Classical Music

Opera Album Review: An Engaging Opera by an 18th-Century Black Composer

September 10, 2023
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Joseph Bologne, whose mother was a slave in Guadeloupe, proves to be as skillful in vocal-dramatic music as we have long known he was in instrumental works.

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Opera Preview: Expanding “Butterfly”‘s Habitat — A Chat with Phil Chan

September 6, 2023
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We’re not saying get rid of “Madama Butterfly” We’re saying do a better Butterfly.

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Jazz Album Review: A Creative “Synergy—Bobby Kapp Plays the Music of Richard Sussman”

September 1, 2023
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The arrangements seem to emerge organically from the structure and feel of the compositions and harmonies, like leaves unfolding from the stem of an exotic plant.

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Commentary: Brandeis University Axes the Arts

August 30, 2023
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Gutting a venerable department – particularly a world-renowned one that, by all accounts, delivers – in the name of belt-tightening is shortsighted and foolish.

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Classical Album Review: Andrew Manze Conducts Vaughan Williams

August 29, 2023
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The album is a welcome appendix to the conductor’s admirable symphonic cycle with this orchestra, as well as a timely reminder of Vaughan Williams’ compositional range.

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Classical Album Review: “Dependent Arising” — Lots of Sound and Fury

August 28, 2023
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A three-movement concerto for violin and orchestra, “Dependent Arising” fuses the worlds of heavy metal, punk rock, and 20th-century classical composition into a furious, frenetic, sometimes tortured thirty-minute whole.

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Classical Album Review: Pierre-Laurent Aimard Plays Bartók’s Piano Concertos

August 27, 2023
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Ultimately, then, we’ve got something special here: a fresh take on some canonic works by a conductor and soloist whose bread-and-butter is this very fare.

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Classical Album Review: Rautavaara & Martinů Piano Concertos

July 30, 2023
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Move over, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Bartók: the pantheon of great Third Piano Concertos is growing.

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Classical Album Review: Charles Villiers Stanford’s “Requiem”

July 29, 2023
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This new recording of Charles Villiers Stanford’s”Requiem” by Martyn Brabbins, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), and the University of Birmingham Voices, is beautiful and often memorable.

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Classical Music Album Review: John Corigliano’s Piano Music

July 28, 2023
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An album that does admirable justice to one of the most prolific, significant, and increasingly long-lived composers of a remarkable generation.

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