Well-Proportioned Passion Highlights Carolina Bach Fest
By Perry Tannenbaum
CHARLOTTE – The sound of silence during the climax of a powerful St. Matthew Passion provided what may have been the most dramatic moment of the second annual Charlotte Bach Festival. Tenor Steven Soph sang the Evangelist.
Five Boys Wrongly Convicted, One Donald Just Wrong
By Richard S. Ginell
SAN PEDRO, Calif. – Anthony Davis extends his string of politically charged historical operas with The Central Park Five, an incendiary piece given its world premiere by Long Beach Opera. (One big role is a certain real estate mogul.)
Pair Of Premieres Put Bold Face On Summer Festival
By Kyle MacMillan
CHICAGO – Along with two standard works from the 19th century, the Grant Park Festival Orchestra led by music director Carlos Kalmar offered in one night consecutive world and U.S. premieres by Kareem Roustom and Carl Vine.
Song Cycles Honor Pride Month And Rise Of Feminism
By Anne E. Johnson
NEW YORK – Honoring trailblazers, the New York Festival of Song premiered After Stonewall, a song cycle by six female composers, and revived Fierce Grace: Jeannette Rankin, with Heather Johnson as Congresswoman and icon.
Last Seen In ’92, Monk Opera Atlas Is Back In Big Way
By Richard S. Ginell
LOS ANGELES – Even for a space that has hosted more than its share of outsized spectacles lately, the 36-foot-diameter globe that greeted LA Phil concertgoers upon entering Walt Disney Concert Hall was one for the books.
Hannigan Takes A Turn Steering Adventurous Ojai
By Rick Schultz
OJAI, Cal. – As music director of the 73rd edition, Barbara Hannigan conducted and sometimes sang in works that underlined the Ojai Festival’s value as an outdoor laboratory for reevaluating 20th-century and contemporary music.
Extravaganza! Baroque Opera As A Vocal Spectacle
By Keith Powers
BOSTON – In the dozen substantial roles of Agostino Steffani’s Orlando generoso, superb singers offered an endless stream of engaging recitatives and arias with the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra led by Robert Mealy.
Lang’s prisoner: Freedom Chained In Fidelio’s Prism
By Nancy Malitz
NEW YORK – The first thing you notice is the fencing – the menacing kind, tall and barbed, that keeps captives in. The room is dark. This is David Lang’s prisoner of the state, spun from Beethoven. There will be other surprises.
In A Creepy Twist, Queen Dido Goes Deep Underground
By Anne E. Johnson
BROOKLYN – Do ghosts enjoy early Baroque opera? Hopefully they do, since any spirits lingering in the Catacombs under Green-Wood Cemetery are currently a captive audience for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas.
Around the U.S.
LA Phil Shebang Goes Wall To Wall, Noon To Midnight
By Richard S. Ginell
LOS ANGELES – Its centennial season finale was a study in near-megalomania that only this orchestra could carry off – Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” plus a nonstop new-music blowout that lasted twelve extravagant hours.
Ensemble Creates Anniversary Work: It’s A Mixed Gift
By Mike Greenberg
SAN ANTONIO – As a 25th birthday present to itself, the SOLI Chamber Ensemble hatched a new genre: The Clearing & the Forest, by composer-director Scott Ordway with designer Erica Eliot, is a “theater of music.”
Salome Is Given A Risky, Risqué Spin In Spoleto Staging
By James L. Paulk
CHARLESTON – At Spoleto Festival USA, the directing team of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser make a vivid, persuasive case for Richard Strauss’ biblical opera that is more crude, more violent, and more depraved than usual.
Around Canada
Crusader, Curator: Attuned Composer Reaches Milestone
By David Gordon Duke
VANCOUVER – In her long stint as Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s personable composer in residence, Canada’s Jocelyn Morlock, who is about to turn 50, has become an eloquent example of the new “new music.”
Wacky Yet Morbid Ghost Opera With Cast Of Puppets
By Bill Rankin
BANFF, Alberta – Adapting an ancient Greek story, Veronika Krausas and André Alexis populated their opera with humans and puppets. Giddy laughter from the audience during Act I gave way to silence for the dark ending.
Pulling Out Stops To Spotlight Organ In Rollicking Rite
By Arthur Kaptainis
MONTREAL – Observing the fifth anniversary of its Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique, the Maison symphonique showcased the 6,489-pipe colossus with a four-hand go at The Rite of Spring by Olivier Latry and Shin-Young Lee.
International
Viola Concerto Has World Premiere In Beethoven Frame
By Tim Diovanni
LONDON – Composer-conductor Thomas Adès led the world premiere of Irish composer Gerald Barry’s Viola Concerto with soloist Lawrence Power on a program by the Britten Sinfonia with two Beethoven symphonies.
Creative Fest Fare Piques Curiosity And Sensibilities
By Xenia Hanusiak
BERGEN, Norway – At the 67th International Bergen Festival, director Anders Beyer has put together an intriguing mix of brand-name artists and experimentalists likely to leave some viewers wanting more and others overwhelmed.
China Competition Makes Debut With Philadelphians
By Rebecca Schmid
BEIJING ‒ Canada’s Tony Siqi Yun, the 17-year-old winner of the first China International Music Competition, played Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Issues in the Arts
With Strike Ended, CSO Has Breathing Room Under Muti
By Nancy Malitz
CHICAGO – In the aftermath of a bruising labor dispute, Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti sounded themes of tradition, continuity, and community. The first program featured Joyce DiDonato in Berlioz.
Mary Ann Feldman Left Her Mark As Musical Whirlwind
By Michael Anthony
MINNEAPOLIS – A gifted writer, Mary Ann turned out erudite and witty program notes for the Minnesota Orchestra for 33 years. She died Feb. 18 at age 85, perhaps the Twin Cities’ most prolific advocate for classical music.
Ensemble Project Sparks Surge Of Creative Energy
By Nancy Malitz
CHICAGO – The recently debuted Grossman Ensemble, a contemporary sinfonietta set up with funding for 15 years, includes thirteen award-winning instrumentalists committed to work with a dozen composers each season.
Disc and Stream
BSO Shostakovich Cycle Continues: Nelsons Adds 6 & 7
By Richard S. Ginell
DIGITAL REVIEW – The Boston Symphony did not have much of a Shostakovich tradition historically on disc. But both the BSO and DG are catching up in a hurry as Andris Nelsons’ explores middle works in the canon.
Stenhammar CD: On A Path Apart From Schoenberg
By Paul E. Robinson
DIGITAL REVIEW – Herbert Blomstedt, championing the early 20th-century output of Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar, draws attention to his music via recordings, concerts, and an upcoming Berlin Philharmonic webcast.
CD Memorializes Stucky In Works By 32 Composers
By Richard S. Ginell
DIGITAL REVIEW – Pianist Gloria Cheng, who initiated the collection as a memorial project, performs pieces dedicated to the composer, ranging from the intensity of a work by Esa-Pekka Salonen to a little waltz by John Harbison.
MCANA Hosted Blogs
Monterey Jazz Salutes The Year Of The Woman
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
MONTEREY, Calif. – The 61st Monterey Jazz Festival Sep. 21-23 was billed as a salute to “The Year Of The Woman” – and they weren’t kidding. Trumpeter Ingrid Jensen and alto saxophonist Tia Fuller were designated as the artists-in-residence, singer Dianne Reeves was the 2018 Showcase Artist. The schedule was loaded.
Unreleased Coltrane CDs Stir Up The Jazz World – Again
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
Everyone in jazzland seems to be weighing in on the release this week of Both Directions …
Fanciful Turandot Takes The Stage At Lyric Opera Of Chicago
By Dorothy Andries: Windy City Arts
A China-that-never-was opened on the stage of Lyric Opera of Chicago, complete with a giant eye-popping dragon, which hovered with considerable menace in Puccini’s “Turandot.”
Please Visit Our Advertisers
Help Us Grow
Support quality coverage of the performing arts.
Click here to help Classical Voice North America resound!
A MESSAGE FROM OUR PRESIDENT
John Fleming
MCANA President
Welcome to Classical Voice North America, the online news site of the Music Critics Association of North America. CVNA was launched in 2013 to provide an outlet for classical music coverage at a time when the market for traditional print journalism was shrinking, a trend that has continued. With readers in 152 countries our site has shown steady growth, recently passing 750,000 page views on more than 1,500 reviews, essays and lookaheads by 131 authors, the great majority of whom are members of MCANA.
In the summer, the music world decamps to festivals in bucolic locations around the world, from Aspen to Bayreuth to Santa Fe, and music journalists are no different. On July 26-28, MCANA is holding its 2019 annual meeting for the first time at the Tanglewood Festival, summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the beautiful Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Among the highlights are three concert performances (one for each act) of Wagner’s Die Walküre, with BSO music director Andris Nelsons leading the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and a cast of top-level Wagnerians. This summer also sees the opening of the Tanglewood Learning Institute, a four-building complex designed to support new programming that links festival concerts with cross-cultural themes from the visual arts, film, history, philosophy, and current events.
The summer will also bring the announcement of the third annual MCANA Best New Opera Award, previously presented to composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek for Breaking the Waves in 2017 and to composer-librettist David Hertzberg for The Wake World in 2018. Watch this space for the 2019 winner.
Thank you for reading CVNA, which seeks to convey the richness of musical life in North America and elsewhere, with reviews and commentary by expert MCANA members and occasional guest contributors. Are you a writer with experience in classical music? If so, please consider this an invitation to join us.
