Classical Music
BEMF’s Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs have, once again, produced a work of impeccable and imaginative scholarship for a production that’s not only historically informed, but musically, dramatically, and visually entertaining. Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate. Presented by the Boston Early Music Festival. At New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA,…
Read MoreDecember classical music offerings range from a recital by 20-year-old Haochen Zhang, who won last year’s Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, to The MIT Chamber Music Society presentation of a free, two-piano concert, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project taking on, without charge, an evening of music by three women composers. By Caldwell Titcomb. December…
Read MoreThe Parker Quartet’s appearance here in Jordan Hall on November 22 was marked by one surprising feature: there was not a single music stand to be seen on the stage. It turned out that the four musicians played the entire concert from memory. By Caldwell Titcomb Haydn is widely called the Father of the Symphony,…
Read MorePianist Garrick Ohlsson is helped by having unusually wide stretches in both hands. And like Chopin’s own playing, he never resorted to harshness or banging even in climactic passages. By Caldwell Titcomb Of all the musical events scheduled for this season I was most eagerly looking forward to the November 14 Symphony Hall recital by…
Read MoreComposer John Adams (b. 1947) was represented by two impressive works: “Chamber Symphony” (1992), and “Son of Chamber Symphony” (2007). For some reason the latter opened the concert and the former closed it, but no matter. By Caldwell Titcomb The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) kicked off its season with a Jordan Hall program on…
Read MoreUltimately, Basil Twist’s Petrushka is a meditation on the tension between the animate and inanimate, a story that lets a puppet explain what it’s like to be a puppet, a fable that argues that to be alive is to recognize causality and suffering—and that the ability to suffer is paradoxically a precious gift. Basil Twist’s…
Read MoreLaudably, the Cantata Singers music director David Hoose, now in his 28th year at the helm, has chosen to bring forward works not often played, of which there were two on this month’s program. Three other composers were also represented during the evening. By Caldwell Titcomb. In the first major concert by the Cantata Singers…
Read MoreThe Boston Lyric Opera’s current production, adapted from the Scottish Opera, is updated, but this does no real damage. The three locales are properly preserved. And the three principal characters—opera diva Floria Tosca, her lover Mario Cavaradossi, and the lusting and villainous Baron Scarpia—hit their mark solidly. By Caldwell Titcomb. Some years ago the noted…
Read MoreAmong the classical possibilities this month, the Discovery Ensemble tackles Stravinsky’s perky, neo-classical “Dumbarton Oaks Concerto,” The Spectrum Singers offers a rare chance to hear the Mass, Op. 130 by the Belgian composer Joseph Jongen, and Boston Musica Viva serves up two world premieres: Bernard Hoffer’s Piano Trio (“Cosmic”), and Chris Arrell’s “Convergence.” By Caldwell…
Read MoreThe possibilities of the internet as well as the MET in HD pull Wagner’s dream of a total work of art into the context of 21st-century technology and culture, making possible new cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary references as never before. I think he would have loved it. By Helen Epstein. When I was a musicology student…
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