Classical Music
This album manages to impressively realize the depth and versatility of John Adams’s music for string quartet. It also announces the arrival of a phenomenal ensemble that plays with a mix of maturity, adventure, and musical insight: this is a group to follow closely and cheer.
The Celebrity Series of Boston offers top-notch artists and performing ensembles from around the world. With a Russian at the helm, it is no surprise that the Shostakovich Concerto would match or exceed expectations. The question was whether the Beethoven would.
Pianist Jeremy Denk wields a large artillery of dynamics and colors and it served him well in this performance.
Playing by heart with these three incredible people is the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done as a musician, and I look forward to many more years of doing this with the Chiara Quartet. — Gregory Beaver of the Chiara String Quartet
March is a month to hear amazing pianists – Jeremy Denk, George Li, Charlie Albright, Jeffrey Swann, Wu Han, and Lydia Artymiw – as well as inspiring choruses and unusual chamber music
Handel and Haydn artistic director Harry Christophers placed a composer who is familiar, but not always the focus of attention, front and center, and, in the process, reminded us just how good a musician Haydn was.
In the slow third movement, Mr. Zander, the BPO, and the Symphony seemed to really be in sync: the music breathed, sighed, sang, and unfolded at a natural pace that brought out the best in everybody.
Composer James MacMillan’s musical strategy in this opera is a stylistic patchwork that seems to mean to convey that each character inhabits a different, mutually misunderstood world.
In an effort to give the proceedings an intimate, salon feel, the Symphony Hall stage was dotted with a couple of potted plants, three armchairs, and a pair of music stands; the cavernous environ of the space was still very much present, but one appreciated the effort to minimize it, even if only partially successful.
John Adams’s Chamber Symphony brought out the best in Mr. Lewis as a conductor: it was fun watching him maneuver through the score’s intricate rhythmic patterns and his confidence was reflected by the Ensemble in a brash, involved reading of a far-too-little-heard (in these parts, at least) piece.
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