By Rebecca Schmid The Deutsche Oper’s Tischlerei, a new wing for alternative music theater, hosted the results of Neue Szenen—a competition for composition launched by the Hans Eisler Conservatory—on April 8. Three young composers, Evan Gardner, Stefan Johannes Hanke and Leah Muir, emerged from a pool of 52 applicants with their musical settings of a [...]
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By Rebecca Schmid Experimental Regie, free from the scrutiny of finicky patrons on the German opera scene, can in the best case scenario serve to illuminate hidden meanings of a score. In the worst case, it can drown out or obscure musical considerations. The Staatsoper Berlin’s Werkstatt (‘workshop’), a wing of the company’s temporary residence [...]
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By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. When I opened the Arts section of The New York Times three weeks ago, I saw an interesting article about a singer who was new to me, the South African soprano Pretty Yende. The first name certainly called attention to itself, as did the large [...]
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by Sedgwick Clark NOTE: BEGINNING THIS WEEK, I’LL BE POSTING MY BLOG ON THURSDAYS AT NOON RATHER THAN WEDNESDAYS. Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and its current music director, Mariss Jansons, stopped by Carnegie Hall last week (2/13 and 14) for a pair of concerts to celebrate the ensemble’s 125th anniversary. They were a [...]
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By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. In my first column of this year, I listed among my New Year’s resolutions “try to go to at least one concert a month that offers music unfamiliar to me, preferably new music.” Little did I know then how rewarding that would prove to be. [...]
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By Rebecca Schmid Berlin may be the capital residence for young composers today, and no other time of year makes this more apparent than the Ultraschall Festival for New Music. They gathered in strong numbers during freezing temperatures for a concert on January 19 at the Haus des Rundfunks, where Brad Lubman led the Deutsches [...]
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By Rebecca Schmid Journeys have provided powerful inspiration to writers, painters and composers alike, opening eyes to new ways of seeing the world. The broadening of artists’ palettes has sometimes allowed them to capture a landscape more vividly than the natives could themselves. One only has to think of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, Gauguin’s portraits [...]
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by Sedgwick Clark We were driving bumper to bumper out to the country last Friday and checked out the Met Opera station on Sirius XM. It was about 20 minutes into Wagner’s Die Walküre, and Hunding had just come home from a hard day at the office to discover his lovely wife, Sieglinde, with a [...]
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By Rebecca Schmid The eclectic musical life of the brief but thriving ‘Roaring twenties’ continues to inspire a nostalgia that is all the more understandable given contemporary classical music’s reorientation toward popular idioms from techno to rock. The latest album of French pianist Alexandre Tharaud, Le Boeuf sur le Toit, sets out to recreate the [...]
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By: Edna Landau On the occasion of the Thanksgiving holiday, I would like to offer my thanks to Musical America, all our devoted readers, our sponsors, and those who have sent in their interesting and thought-provoking questions. I look forward to continuing to receive your questions, and even suggested topics for this column. Happy Thanksgiving [...]
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