Archive for the ‘Munich Times’ Category

Gärtnerplatztheater Reopens

Saturday, November 4th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 4, 2017 MUNICH — With a shrill, pretty Hanna, a shriller, pretty Valencienne, a Camille of uneven tone, but a tight, fluent chorus and much charming orchestral work, Die lustige Witwe ended six years of darkness at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz Oct. 19. This city’s second opera company, of the […]

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Concert Hall Design Chosen

Friday, October 27th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 27, 2017 MUNICH — Though it will be built on the wrong side of the wrong train station, Munich’s much-debated, much-delayed new concert hall crept toward reality today with the announcement of a winning design. Bregenz-based Cukrowicz Nachbaur Architekten secured first place in the competition for the venue, now dubbed […]

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Magelone-Romanzen on Disc

Monday, October 16th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 16, 2017 MUNICH — Sony has released a remarkable recording of Brahms’s Magelone-Romanzen, Op. 33, complete with Zwischentexte prepared by German author Martin Walser. Christian Gerhaher sings the fifteen songs and recites two of the other three poems (the 1st, 16th and 17th) from Ludwig Tieck’s 1797 narrative not set […]

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Two Quartets for Mendelssohn

Monday, October 16th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 16, 2017 GRÜNWALD — In mixing-bowl terms, Berlin’s Armida Quartett and Paris’s Quatuor Modigliani combined rather than blended in a standing-room-only concert Oct. 11 here at the August Everding Saal. That is as required for some recipes, possibly including Mendelssohn’s E-flat String Octet (1825), which received a convulsive, unnuanced performance […]

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Bruckner’s First, Twice

Sunday, September 24th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 24, 2017 MUNICH — He had to abandon his Munich Philharmonic cycle, a cosmic Fifth being one of its relics, but Christian Thielemann’s Dresden cycle* of the numbered Bruckner symphonies has progressed smoothly to near completion, and with video. Oddly parts of it have been filmed here at the Gasteig […]

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Carmen Dives In at Bregenz

Saturday, September 23rd, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 23, 2017 BREGENZ — Post is under revision. Photos © Bregenzer Festspiele Related posts: Nitrates In the Canapés Harteros Warms to Tosca Nézet-Séguin: Hit, Miss On Wenlock Edge with MPhil Wagner, Duke of Erl

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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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Netrebko, Barcellona in Aida

Wednesday, August 30th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 30, 2017 SALZBURG — Qualitative upticks at the main festival here have heralded Markus Hinterhäuser’s installment as Intendant after a shaky two-summer void. The priority, it appears, is music itself over theater or opera, as might be expected from a boss who is also a professional pianist. Hinterhäuser is retaining […]

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Poulenc DVD Back On Market

Friday, August 18th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 18, 2017 MUNICH — BelAir Classiques and Mezzo TV have succeeded in getting a ban overturned on their sale and airing, respectively, of a 2010 filmed staging of Dialogues des Carmélites made here at Bavarian State Opera. The ban, or arrêt, had been imposed in 2015 by the Cour d’appel […]

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Pintscher Conducts New Music

Saturday, July 29th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: July 29, 2017 MUNICH — Not every week does the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra devote a whole program to music written since 2000. Guest conductor Matthias Pintscher’s concert July 7 in the Herkulessaal proved an exception. It began spatially, extravagantly, with his own fantasy With Lilies White (2002); progressed to a […]

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