Jonathan Blumhofer
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.
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John Corigliano’s take on goodbyes is, if not exactly bitter, then full of sorrow: few happy memories to be had here.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Richard Muti draws playing of full-blooded passion from Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Thierry Fischer conducts Camille Saint-Saëns with a sure hand, and violinist Tasmin Little’s new recording of neglected violin-and-piano pieces by mid- and late-Romantic women composers is terrific.
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Our critic’s year-end tally of the classical albums that, in looking back over 2018, stand tallest – plus a few that didn’t make the bar.
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Aequa is one of the year’s standout new-music albums. Philip Glass’s Symphony no. 11 suggests that the veteran composer has more than a few tricks left up his sleeve. And Neave Trio’s Celebrating Piazzolla is a thoroughly delightful, engaging album.
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In Memoriam — Sanford Sylvan (1953-2019)
Hearing Sanford Sylvan sing made one rich: spiritually, emotionally, musically.
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