Classical Music
Edward Loder’s well-crafted Raymond and Agnes (1855) captures much of the eerie glow of its Gothic model, Matthew Lewis’s once scandalous novel, The Monk.
Opera Review: Arabs on the Operatic Stage — Meyerbeer’s 1814 Comic Opera about the Mysterious ‘East’
Long before the often-prejudicial portrayals of Middle Easterners in Hollywood films, opera composers crafted insightful works from 1001 Nights.
CD recordings keep bringing us unexpected treasures, including chamber works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Samuel Adler, and the (by turns) exquisite and powerful opera Armida by Mozart’s contemporary — who was not his murderer — Antonio Salieri.
Berkeley’s Nelson reinforces my sense that many fine composers of the twentieth century have largely slid off the map because they did not cater to the obsession of many critics and academics with “the New at all cost.”
A young ensemble, the USE is a technically accomplished one and, regardless of the interpretive strengths or weaknesses of each reading, the group’s sheer skill level is evenly impressive.
A surprisingly moving collection, all of it mightily played and sung by musicians who clearly intuit John Harbison’s musical language.
Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.
Newly recorded in the original German, Anton Reicha’s Lenore offers a vivid response to Bürger’s famous “Gothic” ballad from 1774.
Joseph Horowitz’s short, punchy, well-sourced, and compulsively readable book argues for bringing back the forgotten works of important Black composers.
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