What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
American Bach led a stirring rendition of Handel’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, full of big questions and even bigger musical highlights.
Johann Sebastian Bach
25 pieces since 2010.
25
pieces
17
years
Bach to Bach
An invigorating double bill at the San Francisco Symphony challenges how Bach “should” be performed.
By spirit alone
A sublime Reginald Mobley and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra are a balm for troubled times in a program of baroque selections and spirituals.
The Italian connection
American Bach brings out the operatic side of Bach in a program featuring sparkling vocal talents.
This summer I’m reading Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment
Not really an opera book but, c’mon, it’s Bach.
By David Phillips
39 comments
This summer I’m reading Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven
If you love the astonishing vocal works of J. S. Bach, John Eliott Gardiner’s 2013 book is a deeply rewarding read.
By Astyanax
27 comments
Singing from our chains
There are two problems to address – problems of the sort the arts thrive on addressing.
Milling around
On Tuesday night, in the commodious concert hall of the Morgan Library, the Boston Early Music Festival forces brought Georg Philipp Telemann’s Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Comacho to New York.
If you remember, then follow
How many hours of our lives are spent looking back?
Purcell takes the stage
On Saturday at Alice Tully Hall, Julliard 415, the school’s top-flight period-instrument ensemble, was joined by students from the Marcus Institute for Vocal Arts and Juilliard Drama for a rare semi-staging of King Arthur.
Everything sacred
Wrapping up Diva November, Chris’s Cache offers two sacred works that couldn’t be more unalike.
Clear, crackling, comprehensible
Davóne Tines has sung with Early Music groups and avant-garde ones, and he has a taste for projects that cross artistic boundaries, which suits an innate showmanship.
Those monsters look like us
“This used to be a funhouse… but now it’s full of evil clowns / It’s time to start the countdown…. I’m gonna burn it down”
Making her garden grown
Joyce DiDonato admits that she is “a problem solver, a dreamer, and—yes I’m a belligerent optimist.”
Passion play
Los Angeles Opera’s St. Matthew Passion was by equal parts challenging and hypnotic to watch.
Late bloomer
Teresa Zylis-Gara died in late August at 91 and Trove Thursday offers the Polish soprano in a wide-ranging collection of live material showcasing her great versatility.
Cradle song
While seasonally-awkward streams of Messiah abound, Trove Thursday turns instead to Berlioz’s exquisite L’Enfance du Christ from francophone forces including Stéphanie d’ Oustrac, Bernard Richter, Edwin Crossley-Mercer and Nicolas Testé (for once, sans sa femme).
More things sacred
In recent weeks local and visiting groups performed refreshing rarities by Zelenka, Domenico Scarlatti and Telemann so engagingly that one didn’t miss the old standbys at all.
Welcome Bach
An unusually provocative program by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Bernard Labadie with soloists Lydia Teuscher and Benno Schachtner made my “return” Thursday evening an illuminating and rewarding experience at Zankel Hall.
“Thy power standeth not in multitude nor thy might in strong men”
An unstaged performance of Juditha Triumphans by five soloists and the Venice Baroque Orchestra under Andrea Marcon.
No such Gluck
When Richard Wagner reached into the past and revised Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide, he went beyond the accepted boundaries of tinkering and more or less created a new work that’s fomented aesthetic debates ever since.
By Adriel
2 comments
Zing went the strings
This DVD
of a Diana Damrau recital (accompanied only by the harpist Xavier de Maistre) is sure to please her legions of fans.
Bach to basics
Some composers write as if the dividing line between instruments that play notes and the voice, which usually sings a text and takes some of its attitude towards the music from that text, were not an all-important factor.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
