By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 27, 2016 NUREMBERG — Tired of paying for digitized concert-hall privileges? Here is a sumptuously sung, gloriously gratis (for the moment*) St John Passion from this city’s Lutheran Lorenzkirche, filmed in June 2015 as part of a drawn-out Bavarian Broadcasting project to mark “500 Years of the Reformation”: — Windows— […]
Read the rest of this article »The premiere of Mark Morris’s “A Forest” (seen May 21) took place at his home, the Mark Morris Dance Center in downtown Brooklyn, which is now in a construction zone where multiple glass skyscrapers are dwarfing the once prominent, white dance building. As if in response, Morris’s choreography for “Forest” to Haydn’s elegant rhythms and sonorities, from Piano Trio No. 44 n E Major, is often treated with small dance responses. For example, when MMDG Music Ensemble pianist Colin Fowler, violinist Georgy Valtchev, and cellist Wolfram Koessel introduced Hayden’s primary theme, and later repeated it, the nine dancers became Pavlovians, dutifully repeating the same dance phrase. Part of their dance phrase involved hopping three times in three clumps, and in time with the musicians’ strident triple bowing and fingering. They brought to mind excited kids at a candy store.
Read the rest of this article »As pianist Anthony de Mare’s fabulous project, LIAISONS: Re-Imagining Sondheim from the Piano, took shape, he found that he could advance the project’s prospects for success through the use of Twitter, e-mailing lists, and an updated and effective website. Here, Mr. de Mare discusses with Eugenia Zukerman and Emily Ondracek-Peterson (founders of Noted Endeavors) points […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 17, 2016 MUNICH — Beckmesser blew his brains out at the end of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg last night here in the Nationaltheater. That was after first aiming his gun at the back of the head of Sachs, and after a graphically brutal beating by David and bat-wielding apprentices had […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 10, 2016 MUNICH — As if to unify its program of late Beethoven and Schubert last week (May 4) at the Court Church of All Saints, the Arcanto Quartet stressed gloom wherever possible. Playing of intensity and integrity supported this approach, and, to be sure, the Heiliger Dankegesang String Quartet, […]
Read the rest of this article »By Sedgwick Clark I’ve been a parsimonious blogger this season. But the coming week in New York City concert halls has brought out the town crier in me. The week is bookended by performances of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata by two pianists I never expected to hear ascend this Everest of the keyboard: Murray Perahia at […]
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