The Arts Blog (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Berlin Philharmonic Led by Sir Simon Rattle, the world’s greatest orchestra, at least by some estimations, returns to Disney Hall with a pair of programs devoted, though not exclusively, to Brahms. The first pairs Arnold Schoenberg’s vivid orchestration of Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 with the Symphony No. 1. The second features Wagner’s Overture to “Die [...]
Berkshire Review for the Arts (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
By opening the Berlin Philharmonic's three-concert series at Carnegie Hall with Schoenberg's arrangement of Brahms' G minor Piano Quartet Sir Simon Rattle made a definite statement about what was to come and how we should listen to it, but just what this meant was not clear until we heard the performance. Since the arrangement has found a place in the repertory, conductors have succumbed all too easily...
Andrew Patner: The View from Here (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Here is my Wednesday November 18 Chicago Sun-Times review of the Monday November 16, 2009, Orchestra Hall concert by the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle, principal conductor, in music of Wagner, Schoenberg, and Brahms. Berlin Philharmonic in Chicago: Once is...
Entartete Musik (Free subscription) | 11/17/2009
Schoenberg, like Mahler, is an impossible character to pin down. Yet both composers have entered the CUP pantheon allotted a title in the publisher's Companion series - would that their bravery would stretch to less favoured territory in the future. The Cambridge Companion to Schoenberg will be published in May 2010 and features an enticing line-up of essays.Chronology of Schoenberg's life and
Chamber Music Today (Free subscription) | 11/14/2009
Schoenberg discursively plays ‘chamber pingpong’ in 1930 H ow words are understood is not told by words alone. How music is understood is not told by music alone. [How films are understood is not told by film alone.]” — Arnold Schoenberg quote . T hough originality is inseparable from personality, there exists also a kind of originality which does not derive from profound personality....
Berkshire Review for the Arts (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009
Ms Chinn made each song something to behold. Her colorations, from the dark-hued and husky to the flutelike, conveyed the ever-changing capriciousness and coy equivocation of this work. Her striking stage presence, her breathtaking mastery of the frequently caustic vocalizations, and her interpretive insight into vivid Symbolist prosody placed her visionary reading at the top of a half-century of performances....
Renewable Music (Free subscription) | 10/28/2009
The critic/theorist/philosopher/musician Heinz-Klaus Metzger has died at the age of 77. Metzger trained to be a private piano teacher, then studied composition in Paris with Max Deutsch, a student of Schoenberg. Metzger's earliest allegiances were to the Schoenberg school and his theoretical bent brought him into early contact with Adorno. The relationship to Adorno's work — more as sparring...
From Beyond the Stave (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
‘He sums up Schoenberg in twenty minutes and then spends half a bloody hour on some guy called Othmarrrr Shirk’ – I still remember the disgust with which a Scots fellow student rolled his broad Rs around Robin Holloway’s approach to music history. The occasion was Robin’s lecture course on the twentieth-century, back in 1983 in Cambridge. He had indeed dealt with Schoenberg...
AfriClassical (Free subscription) | 10/21/2009
[ Girma Yifrashewa : The Shepherd with the flute (2001) ] UCLA.edu Thursday, Oct. 22 7:30 p.m. Jan Popper Theater, Schoenberg Music Building (1200) Flautist Laura Falzon (U.S./Malta), accompanied by Janise White (piano) and Wilson Moorman ( darbukka ), performs works by Akin Euba, Halim El-Dabh and Roy Travis, among others, including two world premieres and one U.S. premiere. American singer-storyteller...
operaman's blog (Free subscription) | 10/12/2009
I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago that our General Director, Christopher Mattaliano, is going to New York to direct the opening production of New York City Opera’s season, Esther . I am not familiar with this opera and as there were other aspects of this venture that interest me I had a chat with Chris about Esther , and what it is like directing for another company and some other stuff...
Song of a Reformed Headhunter (Free subscription) | 10/05/2009
A basic and helpful introduction to music for someone like me, i.e., no music training beyond playing the pianica in primary school, and strumming the guitar round campfires in high school. In this book first written in the 1930s, Copland distinguishes between listening on a sensuous plane (mere enjoyment of the quality of sound) and on expressive and sheerly musical planes. While not slighting the...
New York Times (Free subscription) | 09/26/2009
The performance of Schoenberg’s formidable “Pelleas und Melisande” that Alan Gilbert drew from the New York Philharmonic on Thursday night was assured and beautiful.
I'll think of something later (Free subscription) | 09/09/2009
Help - I just can't stop being blitzed. Writing this is something of the breather I need after the hammerblow of the second-act denouement in MacMillan's The Sacrifice , which in the WNO performance soon to be released by Chandos is just as unbearable as it was in the theatre when I didn't know what was coming; must get on with score-following Act Three and write the note, but it's heavy stuff. And...
The Collaborative Piano Blog (Free subscription) | 09/07/2009
Here are the most popular Collaborative Piano Blog posts from this summer: Nora the Cat in Piano Catcerto 7 Useful Resources for Identifying Intervals By Ear Schimmel Pegasus and Cylon Raider: Separated at Birth? Is a Career in Academia Still Worthwhile? Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall - The Private Collection Spotted in Sydney Custom-painted Piano Arnold Schoenberg's Opus 11....Played by Cats La...
The Classical Beat (Free subscription) | 08/31/2009
A roundup from the German-speaking world: Festival season is winding down, but the Ruhr Triennale, in the first year of Willy Decker’s Intendanz, appears to be going strong. The new director’s four-million-Euro production of Schoenberg’s Moses and Aron opened the festival last week with some features that seem to be becoming standards of Bochum’s Jahrhunderthalle, including...
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