(Photo: © SF/Marco Borrelli) It is always good when a song recital does not include the usual suspects of the Lieder repertoire (you know who they are). This is nothing against “Die schöne Müllerin” or “Dichterliebe.” However, Asmik Grigorian and Lukas Geniušas’s recital was exciting because it featured Rachmaninoff songs, along with some small pieces by Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov for {…}
(Photo credit: Salzburg Festiva)l Apple Music Classical has partnered with the Salzburg Festival. Listeners are offered exclusive audio recordings and playlists from the Salzburg Festival, both past and present. Spatial Audio’s remastering a number of iconic recordings from past Festivals, with the 2009 recital from Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire featured. Festival officials commented in a press release that,”The Salzburg {…}
Photo credit: SF Bernd Uhlig In one of his literary excursions, the great Portuguese author Eça de Queiroz reviewed the premiere of Verdi’s “Macbeth” in Lisbon. He did not see the original Italian version of the opera, but the revised French one and quite likely with the same cast as in Paris. Eça insisted that Verdi was the greatest living {…}
(Credit: © SF/Marco Borrelli) The Salzburg Festival has announced that Hankyeol Yoon is the 2023 winner of the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award. This is the 11th time that the award has been presented and it comes with a 15,000 euro prize. Yoon will also get the opportunity to conduct a Festival concert with the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra {…}
Photo credit: © SF/Marco Borrell It might be unfair to name Purcell as the composer of “The Indian Queen.” The opera, left unfinished, has been restored from the composer’s fragments mostly through the efforts of Teodor Currentzis and Peter Sellars. They managed to give some theatrical shape to the arias and added music from elsewhere in Purcell’s corpus that made {…}
Photo credit: SF/Marco Borell This was a fancy recital: Renée Fleming and Evgeny Kissin. The audience was also the “who’s who” of classical music. Just behind me, Cecilia Bartoli is seated with her mother, the emerita Silvana Bazzoni. Not far away, Jeanine De Bique and Sabine Devieilhe. Other non-operatic essential names pop all from the balconies. They all came to {…}
(Credit: Photo © SF/Bernd Uhlig) When Cecilia Bartoli enters the stage, all eyes are on her. The leading headliner in Salzburg has made herself a living legend. I know many music-lovers, of all ages, who have fallen in love with opera first and foremost because of Cecilia. Such talent has made legions of fans—myself included— to feel entitled to use {…}
(Photo Credit: SF/Matthias Horn) “Le Nozze di Figaro” in Salzburg is always a big challenge; it is Mozart’s city. The festival public is not conservative per se, but it does have high standards for Mozart, and will not willingly countenance simplistic approaches to the opera that would diminish Mozart and Da Ponte’s powerful message in name of some moralism. But {…}
(Photo: © SF/Marco Borrelli) If I had to define the Salzburg Festival in one word, it would be “tradition.” This has both good and bad implications. Revering tradition is an active attempt to make the past alive and present. The concertgoers sport their Dirndl and Lederhosen, traditional Tirol formal wear, with much pride, as they should. The claims of tradition, however, {…}
The Salzburg Festival has announced a conductor change for its production of Verdi’s “Macbeth.” In a press release the festival said, “With great regret, Franz Welser-Most must withdraw from conducting Macbeth due to acute orthopedic issues which require him to undergo medical treatment. However, he remains confident that he will be able to conduct his concerts at the Festival with {…}
The Salzburg Festival has announced the three finalists for the Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award 2023. Chaired by Manfred Honeck, Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the jury chose eight candidates (two female, six male) in February as semi-finalists for the eleventh edition of the renowned competition, which takes place every two years. This year, there were 323 {…}