Pulitzer Compass Key To Mapping American Music
By Johanna Keller
TOKYO – At the recent institute on Music From Japan, I was asked to sum up musical trends in North America today. A brief survey of the last eight Pulitzer winners reveals a rich landscape: chaotic, diverse, experimental, many-faceted.
Queen Of Spades Gets Reshuffled As Stark, Cool Drama
By Rebecca Schmid
SALZBURG – Two maverick stage directors took their first cracks at Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” and Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea.” The former looked unemotional; the latter veered from captivating to senseless.
Brevard Festival Basks In Bounty Of Diverse Bernstein
By Paul Hyde
BREVARD, N.C. – In an idyllic setting of lofty trees and mountains, the Brevard Music Center summer festival went all out for Leonard Bernstein to celebrate his 100th birthday. The major work was the composer’s Mass.
New CD Unearths Three Diamonds, All In The Rough
By Paul E. Robinson
DIGITAL REVIEW – Works by David Diamond, including the first commerical recording of his Symphony No. 6, are roundly unsatisfying in performances by Indiana University ensembles conducted by Arthur Fagen.
Starry Wagnerian Quartet Highlights Restrained Parsifal
By David Shengold
MUNICH – A cast including Jonas Kaufmann, Nina Stemme, René Pape, and Christian Gerhaher brought sonic luster to Pierre Audi’s stark staging of Parsifal that featured sets by Georg Baselitz at the Bavarian State Opera.
Măcelaru Sparkles With Modern Fare At Cabrillo Festival
By Richard S. Ginell
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – Music director Cristian Măcelaru is bringing a crowd-pleasing style to the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music. His programming ranges from loud, flashy showpieces to an elegy on the migrant crisis.
In A Swift Turn, Festival Honors Knussen Legacy
By Leslie Kandell
LENOX, Mass. – Adding a Tanglewood tribute to his late colleague Olly Knussen, who died July 8, Thomas Adès fashioned a Festival of Contemporary Music finale that also featured works by Lutosławski and himself.
American Director, Polish Lohengrin Bow At Bayreuth
By David Shengold
BAYREUTH – The innovative Yuval Sharon became the first American stage director employed in Wagner’s fabled precincts, and tenor Piotr Beczala scored a debut triumph in the production led by Christian Thielemann.
Around the U.S.
Early Romantic Opera, Joined With Its Sound World
By Susan Brodie
PURCHASE, N.Y. – Ending twenty years at Caramoor, Will Crutchfield moved his summer festival and renamed it Teatro Nuovo. Rossini’s Tancredi reflected historically informed style, but the drama was
hampered by blandness.
Rubinstein Opera Revival Beset By Rash Of Demons
By John Rockwell
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – Anton Rubinstein’s The Demon (1871) offers an uneven score with an uneven structure, and the Bard SummerScape production conducted by Leon Botstein has its own ups and downs.
Chamber Music (And Prices) Fit For The Hamptons
By Tim Diovanni
BRIDGEHAMPTON, N.Y. – In 1984, when flutist Marya Martin planned the first Bridgehampton Chamber
Music Festival, her neighbors doubted it could last. But it has grown to a dozen main programs, and lots more.
Around Canada
Magic Of Mozart, In A Staging Both Novel, Traditional
By Arthur Kaptainis
QUEBEC CITY – The Festival d’opéra de Québec’s marquee production affirms stage director Robert Lepage’s status as a leading conservative of our time. Mozart’s humanistic message shines through Ex Machina’s dazzling visuals.
Banff Goes Gluck One Better With Modernized Orphée
By Bill Rankin
BANFF, Alberta – Joel Ivany directed an enhanced take on the 1859 Berlioz version of Gluck’s French rethinking of Orphée et Eurydice, now newly retitled Orphée+. Like Gluck in his day, Ivany said he wanted to add innovative touches.
In Beethoven Trek, Kent Nagano Hews To Middle Of Road
By Arthur Kaptainis
MONTREAL – In leading the Montreal Symphony through the nine symphonies, music director Kent Nagano brought a contemporary golden mean of interpretation: neither old-fashioned tempo manipulator nor neo-Baroque martinet.
International
Music From Japan Builds Noteworthy New-Music Catalog
By Michael Huebner
FUKUSHIMA, Japan – With the help of government and private funding, co-founders Naoyuki Miura and Mari Ono have commissioned 76 works by Japanese composers and nine by American composers influenced by Japan.
St. Luke Passion Opens Salzburg Fest Under Nagano
By Arthur Kaptainis
SALZBURG – Whether heard as a landmark of modernism or its repudiation, Penderecki’s
various materials made a fluid whole under Kent Nagano’s baton. He led his Montreal Symphony and choirs from Krakow and Warsaw.
A Packed Festival Of Music From Japan, In Japan
By Richard S. Ginell
TOKYO – Ten writers from the Music Critics Association of North America traveled to Japan for a week’s immersion in a distant yet surprisingly approachable culture. One critic kept a diary of concerts in Tokyo and Fukushima.
Issues in the Arts
Archive Retrieves Golden Interviews With Studs Terkel
By Nancy Malitz
CHICAGO – When Louis “Studs” Terkel left WFMT in 1997 after 45 years on the air, he took more than 5,600 of his reel-to-reel tape chats with the A-list of culture at large. That treasury of incredible stories is getting new digital life.
Carnegie’s Season Of Glass Retraces Path Of A Master
By John Rockwell
NEW YORK – How times have changed for 81-year-old Philip Glass. An outsider spurned by the establishment in the early 1970s, the composer’s vast output and its impact were on display all season long at the epicenter of American music.
Orchestra Festival Lit Up Uniqueness Of U.S. Ensembles
By John Fleming
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The 2018 SHIFT Festival threw its spotlight on four diverse U.S. orchestras whose musical reach extended from the Kennedy Center to the corners of the nation’s capital – even to a concert at Union Station.
Disc and Stream
Torke Symphony Raises Voice To American Spirit
By Richard S. Ginell
DIGITAL REVIEW – Leading the Philadelphia Orchestra’s new recording of Michael Torke’s Unconquered, which was inspired by the Battle of Saratoga during the American Revolution, Cristian Măcelaru proves that his star is rising.
Two Impressions Of Debussy (Who Hated That Word)
By Paul E. Robinson
DIGITAL REVIEW – Maurizio Pollini and Alexander Melnikov offer quite different approaches to Debussy’s Préludes Book II, not only in conception and tempo, but also in the sonic character of the pianos they play.
De Sabata CD Set Proves Conductor Giant Of His Time
By Paul E. Robinson
DIGITAL REVIEW – From pre-war and post-war, this new four-disc treasury, which restores many of Victor de Sabata’s most important recordings to the catalogue, could make his name familiar to a new generation.
MCANA Hosted Blogs
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.”
Muti/Chicago Play it Safe with All-Brahms at Disney Hall
By Richard S. Ginell: From Out of the West
The CSO remains a phenomenal instrument – they never miss – yet the most phenomenal features about these performances were the little things.
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A MESSAGE FROM OUR PRESIDENT
John Fleming
MCANA President
Welcome to Classical Voice North America, the online journal of the Music Critics Association of North America, of which I was elected president in 2017. I have been a member of MCANA for 26 years, joining after I became performing arts critic of Florida’s St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times).
I remember fondly the first MCANA annual meeting I attended, organized around the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 1992 premiere of McTeague, with a score by William Bolcom. That meeting gave me – then new to music criticism – the invaluable opportunity to get acquainted with leading journalists in a specialized field. Many newspapers and magazines sent their staff critics, a far cry from the situation today when traditional print is severely stressed. Still, our meetings continue to be a great way to exchange ideas and hear top-notch performances together. In April, we met in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the SHIFT Festival of orchestras.
Under Barbara Jepson, my predecessor as president, and other MCANA leaders, CVNA was launched in September 2013 to provide a new outlet for classical music coverage. With readers in 90 countries it has shown consistent growth, recently passing half a million page views on 1,100 stories by 123 authors, the great majority of whom are members of MCANA.
This year saw the second annual MCANA Award for Best New Opera, which went to composer/librettist David Hertzberg for The Wake World, premiered by Opera Philadelphia. Click on an article about the award here.
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.
