DIGITAL REVIEW – Everyone knows the story of Lady Godiva riding naked through the center of a town. But what composer would want to write music about that? Vítězslav Novák (1870-1949) did — and did an impressive job of it.
For every widely-celebrated jazz musician, there may be hundreds of often equally-gifted players who never received their due whether by bad luck or by...
TOKYO – American-born Robert Rÿker, a tuba player turned conductor, has led orchestras on four continents over more than 40 years, but he has made his most distinctive mark as music director of the Tokyo Sinfonia.
LOS ANGELES – Daníel Bjarnason's strange new Violin Concerto performed by Finnish maverick Pekka Kuusisto is not what you would call normal Hollywood Bowl fare. Credit Gustavo Dudamel for spending goodwill capital on a wild ride.
DIGITAL REVIEW – The Minnesota Orchestra and music director Osmo Vänskä bring fine playing to the Fifth Symphony, and the BIS production is an audiophile’s delight. What’s lacking is Mahler’s sense of drama.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Pianist Andrew Cooperstock’s valuable collection is the first that indeed seems to be genuinely complete. His performances are, for the most part, gentler and softer in focus than most renditions.
BAYREUTH – To assess the non-Ring operas at the 2017 fest is to go from the least successful oldest (Tristan, 2015) through last year's Parsifal to Barrie Kosky's intriguing Meistersinger as a musicale in Wagner's home.
LENOX, Mass. - As curated by Jacob Greenberg, Nadia Sirota, and Kathryn Bates, the 2017 Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood drew on composers from their 30-something generation and works from the 20th century.
VANCOUVER – Local and imported artists combined under the assured direction of Alexander Weimann to create an impressive performance at the second summer Bach Festival presented by Early Music Vancouver.
NEW YORK – Mostly Mozart reached into Schubert with the US. premiere of Hans Zendler’s extravagantly orchestrated version, staged by Netia Jones for tenor Ian Bostridge. The sensory onslaught distracted from the emotional core.
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – For his first season as music director of the incorrigibly progressive Cabrillo Festival, Cristian Măcelaru is leading a flurry of premieres, including a made-to-order tour de force for percussionist Evelyn Glennie.
TAIPEI – Showcased at an international festival, Singapore’s aspiring, self-governing Orchestra of the Music Makers, in its ninth season, sounded like a million dollars and was certainly at one with the Force.
JOLIETTE, Quebec – Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conducting the score of Wagner’s long opera for the first time, led Montreal’s Orchestre Métropolitain in a glorious outdoor performance with Christian Elsner as Parsifal.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Under conductor James Ross, the accomplished young musicians of the National Orchestral Institute Philharmonic seem quite at home in Thompson's Second Symphony as well as Barber's First for Naxos.
SANTA FE, N.M. - While David Alden's setting of Handel's opera in a tawdry movie theater was fraught with gender ambiguities, conductor Harry Bicket kept the music smartly attuned to the period at the Santa Fe Opera.
SANTA FE, N.M. – The wizardly guitarist Łukasz Kuropaczewski offered solo works, and a star ensemble played a Mozart string quintet, exemplifying the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival’s penchant for marvelous mixes.
CHICAGO – Carlos Kalmar led the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus in their first traversal of Frank Martin’s oratorio In terra pax, written to mark the end of World War II. The outdoor setting wasn’t kind to the composer’s lean textures.
