by Sedgwick Clark If I never hear another concert I will die a contented music lover, having heard the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus perform Beethoven’s Missa solemnis under Colin Davis and Britten’s War Requiem under Gianandrea Noseda last weekend. To see Davis, now 84 and in declining health, haltingly ascend the podium to sit [...]
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By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. Dear Edna: I am a flutist, a soloist and chamber musician. I am just getting started pursuing performances, after many years playing in an established ensemble. I have a nice website with good audio and video tracks, but I have found that if I can [...]
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by Keith Clarke The Royal College of Music always keeps its music staff busy, but it looks like the lawyers might be earning their keep on its latest offering. Lisbon Contemporary Music Ensemble is visiting with the world premiere of a new one-act opera “based on the real-life events surrounding Dominique Strauss-Khan.” A press release [...]
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by Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. Dear Edna: I hope you won’t mind a slightly different question from those you have been answering so splendidly and thoroughly in your excellent columns, asked by one of your former colleagues and longtime friends. I come from a small town in the United Kingdom. [...]
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“You just have to get crazier.” These words came from Pina Bausch, the late choreographer, whose dance troupe made the industrial city of Wuppertal, Germany an avant-garde theatrical destination for 36 years. In Wim Wenders’ 3D documentary “Pina,” screened on October 15 at Alice Tully Hall for the New York Film Festival, audiences got a taste of what Bausch’s crazy looks like. In one scene, a Bausch dancer walks through a park in a floor-length dress like a zombie queen. The woman careens to the ground, flat as a board. Right before smashing her face, her suitor scoops her up like a crane lift. Then she falls again, and again. The effect is part amusement ride, part suicide watch.
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By Alan Gilbert I’ve recently tried my hand at acrylic painting, and just bought a how-to book that stresses the overriding importance of composition — i.e. form and the use of spatial elements — in a successful work of art. By that measure, I can tell you right now that this blog entry will not [...]
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by Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. Hi, Edna. My name is Caitlin Mehrtens and I’m a first year harp student at the Oberlin Conservatory. I have a question about being humble and marketing oneself as a musician. I have struggled in part with balancing being humble and writing a bio or [...]
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By James Jorden The Metropolitan Opera debut of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, an amazing 180 years into the work’s history, won mostly respectful reviews last week—in between snipes at Anna Netrebko’s momentary breaking of character during the “Tower Scene.” A common thread in both published and popular opinion, though, was that the piece itself was not [...]
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by Keith Clarke On the day that she receives Gramophone’s Lifetime Achievement Award at London’s Dorchester Hotel, mezzo-soprano Dame Janet Baker gives a fascinating interview in today’s Telegraph [click here]. . She reveals her regret at how when Karajan contacted her agent, the legendary Emmie Tillett, to book Baker for the Salzburg Festival, he was [...]
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by Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. Dear Edna: I am a cellist studying at an American conservatory and I try to read your blog regularly. A few weeks ago, you wrote about proper etiquette for working with a presenter in a case where a member of your ensemble is unable to [...]
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