Classical Music
Mr. Hammer played Bach’s Sonata in G minor energetically and sensitively, drawing out composer’s long melodic phrases with appealing grace. Ms. Graveline made a strong accompanist, clearly articulating Bach’s contrapuntal textures.
Chameleon Arts Ensemble’s programming, the brainchild of its director and flutist Deborah Boldin, aims to place pieces together that have interesting things in common musically and culturally.
If you find classical music to be a vibrant, living thing in which inventive pairings and convincing realizations of music of the distant and recent past can speak in fresh and vital ways to the present, Jeremy Denk is your man and this is your CD.
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is a piece the BSO trots out with greater regularity of late than most orchestras (as Tanglewood aficionados are aware, it’s been the traditional summer closer each August for about a decade now) and, while such familiarity may not exactly breed complacency, it certainly runs the risk of so doing.
Emmanuel Music bought this neglected Mozart opera to life with polished musicianship and excellent singers.
As the BSO searches for its new music director, Mr. Salonen’s name is sure to come up. While he’s probably a long-shot candidate, any orchestra that has him on their podium for a week or two a season should count itself lucky.
There was nothing in the program about the pieces he and his fellow musicians would be playing, but no one seemed to care. Most already knew the music from Paco de Lucía’s recordings. They were coming to hear him live, and there was not an empty seat to be seen in the Boston Opera House.
This recording heralds a serious, probing musician exploring some vital, if unfamiliar, twentieth-century violin repertoire, and, as such, presents a more-than-welcome addition to recent solo violin discography.
If a few of his tempos, particularly in the opening movement, weren’t among the liveliest on record, there was a gravitas and underlying conviction to Mr. von Dohnányi’s interpretation of “A German Requiem” that were wholly appropriate to the piece and its appearance on a program that was presented during Holy Week.
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