DIGITAL REVIEW – A joyful collaboration between two of America's most exciting tenors, Lawrence Brownlee and Michael Spyres, offers a generous CD sampler drawn from seven Rossini operas, from the familiar to rarities.
COMMENTARY – This time, John Cage’s famous 4’33” really was about silence as Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic found a special way to say farewell to live audiences under Europe's Covid-constrained lockdown.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Religious fervor and near-operatic passion resound across a CD of six works, four of them written in the 21st Century, performed by the Massachusetts-based choir Gloriae Dei Cantores directed by Richard K. Pugsley.
BOSTON – The early-music ensemble Boston Camerata, innovators in performance practice since 1954, planned a Purcell party. Then came COVID. And necessity sparked a film: Dido and Aeneas, An Opera for Distanced Lovers.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Vivid letters in the collection of America's only World War I museum inspired Jonathan Leshnoff's Symphony No. 3 with baritone. Michael Stern conducts the Kansas City Symphony's all-Leshnoff disc.
DIGITAL REVIEW – A new CD cycle by the Miró Quartet, the re-release of the Juilliard's complete set and the first flourish of a projected Dover Quartet cycle remind us that these works provide unique insight into the composer.
BOOK REVIEW – In his exhaustive and fascinating book Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, Alex Ross probes the enduring cultural impact of the composer's art as well as his controversial social views.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Eleven years after it was recorded, the album Singing in the Dead of Night displays the rock-infused music of David Lang, Michael Gordon, and Julia Wolfe, accented – not surprisingly – by a whiff of the Beatles.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Conductor Bernard Labadie, founder of Quebec's Les Violons du Roy, leads a stylish Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and a strong cast through this attractive score framing a tale of the exotic ancient Middle East.
ORLANDO, Fla. – Opening its 2020-21 season, the Orlando Philharmonic led by Eric Jacobsen turned the 25,000-seat soccer venue Exploria Stadium into a concert space with room for social distancing and grandly amplified sound.
DIGITAL REVIEW – Simone Dinnerstein’s CD A Character of Quiet, devoted to Philip Glass piano etudes and Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat, D. 960, sprang from reading Wordsworth's The Prelude, an autobiographical poem.
PROFILE – Valerie Coleman, whose Seven O’Clock Shout will be performed online by the Philadelphia Orchestra at its virtual season opener Sept. 30, makes a case for getting people to understand one another’s point of view.
COMMENTARY – The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has resonated in many ways. Her influence was far more significant in the high realm of jurisprudence, but Ginsberg also was arguably the most famous opera fan on earth.
COMMENTARY - What better time than the COVID-19 shutdown to look at the phenomenon of silence in music? If the idea seems like a contradiction, composers have historically invoked the sound of silence in creative ways.
AROUND NORTH AMERICA – With their homes shuttered, orchestras, opera companies, and other ensembles have found creative ways to keep the music coming by shifting to unusual venues, digital platforms, and novel stagings.
NEW YORK – Since his start at the Moscow State Satire Theater, the Russian-born pianist and actor Konstantin Soukhovetski has applied the Stanislavski technique of emotional recall to heighten musicians’ expressive powers.
BOOK REVIEW – Filled with more than 200 essays, Hough's Rough Ideas abounds in aphoristic commentary, like a concert of virtuosic bonbons. Topics range from stage fright and trials of touring to the aging of classical audiences.
PORTLAND, Ore. – Clarinetist David Shifrin, who retired this summer after 40 years as Chamber Music Northwest’s artistic director, was hailed by colleagues for his exceptional musicianship, broad repertoire and creative programming.
CINCINNATI – Recalling its World War II fanfare project, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops commissioned solo fanfares from 13 composers, including Tyshawn Sorey's terse flourish for trumpet, to air online.
DIGITAL REVIEW – A nice contrast to the flood of new Vivaldi opera recordings and collections by mezzos and countertenors of castrato-inspired baroque arias ...
