Classical Music
This is one of the zippiest, most life-affirming opera recordings I have heard in a long time. Well, this puts it a bit too blandly, because the work’s social satire also targets the smug self-satisfaction and careless cruelty of the powerful.
modern world out of control is more perceptive and chilling than ever.
That rarest of Opening Nights: a program that was mostly fun and entertaining, but also substantive and artistically satisfying.
One of Saint-Saëns’s most important operas, Proserpine, has recently been given its world-premiere recording, and the result is a revelation.
Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic do justice to a lot of Tchaikovsky’s orchestral music, while John Eliot Gardiner and the London Symphony play Robert Schumann’s famously-dense orchestrations with clarity. But Michael Stern’s account of The Planets completely lacks mystery.
Two recordings serve up the music of Mozart in unusual packages.
Nancy Dalberg’s string quartets are worth getting to know, Wynton Marsalis’s violin concerto receives an electrifying performance, and Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra continue to churn out a less than necessary Mahler cycle.
Herbert Blomstedt conducts a powerful version of Mahler’s valedictory essay, organist Christopher Jacobson provides a so-so “Organ” Symphony, and Kirill Petrenko’s initial recording as the chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic is lovely.
A can’t-miss album of Bartók Ballets, Thierry Fischer continues to do right by the symphonies of Saint-Saëns, and a spirited recording of the “last great symphony in the German Romantic tradition.”
Arts Commentary: 2019-20 Classical Music Preview
I’ve compiled a list of twelve concerts (or concert series) that I think will stand among the future season’s highlights.
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