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 […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 16, 2013 MUNICH — Some festivals strive to be on your radar twelve months of the year, with unending publicity. Others revel in a few days. Take the annual Brahms Days in tranquil Tutzing, south of here on Lake Starnberg. Its scale is intimate, its setting gemütlich. Its focus — […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 2, 2013 MUNICH — A short walk separates two of this city’s four opera houses: the Cuvilliés Theater, where Mozart conducted Idomeneo, and the National Theater, where Hans von Bülow led the first Tristan und Isolde. Ensconced half way stands the Court Church of All Saints, an 1837 neo-Romanesque, quasi-Byzantine […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 8, 2012 MUNICH — Johannes Brahms came here in 1870, catching the completed half of Wagner’s Ring and hobnobbing with colleagues, Liszt among them. He basked in new celebrity, his German Requiem having appeared in print a year earlier. The visit ended with a few days’ repose at Lake Würm, […]
Read the rest of this article »
