By Laurie Niles: I realized on Thursday night that despite having listened to recordings of the Alban Berg Violin Concerto countless times, I hadn't come close to understanding it. Seeing a live performance enlightened me; moreover, seeing a live performance with violinist Gil Shaham , conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall energized my senses. The evening also included...
The Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Christoph Eschenbach, offered a nuanced interpretation of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony at Carnegie Hall on Thursday. Mahler’s Seventh Symphony
The Buzzing Reed, David Thomas Clarinet Blog (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
Preparing for tonight’s Columbus Symphony performance of the 9th symphony of Gustav Mahler, a magnificent and momentous work, I took a long walk through the park near my house. Nature was Mahler’s spirituality, and so it was helpful to walk through it to gear me up mentally and psychologically for this music. Gunther Herbig, who is [...]
For the second year in a row, here is the complete schedule for the Tanglewood Festival , released one minute after the end of the press embargo. These listings are taken directly from the press release, with only some minor formatting changes made to the original text. The Mahler Symphonyies # 2 and 3 look to be season highlights, but I always have a soft spot for programs like Audra MacDonald's New...
Mahler's 6th Symphony caught my attention a while back when Alex Ross mentioned the big box constructed especially for the Redwood Symphony , to be used in the symphony's final movement. Something in Alex's description moved me, especially when he wrote "to produce the famous hammer blows in Mahler's Sixth, the orchestra deployed a large wooden box that matched Mahler's original specifications."...
The video above is the Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra’s own promotion for its concert on Sunday (details below). Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra Conductor Maxim Eshkenazy will lead Pacific Symphony Youth Orchestra in a season opening “Beethoven and Wagner” agenda. The program includes Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” the Adagietto from the Symphony No. 5 by Mahler,...
What else could it be, on Remembrance Day? And this clip from 1993 is fraught, for me, with sadness for the gap I still feel Slava has left behind him. The late Richard Hickox is there too, conducting the LSO chamber ensemble. It also reminds me that Bryn was a natural from the start. Whatever circus lies in store with his 'Bad Boys' concert tonight at the Royal Festival Hall, my first assignment for...
One witness to a performance of Tristan und Isolde conducted by Mahler on 8 May 1906 wrote that during the evening ‘powerful waves of tone flood the room, and the murmur of the wind gives way to a terrible roaring frenzy of sound’, thereby echoing the psychobabble of Jung-Wien literature. The nigh-penniless dauber who heard that ‘terrible roaring frenzy’ was Adolf Hitler, whose...
The last word Gustav Mahler uttered on his deathbed — according to his wife, Alma — was “Mozart.” Perhaps the composer was already hearing sounds from the next world, or simply reliving some of his happiest memories from this one....
Web-only review: BSO goes pretty with cozy standards by Charles T. Downey If anything, the program offered by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Friday night at Meyerhoff Hall was too pretty, too easy on the ears. Continuing an unofficial traversal of Gustav Mahler's symphonies, music director Marin Alsop gave up on last season's unsuccessful pairing of Mahler's music with that of Leonard Bernstein....
Brahms' Symphony No. 1 is one of those rare pieces I can listen to over and over again, without ever getting bored. There's so much drama, anxiety and (eventually) affirmation in the piece that I would gladly travel abroad to hear different performances of it. So I did. Brahms' First is often mockingly called Beethoven's Tenth, so it was a fitting conclusion to Bonn's Beethovenfest last month. The...
Says mezzo-soprano Susan Graham: "Singing the ('Dido and Aeneas') role will be like drinking a long, cool drink of fresh spring water when you've been surrounded by milkshakes." If versatility is a musical virtue, then mezzo- soprano Susan Graham should be canonized. The 49-year-old Graham's singing résumé reveals an intense desire for tackling a wide range of roles. These...
How about a quiz ? Name some classical repertoire for accordion. Wozzeck is the only one springs to mind but there must be more. Click on the photo to enlarge, the guy is soooo cute. And below, there's a clip of authentic Cajun music. Nowadays everyone knows who the Cajuns are because every restaurant has Cajun sauce and stuff like that. But the real Cajun thing was much too quirky and individual to...
[Marlon Daniel] Marlon Daniel sends us YouTube videos of about 5 minutes each of rehearsals in Prague, followed by two links to preview information for the Nov. 8, 2009 concert in New York: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqrz14stNrg Conductor Marlon Daniel shares with us the theories and music of Gustav Mahler. Observe the preparation involved for an electrifying performance by Marlon Daniel with special...
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