Posts Tagged ‘Kritik’

Houston Has No Problem

Tuesday, March 20th, 2018

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 20, 2018 MUNICH — Judging from reports around the country here, the Houston Symphony Orchestra today returns to Texas mission-accomplished. The clarity of its tone colors, the exuberance of its brass section, the articulate luster of its strings — all have been remarked upon during an eleven-day tour to busy […]

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Margaine, Tézier Find Favor

Tuesday, February 27th, 2018

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 27, 2018 MUNICH — Sometimes the revival has the better cast. So it was for La Favorite at Bavarian State Opera on Sunday, when Giacomo Sagripanti, Clémentine Margaine and Ludovic Tézier made more sense of the music than their counterparts in the 2016 production’s first run (a Deutsche Grammophon DVD) […]

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Jansons Turns 75

Friday, January 12th, 2018

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 12, 2018 MUNICH — Against the medical odds, perhaps, Mariss Jansons turns seventy-five on Sunday, still adored by his favorite orchestra. Bavarian Broadcasting marks the occasion with a 44-minute video portrait, Im Zeichen der Musik, or In the Music’s Character, freely watchable. Last evening here at the Gasteig, a subscription […]

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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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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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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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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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Blomstedt’s Lucid Bruckner

Saturday, July 29th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: July 29, 2017 PASSAU — What more heavenly way to mark your 90th birthday than conducting a favorite symphony in four cathedrals on four successive nights, and with an orchestra that adores you? This, at least, was Herbert Blomstedt’s thinking, amenably realized by the Bamberger Symphoniker — in Bamberg’s Dom St […]

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