In Brief: R.I.P Google Reader Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)


From the Wiener Festwochen, Till Fellner plays music by Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Schumann. [Österreichischer Rundfunk]

A recital by the excellent pianist Alexander

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Dip Your Ears, No. 144 (Papa Järvi's Raff)

J.J.Raff, Symphony No.2, Shakespeare Preludes
N.Järvi / Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Chandos


Rheinbergerish-Brahmsean-LizstesqueFrom his bold First Symphony (“To the Fatherland”) to his four “Seasons” Symphonies (Nos. 8-11), Joseph Joachim Raff’s symphonic output is as important as it is ignored. Raff—who taught Liszt orchestration—combines dark Brahmsean ardor, Rheinbergerish touches,

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'For a long time, I went to bed early'

This year is also the centenary of the publication of Du côté de chez Swann, the first volume of Marcel Proust's landmark roman-fleuve À la recherche du temps perdu. In June 1913 Proust was correcting the proofs, making significant changes, and the book would finally appear that November. The following year, the love of Proust's life, his one-time taxi driver and then secretary, Alfred

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Picasso in Oslo

Before Anders Breivik perpetrated his terrorist attack on the island of Utøya in 2011, he set off a bomb near a building in Oslo that housed the offices of the ministries of justice and police. Two of those buildings are likely to be demolished because of the damage to the structure. As Jean-Jacques Larrochelle reports (A Oslo, Picasso au secours d'un bâtiment ministériel, June 26) for Le Monde,

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À mon chevet: The First Four Notes

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.


Of course, only the perceiving subject could know whether their judgment is concept free and therefore aesthetically valid, and Kant admits that the perceiving subject is an unreliable witness, often unaware that a perception of beauty is based on a concept. That makes it difficult to tell

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Summer Reading: French Edition

Andrus Kivirähk, L'Homme qui savait la
langue des serpents (Attila, 2013)
Here is a selection of some French beach reads (Les coups de coeur du "Monde des livres" pour l'été, June 21) recommended by Le Monde (my translation):
Andrus Kivirähk, L'Homme qui savait la langue des serpents (Mees, kes teadis ussisõnu), trans. Jean-Pierre Minaudier, Attila, 422 pp., 23 €.

In this novel by Andrus

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Reviewed, Not Necessarily Recommended: Peter and the Wolf at Lake Wobegon

PETERING The Tomten and the Fox: New Classical Music for Children • Mississippi Gulf Coast Suite, Journey for Two Violins, String Quartet for Pet Rabbit, The Tomten and the Fox • Norene Smith, Mark Petering, Charles Sena (narrators); Stephen Colburn, cond; Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra New Music Ensemble • Zebrina Records ZR1075 (50:30)



M.Petering , The Tomten and the Fox et al.,
N.Smith,

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In Brief: At the Lake Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)


Listen to the concert of the three prize-winners at the Concours Musical International de Montréal for violin: Marc Bouchkov (Belgium), Stephen Waarts (USA), and Zeyu

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The Currentzis Dances II & Ravel’s Wonderful Rubbish

Teodor Currentzis’ look is half Emo, half Marilyn Manson. It’s rather dreadful, but I suppose anything to differentiate oneself from the crowd will do and serves a purpose. And if rebel one must, it is surely better to rebel with black carrot pants and a white dinner jacket and greasy side-shaved hair than, say, youthful swastikas. From a PR point of view, at least. (Also with the difference that

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Dip Your Ears, No. 143 (Jansons' Lutosławski & Friends)

Lutosławski, Szymanowski, A.Tchaikovsky , Cto. for Orchestra, Sy.#3, Sy.#4
M.Jansons / BRSO
Rafał Bartmiński (tenor), Andreas Röhn (violin), Nimrod Guez (viola)
BR Klassik

Lutosławski TouchstoneLutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra is of a rare, invigorating quality: here pounding, there lyrical, then flitting like reveling grasshoppers. Success depends on painstaking precision, fitting each

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NSO Ends Season with a Modern Bang

W. Lutosławski, Concerto for Orchestra (inter alia), Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, W. Lutosławski (EMI)
The regular season of the National Symphony Orchestra came to a memorable close last night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. Before heading off for summer shits and giggles at Wolf Trap, the ensemble brought back Witold Lutosławski's virtuosic Concerto for Orchestra, not heard

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Second Opinion: NSO with Tough MacMillan Nuts, Lutosławski Excitement

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from The Kennedy Center.




Thursday night, at the Kennedy Center,the National Symphony Orchestra welcomed Polish conductor Krzysztof Urbanski in a program of Edvard Grieg, James MacMillan, and Witold Lutosławski.

Grieg’s Suite No.1 from Peer Gynt made for a nice curtain raiser and warm-up piece. It also revealed the style of the very young

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Flying Dutchman Sketches & Doodles

Jotted down during Minkowski's performance at the Vienna Konzerthaus. (Not creatures of boredom.)

The Gal



The Vision

The Long Talk

The Meeting

The Courtship

The Promise

The End

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Minkowski's Sons of Meyerbeer: Wagner & Dietsch

A Double Bill of Flying Dutchmen
While in Vienna, do as the Viennese and attend concerts. At least that’s the cliché about the allegedly culture-loving town, and I’m not above it. After tremendous Verdi at the Konzerthaus (Requiem, Noseda), I was in for another anniversary-boy in the same venue. This time Wagner, but with a two-hour twist. When Wagner wrote the libretto for his Flying Dutchman,

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Briefly Noted: MacMillan Piano Concerto

J. MacMillan, Piano Concerto No. 2, W. Marshall, BBC Philharmonic, J. MacMillan (Chandos, 2006)
Krzysztof Urbanski is conducting quite a program with the National Symphony Orchestra tonight, combining Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, op. 46, and Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra. In between will be Jean-Yves Thibaudet playing a piano concerto, either the new third piano concerto by Scottish

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'Sostegno e gloria d'umanità': Arts and Wine

British art historian Norman Rosenthal has a theory about Dionysian references in the history of art. Valérie Duponchelle spoke to him about it for an article (Sir Norman Rosenthal : «De Dionysos à Picasso», June 19) for Le Figaro (my translation):
LE FIGARO. - Art and wine, is it a long, loving marriage?
Seated in my library, I see all my art history books which are filled with endless

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Montserrat on Montserrat

Llibre Vermell de Montserrat, M. Figueras, Hespèrion XX (inter alii), J. Savall
(re-released on October 25, 2010)
Virgin 628658 2 1 | 59'18"
Hard as it is to believe, this fine little disc was recorded 35 years ago, in the heyday of the early music movement. In it Jordi Savall offers alternately mysterious and earthy performances of the ten pieces notated in the Llibre vermell, a 14th-century

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NOI's Strauss

Charles T. Downey, National Orchestral Institute’s presentation of young musicians displays talent, haste
Washington Post, June 17, 2013


R. Strauss, Tone Poems, Philadelphia Orchestra, W. Sawallisch
The best way to learn is to do. That is the goal of the National Orchestral Institute, the summer apprenticeship program for young classical musicians at the University of Maryland. Its National

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Ionarts-at-Large: AkAMus Rocks Corelli

In the fourth concert of their little mini-residency in Munich’s Prinzregenten Theater, the Academy for Ancient Music Berlin (AkAMus) appeared before a very decent crowd last Saturday. Not like on their last outing, where the concert venue, a smaller scaled Bayreuth replica, was apparently two thirds empty. It’s heartening, that the rather un-adventurous Munich crowd cared enough about one of

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In Brief: Dear Old Dad Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)





From the Salle Pleyel, watch Vasily Petrenko lead the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in Shostakovich's fourth symphony, plus Tchaikovsky's violin concerto

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Dip Your Ears, No. 142 (Modern Piano Préludes)

Various Composers, Piano Préludes from the 20th and 21st Century
Ulrike Fendel
Gramola

Irresistible Unknowns
Irresistible unknowns: I know as much about Ulrike Fendel as this disc’s liner notes tell me. Nor do I know if it is her performance prowess, to any significant degree, or just the ingenious assembly of pieces that makes this release work. But it is an increasingly enthralling

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Ionarts-at-Large: Grazioso Indeed! Nelsons with the BRSO

Andris Nelsons may have signed on in Boston as the new MD—and Mariss Jansons may have renewed his contract with the BRSO through 2016, but the courtship between the orchestra and Nelsons, the Jansons protégé, continues right on. Only the consummation has been postponed. (Aside: in this day and age, no maestro is expected to be monogamous… going steady with two, even three orchestral bodies a

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Musical Evocations at the Kennedy Center

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from The Kennedy Center.



This Thursday night, French influence was everywhere with the National Symphony Orchestra under British guest conductor Matthew Halls at the Kennedy Center. First there was Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, a recollection of 18th-century French music through the gauze of Impressionism, next, Henri Dutilleux’s Tout

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Briefly Noted: Hamelin's Haydn

Haydn, Keyboard Concertos 3/4/11, M.-A. Hamelin, Les Violons du Roy, B. Labadie
(released on April 9, 2013)
Hyperion CDA67925 | 61'44"


Haydn, Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 3, M.-A. Hamelin (2012)Marc-André Hamelin plays Haydn on a Steinway, unapologetically and beautifully. We have admired the Canadian pianist's immaculate, sleek, ornately decorated Haydn sonatas in concert, at fine recitals in 2011

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Picasso Studio Possibly for Sale Soon

If you have always wanted to visit the Grenier des Grands-Augustins, go soon. It is the attic floor of the Hôtel de Savoie (7, rue des Grands-Augustins) in the VIe arrondissment of Paris, a space that figures in the Balzac short story Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu (in English, The Unknown Masterpiece), was the residence of actor and director Jean-Louis Barrault, and is where Picasso painted Guernica

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Curse of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées

Does something about the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris encourage outrageous behavior in its audiences? The theater opened in 1913, 100 years ago, and quickly hosted the premiere of Debussy's Jeux and The Rite of Spring. The infamous riot that greeted the latter's first performance is only one of several controversial events that have happened in the theater. Pierre Gervasoni takes a look

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Lutosławski's 'Trois poèmes d'Henri Michaux'

Charles T. Downey, At Strathmore, National Philharmonic’s Lutoslawski benefits from lacking Orff
Washington Post, June 11, 2013


Orff, Carmina Burana, G. Wand
The National Philharmonic marked the 100th anniversary of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski’s birth by giving what was billed as the local premiere of one of his landmark works, “Trois poèmes d’Henri Michaux,” on Sunday at Strathmore.

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New Opera about Muhammad Ali

Charles T. Downey, The Washington National Opera’s ‘Approaching Ali’
Washington Post, June 10, 2013


D. Miller, The Tao of
Muhammad Ali
Little is more exciting than the chance to hear a new opera. There before you is an unknown libretto, characters and plot unfolding, and unheard music flowing into your ears for the first time without anyone’s impressions or experience of the work to bias your

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In Brief: It's Summer Vacation Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)





Pianist Elisso Virsaladze, cellist Natalia Gutman, violinists Ingolf Turban and Maria Kagan, and violist Bodar Zhvania perform a concert of chamber music by

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Augustin Hadelich with the NSO

Flying Solo (Bartók, Paganini), A. Hadelich (2009)
In the last few years, pops concerts and other activities have made the last month of the National Symphony Orchestra's season seem cut short or non-existent. This year, happily, the Kennedy Center Concert Hall has a series of concerts, with some satisfying repertoire, that runs through most of the month of June. The latest one, heard on Friday

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Dip Your Ears, No. 141 (Geordie Corelli)

A.Corelli, 12 Violin Sonatas Op.5
The Avison Ensemble
Pavlo Beznosiuk (leader)
Linn 2 SACDs


Fiercely Baroque “You request Corelli?”, my former boss at the radio station asked me with some disbelief over white sausage breakfast, eyeing this SACD release with the dozen Opus 5 Violin Sonatas sitting next to me. Yes, I do. And I was right on with this one! These are terrific performances by

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Ballet Across America 2: 'Les Patineurs'

The second part of the Kennedy Center's Ballet Across America festival (see Part 1) had the choreography that really caught my eye, Frederick Ashton's classic Les Patineurs. Overall it was likely the high point of the week because of the combination of Ashton's skating ballet, made for Sadler's Wells in 1937, with a Philip Glass choreography, Wunderland, and more Balanchine, The Four Temperaments

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Opera on DVD: Branagh's 'Magic Flute'

Mozart, The Magic Flute, J. Kaiser, A. Carson, R. Pape, L. Petrova (film directed by K. Branagh), Chamber Orchestra of Europe, J. Conlon
(released on June 11, 2013)
Idéale Audience REVA1047 | 134'
Attentive readers may recall me mentioning a new film version of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, directed by Kenneth Branagh, back in 2006 when it was first seen in limited release (in Canada, France, and a

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Ionarts-at-Large: Noseda's Stereofantastic Verdi-Vienna Requiem

Outgrowing its inaugural home of Munich, the classical music recording industry fair “Classical:NEXT” took place in Vienna this year… as good an excuse to travel east to the Austrian capital as there is. Once there, however, it was a decision between attending the opening ceremony with a chat by Daniel Hope or a Verdi Requiem in the Konzerthaus, featuring the Teatro Regio Torino Orchestra in its

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“In Music I’m a Lot More Courageous”

An Interview with Anna Zassimova


An Authority on Catoire
I’m sitting in the middle of sugary-charming Salzburg, running from concert to concert, with scarcely time to change shirts between. Christian Thielemann conducts Die Frau ohne Schatten left of the Salzach river. On its right a complete cycle of Shostakovich’s string quartets with Mandelring String Quartet takes place in the Mozarteum.

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Ballet Across America 1

What if you could take a cross-country tour to get a snapshot of what smaller ballet companies are presenting across the United States? That is the goal of the Kennedy Center's Ballet Across America festival, a cross-section of regional ballet from around the country, now in its third installment after previous incarnations in 2008 and 2010. The most recent work on the first set of three ballets,

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Briefly Noted: The Lord Said to My Lord

Handel / Vivaldi, Dixit Dominus, L. Crowe, La Nuova Musica, D. Bates
(released on April 9, 2013)
HMU 807587 | 66'38"
This setting of Dixit Dominus -- Psalm 109, in the Divine Office the first psalm at solemn Vespers on Sunday -- is the third known to have been composed by Antonio Vivaldi. It was discovered in Dresden only in 2005, because the work had long been wrongly attributed to Baldassare

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Briefly Noted: Lera Auerbach's Celloquy

L. Auerbach, 24 Preludes for Cello and Piano / Cello Sonata / Postlude, A. Aznavoorian, L. Auerbach
(released on February 5, 2013)
CDR 90000 137 | 75'12"
Lera Auerbach has been one of the composers whose music I most want to hear since her first cello sonata came to my ears (the one for cello and piano, not the one for solo cello), on a recital by David Finckel and Wu Han, for whom it was

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In Brief: Class of 2013 Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to online audio, online video, and other good things in Blogville and Beyond. (After clicking to an audio or video stream, press the "Play" button to start the broadcast.)


From the Opéra Comique in Paris, listen to a performance of Cendrillon, a 1904 chamber opera by Pauline Viardot, for seven voices and piano. [France Musique]

Listen to

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Dip Your Ears, No. 140 (Bacewicz and the Cello)

G.Bacewicz, Cello Concertos
Sinfonia Iuventus Orchestra /
DUX

From Lutosławski, Górecki, Panufnik, Penderecki, and Tansman—the five better-known Polish 20th Century composers—one important name missing: Grażyna Bacewicz, who successfully escaped style-classification but also escaped lasting fame. Her String Quartets and Violin Concertos are the go-to works, but the Cello Concertos are “

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Second Opinion: John Adams and his City Noir

Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from The Kennedy Center.

Last Thursday, American composer John Adams led the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in a program of Ottorino Resphigi’s Fountains of Rome, Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major, and Adams’s own City Noir, composed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and premiered in 2009. What could possibly tie this

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