Jonathan Blumhofer
Julian Rachlin is a Romantic violinist in the best sense: he has technique to burn, but isn’t overly showy. His tone is pure, his intonation impeccable, and in his playing the melodic line is – even in the busiest solo textures – given pride of place.
Highlights of the month include performances from the admired vocal groups A Far Cry and the Lorelei Ensemble as well as early music programs from the Green Mountain Project and Dünya.
Now in his mid-50s, Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of the most interesting and important composers of his generation and the recent attention his music is receiving is well deserved.
On Sunday, the New England Philharmonic and music director Richard Pittman are presenting a family concert that pays no heed to the season but showcases some of the area’s finest young performers in action.
Bravo to Courtney Lewis and the Discovery Ensemble for programming Esa-Pekka Salonen’s “Five Images” and pulling off such an engrossing performance.
Chamber music fans will know that the current season will be the last for the extraordinary Tokyo String Quartet (TSQ), which opted to disband rather than replace retiring violinist Kikuei Ikada and violist Kazuhide Isomura.
A festive month of music, with The Emerson Quartet, A Far Cry, Tallis Scholars, and the Borromeo Quartet among the standout performers.
If the BSO wanted to make a statement about where it might be headed based on the strong artistic results of the current season, it certainly could have. That it didn’t is a missed opportunity and hopefully not a sign of things to come.
With “In Seven Days,” Thomas Adés seems to have developed a musical language that’s complex yet not forbidding: there’s no sense that his music is weighed down by expectations of the past, even as he freely refers to archaic compositional forms.
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