Posts Tagged ‘Beethoven’

Jansons Turns 75

Friday, January 12th, 2018

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 12, 2018 MUNICH — Against the medical odds, perhaps, Mariss Jansons turns seventy-five on Sunday, still adored by his favorite orchestra. Bavarian Broadcasting marks the occasion with a 44-minute video portrait, Im Zeichen der Musik, or In the Music’s Character, freely watchable. Last evening here at the Gasteig, a subscription […]

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Levit Plays Elmau

Tuesday, September 19th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 19, 2017 ELMAU — His website left the program as vague as “Beethoven and Shostakovich” right up until the recital, but Igor Levit knew exactly what he wanted to do Aug. 14 in the timber-framed auditorium of this isolated castle-spa below the Wettersteinwand. An aural onslaught was in the offing. […]

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Earful of Joy for Trump

Friday, June 23rd, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 23, 2017 MUNICH — Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, complete, is slated for President Trump’s second orchestra concert on the job, to take place, like the first, in Europe, specifically at Hamburg’s new Elbphilharmonie. Details of the July 7 event, part of the 12th G20 Summit, were announced Wednesday by a spokesman […]

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Gerhardt, Osborne Team Neatly

Friday, May 19th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 19, 2017 RAVENNA — Sometimes a musician just needs a good partner. Cellist Alban Gerhardt and pianist Steven Osborne work magically together but have a habit of starting their recitals apart, as if to establish credentials. So it was April 11 here at the Teatro Alighieri, home of the Ravenna […]

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All Eyes On the Maestro

Sunday, April 30th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 30, 2017 FERRARA — Lanky Teodor Currentzis looms over his MusicAeterna players the way Basil Fawlty loomed over Manuel, and with comparable gestures. It is anyone’s guess how their 13-year relationship has survived, what with labor conditions in Russia, the quirks of period-instrument practice, their joint move from Novosibirsk (in […]

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Horses for Mozartwoche

Friday, February 24th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 24, 2017 SALZBURG — The gimmicky proposition of Mozart’s Requiem enhanced with equine ballet dominated this year’s Mozartwoche schedule, and no doubt budget. It capped, in a way, five iterations of the festival lavishly managed by Marc Minkowski and his front-office counterpart Matthias Schulz, and it brought in for the […]

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Tonhalle Lights Up the Beyond

Friday, January 27th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 27, 2017 ZURICH — It was not the most natural of programs. Beethoven’s familiar C-Major Piano Concerto (1795) prepared nobody for Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà … , or Lightning Over the Beyond … , the 65-minute theological ornithological astronomical would-be symphony Messiaen finished in 1991. Wary of the exotic fare ahead, […]

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Meccore: Polish Precision

Saturday, June 11th, 2016

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 11, 2016 SEESHAUPT — The men from Lódź, Zagań, Poznań and Warszawa who make up the Meccore Quartet bring phenomenal energy to their work. So goes their reputation, and so it was last Thursday (June 9) here in the Alte Post’s Festsaal on the south shore of Lake Starnberg. Energy, […]

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Gloom, Doom from the Arcanto

Tuesday, May 10th, 2016

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, […]

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Mariotti Cheers Up Bologna

Friday, March 25th, 2016

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 25, 2016 BOLOGNA — Two years ago all was bleak in music circles here. Orchestra Mozart had folded. Claudio Abbado died. Teatro Comunale lumbered toward a fiscal guillotine mandated by the government. Now, the sun is back, much of it radiating from the reorganized opera house where Nicola Sani holds […]

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