Posts Tagged ‘Schubert’

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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Muti Crowns Charles X

Thursday, January 14th, 2016

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 14, 2016 MUNICH — Framed by an andante Kyrie and a beguiling instrumental Communion marked grave, Cherubini’s 1825 Coronation Mass for Charles X is one handsome piece of music. No, its movements are not exactly symphonic. They sound bonded to the flow of the service, so much so that unset […]

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Mariotti North of the Alps

Sunday, April 26th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 26, 2015 MUNICH — He will always be attached to Rossini, but Michele Mariotti, 36, can probe and illuminate a vast repertory besides. This much was evident March 23 in a refreshing return engagement with the Münchner Symphoniker. The Pesaro-born maestro’s podium technique and constructive manner recall another Rossinian, the […]

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Salzburg Coda

Friday, October 31st, 2014

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 […]

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Arcanto: One Piece at a Time

Friday, January 31st, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 31, 2014 MUNICH — The 11-year-old Arcanto Quartet, heard here last Friday (Jan. 24), is everything a chamber group shouldn’t be for promotional purposes. There are no family ties. Their instruments don’t match. They share no doctrine about period practice. They don’t grind out whole cycles of anyone’s music. Not […]

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Volodos the German Romantic

Sunday, December 22nd, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: December 22, 2013 MUNICH — Somewhere between the patent introspection of his new Mompou CD* and the tags of his early Stateside career — “big bravura pianist,” “new Horowitz” — lies an accurate description of Arcadi Volodos. It may simply be this: German Romantic, as in Schumann and Brahms, with impressionist […]

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Liederabend with Breslik

Tuesday, July 9th, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: July 9, 2013 MUNICH — With the brightness of his voice working against him at every turn, Pavol Breslik blazed and sweated his way through Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin last Friday (July 5) here at the Prinz-Regenten-Theater. By the end, drowned in Wilhelm Müller’s creek, he had somehow won over the […]

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Muti Taps the Liturgy

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 8, 2013 RAVENNA — Sacred music has lent gravitas to Riccardo Muti’s career since the 1960s. Settings of the Ordinary and the burial service by Bach, Mozart, Cherubini, Schubert, Berlioz, Brahms and Verdi have drawn his attention and received, more often than not, a disciplined performance. No, this is not […]

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To Thine Own Self Be True

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

by Edna Landau  To ask a question, please write Ask Edna. This column was prepared with the assistance of Neale Perl, President of the Washington Performing Arts Society, and Ruth Felt, President of San Francisco Performances. Both are valued longtime colleagues, to whom I am very grateful. Dear Edna: I am a pianist and have […]

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