Classical Music
A serving of the essence of the music of John Corigliano: a blend of old and new, radical and traditional that has made him such a singular force in American music over the last fifty-plus years.
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Symphonic music wasn’t composer Florence Price’s strong suit. Rather, she was much more at home working in smaller forms or for her own instrument.
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This is a release that showcases many of Andris Nelsons’ strengths, including his strong sensitivity for instrumental colors, blends, and balances. At the same time, it also demonstrates the conductor’s hit-or-miss nature with the core repertoire.
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I was pleased to encounter all three compact operas. Lennox Berkeley seems to me more and more an admirable, indeed lovable composer, and a bit of a chameleon. I like him in all his various colors.
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New recordings serve up fine performances of music from Latin America, Brazil, and post-1918 England. And a novel sends its main character back two centuries into Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.
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American-ness in music is impossible to define and constantly in flux, yet the threads that connect it all together – at once beautiful, tragic, humorous, ironic, whimsical – are all somehow recognizable.
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Taken together, this is a release that showcases both the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and its chief conductor – as well as their repertoire choices – in a brilliant light.
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Thankfully, there is no melodramatic black-and-white in James Kallembach’s fascinating 36-minute work, first performed at Boston University by the Lorelei Ensemble in 2017.
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This “serenata” (or chamber opera) with characters from Graeco-Roman mythology receives an elegant world-premiere recording that may bring a major composer out from the shadows.
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Moissey Vainberg’s opera powerfully evokes the brutality of Hitler’s extermination camps and the moral ambiguity of postwar Germany.
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The 20th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: The Institution Continues