Music
Between songs Touré and Raichel conferred inaudibly with one another, deciding which tune they would play next. There was very little chatting up the audience, until before the fourth song. Raichel said “Hello, Boston.” Touré asked, “How you doing?” and the audience roared.
Supplementing Eugene O’Neill’s high drama is a subtle score of music and sound created by Dewey Dellay, an Elliot Norton Award winner for Outstanding Design.
Emmanuel Music bought this neglected Mozart opera to life with polished musicianship and excellent singers.
As the BSO searches for its new music director, Mr. Salonen’s name is sure to come up. While he’s probably a long-shot candidate, any orchestra that has him on their podium for a week or two a season should count itself lucky.
There was nothing in the program about the pieces he and his fellow musicians would be playing, but no one seemed to care. Most already knew the music from Paco de Lucía’s recordings. They were coming to hear him live, and there was not an empty seat to be seen in the Boston Opera House.
This recording heralds a serious, probing musician exploring some vital, if unfamiliar, twentieth-century violin repertoire, and, as such, presents a more-than-welcome addition to recent solo violin discography.
If a few of his tempos, particularly in the opening movement, weren’t among the liveliest on record, there was a gravitas and underlying conviction to Mr. von Dohnányi’s interpretation of “A German Requiem” that were wholly appropriate to the piece and its appearance on a program that was presented during Holy Week.
This CD marks a turning point: a solo effort by Basya Schechter with outstanding back-up by a wide range of musicians that features music based on the Yiddish poetry of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.
It was, for this listener, an embarrassment of riches, even in this early music town. Both groups gave excellent performances of music written at approximately the same time.
The strength of the poetry is the ambiance it creates. Narrative is almost totally submerged in imagery, which may seem natural enough in verse but often is not the case.
Recent Comments