Am I repeating myself? Time heals, it is often said. But I cannot imagine how much time the Ukrainian people, as well as many Russians, will need to heal the wounds inflicted by the vile, criminal actions and decisions of one regime. But time is also sobering. And after this year, it still hurts a lot, but I’m not afraid {…}
Photo: Tristan Cook On Feb. 10, 2023, Chamber Music Society (CMS) of Lincoln Center presented the final program in this year’s WinterFest. Titled “The Magic of Schubert,” the festival celebrates the composer’s famous and lesser-known works, which opened on Jan. 22 with their “Into Eternity” program. This latest program, “From Song,” {…}
Credit: Priamo Tolu The Sardinian landscape is dotted with archeological monuments, burial sites, towers, and dwellings built by the various peoples that long ago settled the island. The Beakers, Nuraghe, Phoenicians, and Romans, to name but a few, have all left their mark. The island’s museums boast impressive collections of artifacts fashioned in metal, glass, stone, and clay that reflect {…}
“These Distances Between Us” – the album’s title, drawn from Jessica Rudman and Aiden Feltkamp’s “The Flight,” reads like a motto to its melancholy set of 21st-century lieder and their description of both solitude and emotional, if not spiritual, longing for wholeness and love. As such, it is a compelling reverberation of the Covid-era zeitgeist that seamlessly integrates Naxos’ catalog {…}
In this installment of Off the Beaten Track, we look at “False We Hope” an experimental and innovative art song album that takes a new and jarring approach to the genre. Ellis Ludwig-Leone’s debut album explores themes of hope, loss, connection, and isolation. It features the Grammy-winning Attacca Quartet and soprano Eliza Bagg, with Ludwig-Leone on piano and synthesizer. Ludwig-Leone’s {…}
For the initiated “L’Amico Fritz” is far more than a somewhat obscure successor to the one-hit wonder of “Cavalleria Rusticana” which, in 1890, had famously crowned Mascagni before he was King (to paraphrase his own words). It rather stands as a vividly orchestrated bucolic clad in the musical jargon of the giovane scuola with its chromatic shifts and tonal ambiguity {…}
This is for the performance on Feb. 11, 2023. The posters are all over Paris: Gluck’s “Orphée et Eurydice” is premiering at Thêatre l’Athénée. The announcement is somewhat tempered, however, by the ominous qualifier: ‘freely adapted by Othman Louati.’ Even the most enthusiastic contemporary operagoer must raise their eyebrows when the words ‘freely adapted’ appear after Gluck’s name. The ‘freely’ {…}
Photo : Jennifer Taylor Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall was filled with the wondrous sounds of a talented group of young artists in recital, each of whom had taken part in the 2023 SongStudio. The concert was the culmination of a weeklong series of workshops and masterclasses taught by renowned vocalists Golda Schultz, Hartmut Höll (pianist), and Jamie Barton. Under the {…}
(Photo: Michele Crosera) Premiered in Vienna in 1792, Domenico Cimarosa’s “Il Matrimonio Segreto” proved to be one of the century’s most successful operas, quickly establishing itself across Europe with performances in Milan, London, Barcelona, and Lisbon. In fact, such was its initial success, that not even Mozart, with whom Cimarosa is often compared, was able to create an opera that {…}