Jonathan Blumhofer
Three new classical music albums: two are superior, one is a bit of a mixed bag.
My snoring neighbor left during intermission (he was roused a bit when the musical vigor picked up in the finale of the Mozart).
Beethoven’s Mass in C is the highlight. Would that the San Francisco Symphony’s performance of the Third Concerto had more electricity.
Kurt Masur leaves behind a complex legacy, one that’s not neatly (or easily) summed up by the caricature of a stern, conservative, Old World German maestro.
This is truly exciting, world-beating Beethoven, played with gusto and a kind of musical intelligence that you simply can’t take for granted.
Of course, it’s a tricky business to summarize a classical music scene as busy and wide as Boston’s.
For classical music recordings it has been a remarkably rich year, especially over its second half.
Andris Nelsons possesses a clear fondness for Slavic music and his Tchaikovsky performances in Boston have become can’t-miss events.
Classical Music Commentary: “Boulez est mort”
And yet, for all the violence of his youthful polemics and his unflinchingly-held beliefs, Pierre Boulez was neither demagogue nor ideologue.
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