Classical Music
Marin Marais, memorably enacted by Gérard Depardieu (and his son Guillaume) in the film “Tous les matins du monde,” proves a master of Baroque opera in this splendid recording.
Let’s hope composer Tod Machover, Opera of The Future, and the Media Lab have more up their space-age sleeves.
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.
We’re not saying get rid of “Madama Butterfly” We’re saying do a better Butterfly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Move over, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and Bartók: the pantheon of great Third Piano Concertos is growing.
Commentary: Brandeis University Axes the Arts
Gutting a venerable department – particularly a world-renowned one that, by all accounts, delivers – in the name of belt-tightening is shortsighted and foolish.
Read More about Commentary: Brandeis University Axes the Arts