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. […]
Read the rest of this article »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 […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 15, 2016 SALZBURG — There is a pleasure in arriving in Salzburg with snow on the ground. Or maybe the word is reassurance: the city will be real, not a theme park; the people mostly locals, despite the hollowing out of property ownership here; the profile quiet, even intimate, affording […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 16, 2015 MUNICH — Ivo Pogorelich wants to continue to play. He has recital programs planned out till 2020. He keeps several concertos in his repertory, the Chopin F-Minor and Prokofiev Third performed here persuasively in recent seasons. He is “pleased,” he writes, about a new box of his old […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 24, 2014 MUNICH — It took him 39 years, but Maurizio Pollini has now completed his recorded survey of Beethoven sonatas here in the Herkulessaal, where the project began. The final sessions, for the Opp. 31 and 49 pieces, were held in June this year, and the resulting CD set […]
Read the rest of this article »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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