a virtual journal and essential blog of the classical music scene in greater Boston
Lee Eiseman, publisher; Robert Levin, advisor; David Moran, assisting editor; Bettina A. Norton, emerita editor
- Richard Riley on New Year’s Eve with Boston Baroque
- Dennis Milford on Dazzling ART: Natasha, Pierre, and the 1812 Comet
- Ed Burke on Critics Remember 2015
- Alan Levitan on Bartokathon Take Two: ¡YOWZA!
- Dennis Milford on Bartokathon Take Two: ¡YOWZA!
- David Moran on Tallis Tells of a Birth
- Peter Kronheimer on A Seasonal Mix Blows In From That Other BSO
- Sergey Schepkin on Illuminations of Messiaen from Emerging Pianist
- Bettina A Norton on Tallis Tells of a Birth
- Geoffrey Wieting on Ponderousness Banished by Boston Baroque
January 4, 2016
in: Reviews
Pearlman, Abreu, and Martinson Flourish
by Geoffrey Wieting
Free champagne and chocolates at the intermission no doubt raised our spirits, but Boston Baroque’s pyrotechnics in The Four Seasons brought us our greatest artistic pleasures. [continued]
January 1, 2016
in: Reviews
New Year’s Eve with Boston Baroque
by David Patterson
Nobody needed Times Square, as Boston Baroque ushered in 2016 with roasting 18th-century chestnuts at Sanders—complete with sopranissimo. [continued]
December 31, 2015
in: Reviews
Dazzling ART: Natasha, Pierre, and the 1812 Comet
by Garry McLinn
Tolstoy has been dramatized in outstanding fashion at ART over the last month; the musical will continue through Sunday before this comet of a show orbits off to Broadway. [continued]
December 29, 2015
in: Reviews
Schütz Christmas Story Staged in Cambridge
by Steven Ledbetter
Appearing together in First Church in Cambridge, Musica Nuova, the Weckmann Project, and Long & Away staged the Schütz Christmas Story on the day after Christmas. [continued]
December 23, 2015
in: Reviews
Singing, Listening, Imagining Across Cultures
by Tom Schnauber
The Boston Camerata’s “A Mediterranean Christmas” brought a movingly relevant uplift to the sanctuary of the First Church Congregational Cambridge on Monday. [continued]
December 23, 2015
in: Reviews
Bartokathon Take Two: ¡YOWZA!
by Vance R. Koven
Herein a second BMInt thinker opines on Borromeo’s Six Bartok quartets at the Gardner last Sunday. [continued]
December 22, 2015
in: Reviews
Borromeo Bartokathon: Exhilaration or Overkill?
by Fred Bouchard
The foursome’s intimate, bristly marathon brought energetic precision to all six of Bartok’s string quartets at the Gardner on Sunday. [continued]
December 21, 2015
in: Reviews
A Newfangled Schubertiade
by Nate Shaffer
“Old Friend” sandwiched songs and instrumental works among orchestrated arrangements of Schubert lieder before A Far Cry’s enlargement of Schubert’s String Quartet in G Major, D. 887 somewhat heavily occupied the second half at Jordan Hall on Friday. [continued]
December 20, 2015
in: Reviews
Serious Seasonal Helpings from H + H
by Sudeep Agarwala
The wide range of technique and storytelling we found Thursday in Handel + Haydn’s selection of three Bach cantatas and a funeral motet made “Bach Christmas” particularly enticing. [continued]
December 17, 2015
in: Reviews
Illuminations of Messiaen from Emerging Pianist
by David Patterson
Pianist Daniel Parker’s way with birdcalls and just about everything else hooked me at Killian Hall on Wednesday. [continued]
December 15, 2015
in: Reviews
A Seasonal Mix Blows In From That Other BSO
by Vance R. Koven
The Brookline Symphony Orchestra performed first-rate and varied repertoire for the orchestra’s holiday-season program on Saturday at All Saints Church Brookline with solidity and finesse that belied its community-ensemble status. [continued]
December 15, 2015
in: Reviews
Longest Nights’ Journey Into Day
by Kate Stringer
Oriana Consort wove Advent themes of light and darkness in The Longest Nights; their yuletide concert given this past Saturday evening at First Lutheran Church in Boston brought clarity and obfuscation in equal measure. [continued]
December 14, 2015
in: Reviews
Ponderousness Banished by Boston Baroque
by Geoffrey Wieting
Chorus, orchestra, and soloists reached international levels of color, emotional commitment, and virtuosity in Boston Baroque’s Messiah at Jordan Hall on Friday. [continued]
December 14, 2015
in: Reviews
Tallis Tells of a Birth
by Virginia Newes
To celebrate the advent of Christmas, Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars juxtaposed late-20th-century compositions by Arvo Pärt with music from mid-16th-century England at St. Paul’s, Cambridge on Saturday. [continued]
December 12, 2015
in: Reviews
Rumbarocco Grooves with Baroque
by Garry McLinn
Rumbarocco’s Latin-Baroque Fusion rhythms got the First Lutheran Church Boston audience in the mood to dance last night. [continued]
December 10, 2015
in: Reviews
LSO Seized By Spirit of Paganini
by Kate Stringer
The Longwood Symphony Orchestra under Ronald Feldman delivered a well-mixed program including In Mo Yang’s performance of Paganini’s First Violin Concerto to a Saturday night crowd at Jordan Hall. [continued]
December 10, 2015
in: Reviews
Jay Gatsby Struts to Harbison’s Tune
by Sarah Schaffer
Semperoper’s new production plumbs and energizes Harbison’s Gatsby with high production values in one of the world’s greatest opera houses. [continued]
December 9, 2015
in: Reviews
Penelope Partners Morrison with ISGM
by Laura Stanfield Prichard
The Gardner kicked off its innovative series of new vocal works curated by avant-garde impresario Beth Morrison last Thursday with a packed house for Sarah Kirkland Snider’s moody, evocative song cycle. [continued]
December 8, 2015
in: Reviews
Thirty Years On, Quartet Still Nails It
by Brian Schuth
Haydn, Dvorak, and Andres came through brightly from the Takács Quartet at Jordan Hall last Friday. [continued]
December 8, 2015
in: Reviews
Schubert and Wyner Played with Mozart on First
by Mark DeVoto
“First Monday” at Jordan Hall refreshed in every way with its fine assembly of current faculty, alumni, and old friends. [continued]
December 8, 2015
in: Reviews
Traditions Adapted in Collegium’s Messiah
by Kate Stringer
The Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum rang in the University’s holiday season with a distinguished, richly contextualized Messiah on Friday evening at Sanders. [continued]
more reviews →December 21, 2015
in: News & Features
Critics Remember 2015
by BMINT STAFF
The several BMInt writers not immune to nostalgic rumination have each submitted lists of their favorite CDs and concerts of the last season. We thank them for their reflections. More are expected, so check back. Some have chosen to nominate concerts they have reviewed while others have chosen from concerts which they merely attended. During the past 12 months BMInt has published hundreds of reviews and articles (for the record, 3700 reviews in 5 years), so this epistle must needs place a severe test on the memories of the participants. But this exercise also gives us all yet another reminder of how much to be grateful for the musical life of Boston and its environs. I believe that BMInt’s 50+ active writers, including one who doffed her training wheels to serve as a correspondent to the Globe, salute all of our players and presenters. And I add my wishes for a Happy New Year to the readers of this site who on a good day number over 5000. The discourses on these pages and their re-postings on Facebook, Twitter, and presenters’ websites speak volumes to the relevance of the art we celebrate and our yearnings to discuss it. [continued…]
December 9, 2015
in: News & Features
Borromeo Bartok Quartet Marathon Coming Soon
by Brian Schuth
Béla Bartók (file photo)
My intense and exhausting pleasure of hearing the foursome play these works last year still casts shadows over my listening today. I was therefore thrilled to have the chance to talk with violinist Kristopher Tong about the forthcoming surfeit on December 20th. Too much of a good thing can be wonderful! Just ask Mae West or Kris.
BJS: Kristopher, the Borromeo has been performing all six Bartok quartets for some time now, since before you joined them. What was it like to confront those works with them? Has it changed over time? I was taken with your performance last year [my review here]; has anything surprising happened in your reading of the pieces?
KT: I have an interesting history with the Borromeo. I studied at New England Conservatory and met them as faculty when I was doing my Masters’ Degree. One of the most memorable concerts I experienced as a student was seeing them perform the complete Bartok Cycle in Jordan Hall, something that seemed absolutely gargantuan and impossible to me at the time. It was a couple of years into my time with the quartet that we revisited the project.
We have a tendency to dive into a given composer’s work for a period of time, thanks in part with our history of concerts at the Gardner Museum. It has been a real education: the first time we performed the Bartok cycle together was my very first time performing the Sixth Quartet. Since then we have spent time with each of the pieces apart from the cycle. We’ve coached them with students. We’ve performed the cycle many times. We’ve played a lot of Beethoven, we’ve played a lot of Bach. Each of us has done a lot of teaching in the interim. All of these things change your perspective. They give you new ways of looking at your art, new ways to approach even those pieces which feel like ‘old friends’. Your relationship to significant works evolves as you evolve. Every time you perform, you are bringing something to life which has never happened before…I don’t know if you will be ‘surprised’ in December, but I certainly hope that what you hear sounds vital and renewed. [continued…]
November 24, 2015
in: News & Features
Dying Face-down in a Swimming Pool:
by BMINT STAFF
John Harbison (BMInt staff photo)
Harbison’s Gatsby To Play the Semper Opera
Yes, we remember the excitement in Boston when the Metropolitan Opera commissioned our own John Harbison’s The Great Gatsby in 1999. Revivals have followed sporadically in San Francisco, at the Aspen Music Festival, and in concert performances in Boston and at Tanglewood Music Center.
Finally, the first European staged performance of the full grand opera Gatsby comes at the historic at Semperoper Dresden from December 6th through 21st. According to the company, “The opera blends modern classical music with jazz and swing to paint a thrilling portrait of a debauched and decadent society, where double standards clash with idealism.”
Wayne Marshall serves as music director, Keith Warner essays stage direction, with dramaturgy by Stefan Ulrich, and set design by the late Johan Engels. In this staging, Director Keith Warner avoids the directorial conceits often plaguing recent European productions. Instead he goes directly where we would expect—to the excesses, excitements, and impending doom of Fitzgerald’s mid-20s America. [continued…]
November 19, 2015
in: News & Features
Tanglewood Festival 2016 To Be a Feast
by Mark DeVoto
Mark DeVoto ca. 2000
Running from July 3rd (Prairie Home Companion warmup June 25th) to August 28th, the Tanglewood-to-be promises an abundance of deeper challenges among its harvest of crowd-pleasers. The information received thus far presents preliminary and incomplete teasers of events numerous and varied.
Summertime on the lawn or in the Shed implies a certain relaxation and dolce far niente, in addition to serious concentration. So while I have railed in the past about too many performances of works of lesser quality, I can be sympathetic if a Tanglewood performance is involved. And some of the programming is inspired. Friday July 22nd sees two outstandingly dull warhorses, Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia and Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, but sandwiched between them is Dvorák’s Violin Concerto, with Lisa Batiashvili. On Saturday, the high point is the complete Sombrero de tres picos of Manuel de Falla, one of the more sparkling creations of Diaghilev’s later years, but to hear it you have to endure Tchaikovsky’s overplayed Piano Concerto no. 1, the consolation being that soloist Garrick Ohlsson is one of the best pianists alive. One BSO program features Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite no. 2—it’s hard to get tired of either—but winds up with Carmina Burana, vulgar albeit good-natured fun. [continued…]
November 19, 2015
in: News & Features
Groupmuse Seeks Support
by BMINT STAFF
A be-mused Sam Bodkin
Groupmuse, the Boston-founded startup that organizes classical music house concerts, has announced a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise $100,000 to grow its operations and staff. The donor tiers range from “keep Groupmuse close to your heart” for $1, to “be like an emperor or something” for $10,000.
BMInt spoke with Sam Bodkin, the Founder and CEO of Groupmuse, about the organization’s past successes and future plans.
SB: Boston was the birthplace of Groupmuse and Boston made Groupmuse possible because it has the ideal conditions for something like this. It’s a city with a deep and honest love of great culture, it has world class institutions, and there’s a bone-deep commitment to the life of the mind and the life of the soul. I mean, look at the Boston Music Intelligencer! It grew straight out of the Harvard Musical Association, which was once in talks with Wagner to produce Parsifal! That’s heavy duty stuff! And to top it off, it was one of the first outlets to cover Groupmuse, when we were in our absolute infancy!
But even with all of that pedigree, Boston also has this new-fangled innovation streak, and it’s a small city. So something like Groupmuse was really able to take root. I’m hoping in Boston we have a strong showing of people to come out and support this Kickstarter. I think Groupmuse is essential for our culture, which is on a precipice, and cities like Boston can show the way.
BMInt: What have been the major success for Groupmuse since its first coverage in BMInt back in 2013? [continued…]
November 18, 2015
in: News & Features
Christmas Comes Early From H + H
by BMINT STAFF
Some 1000 people showed up on Christmas Day of 1815 to hear the first installment of what has become the longest running show in town. Handel and Haydn Society’s inaugural concert, at King’s Chapel came as a response to a pair of successful presentations earlier in the year led by Gottlieb Graupner, a musician who had arrived from London in 1797 and who had once played oboe under Haydn there. His musical miscellanies had aroused enough interest to inspire the founding of the Society.
The composers heard in the stone church that night included by the namesakes of the ensemble well as lesser composers whose stars have faded. A special event—again at King’s Chapel—on this Saturday night at 7 pm, re-creates, and in various ways, celebrates the founding and early history of this most senior of American concert-giving organizations. And it does so in what is surely the one gathering place in Boston that is least changed in the last 200 years.
Saturday evening will not literally repeat that founding moment, though it will, naturally, close with what must count as the two most famous and popular choral numbers to have been performed over the period stretching from the founding to today: the close of Part I of Haydn’s Creation, “The Heavens are telling the glory of God,” and the close of Part II of Handel’s Messiah, “Hallelujah.” [continued…]
November 16, 2015
in: News & Features
Laudamus Gunther
by BMINT STAFF
Acknowledging Dreamscape
Though an amazing 50 other concerts seem to be happening between Monday and Sunday, six celebrations planned in celebration of Gunther Schuller’s 90th birthday may constitute the major events for many of us. Schuller’s death five months ago inspired extended looks at his considerable legacy.
Gunther’s weekend starts a day early, on Thursday. At NEC, John Heiss has curated a November 19th concert that spans his 70 years of composing, as well as the tremendous range of genres and ideas encompassed in his output. Free at 7:30pm at Jordan Hall, Gunther Schuller: A Musical Celebration features Quartet for 4 Double Basses; Sandpoint Rag (pianist Veronica Jochum); Headin’ Out, Movin’ In; Grand Concerto for Percussion and Keyboards; and Ran Blake’s Gunther. At 8pm at BU and also free, David Martins leads the Boston University Wind Ensemble in Schuller’s Symphony for Brass and Percussion, and other works.
On Friday evening November 20th at 8pm, free recitals continue, with organist Aaron Sunstein giving the world premiere of Schuller’s (1981) Organ Symphony, with other works, at Church of the Advent; co-sponsored by NEC and the Boston chapter of the American Guild of Organists. [continued…]
November 12, 2015
in: News & Features
The Circa Is Coming to Town Again
by BMINT STAFF
With nary a dog and pony act or whitefaced clown, Circa’s 19 circassians (acrobats) will illustrate three Schostakovich string quartets at Schubert Theater this weekend . . . if you can believe it. Some may remember Circa’s dark and edgy appearance in 2012. This time their unlikely partners are four blindfolded members of the Quatuor Debussy. The acrobats promise to defy gravity with dangerous hand to hand stunts, including a woman walking on the heads of her male counterparts, and dropping into a full split with her feet on the heads of two men. They will also do some aerial stunts with ropes and satin. You can see a short trailer of the performances here.
The edgy show created by Circa’s artistic director Yaron Lifschitz begins with a solo performer suspended on a rope serenaded by musicians, then moves through rapidly alternating scenes of dislocated stillness and violent explosions into geometries of acrobats intersected by extreme physicality to arrive at exquisitely detailed and nuanced choreographies of acrobats flying, balancing and landing. Opus apparently explores the complex relationships between the individual and the group, between the march of history and the dictates of the heart and between the tragic and the comic.
BMInt asked Quatour Debussy’s violinist Christope Collette what’s the point of the blindfolds? [continued…]
more news & features →