Classical Music
Halka struts its stuff, impressively, in this new recording with an all-Polish cast conducted by internationally renowned Gabriel Chmura.
Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony have ways of digging into the music and providing new perspectives on it such that their recordings are, by and large, can’t-miss events.
May the Boston Symphony – which just concluded its annual weekend celebrating the music of Black composers by shunting them off on their own, away from Rachmaninoff, Strauss, Beethoven, and Friends – take note: this is how it should be done.
New CD releases provide splendid performances of remarkable American music, from Barber and Bernstein to recently rediscovered Black composers Florence Price and William Grant Still.
With its wide-ranging textual and musical materials, this “church parable” stands as one of Benjamin Britten’s most striking creations.
A terrific album, commandingly played, that adds to our knowledge and appreciation of this too-long neglected repertoire.
This was an epic performance of an epic piece, steeped in Brucknerian character.
Andris Nelsons’s conception of Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung was impressive, marked by strong contrasts of character, flexibility of phrasing, and a commendable grasp of musical space.
I’m not entirely sure if Enigma just adds up to the sum of its parts or if it, in fact, exceeds them. Either way, it is music of stirring, striking originality.
For Benjamin Zander and his musicians – as for all of us – it was a strange, even desperate, several months.
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