Musical America Blogs

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 4, 2015 BAMBERG — When the Bamberger Symphoniker replaces its Chefdirigent next year, it could do worse than hiring Constantinos Carydis. The intense but discreet Athenian secured creative and technically superb playing in a Nordic and Impressionist program Nov. 29 here at the Joseph-Keilberth-Saal, confirming skills he has shown in […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: December 11, 2014 MUNICH — Puccini lost even before the curtain went up Nov. 15 on Hans Neuenfels’ conceptual new staging of Manon Lescaut for Bavarian State Opera. Anna Netrebko, its titular star, abandoned the project in quiet disgust, understandably it turned out. Disaster did not follow, but the night and […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 31, 2014 SALZBURG — Alexander Pereira is now gone from the main festival here, and two tenuous summers are in the offing before Markus Hinterhäuser replaces him as Intendant in 2017. His exit, under a cloud, ends a budget tempest but threatens reversals of worthy initiatives he took: lengthening the […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 29, 2014 ERL — Nothing tests funding for the musical arts like Der Ring des Nibelungen. Then again, nothing cements a support base so decisively. Take this Austrian village of 1,452 souls and several hundred brown cows, where the eighth Ring cycle in sixteen years turned smoothly Aug. 1, 2 […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 20, 2014 MUNICH — In a rambling, two-page “personal statement” to Munich Philharmonic subscribers made public today (May 20), Valery Gergiev stressed the role of music as bridge-builder and affirmed his now divisive assumption of the post of Chefdirigent of the orchestra, effective in fall 2015. The statement covers a […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 9, 2014 MUNICH — Not a week goes by here now without media mention of Valery Gergiev. The musical friend of Vladimir Putin and, more to the point, high-profile employee-to-be of the City of Munich inspires comment even in modest suburban newspapers. Many want his alarmingly long contract (2015–20) shredded. […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 1, 2014 MUNICH — In every book on time management, there is a chapter about giving your work to someone else. Delegation, they say, is a virtue: an assistant exercises new authority and the delegator accomplishes other tasks, perhaps in other places. Maybe in another country. Or two. Take Valery […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 10, 2014 MUNICH — Creative exhaustion appears to have arrived for a whimsical, multi-year promotional campaign here. Its subject: the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Its budget and goals: inscrutable. The thing would never have seen the light of day in the U.S., if only for legal reasons, and its existence […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 17, 2013 MUNICH — Spirograph needlemaniac defaces legendary (and conveniently deceased) Brünnhilde. And so on. Bavarian State Opera’s anticipated additions to its portrait gallery went public yesterday, their twenty-one victims — er, honored subjects — being depicted in various media by twenty-one visual artists. Scattered docent notes: • Anja Harteros […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 13, 2013 MUNICH — Next Wednesday (Oct. 16) new portraits go on display in Bavarian State Opera’s lobby. Twenty-one new portraits. Astrid Varnay, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Kurt Moll, Brigitte Fassbaender, Lucia Popp, Edita Gruberová, René Kollo, Hildegard Behrens and Waltraud Meier are among the worthy singing subjects, company troopers all. But […]