By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 22, 2015 MUNICH — At five o’clock last Sunday afternoon, Munich time, three Mariinsky Orchestras began to play. Two of them launched into Pikovaya dama and Die Zauberflöte at the Mariinsky complex in St Petersburg. The third, here at the Gasteig, opened the accompaniment to a witty Shchedrin vocalise. Such […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 25, 2015 MUNICH — 2014–15 has been a rough transitional season for the Munich Philharmonic. Lorin Maazel’s sudden resignation a year ago forced its managers into much recasting, and some feeble programs. Then, midseason, came worse news. An irksome pact between Munich’s Bürgermeister Dieter Reiter and Bavaria’s Minister-Präsident Horst Seehofer […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 6, 2015 MUNICH — Julian Rachlin’s ebullient, craggy, not so lyrical reading of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto held listeners in rapt attention Feb. 17 here at the Gasteig. His tone, rich and glowing, illuminated this view of the essentially blissful score (1878), as did the occasional wabi-sabi rasp or squeal, and […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 14, 2015 MUNICH — After four straight days on the road, the Russian National Orchestra looked decidedly bushed for its Jan. 26 MünchenMusik concert at the Gasteig: not the smartest way to play this demanding city. The all-Tchaikovsky program emerged tired-sounding, also somewhat stale interpretively, despite conductor Mikhail Pletnev’s manifest […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: December 31, 2014 MUNICH — Lëtzebuerg Stad, a.k.a. Luxembourg-Ville, population 100,000, holds a spiffier position these days in the musical firmament. Its orchestra has graduated from the legendary but somewhat seedy aegis of Radio Luxembourg — once a commercial thorn in the national broadcasting sides of France and Britain — and […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: December 11, 2014 MUNICH — Could leaders here finally be moving ahead with a sorely needed new concert hall? Plans and sketches released this morning indicate progress on what has been an excruciatingly slow drive to supplement, or really supplant, the small Herkulessaal and hideous Gasteig venues. As presented by chief […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 17, 2014 MUNICH — Something has happened to Moscow’s Bolshoi Orchestra. Perhaps steady funding? It has lost its old woolly sound, judging from an April 9 Bell’Arte tour stop here at the Gasteig, and found another: a gleaming, uniformly virtuosic persona that commands attention. Vassily Sinaisky, overseer of this transformation, […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: April 11, 2014 MUNICH — Watching Manfred Honeck lead the Munich Philharmonic in Strauss last Sunday (April 6), a question came to mind. Why isn’t this the man replacing Lorin Maazel next year? With refreshing conviction and broad arm gestures à la Carlos Kleiber, Honeck drew polished performances from the orchestra […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 27, 2014 MUNICH — In eight days in May 2004, as a kind of audition for the post of principal conductor, Valery Gergiev drove the London Symphony Orchestra brilliantly, if roughly, through recorded concerts of all of Prokofiev’s symphonies. Acclaim ensued, he got the job, and two years later the […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 6, 2013 MUNICH — The 1909 candy-box essays by Schönberg and Webern, Fünf Orchesterstücke and Sechs Stücke, can pass by gratuitously in uncommitted hands. Not so yesterday (Oct. 5) in a Munich Philharmonic program pairing them with Beethoven concertos. Norwegian conductor Eivind Gullberg Jensen, calm and assured, drew incisive, expressive […]
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