Uncategorized

SAN FRANCISCO – His characteristic erect posture unaltered by the recent physical and emotional challenges of brain-tumor surgery, MTT, who turns 77 on Dec. 21, led the San Francisco Symphony in his own music and Schumann's.

LOS ANGELES – Defiantly back in business after a long pandemic-induced hiatus, the LA Opera took a giant step toward normalcy by staging Wagner’s Tannhäuser, the company’s first production of anything by Wagner in eight and a half years.

PERSPECTIVE – Tines, who has burst onto the world's music stages, commands a range of more than three octaves, from low D to high E-flat. He says he is neither a bass nor a baritone: “It’s a broader conception of how to think about voice.”

PREVIEW – At last, some good news! William Grant Still's opera Highway 1, U.S.A. is among the offerings this summer as Midwest opera and orchestra festivals offer their novel enticements to draw people back into the concert habit.

BOOK REVIEW – Three recent books about the composer-pianist offer rich insights into his life as man and musician. All three offer much to ponder, and time and again had this reader reaching for a score or a recording to follow up.

PERSPECTIVE – Even with some 60 works and a Pulitzer Prize to his credit, Joseph Schwantner's far-ranging sound palette and distinctive voice remain something of a hidden treasure, unfamiliar to much of the concertgoing public.

NEW YORK - In its series of site-specific operas in unconventional locations throughout the city, On Site Opera now offers The Road We Came, walking tours with streamed music recalling the richness and the trials of Black history here.

PERSPECTIVE – Terrance McKnight has always lived his life "between the two worlds" of being Black and being part of the classical music culture. He wants to bring everyone’s culture to the table, "not putting one above the other."

DIGITAL REVIEW - Echoing his prodigious, politically inspired variations The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, for solo piano, Frederic Rzewski offers a still more ambitious work, Songs of insurrection. Pianist Thomas Kotcheff nails it.

TIANJIN – Chinese students have long enjoyed a presence at The Juilliard School in New York. Now Juilliard has brought to China an impressive single-building campus with an international faculty to focus on ensemble training.

DIGITAL FEATURE – Lara Downes' recording project, called Rising Sun Music and offered on streaming platforms, explores the neglected legacy of composers ranging from Hazel Scott and Nora Holt to Benny Golson and Eubie Blake.

CHICAGO – It was a novel spin on drive-in theater: cars filing into a downtown underground parking garage for a live-with-video production of Wagner's Götterdämmerung writ small. Christine Goerke's Brünnhilde rode a crimson Mustang.

CHICAGO – Given this city's diverse musical heritage, ranging from European classicism to the Great Migration, music director Riccardo Muti's choice of an African American woman comes as a notable next step for the Chicago Symphony.

PORTLAND, Ore. – Whether singing, writing music, or giving artistic advice, bass-baritone Damien Geter has been one busy fellow despite the pandemic. His opera American Apollo debuts May 1 at the Washington National Opera.

PERSPECTIVE – It is now possible to hope that the pandemic that has terrorized humanity for more than a year will eventually begin its retreat. And it is arguable that classical music in most of its many forms will be all right. Maybe even stronger.

PERSPECTIVE – Stravinsky died 50 years ago on April 6, 1971. And so I found myself there, a music student all alone with his casket at the funeral home, the sounds of his music racing through my brain: Firebird, Petrouchka, Sacre du printemps.

COMMENTARY – What lies ahead for opera now? Gathering via Zoom, composer Ellen Reid, librettists Tazewell Thompson and Royce Vavrek, producer Kristin Martin and critics Heidi Waleson and Alex Ross discuss the transformative impact of this challenging year.

DIGITAL REVIEW – David Hertzberg’s fanciful opera The Wake World, premiered in a visually potent production at Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O in 2017, revels in a lush new sound recording under the baton of Elizabeth Braden.

COMMENTARY – Will the pandemic's digital concerts become the new normal? Will audiences accustomed to consuming free music online trouble themselves to schlep downtown and pay good money to hear an orchestra?

VIENNA – Austria will allow group rehearsals starting June 1 under tough – some artistic directors say unrealistic – distancing rules. Vienna’s opera houses plan to reopen this fall as usual. Meanwhile, television provides a lifeline.