By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 4, 2015 BAMBERG — When the Bamberger Symphoniker replaces its Chefdirigent next year, it could do worse than hiring Constantinos Carydis. The intense but discreet Athenian secured creative and technically superb playing in a Nordic and Impressionist program Nov. 29 here at the Joseph-Keilberth-Saal, confirming skills he has shown in […]
Read the rest of this article »By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 31, 2013 MUNICH — Young Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen waved his arms heartily this week for Kullervo, leading the Munich Philharmonic at the Gasteig concert hall. It wasn’t enough. Sibelius’s impassioned sequence of tone poems (1892) demands wily control of dynamics and balances, and an intermittent spotlight on half-hidden themes. […]
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark It’s a most improbable New York story: Broadway salutes a theater critic, of all things, by dimming its lights during prime box-office time prior to curtain. How often has that happened? No one would have been more astonished to receive this honor than its recipient, Howard Kissel, theater critic of the New […]
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark Many years ago I was sitting next to the p.r. director of the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall when a cellphone went off as Simon Rattle conducted. When the piece ended I asked him if that happened in Berlin. “Everywhere,” he said sadly. I left for vacation two days after the cellphone brouhaha at the New […]
Read the rest of this article »by Sedgwick Clark Last weekend I attended the opening concerts of the Bard Music Festival. This year’s subject is “Sibelius and His World.” There were the usual fascinating works being heard for the first time in perhaps a century (and possibly never again) and some thought-provoking panel discussions as befitting the academic environs. Musically, Sibelius’s early […]
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