Musical America Blogs

By Rebecca Schmid The tolerance of German audiences for extreme stage productions is a source of national pride and the envy of many abroad. But a production of Tannhäuser at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein which had to be stripped down to concert performance last week has set off a national debate about the sanctity [...]

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 [...]

By Rebecca Schmid If tradition means not preserving the ashes but fanning the flames, in the words of Gustav Mahler, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is celebrating its 125th anniversary with one foot firmly planted in the past and the other striding fearlessly into the future. Between a tour of six continents this season, the orchestra [...]

By Rebecca Schmid The Festtage of the Staatsoper Berlin, founded by Daniel Barenboim in 1996, is not officially an Easter Festival. But while the Berlin Philharmonic left the Philharmonie for some mountain air (taking up residence for the first time this year in Baden-Baden), the maestro— between conducting the first full cycle of the Cassiers/Bagnoli [...]

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 [...]

By Rebecca Schmid The Berlin Philharmonic is celebrating the centenary of Lutosławski with several concerts this month. The first of the series on February 7—featuring his Concert for Orchestra—opened appropriately with Anne-Sophie Mutter, who premiered one of his most important works, Chain Two, in 1988. In an interview I conducted two years ago, the violinist [...]

By Rebecca Schmid Richard Wagner has managed to slowly dominate the scene internationally in recent seasons, but with the official arrival of his bicentenary, the saturation in Germany has only begun. Nürnberg, Leipzig, Munich and Dresden have unveiled new exhibits; in the latter’s case, an entire new building. A stream of publications has hit the [...]

By Rebecca Schmid It hardly needs to be said that contemporary music enjoys a privileged status in Germany. Even with the heavily protested merger of the SWR (Southwest German Radio) Orchestras currently in effect, the support of public broadcasting for cutting-edge programming everywhere from Donaueschingen to ‘poor but sexy’ Berlin creates an atmosphere of seemingly [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]