Jonathan Blumhofer
Handel & Haydn Society captured all of this and then some with a vigorous, focused performance that was a marvel of controlled fury.
Saariaho’s music is often lush and vibrant, to be sure, but it also can lose track of its musical purpose and meander excessively from time to time. Not so in “Circle Map.”
November features a number of visits from celebrated performers, from Kelly O’Connor and Thomas Adés to the Takács Quartet. Music for Food also presents its second concert/benefit of the season.
That Symphony Hall was probably a third empty is inexplicable, but, if you missed any of these concerts, it’s truly your loss. These were among the BSO’s benchmark performances of the last decade.
If you think contemporary music is the domain of fusty academics and has no bearing on (or relationship to) the outside world, you really need to check out “Canzonas Americanas.”
Herbert Blomstedt and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig present us here with what is easily the most memorable classical box set of 2012 and, possibly, the most important addition to the Bruckner discography in a generation.
It’s a pity we can’t hear the Discovery Ensemble every week – it’s a group that radiates energy and models inventive programming.
Friday’s was the first of a series of strong, interesting programs H&H is offering this season. If its success is any indication of what’s to come (and I hope it is), we should have a very special few months ahead of us, indeed.
This weekend’s soloist, Joshua Bell, is a performer who perhaps best approximates Leonard Bernstein’s charismatic personality in performance: a fully engaged interpreter, he does not shy away from physically expressing the emotional content of what he’s playing.
Arts Commentary: The Last Laugh — Stephen Colbert, Comedy, and Cultural Resistance