Jonathan Blumhofer
Anniversaries are both the bane and the lifeblood of the classical music industry as, for better or worse, three new box sets remind.
Francois-Adrien
Michael Gordon’s score for The Unchanging Sea works better as soundtrack than a concert work; Harmonia mundi releases a DVD of William Kentridge’s powerful staging of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck.
This Sunday’s BPYO concert tied together a number of highly personal strands, presenting music connected to two of conductor Benjamin Zander’s mentors — Benjamin Britten and Gustav Holst.
John Corigliano’s take on goodbyes is, if not exactly bitter, then full of sorrow: few happy memories to be had here.
Bread-and-butter of the orchestral repertoire though this music may be, there was no complacency to be heard in the orchestra’s playing of it.
Conducting Lumina, Andris Nelsons was entirely in his element, capably drawing out the music’s shimmering gestures — string flourishes, brass fanfares, woodwind filigrees, and the like – from a locked-in BSO.
Pianist Kirill Gerstein’s take on Busoni is exhilarating; the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra serves the forceful music of composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and violinist Elina Vähälä does right by Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto.
Fine recordings of symphonies by neglected American composers Florence Price and George Antheil; and a curious album from Cornelius Meister and the ORF Radio-Sinfonieorchester Wien.
In Memoriam — Sanford Sylvan (1953-2019)
Hearing Sanford Sylvan sing made one rich: spiritually, emotionally, musically.
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