Enjoy Boston Camerata’s Free America! for its high spirits and its crafty, delicious way of making the iconoclasm of the past come alive.
Classical Music
Classical CD Reviews: Christian Tetzlaff plays Beethoven & Sibelius, Rachel Barton Pine takes on Dvorak & Khachaturian, and Wagner’s “Siegfried “
Christian Tetzlaff’s brilliant account of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto makes for a great album; Rachel Barton Pine’s versions of Dvorák and Khachaturian violin concertos are songful; orchestrally, Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra’s Sigfried is unfailingly colorful and fresh.
Classical CD Reviews: “To Paradise For Onions,” “Transatlantic,” and “Die Zauberflöte”
To Paradise for Onions is a lovely album; Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra ‘s Transatlantic is spirited; Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Die Zauberflöte is lost in the crowd.
Opera Album Review: Offenbach’s “La Périchole,” by an All-French Cast, Combines Zest and Elegance
This is one of the zippiest, most life-affirming opera recordings I have heard in a long time. Well, this puts it a bit too blandly, because the work’s social satire also targets the smug self-satisfaction and careless cruelty of the powerful.
Concert Review: Koyaanisqatsi Live! — Apocalypse Then … and Now
modern world out of control is more perceptive and chilling than ever.
Concert Review: Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Opening Night
That rarest of Opening Nights: a program that was mostly fun and entertaining, but also substantive and artistically satisfying.
Opera Album Review: A Renaissance-Toned Opera by Saint-Saëns, Finally (and Finely) Recorded
One of Saint-Saëns’s most important operas, Proserpine, has recently been given its world-premiere recording, and the result is a revelation.
Classical CD Reviews: The Tchaikovsky Project, Schumann Symphonies nos. 2 & 4, and Holst Orchestral Works
Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic do justice to a lot of Tchaikovsky’s orchestral music, while John Eliot Gardiner and the London Symphony play Robert Schumann’s famously-dense orchestrations with clarity. But Michael Stern’s account of The Planets completely lacks mystery.
Arts Commentary: 2019-20 Classical Music Preview
I’ve compiled a list of twelve concerts (or concert series) that I think will stand among the future season’s highlights.
Classical Music CD Reviews: Two Refreshingly Different Takes On Mozart
Two recordings serve up the music of Mozart in unusual packages.
