Musical America Blogs

By Rebecca Schmid In the final scenes of Mahlermania, a ‘dramatic fantasy with music by Gustav Mahler’ conceived by the troupe Nico and the Navigators in cooperation with the Deutsche Oper to inaugurate the West Berlin opera house’s new alternative stage Tischlerei on November 27, manuscript paper and fur coats scatter across the stage in [...]

by Sedgwick Clark Gardiner’s “Authentic” Missa solemnis I was driving with a friend over Thanksgiving weekend, and we tuned in during the middle movement of a Sibelius Violin Concerto on Sirius FM. I was quickly enthralled by the soloist’s rubato and technical command and declared him to be “an old Russian violinist.” When I heard [...]

By: Edna Landau To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. I am frequently asked how musicians can be expected to handle the various artistic, administrative, financial, and performance related responsibilities they must regularly juggle and still not have their performances suffer in quality. I actually wrote about this in an earlier column entitled Time out [...]

By: Frank Cadenhead It was appropriate. A visit to New York over the Thanksgiving holiday started off musically with Dvorak’s New World Symphony with its famed Largo  -  the one with the “Goin’ Home” tune. It has been years since my last visit with the New York Philharmonic in their hall and I did not [...]

By Brian Taylor Goldstein, Esq. Dear Law and Disorder: May we loan music that we own for orchestral performances by other non-profit organizations (schools, community orchestras, etc? Would the other group still need to obtain performing/recording permissions? Could we be liable if they don’t? It depends how define “own.” If by “own”, you mean that [...]

By: James Conlon The Gewandhaus Orchester was the first to play the Prelude to Die Meistersinger, conducted by the composer, on November 1, 1862. The orchestra traditionally observes important anniversaries of works that were premiered there. The honor (and pleasure) fell to me last week to open the program with the Prelude before moving on [...]

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 [...]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 23, 2012 MUNICH — Scorpion-Man prowls the rubble of an unnamed flattened city at the start of Babylon, Jörg Widmann’s new opera, wailing as he moves. We should care. Seven scenes, a Hanging Garden interlude, and three costly theater hours later, he is back, doing his thang over the same [...]

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 [...]

by Sedgwick Clark Atlanta Symphony/Spano My broadest exit smiles so far this season occurred the same week at Carnegie Hall featuring programs with a chorus: the Philadelphia Orchestra and Westminster Symphonic Choir (Joe Miller, director) under Yannick Nézet-Seguin in Verdi’s Requiem on 10/23 and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Norman Mackenzie, director) under Robert [...]