew Plenk, tenor (Iopas)
Philippe Castagner, Tenor (Hylas)
Clayton Brainerd, Bass-Baritone (Pantheus)
Anna Caterina Antonacci, Soprano
(Ghost Of Cassandra)
Dwayne Croft, Baritone (Ghost Of Chorebus)
David Kravitz, Baritone (Trojan Sentry 1)
Gustav Andreassen, Bass (Ghost Of Hector
And The God Mercury)
Kirk Eichelberger, Bass (Trojan Sentry 2)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
John Oliver, Conductor
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| Michael Miller |
July 7, 2008 |
An hour before Part I of Les Troyens was to begin, I found myself wandering peacefully and somewhat aimlessly among the trees. The grounds were still unpopulated and quiet, providing an exceptionally favorable atmosphere for music. The first two acts of Berlioz’ epic masterpiece which awaited us are hardly what one would call contemplative music, but a contemplative mood seemed the right preparation for the violent, burning sweep of Berlioz’ romantic tableaux of the fall of Troy. It gave me an hour of so to forget whatever baggage I had brought with me, which amounted to some scepticism as to whether a Tanglewood reprise of the massive, impressive, but flawed effort of late April and early May would make much of a difference.
Les Troyens may still remain something of a connoisseur’s opera, but there are plenty of people who are fascinated with it—Hector Berlioz’ forgotten masterpiece, a vast stage work which only found any real currency with Hugh Macdonald’s publication of a scholarly edition of the score in 1969.
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All-Sibelius Program
London Symphony Orchestra
The Barbican, July 3, 2008
Sir Colin Davis conductor
Nikolaj Znaider violin
Jan Sibelius
Les Océanides
Violin Concerto
Symphony No 4
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| Huntley Dent |
July 4, 2008 |
| Ugliness, thy name is Barbican. No other great orchestra has been miserably consigned to a concrete mausoleum of art except the London Symphony. I went to hear them last night in an all-Sibelius program under Sir Colin Davis. One approaches the Barbican by trudging through an underpass with four lanes of traffic two feet from your elbow and banks of jaundice-colored sodium vapour lamps overhead. The building itself looks like something airlifted intact from East Berlin. The architectural style is a spawn of Brutalism, a masochistic favourite with the British in the post-war era, but without being quite as punitive. |
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Richard Strauss, Ariadne auf Naxos
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, July 2, 2008
Conductor- Mark Elder
Director - Christof Loy
Revival Director - Andrew Sinclair
Primadonna (Ariadne) - Deborah Voigt
Composer - Kristine Jepson
Music Master - Thomas Allen
Dancing Master - Alan Oke
Wigmaker - Jacques Imbrailo
Lackey - Dean Robinson
Tenor (Bacchus) - Robert Dean Smith, Richard Margison
Zerbinetta - Gillian Keith
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| Huntley Dent |
July 4, 2008 |
| What better way to anticipate the Fourth of July than spending time with Richard Strauss, who fiddled while the Nazis burned Europe? He languished in apparent dotage as the Yanks stormed the beach at Normandy. Suddenly the first oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra showed up at Strauss’s mountain retreat in Bavaria. Then a uniformed GI, the oboist commissioned a concerto from the snowy-haired, stork-like composer, and a minor masterpiece was born.
Strauss’s arch comic opera Ariadne auf Naxos appeared in 1912, in the delusional twilight that masked Verdun (714,000 casualties), the Munich putsch, and every satanic horror to come. Blissfully unaware, Strauss also had the nutty idea of preceding his operatic confection by a complete performance of Moliere’s play, Le bourgeois gentilhomme, but the premiere, a flop, stretched the audience’s attention span, not to mention their Sitzfleisch, beyond human capacity. What we are left with is caviar, Strauss’s most sophisticated stage work and a bubbling treasure of melody unmatched by anything outside Die Fledermaus. And like Fledermaus, Ariadne dreams of a heaven where the triumph of love is the same as the triumph of humor.
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| A Ghostly Concert at Tannery Pond
June 20, 2008
David Finckel, cello
Da-Hong Seetoo, violin
Wu Han, piano
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Piano Trio Op.1, No. 1
Piano Trio Op.70, No. 1, “Ghost”
Piano Trio Op. 97, “Archduke”
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| Michael Miller |
July 2, 2008 |
| The Tannery Pond Concerts, founded in 1991 by the renowned photographer and musician, Christian Steiner, is still in its youth, compared to its elders in Norfolk, Music Mountain and Marlboro, but it is true to the mold, such as it exists, and shows no signs of diffidence. Beginning in the 1960’s, Mr. Steiner’s position as the preeminent portraitist of musicians has given him a unique knowledge of the musical world. He is as much in contact with young, emerging artists as with the most established figures in the field, who have included Herbert von Karajan, Maria Callas, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. As director of Tannery Pond, he is especially proud of the debuts or early appearances he has sponsored of musicians who have since risen to the top of the profession. Another feature of Tannery Pond is the beautiful old tannery, built in 1834, now the chapel of The Darrow School, which occupies the site of the Mount Lebanon Shaker Village. Its acoustics are remarkably present and intimate, and, since it seats only 290, its atmosphere is equally intimate. The audience, on the whole, appears to be composed of keen and educated music-lovers who have been attending loyally for some years. Many appear to know each other, and this enhances the family-like atmosphere of the concerts. |
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Our American Cousin
An Opera in three acts by Eric Sawyer
Librettist: John Shoptaw
Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Conductor, Gil Rose
Stage Director: Carol Charnow
Academy of Music, Northampton, June 20, 2008
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| Heidi Holder |
June 29, 2008 |
| A young man, having outsmarted a haughty woman seeking a wealthy husband for her daughter, crows in triumph: “I guess you found your hymnal page, you sock-dologizing ole man-trap!” Hard as it may be for us to imagine, this line brought the house down every time in Tom Taylor’s 1858 hit play Our American Cousin. And appropriately so: a “sockdologer” (a corruption of “doxology”), was in American slang a decisive or knockout blow. The line might be lost to all but theater historians were it not for the fact that Taylor’s play was performed at Ford’s Theatre the night of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and that John Wilkes Booth used the famous line as a cue for his own decisive blow. Eric Sawyer and John Shoptaw’s new opera, Our American Cousin revisits that night and charts the intersection of real life and that of the theater. The opera offers us a play within an opera: a recreation of the performance Lincoln was attending at Ford’s Theatre the night of his assassination. Taylor’s play was a popular and cleverly-made comedy/melodrama about a distant--and rich--relative from America who appears suddenly at the estate of his titled but financially troubled English relations. The plot and characters of this largely forgotten play turn out to matter in unexpected ways, and point towards the thematic heart of the work. |
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| Music Mountain, Falls Village, Connecticut, Sunday June 15, 3 PM
Special Benefit Concert for the Operating Fund
St. Petersburg String Quartet
Alla Aranovskaya, first violin
Alla Krolevich, second violin
Boris Vayner, viola
Leonid Shukayev, cello
Daniel Epstein, piano, replacing Charles Rosen
Debussy: String Quartet in G Minor, Opus 10 (1893)
Shostakovich: String Quartet #12 in D Flat Major, Opus 133 (1968)
Schumann: Piano Quintet in E Flat Major, Opus 44 (1842)
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| Michael Miller |
June 19, 2008 |
| Music Mountain has offered extraordinary chamber music since 1930, when it was founded as a summer home for the Gordon String Quartet. Audiences loyally drive up the winding country road to enjoy the beauty of the grounds and its surroundings, its long, narrow hall with its superb acoustics, and the major chamber groups who play there. Jazz is also a major component of the season, and there is also choral music. On the lawn which spreads out down the hillside from Gordon Hall, you will also find a tent with books for sale, a snack bar, wooden benches under the trees, as well as some rather funky abstract sculptures. There had been a violent storm the week before, which snapped the trunks of several large trees surrounding the lawn. The season, called “Borrowed Melody” this year, because works with themes borrowed from outside sources or the composer’s own works will be worked into most of the programs, got off to a strong start with a special benefit concert featuring the great St. Petersburg String Quartet. Charles Rosen was to have joined them for the Schumann Piano Quintet. He was unfortunately unable to play, but Daniel Epstein filled the gap with intelligence and sensitivity. |
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| In Praise of Herbert von Karajan, with a Selective Critical Discography |
| Huntley Dent |
May 31, 2008 |
| My immediate reaction to Michael Miller's commentary on the Karajan centenary [Oh no! He’s not back again, is he? - May 2, 2008] was rather choleric, but I've settled down a bit since then and can write this from a relatively balanced perspective.
I bought those 1962-63 Beethoven symphonies, too, which by the way are in such bad sound that three remasterings later, including the most recent in SACD, they remain boomy and muddy. I'm not sure where you heard them praised. But Karajan's quasi-hypnotizing style didn't appeal to me back then. I dropped out until the mid-80s. Since then -- don't be shocked -- I've bought his entire EMI output from 1947 until the early Eighties, all his Decca recordings (which are relatively few), a huge chunk of his DG catalogue, and many highlights from the historical archives. As a result, I incline toward his English biographer, Richard Osborne, in believing that Karajan was among the greatest conductors of the century. And not just in the Fifties, that canard notwithstanding.
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| Concerts at Tannery Pond. Season Opening.
Sunday May 25, 2008, 3pm
Edward Arron, Cello
Pedja Mužijević, Piano
Soovin Kim, Violin
Nicholas Phan, Tenor
Franz Joseph Haydn, Piano Trio In C-Major, Hob. 15:27
Gabriel Fauré. La Bonne Chanson, Op. 61
Benjamin Britten, Folk Songs
Robert Schumann, Piano Trio No.1 In D-Minor, Op. 63
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| Michael Miller |
May 28, 2008 |
| The summer season began for this concertgoer Sunday afternoon on a very high level in a very good place, Tannery Pond, on the Darrow School campus, which occupies part of the Shaker community at New Lebanon, New York. A bright, warm Sunday afternoon arrived on cue to inaugurate this season of a distinguished chamber music series which began in 1991. There is no more comely place to gather for music; the acoustics are intimate, clear, and warm in this converted tannery, originally built by the Shakers in 1834; and its founder-director, Christian Steiner, a distinguished pianist and photographer, provides a uniquely enthusiastic “one-man-show,” introducing the program, arranging chairs, recording and photographing the concert, turning pages, and picking up overturned flower pots, as was necessary this afternoon.
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Berlioz, Les Troyens, a Concert Performance and a Symposium
Boston Symphony Orchestra Symphony Hall, Boston,
James Levine, conductor
Hector Berlioz, Les Troyens, Part 1 (The Capture of Troy)
Sunday, May 4, 2008, 3pm
Marcello Giordani, Tenor (Aeneas)
Yvonne Naef, Mezzo-Soprano (Cassandra)
Dwayne Croft, Baritone (Chorebus)
Julien Robbins, Bass-Baritone (Priam)
Clayton Brainerd, Bass-Baritone (Panthus)
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano (Ascanius)
Jane Bunnell, Mezzo-Soprano (Hecuba)
Ronald Naldi, Tenor (Helenus)
David Kravitz, Baritone (Trojan Soldier)
James Courtney, Bass-Baritone (Greek Captain)
Eric Owens, Bass (Ghost of Hector)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor |
Les Troyens, Part 2 (The Trojans at Carthage)
Sunday, May 4, 2008, 6.30 pm
Marcello Giordani, Tenor (Aeneas)
Anne Sofie Von Otter, Mezzo-Soprano (Dido)
Kwangchul Youn, Bass (Narbal)
Christin-Marie Hill, Mezzo-Soprano (Anna)
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano (Ascanius)
Eric Cutler, Tenor (Iopas)
Philippe Castagner, Tenor (Hylas)
Clayton Brainerd, Bass-Baritone (Panthus)
David Kravitz, Baritone (First Trojan Sentry)
James Courtney, Bass-Baritone (Second Trojan Sentry)
Yvonne Naef, Mezzo-Soprano (Ghost of Cassandra)
Dwayne Croft, Baritone (Ghost of Chorebus)
Julien Robbins, Bass-Baritone (Ghost of Priam)
Eric Owens, Bass (Mercury; Ghost of Hector)
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor
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| Michael Miller |
May 16, 2008 |
Les Troyens is so widely accepted as Berlioz’s greatest work, that the progress of the Berlioz Renaissance is punctuated by performances of it in the opera house and in concert, beginning, arguably, with Sir Thomas Beecham’s moderately abridged 1947 BBC broadcast. Now Boston music-lovers may consider the Berlioz Renaissance to be something of a noble fiction, since his music has had its own secure place in the Boston Symphony repertoire for many years, maturing with Charles Munch’s arrival in 1949. During his tenure he and the BSO performed and recorded several of Berlioz’s most important works, and the recordings  are still considered among the best. Later, both Jean Martinon and Seiji Ozawa continued the tradition most capably, and Berlioz has been one of James Levine’s great enthusiasms since early in his career. Expertise in Berlioz seems to be a prerequisite for the job. Yet, this is the first complete performance of Les Troyens by the foremost Berlioz orchestra in America, which in the past has only played brief excerpts, above all the “Royal Hunt and Storm” from Act IV. Hence these concert performances of Parts I and II on following weeks, culminating in a complete performance on Sunday May 4, are in fact landmarks. |
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| Daniel Lessner, piano
Williams College Bösendorfer Recital
Chapin Hall, April 26, 2008, 8 pm
J. S. Bach, Goldberg Variations
Robert Schumann, Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13
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| Michael Miller |
May 9, 2008 |
| Once again, the Williams Bösendorfer Recital program has given us the opportunity of hearing a gifted younger musician display his musicianship with the singular obstacles of a mismatched instrument in an unpleasant acoustic. A portable acoustical shell has been introduced to remedy Chapin’s muffled sound. I heard a favorable judgement of this innovation at the New England Baroque Orchestra concert, which I unfortunately missed, but it was of little help with a solo piano: the music, instead of sounding as if it were being played in another room with the door partially open, sounded as if it were being played in a tunnel, or perhaps a swimming pool. The Williams Bösendorfer has never been a credit to its justly famed manufacturer, partly, it could be, because of the Berkshire climate and partly because it is too much instrument for the hall. The instrument is extremely loud, and so was the pianist, painfully so, occasionally giving me the feeling of being in close quarters with a mad rhino. |
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| Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Levine conducting
Symphony Hall, Friday, April 18, 8 pm
John Harbison, Symphony No. 5 (2008), on texts of Czesław Miłosz,
Louise Glück, and Rainer Maria Rilke
Kate Lindsey, Mezzo-Soprano
Nathan Gunn, Baritone
Gustav Mahler, Das Lied Von Der Erde
(after Hans Bethge’s “The Chinese Flute”)
Anne Sofie Von Otter, Mezzo-Soprano
Ben Heppner, tenor, replacing Johan Botha, who was ill.
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| Michael Miller |
May 5, 2008 |
| [N.B. The Boston Chamber Music Society will offer a performance of a Das Lied von der Erde in Schoenberg’s arrangement for chamber ensemble, Sunday, May 17, 7.30 p.m. at Sanders Theater in Cambridge.]
As in November, James Levine has chosen to pair a work of Mahler with the premiere of a commissioned work, this time, not Elliot Carter’s brief, dense, but deceptively limpid Horn Concerto, but an ambitious symphony for mezzo-soprano, baritone and massive orchestra by John Harbison. It was only after Harbison had begun to make sketches that Maestro Levine, exercising his substantial gifts as a patron of new music, suggested that voices would be a welcome addition. The composer responded by taking up works by three poets who have been particularly highly regarded in recent years, the late Czesław Miłosz, Louise Glück, and, as the classic guest, Rainer Maria Rilke. These texts extend throughout the four movements like wall-to-wall carpeting, and one might get the impression that they had come to dominate the symphony, if its orchestral foundations and symphonic structure were not as strong as they are. The result is a work which attempts to do justice to two objectives: the expressive setting of narrative and lyrical verse and a fully-realized symphonic work. One might think that such a duality might prove a recipe for disaster, but in Harbison’s intelligent and experienced hands, the result is a double, if still somewhat divided, success.
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| Benjamin Moser plays, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Holliger, Tchaikovsky, and Skryabin at the Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield, March 27, 2008 |
| Michael Miller |
April 4, 2008 |
| This was an important event, not only because of the superb playing of a young musician I hope to hear many times again, but also because it showed what the Colonial Theatre can really do for classical music in our community. I have already commented enthusiastically about the acoustics in the hall, which remind me somewhat of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford and are excellent for small string ensembles, chamber music, and piano, if the piano is of the right sort, that is, smaller than a full sized concert grand. The Colonial has acquired a splendid rare instrument in an 1894 Hamburg Steinway, a nine foot Model D, which in a modern instrument would be too powerful for the hall. |
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Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes
Montagu Slater, libretto
Metropolitan Opera House, March 15, 2008, 1.30 pm (transmitted “live” in HD, March 29)
Donald Runnicles, conductor
Peter Grimes – Anthony Dean Griffey
Ellen Orford – Patricia Racette
Captain Balstrode – Anthony Michaels-Moore
Mrs. Sedley – Felicity Palmer
Auntie – Jill Grove
Niece – Leah Partridge
Niece – Erin Morley
Hobson – Dean Peterson
Swallow – John Del Carlo
Bob Boles – Greg Fedderly |
Rev. Horace Adams – Bernard Fitch
Ned Keene – Teddy Tahu Rhodes
John – Logan William Erickson
Production – John Doyle
Set Designer – Scott Pask
Costume Designer – Ann Hould-Ward
Lighting Designer – Peter Mumford
TV Director – Gary Halvorson |
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| Michael Miller |
April 2, 2008 |
| Peter Grimes' first performance in 1945 was a triumph, and the opera has settled into a secure place in the repertory—accessible to a broad audience, as its creators intended, but commanding respect among critics as a serious and important effort, considered by some to be Benjamin Britten’s masterpiece. The composer and his librettist, as well as his companion, Peter Pears, who premiered the role of Grimes and consulted during its composition, achieved a rare success in combining a leftist program of popular appeal, social criticism, and authentic tragedy—a feat many have attempted, but few have brought off. Inspired by the atmosphere of his native region around Aldeburgh, where he grew up and lived most of his life, as well as formative influences like Berg’s Wozzeck, which left its mark almost everywhere in the opera, Britten took a section (Letter XXII) from The Borough by George Crabbe, the Aldeburgh-born poet and coleopterist, and, with the indispensible assistance of the left-wing writer Montagu Slater, transformed it from a black morality tale into the tragedy of an outcast who was hounded to his destruction by the hostile community into which he was born. |
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| Biava Quartet
Austin Hartman and Hyunsu Ko violin, Mary Persin viola, and Jason Calloway cello
Clark Art Institute
Sunday, April 6, 2008, 3 pm.
Haydn, String Quartet in C Major, Op. 54, no. 2
Kodály, String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 (1916–18)
Mendelssohn, String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80
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| Michael Miller |
April 9, 2008 |
| It is perhaps not entirely accurate to call the Biava Quartet (named after the distinguished Philadelphia violinist and conductor Luis Biava.) a “young” quartet, since it is already ten years old. During that time they have collected an impressive array of prizes, including the Naumberg Chamber Music Prize and a first at the London International competition. Today they hold the Lisa Arnhold Quartet Residency at the Juilliard School, serving as graduate quartet in residence and teaching assistants to the Juilliard Quartet. This Juilliard connection is not without significance, since, as cellist Jason Calloway mentioned while introducing the Kodály, the Juilliard Quartet were their mentors. During the Biava’s Sunday afternoon concert, the relationship was constantly apparent, not only in their tight ensemble and disciplined rhtyhm, but in their sound, which recalls not so much the mellowed timbre of the Juilliard Quartet today, but the brilliance and bite of their earlier years. On the other hand, the Biava Quartet’s approach to ensemble textures is quite different. |
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| New Morning for the World
a concert by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Joseph Schwantner, with speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. performed by Omar Sangare; The Williams Symphonic Winds conducted by Stephen Dennis Bodner; Filmed live by Berta Jottar [link1/link2], Sunday, February 3, 2008, produced by Sandra Burton and Stalwart Originality.
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| Michael Miller |
March 29, 2008 |
| When Americans celebrate their more significant secular holidays with art, they notoriously reach for hackneyed expressions which are at best well-intentioned and at worst, totally empty. Williams College, however, produced a notable exception to this in New Morning for The World, a concert piece for winds, percussion, and piano, with recitation, by the distinguished American composer Joseph Schwantner. Regrettably I missed the performance, but I recently came upon a video of the event, filmed by the Mexican video artist and activist Berta Jottar, who is a member of the Williams faculty, along with Omar Sangare, who recited the texts by Martin Luther King, Jr. to the accompaniment of Schwantner’s music. The music and the selection from Dr. King’s speeches was work of a high order, powerful in its effect, as was Dr. Sangare’s recitation and the performance of the Williams Symphonic Winds under their director, Stephen Dennis Bodner, who has been responsible for a series of ambitious, original programs over this academic year and before.
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| Eastman Studies in Music from The University of Rochester Press and Boydell & Brewer publish their 50th volume and then some. |
| From the music-book blog From Beyond the Stave edited by Michael Miller |
March 25, 2008 |
| In February the University of Rochester Press published the 50th volume in its acclaimed series, Eastman Studies in Music: Music Theory and Mathematics: Chords, Collections, and Transformations (edited by Jack Douthett, Martha M. Hyde, and Charles J. Smith). "When we began, I didn't dare dream that this could happen," says Ralph Locke (pictured right in front of the URP offices), a professor at the Eastman School of Music for more than 30 years and series editor since 1994. "We started producing two books a year, and now we are up to seven and growing, which means we can publish books on a range of topics and reach a wider spectrum of the reading public."
Reviews of some volumes from the series will be appearing in The Berkshire Review for the Arts over the next weeks and months: The Substance of Things Heard: Writings about Music, by Paul Griffiths; Bach's Changing World: Voices in the Community, Edited by Carol K. Baron; and others.
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G.F. Handel, Messiah (Dublin Version, 1742)
The Dunedin Consort and Players
John Butt, director
Susan Hamilton, soprano
Annie Gill, contralto
Clare Wilkinson, contralto
Nicholas Mulroy, tenor
Matthew Brook, bass
Recorded at Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh: 1-4 May 2006
Linn Records CKD 285, available as CD, Vinyl, or downloads in MP3, CD, or Studio Master Quality; click here for samples.
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| Michael Miller |
March 20, 2008 |
| Two of the best recordings of Messiah are among the most recent. They could not be more different; one is a performance of the Dublin version of 1742 by a small consort using historical performance practices and the other is an eclectic text performed by larger forces using modern instruments, Sir Colin Davis' most recent version, a live performance recorded at the Barbican in December 2006; but they are unquestionably among the finest performances of Handel’s masterpiece ever, and only a listener who has a seated prejudice against one mode of performance or the other could have any reason to choose between them. One must have both. And don’t forget Malcolm Sargent’s classic 1946 performance with the Liverpool Philharmonic and the Huddersfield Choral Society, available in a superb transfer on Dutton Records, for something completely different!
John Butt, driector of the Dunedin consort and Gardiner Professor of Music at the University of Glasgow, does not offer the Dublin version as the best or the most original of the ten identifiable versions from Handel’s lifetime.
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| G. F. Handel, Messiah (includes bonus DVD with interview with Sir Colin Davis)
Sir Colin Davis conductor
Susan Gritton soprano
Sara Mingardo alto
Mark Padmore tenor
Alastair Miles bass
Tenebrae Choir
London Symphony Orchestra
Recorded live, December 2006, Barbican, London
LSO Live, LSO0606, available as 2 CD/SACD + DVD discs or as download from iTunes, eMusic, or Amazon (USA) Click here for an excerpt.
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| Michael Miller |
March 20, 2008 |
| Two of the best recordings of Messiah are among the most recent. They could not be more different; one is is an eclectic text performed by larger forces using modern instruments, Sir Colin Davis' most recent version, a live performance recorded at the Barbican in December 2006, the other a performance of the Dublin version of 1742 by a small consort using historical performance practices; but they are unquestionably among the finest performances of Handel’s masterpiece ever, and only a listener who has a seated prejudice against one mode of performance or the other could have any reason to choose between them. One must have both. And don’t forget Malcolm Sargent’s classic 1945 performance with the Liverpool Philharmonic and the Huddersfield Choral Society, available in a superb transfer on Dutton Records, for something completely different!
I have chosen to review this magnificent live recording under Sir Colin Davis together with the equally cogent historically informed performance by the Dunedin Consort under John Butt, because they have appeared within a year of one another and because they are both of such superb quality. I do not intend to compare them in detail or to make a judgement between them. Rather I hope to point out what can be gained from both approaches.
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| A Night at the Opera: Gary Lehman and Janice Baird Sing Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera |
| Michael Miller |
March 15, 2008 |
| The evening began with Peter Gelb’s suave announcement that Ben Heppner was ill and recovering at home in Canada. He reminded the audience that only perhaps five tenors in the world were able to sing Tristan, but a replacement had been found, a tenor named Gary Lehman, who would be singing the role for the first time in public. Great promises he did not make. It would be wonderful to say that Lehman electrified the house and became an instant star, just like in the movies—not so, unfortunately, but almost. As pleasing and appropriate as Lehman’s very attractive dark, baritonal voice was, and as thorough as his understanding of the role, and as elegant and intelligent his phrasing, especially in the quieter, more reflective passages, it might have been better for him to have sung the role for a few years in smaller opera houses—there must be some left in Germany or Scandinavia that would still tackle Tristan—before taking the plunge at the Met. What's more, he is a tall, handsome fellow who actually looks like what we expect Tristan to look like. All he lacked was confidence and experience. He deservedly earned a powerful ovation for his effort, but I sincerely hope he will allow himself to develop a bit more, before, God willing, he returns as a master Heldentenor. In fact, he is a singer of considerable experience, although Heldentenor roles are a new direction for him. I thought it better to address the question which will be on everyone’s mind straight out at the beginning before continuing with the other convolutions of this rather strange night at the opera. |
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| A Musical Weekend at Williams, I:
Berkshire Symphony Orchestra
Ronald Feldman, conductor
Chapin Hall, Williams College, 02/29/2008 - 8:00pm
“Three Premieres and a Classic”
Kevin Kaska: from the video game “Lair”
David Kechley: WAKEFUL VISIONS/MOONLESS DREAMS: A Symphony in Four Movements
Felipe Lara: Onda
George Gershwin: An American in Paris
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| Michael Miller |
March 11, 2008 |
| Williams has traditionally placed a high value on the arts without exactly pursuing the disciplines to the level of more specialized institutions, like Bard or Oberlin, except perhaps in the visual arts. The ‘62 Center has changed that in respect to theater, and the new facilities, as well as the distinguished faculty who have been hired to go with it, like Omar Sangare, the brilliant Polish playwright, poet, and actor, have attracted the sort of students who might otherwise have chosen Yale or Tisch. The Williams community, Berkshire residents, and whoever decides to make the trip, can expect great things in the future. Music, while very much a Cinderella in terms of physical plant, considering the problematic acoustics of Brooks-Rogers and Chapin Hall, is nonetheless richly endowed with talent of the first order, and many of these assets were much in evidence this past weekend in departmental chairman David Kechley (recently awarded an ASCAPlus Award as well as an Aaron Copland Award composer residency from Copland House), cellist-conductor Ronald Feldman, and, on Sunday, David Porter, Harry C. Payne Visiting Professor of Liberal Arts, who is as much a classicist as a musician. |
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| A Musical Weekend at Williams, II:
Charles Ives (1874-1954), Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860)
1. Emerson
2. Hawthorne
3. The Alcotts
4. Thoreau
David Porter, Piano, with Anne Royston ‘08, flute
Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall, Williams College
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| Michael Miller |
March 11, 2008 |
| Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata is without a doubt one of the great monuments of American music. It is not heard often, because it is difficult for both the pianist and his audience, and perhaps that is a good thing. It would be a pity if, like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, it were played too often in unworthy performances. It embodies the highest principles of American thought and American music, and a performance of it should remain a special occasion, as if it were a secular Missa Solemnis. |
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| Opera Orchestra of New York, Eve Queler, Music Director
Carnegie Hall, February 27, 2008
Vicenzo Bellini, La Sonnambula
Eglise Gutierrez, Amina
Dimitry Korchak, Elvino
Ferruccio Furlanetto, Count Rodolfo
Elisabeth Caballero, Lisa
Laura Vlasak Nolen, Teresa
Brian Kontes, Alessio
Luke Grooms, A Notary
Ira Siff, Stage Director
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| Arlene B. Isaacs |
February 28, 2008 |
| If you were in Carnegie Hall on February 27, attending The Opera Orchestra of New York’s performance of Vincenzo Bellini’s “La Sonnambula,” you were indeed fortunate. Founder/Conductor Eve Queler established the company in 1971, and since then it has provided an annual series in Carnegie Hall in which the Maestra has conducted over 90 operas. OONY is one of New York City’s cultural phenomena. Long noted for important discoveries of repertoire and singers, each performance at Carnegie Hall is judged a “must attend” event for serious opera-goers from around the world and loyal subscribers who convene during intermissions to exchange insights, reminiscences, and comments. |
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Alfred Brendel, piano
Friday, February 22, 8pm, Symphony Hall, Boston (Celebrity Series of Boston)
Haydn, Variations in F minor, Hob: XVII/6
Mozart, Sonata in F major, K. 533/K. 494
Beethoven, Sonata in E flat major, “quasi una fantasia” Op. 27, no. 1
Schubert, Sonata in B flat major, D. 960 |
| Michael Miller |
February 28, 2008 |
| For his Boston farewell program, Alfred Brendel chose a selective cross-section of the repertoire he has cultivated through much of his career, and a fascinating selection it was, both in terms of Mr. Brendel’s taste and the inter-relationships between these mostly classical composers. There was no Schoenberg, no Schumann, and Liszt only as an encore. One felt that he had concentrated on the very marrow of his repertory. On the other hand, it came as a powerful discovery to experience the various forms—the overall shapes—of these four works within the compass of a single concert. Brendel has always been especially strong in comprehending and delineating classical structure and form, and now, at the very end of his public career, he appears to have distilled it to the utmost. |
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The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Deborah Voigt, Soprano
Alfred Brendel, Piano
Webern, Six Pieces for Orchestra
Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491
Berg, Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6
R. Strauss, Final Scene from Salome
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| Michael Miller |
February 20, 2008 |
| It comes as particularly sad news that Alfred Brendel will retire from public recitals at the end of this year. He will have been playing for sixty years, and I’ll have been attending his performances for over forty, ever since one of his first Boston concerts in 1967. Since then he has been for me the musician who was always present throughout my musical life and who has served asas the reference point for my musical experience, in my estimation, the musical personality most characteristic of the late twentieth century. During this period, the music of the Second Vienna School made progress into the basic repertory. Performances became more polished and masterful. Brendel, as a pupil of Eduard Steuermann, has been one of the great exponents of this music, above all Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto. Following the example of Artur Schnabel, Brendel adopted Schubert’s late piano sonatas, making them a regular feature of his concert programs and recording them numerous times. His love of Schubert was also developed by another of his teachers, Edwin Fischer, as was his approach Mozart’s piano concertos. The weight, emotional range, and intellectual rigor of his interpretations of these works, have to my mind set the standard for the past generation. His Beethoven sonatas again set the standard for the late twentieth century, just as Schnabel’s did for the first half of the century, as did his performances of the piano concertos. Finally, no other musician has done as much to promote the reevaluation of Franz Liszt’s work, stressing his strongest music rather than pieces which offered the most fruitful resources for virtuoso display. |
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| The Elgar Year and Beyond, Collected Reviews |
| Michael Miller |
February 8, 2008 |
| A compilation of reviews from the Bard Music Festival, Boston Symphony Concerts, and Recordings |
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| Boston Symphony Orchestra, Symphony Hall, Friday, January 25, 2008
Sir Edward Elgar, The Dream of Gerontius
Sir Colin Davis, conductor
Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano
Ben Heppner, tenor
Gerald Finley, bass-baritone
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, conductor
For an in-depth discussion of the major Elgar year (2007) celebrations in America, click here.
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| Michael Miller |
February 3, 2008 |
| Once again, less than two months after James Levine’s great reading of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, Symphony Hall audiences heard a truly unforgettable performance—on the very highest level in nearly every respect and even miraculous in some—of a very great work, Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Even the widespread neglect of this great work in America offered an advantage of sorts. Hearing it out of its secure context in the repertoire of the English choral societies, one could more readily appreciate its universality, its power to move audiences in purely human terms, beyond its ostensible religious, particularly Roman Catholic, origins. However, as rich as its musical and spiritual rewards were, the event posed just as many questions, above all, why is the music of Elgar so dismally neglected in this country, when critics have singled Elgar out as the most international of British composers?* In his own time, he was regarded as the true successor to the great German symphonists, and Gerontius itself enjoyed its first successes in Germany. Its freedom from religious specificity, the universality of its effect on audiences, poses another question. If it isn’t a church work, just what sort of music is it?
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| Emmanuel Music: Russell Sherman presents three concerts featuring the complete English Suites of J. S. Bach. Each program will also include one of Bach’s three Viola da Gamba Sonatas and Bach-Busoni Chorale Preludes. |
| Michael Miller |
February 3, 2008 |
| CONCERT 1: Saturday, January 26, 2008 at 8:00 pm, Emmanuel Church, Boston
English Suite No.2 in A minor, BWV 807
Russell Sherman, piano
Sonata No. 3 in G minor for Viola da Gamba and Keyboard, BWV 1028
Mary Ruth (UV) Ray, viola
Minsoo Sohn, piano
Chorale Prelude, In dir ist Freund, BWV 615 (Bach-Busoni)
Chorale Prelude, Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659 (Bach-Busoni)
Minsoo Sohn, piano
English Suite No. 5 in E minor, BWV 810
Russell Sherman, piano
I should stress at the beginning of this review that I write it as one of Russell Sherman’s most ardent admirers. His knowledge of his extensive repertoire, his penetrating understanding of it, his technique (even at the age of 76), and his imagination and resourcefulness of expression are second to none, in my opinion. He has distilled all his sensitivity and intelligence into a highly personal, even idiosyncratic method, which is not equally palatable to all listeners, perhaps inevitably in our age of conformity. While I can respect, enjoy, and learn from an O’Conor, an Ohlsson or an Ax, Russell Sherman brings a unique insight and sensibility to his performances, which are only accessible in the unique form he has developed over many years. I have collected his recordings and travelled many miles to attend his concerts, which in recent years have focused on Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Liszt.
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| The Handel and Haydn Society, Harry Christophers, conductor
Friday, January 25, 8.00pm, Symphony Hall, Boston
Handel: Water Music Suite No. 3
Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 3
Purcell: Selections from The Fairy Queen
Handel: Royal Fireworks Music
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| Michael Miller |
February 3, 2008 |
| If there is a baroque equivalent of an old-fashioned Tanglewood program, consisting of perhaps Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto, and Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony, this is it. In fact, during the break, I overheard one perky female voice exclaim, “Yes, I actually know that song. That’s the Air on the...G string!” Some people may be too jaded to enjoy that imaginary program from the old days or the Handel and Haydn Society’s offering from this past weekend, no matter well performed, but the appeal of hearing this superb, if familiar music performed by a first-rate period band in Symphony Hall, is irresistible. When the results are as ebullient and musical as on Friday evening, such tried and true programming can only seem brilliant. |
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