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The Monster (baritone Joshua Jeremiah) from Gregg Kallor's Frankenstein Suite; presented by The Angel's Share; photo by Kevin Condon

New York City October Surprises: Lang on the High Line, Kallor in the Catacombs

By Charles Geyer on 31 October 2018 Arts Industry, Chamber Music, Choral, Classical, Classical Music, Contemporary, Education, Experimental Jazz, La Scena Online, Musical Theatre, Opera, Orchestral, Piano, Popular Music, Scena Arts, Technology, Theatre, Vocal

REVIEW: of works by composers David Lang and Gregg Kallor – The Mile-Long Opera by Lang, performed on the High Line; and sketches from The Frankenstein Suite, plus the monodrama “The Telltale Heart,” by Kallor, performed in the Catacombs of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Some uncanny musical surprises graced unusual locations both above and below New York City street-level during the early part of Halloween month. Here’s a diary retrospective. Going the Extra Mile Beginning at twilight on six consecutive evenings (October 3 through 8; viewed October 7), Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer David Lang and a host of collaborators presented a unique choral…

Viennese Masterpieces on Stage : Mozart meets Beethoven at the Maison symphonique

By Benjamin Goron on 31 October 2018 Classical, Classical Music

By all appearances Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony are sharply contrasting if not utterly dissimilar works. The former, stemming from the Salzburg prodigy’s youthful years, is gracefully elegant in tone and style. Scored for a smaller orchestra, the piece is a wellspring of melodic ideas that often go undeveloped. The latter work, for its part, is a late opus of the German composer, the result of much thought, and soon recognized as a pinnacle in his artistic oeuvre. Far more ambitious in scope, it requires not only an unusually large instrumentation to fully realize its intention,…

The audience playing the part of “The Water” at Festival O18’s Queens of the Night: Dito and Aeneas at the Theatre of Living Arts; photo by Steven Pisano

Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O18: The Whirlwind That Was

By Charles Geyer on 29 October 2018 Baroque and Early, Choral, Classical, Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, La Scena Spotlight, Multimedia, Musical Theatre, Opera, Orchestral, Theatre, Visual Arts

REVIEW: of Opera Philadelphia’s “Festival O18” (September 20-30, 2018) – a new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, composed by Gaetano Donizetti with libretto by Salvadore Cammarano; the world premiere of Sky on Swings, composed by Lembit Beecher with libretto by Hannah Moscovitch; the premiere of Ne quittez pas (a “reimagined” La voix humaine of Francis Poulenc, with a new prologue featuring numerous of the composer’s art songs); the premiere of Glass Handel, an immersive concert experience featuring countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo performing music by George Frideric Handel and Philip Glass; and Queens of the Night: Blythely After Hours, an opera/rock…

Bartok: Concerto, Enescu: Octet (Warner Classics)

By Norman Lebrecht on 7 September 2018 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Classical, Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

The one thing that keeps me from awarding this album the full five stars is that it is upside down. It opens with a perfectly decent performance of Bela Bartok’s first violin concerto by the Norwegian virtuoso Vilde Frang, with the Radio France philharmonic orchestra conducted by Mikko Franck. Frang, who is 32, has been performing since she was ten years old. Everything she does is perfectly lovely and agreeable. The first Bartok concerto, a youthful effusion of innocent love, is not going to change our lives. The octet, on the other hand, might. George Enescu was one of the great…

Sebastian Catana as Rigoletto; Berkshire Opera Festival; photo by Ken Howard

All Jesting Aside – the Berkshire Opera Festival’s Thrilling Rigoletto

By Charles Geyer on 30 August 2018 Classical, Concert Reviews, La Scena Online, La Scena Spotlight, Musical Theatre, Opera, Orchestral, Theatre, Vocal

REVIEW: of the Berkshire Opera Festival production of Giuseppe’s Verdi’s Rigoletto (August 25 at 1 p.m.; August 28 at 7:30 p.m. and August 31 at 7:30 p.m., at the Colonial Theatre, Pittsfield, Massachusetts). Sex, power, seduction, revenge, and a dazzling lightning storm. Verdi’s gutsy 1851 operatic melodrama, Rigoletto, gets a fascinating, stylish, and unflinchingly close study in the Berkshire Opera Festival’s new production, running through August 31 at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Massachusetts (viewed here at the August 25 opening). Under director Jonathon Loy (who is also the festival’s co-founder), Verdi’s tale of a deformed court jester who seeks…

Michael Hewitt as Lieutenant Horstmayer and Arnold Livingston Geis as Nikolaus Sprink in The Glimmerglass Festival's 2018 production of Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell's "Silent Night." Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival

Through the Glimmerglass, 2018 – Reflections of a Turbulent Century

By Charles Geyer on 24 August 2018 Art Song, Choral, Classical, Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Dance, Education, Folk, La Scena Online, La Scena Spotlight, Musical Theatre, Opera, Orchestral, Romantic

PROFILE/REVIEW: of the 2018 Glimmerglass Festival Season: Silent Night by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell; West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim; Cunning Little Vixen by Leoš Janáček; and The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini and Cesare Sterbini. “It’s remarkable how many important things happened in 1918,” observes Glimmerglass Festival artistic and managing director Francesca Zambello, speaking at a recent pre-show audience address in Cooperstown. “The end of World War I. The birth of Leonard Bernstein. And the premiere of this piece” – this last a reference to Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, which was…

Shostakovich: Symphonies 4 and 11 (Deutsche Grammophon)

By Norman Lebrecht on 24 August 2018 CD and Book Reviews, Classical, Classical Music, La Scena Online, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

Two problematic symphonies by a tortured composer are despatched by the Boston Symphony and its Latvian conductor with near-nonchalance. The 4th, withheld by the composer for quarter of a century after Stalin’s attack on Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, is ultra-Mahlerian in its orchestration and ironies and utterly daring in its refusal to toe the party line of relentless positivism. The key to the composer’s intentions eludes many conductors. Andris Nelsons adopts a kind of Baltic neutrality in downplaying the score’s emotional extremes in the hope he won’t get mauled by the Russian bear. It’s a fine performance, lacking only the…

Mozart & Salieri Are at It Again, at dell’Arte Opera Ensemble’s Festival 2018

By Charles Geyer on 9 August 2018 Art Song, Choral, Classical, Classical Music, Interviews, La Scena Online, La Scena Spotlight, Musical Theatre, Opera, Orchestral, Strings, Theatre, Vocal

PREVIEW: of the 2018 dell’Arte Opera Ensemble Summer Festival Season, “Mozart & Salieri,” at New York City’s LaMaMa (66 East 4th Street), August 11 through 26; and INTERVIEWS: with company founder and artistic director, maestro Chris Fecteau, and dell’Arte 2018 creative team members Brittany Goodwin and Catherine O’Shaughnessy. This company is ready to rumble. Call it the Thrilla from Vienna: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, that most bruited matchup of 18th Century musical titans, is slated for a redux this month – this time in 21st Century New York, courtesy of the dell’Arte Opera Ensemble. Grab a ringside seat.…

Two emerging musicians honoured with the 2018 Michael Measures Prizes

By Newswire on 25 July 2018 Arts Industry, Classical, Newswire

Toronto, July 25, 2018 – The Canada Council for the Arts, in collaboration with NYO Canada (National Youth Orchestra), is pleased to announce this year’s winners of the Michael Measures Prizes, which recognize promising young Canadian classical music performers. This year’s Michael Measures first prize of $25,000 goes to Martin Mangrum, of Montréal, who plays the French horn. Martin is a performance student at the Colburn School Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. “I am honored and thrilled to receive the Canada Council for the Arts – Michael Measures Prize 2018.” -Martin Mangrum “The prize money will, of course, be…

Le Chimera Project Winterreise at domaine forget : A Winter journey in Summer

By Adrian Rodriguez on 23 July 2018 Art Song, Chamber Music, Classical, Concert Reviews, Vocal, World Music

A warm summer evening at Domain Forget provided the setting for the premiere of Canadian baritone Phillippe Sly’s latest musical venture: Schubert’s Winterreise (A Winter Journey) Klezmer version. The show also marked the debut of his newly formed band “Le Chimera Project” featuring Karine Gordon (trombone), Jonathan Millette (violin) Samuel Carrier (accordion), Félix de l’Étoile (clarinet and bass clarinet) and Roy Rallo (staging). The band was formed about two years ago. Sly was inspired after hearing Samuel Carrier and Félix de l’Étoile perform one piece from Winterreise in an informal setting. He was also fascinated by the theme of an…

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