Groton Hill Music Center’s astonishing facility [see my accounts HERE and HERE] includes a fascinating Meta Organworks “organ of organs, “a collection of 15 significant historical instruments sampled to a fare-the-well by Hauptwerk. Last Thursday titulaire organist Randy Steere led us through the power and charms of the virtual St. Etienne Cavaille-Coll, French romantic organ (and four other) teleported to Groton through digital magic and the brute force of 48 massive loudspeakers transmitting nearly 50,000 watts of undistorted power last Thursday. We lard this interview with video snippets from that encounter. In the fullness of time Steere promises to reveal the charms of the other 14 examples the four-manual console comprises in its memory banks. A review of the instrument’s debut with the Vista Philharmonic Orchestra is HERE. An executive slide show is HERE

FLE: So I am standing before an organ of organs.

The builder took the name Meta Organworks partly because it can encompass an almost limitless number of complete sampled instruments. So among our 15 instruments we have all of the major organ styles: Italian Renaissance; German, French and Spanish Baroque; French, English, American Romantic/Cathedral/Symphonic. We have a theater organ here.  We have American eclectic, Rosales, Casavant, Æolian-Skinner, and an E.M. Skinner. So a wide variety to play all kinds of music.

RS: And what you said that interests me is that you can only use stops that belong to a particular organ at any one time.

The whole point of this, which is what makes it a virtual pipe organ, is when you load the organ you are loading just that entire instrument. I can’t take a stop from the French organ and mix it with the German organ. Because the whole design is for you to play it authentically as the organ builder intended. It is possible to have a consultant (only those that Hauptwerk has licensed) “extend” an organ.  Much like we do all the time with electronic extensions to pipe organs, a consultant could take a 16’ stop and create a 32’ stop from it.  They could take a trumpet, copy it and voice it into an en Chamade or Tuba.  They might take the clarinet from the swell and “borrow” it to the choir.  But this is still using the original sounds with the original ambiance.  Some sample sets allow that, others are encrypted and locked down so that is not possible. With electronic organs it’s not that way. I could pick the French version of this flute with the German version of this reed or even pick from a generic laundry list of stops. It’s not a specific instrument, so there’s no integrity. [continued…]

First Lutheran Church of Boston’s fabulous free Boston Bach Birthday concert begins at 8:45 AM on Saturday.  A German lunch comes at noon and the concluding Vespers Service begins at 5:00.

Amongst the nonstop early music making in between comes a piano, albeit a reproduction of an early one that Bach might have played. At 2:10 Pianist/harpsichordist Artem Belogurov, visiting from Haarlem, NL, will present a core solo recital of remarkable breadth and interest for the Boston début of builder Kerstin Schwarz’s acclaimed “Red Cristofori,” her replica of the 1726 original in the Grassi Museum, Leipzig.Brilliant Florentine keyboard instrument builder Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731) worked for the final generation of the Medici, that tumultuous Tuscan ruling family. The security of a good workshop, access to select materials, and a protected existence allowed him a rare degree of freedom. We know little of his first harpsichords-with-hammers, but three 1720s pianos, each configured somewhat differently, exist in New York, Rome, and Leipzig. Exact modern copies by builder Kerstin Schwarz stand next to two of them.

Many Crisotoforis were or are agreed to have been exported to Würzburg, London, Dresden, and other mainland European centers. When Domenico Scarlatti left Naples for the Lisbon court, his interest in the new cembalo col pian’ e forte led to the importation of many Florentine pianos to Portugal. Sparked by his and his royal employer’s move to Madrid, a rich heyday of the new piano and its older plucked sibling ignited waves of new music in Iberia. Iberian instrument makers soon copied Cristofori’s elegant Florentine design, some with excellent innovations. A precious few of these early Iberian pianos survive. [continued…]

Bostonians are about to have a rare chance to hear traditional Afghan music performed by some of its most-skilled masters. They will be gathering to perform along with Afghan musicians who were schooled in western classical music in Kabul but who now live in exile in the U.S. Billed as a Concert in Solidarity with Afghan Musicians, it takes place on March 20^th at 7:00 PM at the First Church, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge. Produced in association with the Longy School of Music, the concert is happening on the Persian New Year, Nawroz, which is widely celebrated in Afghanistan. The participating musicians aim to direct attention to “the Taliban’s inhumane ban on music and persecution of Afghan musicians.”

The concert has been organized by Arson Fahim, who though only 22, has already had successes as a pianist, composer and conductor. Two weeks before the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, Arson left his home there to start studies at the Longy School of Music. It was an unexpected destination for someone born in a refugee camp in Pakistan, and who had not started playing piano until he was 12. Arson tells how a few months after returning to Kabul, he was at a children’s learning center. “From behind a closed door came this wonderful sound. Someone was playing a beautiful piece of music on the piano,” he remembers. “I knew I should not go in uninvited, but couldn’t help myself.” The teacher was giving a lesson, but he let Arson walk up to the piano.

I gently touched it and pressed every single key, for the first time in my life. From that moment, I knew I had to learn piano. I had to become a musician.

He says he took his first piano lesson that day. [continued…]

A portrait concert of composer Derek David will feature new vocal and chamber works that reflect upon Jewish identity and Yiddish culture in a contemporary landscape. The Boston Festival of New Jewish Music event, hosted by MIT Music & Theater Arts in Kresge Auditorium, on Saturday, March 18^th at 7:00pm will feature the full premiere of Derek’s Clarinet Quintet Oh World, Goodnight  by Del Sol Quartet with Andrew Friedman (and a surprise appearance by Carduus Choir), and the premiere of String Quartet No. 4 Kaddish with Verona Quartet. Vocal works will include Four Yiddish Folksongs from members of Ezekiel’s Wheels (Nat Seelen and Abigale Reisman), pianist Renana Gutman, and soprano Megan Jones; and choral works with A Besere Velt, the world’s largest Yiddish chorus.

David Stevens interviewed Derek David:

DS: The Boston Festival of New Jewish Music (BFNJM) is a young organization, only in its second season. How did your involvement with this festival come about and how does your project participate in their theme? [continued…]

Vocal ensemble  Lorelei Ensemble, celebrated for inventive programs that champion the virtuosity of the human voice, will give the Northeast premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Her Story with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a subscription-series concert led by Giancarlo Guerrero on Thursday, March 16, 2023 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, March 17, 2023 at 1:30 p.m.; and Saturday, March 18, 2023 at 8:00 p.m. at Symphony Hall that also includes Góreki’s Symphony No. 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. The New York Times described Her Story as having “a ferocity that is literally written into the score, but also an absence of resolution as it looks back to suffrage with one wary eye toward the future steps this country still needs to take for something resembling true equality.”

Written for Lorelei Ensemble and co-commissioned by the BSO, Her Story invokes the words of historical figures and the spirit of pivotal moments to pay tribute to the centuries of ongoing struggle for equal rights for women in America. The 30-minute piece for orchestra and women’s vocal ensemble incorporates text from throughout the history of women’s fight for equality, ranging from a letter written by Abigail Adams, to words attributed to Sojourner Truth, to public attacks directed at women protesting for the right to vote, to political satire, and is the latest in a series of Wolfe’s compositions highlighting monumental and turbulent moments in American history and culture, and the people—both real and imagined, celebrated and forgotten—that defined them. A siren for our times, Lorelei’s Artisic Director Beth Willer answered a few questions for BMInt.

FLE: How did Lorelei put together the commissioning group of the Boston, Chicago, and Nashville symphonies for Julia Wolfe’s Her Story ? Apparently you know the composer and had proposed the concept of commemorating the 19^th amendment. [continued…]

BMInt’s Chi Wei Lo, a DMA candidate in Contemporary Improvisation at NEC had an interesting discussion with Bruce Brubaker, co-chair of the piano department at NEC, about the curation of “A Fine Balance: Piano Music by Women and Men,” and developments in the department.

CWL: How did the idea to include such a highly unusual selection of repertoire, with some pieces rarely performed, come about?

BB: The idea for the concert began with the realization that both Fanny Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky had written sets of 12 pieces for the piano, with each piece representing a different month. I was intrigued by the idea of bringing together these two monumental works from the 19^th century and thought it would make for an interesting concert. This was part one of the series. The exploration of Fanny Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky’s works led us to consider how women were often excluded from the musical world of Europe during that era. I then started to think about other examples of pieces by women and men that could be juxtaposed on the same subject, material, or formal basis.

How do you see the link between pairs?

Some of the pairings were quite obvious, like Clara Schumann’s variations on Robert Schumann’s Bunte Blätter, which were intended to be published together with Brahms’s variations on the same theme. Other pairings were more thematic, like Joan Tower and Alkan’s “train” pieces. [continued…]

For over three decades, Musicians of the Old Post Road have delighted in their mission of uncovering and performing works by historically overlooked individuals and communities. Based in the Greater Boston area, the ensemble specializes in the period instrument performance of dynamic, diverse, and little-known music from the Baroque to early Romantic eras.

In March, the group returns for the second half of its 34^th season with more live performances for both in-person and online audiences. On March 11^th and 12^th, the ensemble pays homage to one of the original superstar prima donnas, Faustina Bordoni. Born to an aristocratic family in Venice in 1697, she studied with Michelangelo Gasparini under the patronage of brother composers Alessandro and Benedetto Marcello. She made her operatic debut in Venice in 1716 in Carlo Francesco Pollarolo’s Ariodante and continued singing in her home city for 10 more years, performing in operas by Albinoni, the Gasparini brothers, Giacomelli, Leonardo Leo, Giuseppe Maria Orlandini, the Pollarolos (father and son), and Leonardo Vinci, among others. It was during this time she met soprano Francesca Cuzzoni, who would become her greatest rival. [continued…]

The Boston Bach Birthday is back! First Lutheran Church of Boston will hold its annual celebration of Johann Sebastian Bach and his music on Saturday, March 25^th to honor the 338^th anniversary of Sebastian’s birth. All musical events are free, with donations gratefully accepted. Tickets are only required for the famous, not-to-be-missed German lunch ($15 at the door), presented by the FLC Young Adults.

This year’s program returns to the BBB’s roots as an organ-centric event, featuring heavily “Boston’s Bach Organ,” built in 2000 by Richards, Fowkes & Co. FLC’s Kantor Jonathan Wessler will play a two-part program (8:30am and 1:10pm) featuring all six of Bach’s demanding trio sonatas, interspersed with lesser-known trio-texture chorale preludes. At 11am local organist Rosalind Mohnsen will play a program of music by Bach and friends, and at 4pm Heejin Kim, the most recent Yuko Hayashi Memorial First Prize winner of the Boston Bach International Organ Competition, will play a program of music in the keys of Bach’s name: B-flat, A, C, and H (B).

The BBB traditionally features programs for children of all ages, and this year is no exception. At 10am silent film accompanist Peter Krasinski will present “Peter and the Pipes,” a multimedia presentation as to the many parts that make up FLC’s brilliant pipe organ, and provide an improvised organ accompaniment to the famous French film The Red Balloon. Prior to Peter’s program, the Young People’s Concert at 9:30 will feature young instrumentalists playing Bach’s music, demonstrating that Bach truly speaks to all ages. [continued…]

Today’s New York Times gives a half-page notice of the death on February 14^th of Viennese composer Friedrich Cerha three days short of his 97^th birthday. Noted for music for the stage and the concert hall, he was well associated with postwar Viennese modernism and avant-garde. He directed the new-music ensemble “Die Reihe,”after the short-lived, very German-oriented new-music periodical of the same name. When I met him at an Empfang (reception) in Vienna in 1986, I enjoyed hearing his nicely Viennese–sounding Gschwandtner Tänze for chamber ensemble.

As the Times obit by David Allen says, “… at least outside of Austria, Mr. Cerha was known less for his own work than for his celebrated contribution to another composer’s masterpiece,” namely his completion of the orchestration of Alban Berg’s second opera, Lulu, which had been left unfinished at the time of Berg’s death in 1935. Lulu was performed as a two-act torso, with a third-act unsung fragment, in Switzerland in 1937, and this makeshift remained the rule for performance for the next 42 years. Berg’s widow Helene, for reasons of her own, decreed a permanent ban on all attempts to reconstitute Berg’s third act as he wrote it, and prohibited access to his manuscript materials even for study; these prohibitions were included in her own last will and testament as well as into the articles of incorporation of the Alban Berg Foundation, which went into effect upon her own death in 1976. Helene’s successors in the foundation, including the president, the composer Gottfried von Einem, adhered strictly to her testamentary wishes, and these were also supported by Berg’s self-chosen biographer, Willi Reich. Nevertheless, Berg’s publisher, Universal Edition, retained possession of the manuscripts, and having contracted with Berg for a complete three-act opera, did not feel bound by Helene’s prohibitions. In 1963, Universal engaged Friedrich Cerha to complete the score of the opera, but their agreement was kept secret so as to avoid provoking a legal dispute with Berg’s widow. [continued…]

We think of motives as short melodic units that are capable of development, always less than a phrase — often less than half a phrase. Beethoven’s da-da-da-DA in the Fifth Symphony is certainly a motive that comes to mind immediately — it is identified by its rhythm first of all (Morse Code letter V: ••• ─ ), next by its three repeated notes, and then, flexibly, by its melodic shape; the motive appears three times in the first phrase, three times in the second phrase, and so forth. The development of this motive resides in its flexibility — it can be moved around everywhere and repeated as often as necessary, and you can even do it in your head if you know the symphony — even when, near the end of the Development section, the motive is shortened to two notes, and then to just one.

Less often do we look for harmony when we think of motives in music. But the 19^th century introduced recurring individual harmonies as motives, without necessary connection to melodies. A succession of chords can be motivic if it is distinctive. An elegant harmonic leitmotive is found in Wagner’s Meistersinger, where the proud knight Walther speaks of his “wonderful dream” in Scene 3 of Act III. This begins with a deceptive cadence from C major to E major, then to A-flat major and finally (IV-I) to E-flat major: [EX. 1]. [continued…]

After decades of wrestling with the master’s metronome markings and learning from “successes and errors” in performances and recordings, Benjamin Zander told BMInt that he thinks he has found a way of reconciling the two contrary ways of interpreting the work – the Romantic and the more historically informed approach. Thus, in the Boston Philharmonic performances at Symphony Hall on February 24^th and at Carnegie Hall on February 26^th (replacements for planned performances in the anniversary year) audiences will learn how Zander has decided that adherence to the tempo markings needs to be leavened with flexibility and rubato, (which Beethoven himself certainly practiced in his piano playing), so that the thrilling and driven tempi he indicates with his metronome marks are interspersed with more lyrical and “romantic” passages. In this way,  he can reconcile dueling maestros―descended from Wagner on one side, and from the more classical Mendelssohn on the other―into a single interpretation. [continued…]   [continued]

Matthew Aucoin, an American composer, conductor, writer, pianist,  MacArthur Fellowship winner, Artist-in-Residence at Los Angeles Opera and co-artistic director of the American Modern Opera Company, also has strong Boston connections. He will be in town to witness performances of two of his works virtually at the same time on February 18^th when the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra includes an orchestral suite from his opera Eurydice in its Sanders Theater concert and the New England Philharmonic plays his Two Dances. Complete information at the end.

FLE: The hook for this story is your peregrination from Sanders, where the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra is playing a suite from your opera Eurydice, to Jordan Hall, where the New England Philharmonic will be including Two Dances in its program. Is the timing is going to work? [continued…]

Tanglewood opens on June 22^nd  and notably includes a lot of new music, younger conductors and soloists, and especially a variety of different kinds of music in and out of the Shed and Ozawa Hall, along with jazz and some literary events: the mixture is bracing. There’s a generous provision of warhorses, too — not so many, but better than usual.  “BSO Opening night at Tanglewood” on July 7^th, for instance, lists Prokofiev’s always welcome Third Piano Concerto,  Tchaikovsky’s  “grand but very noisy”Fourth,  and a piece by Wynton Marsalis. The complete schedule is [HERE]. Read the full press release HERE.

Some operatic items in concert are also inked: Così fan tutte and Acis and Galatea (“sung in English” — was there a choice?), and a “symphonic version of Ragtime” based on the novel by Doctorow, with soloists, chorus, the Boston Pops (Lockhart), but a composer is not named. The Boston Pops are involved in at least six events, including a whole evening of “John Williams’ Film Night,” for this 91-year-old veteran composer and conductor. Another is an all-Gershwin evening on July 14, but the BSO will honor Gershwin again on August 18, with Jean-Yves Thibaudet playing two concertos: Gershwin’s, and the Saint-Saëns Fifth, both in agreeable F major. A new piece by Carlos Simon appears on the same program. [continued…]

MIT Music and Theater Arts, and Guerilla Opera present the world premiere of The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. Elena Ruehr’s new comedic new opera imagines that Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, the true-life unsung inventors of the first computer, use their brilliant new invention to “fight crime” in alternative universes. The libretto comes from the Pulitzer-prize winning Royce Vavrek, who adapted it from the New York Times best-selling graphic novel by Sydney Padua. Giselle Ty serves as stage director.

The show runs from Friday and Saturday, February 3 and February 4, 2022 at 7:30PM to Saturday and Sunday, February 4 and February 5, 2022 at 3:00PM in the MIT Theater Arts Building W97 Black Box Theater, which is making its own opera debut. Tickets HERE.

FLE: Tell us the creation story please.

ER: It was sometime in the spring of 2015. I was cooking dinner while listening to NPR when I heard Sydney Padua come on to talk about her new graphic novel The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. So I read Sydney’s book and fell madly in love. I emailed Sydney’s agent about the idea and happily, she wrote back saying she was a big opera fan and would love to collaborate.  I had wanted to work with Royce Vavrek on this and was very happy indeed that he signed on.  Sydney is collaborating with us and supplying us with visual imagery. [continued…]

Easley Blackwood, Jr., a composer and pianist of remarkable accomplishment, died on January 22 at the age of 89. This word comes from the University of Chicago Music Department, where he taught for 39 years. Non-musicians today remember his father, Easley Blackwood, who developed the Blackwood Convention in bridge playing. Easley Jr., a graduate of Yale (‘53 and ‘54), was known early in his career as one of the most brilliant students ever of Nadia Boulanger; He studied with Messiaen, too, and on his return to America, he quickly made a national impact with his Symphony no. 1, a Koussevitzky Foundation commission, premiered and recorded by the Boston Symphony in 1958. (Reprinted on Cédille CDR 90000 016.) In the 1970s Blackwood was widely known as a superb pianist, specializing in twentieth-century music. One well-known recital program consisted of Ives’s “Concord” Sonata and Boulez’s Sonata no. 2, both played from memory, and at other times he played Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern (I heard a rumor, which I confidently believe still, that Blackwood learned the piano part of Pierrot Lunaire by ear from Steuermann’s recording before studying the score). [continued…]   [continued]

The Serenade by Wilhelm Stenhammar that the BSO played last week began with an Overtura first movement, appropriately enough for a serenade, and this set me to thinking: what’s an overture for? Begin with a specialized dictionary definition, e.g.: “an act, an offer, or a proposal that indicates readiness to undertake a course of action” — diplomatic overtures, for instance. The French overture (in two or three sections) in Baroque suites is one formal type that disappears after Bach. The Overtura of 30 bars that begins Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge is essentially a herald, announcing all the different guises of the basic theme, and one thinks of his use of this sectional title as idiosyncratic. But a classical overture is basic: an orchestral introduction to an opera, necessarily of at least a few minutes’ length but also something in the nature of a symphony as well — especially of a first movement of a symphony, necessarily in sonata form. But it won’t do to have a 15-minute symphonic first movement as a curtain-raiser, nor even ten-minute example in most cases. Let’s imagine that the opera composer, after completing the sung portion of an entire evening’s opera, needs to come up with an orchestral introduction, but would rather, at that point in creativity, be writing a symphony for relaxation, or at least change of pace. [continued…]   [continued]

Over three quarters of a century, a flood of essays, reviews, and books has poured from Barbara Owen’s pen, typewriter, and computer, including numerous periodical and anthology articles, entries in The New Grove Dictionary of Music, and several books, including The Organ in New England, E. Power Biggs: Concert Organist, The Registration of Baroque Organ Music, The Organ Music of Johannes Brahms, and The Great Organ at Methuen. She has served the American Guild of Organists as Regional Councillor and chapter Dean, is a Past President of the Organ Historical Society, a Trustee of Methuen Memorial Music Hall, and is currently active as an organist, lecturer and organ consultant. She worked as pipe voicer for the CB Fisk organ firm for many years. She has also written five reviews for this site.

The First Religious Society and the Methuen Memorial Music Hall will celebrate her many accomplishments in organ building, preservation, scholarship, history, and music on Saturday, January 21, 2:00-4:00 PM at the First Religious Society of Newburyport, Pleasant St with ten distighuished speakers and seven well-known organists. The readings and performances will be livestreamed HERE. Michael Barone (Pipedreams, American Public Media) will serve as Master of Ceremonies. Click HERE for the complete program. [continued…]

American conductor Alan Gilbert—Music Director of the Royal Swedish Opera, Chief Conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, and former Music Director of the New York Philharmonic from 2009 to 2017—and frequent BSO guest Garrick Ohlsson will premiere Justin Dello Joio’s piano concerto Oceans Apart, written for Ohlsson. Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar’s wide-ranging 1911 Serenade has a satisfyingly symphonic scope. French composer Lili Boulanger’s impressionistic 1918 depiction of a spring morning and Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s celebratory Carnival Overture, from 1891, complete the program for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The conductor spoke with BMInt on Monday.

FLE: Many of us are very glad to see that you will be celebrating the 20^th anniversary of your BSO/Symphony Hall debut with these concerts. So let’s begin by asking about the world premiere of Dello Joio’s Oceans Apart. Absent a history of performance practice, or lots of notation as to expression, how do you know what to do? Are you depending on interaction with the composer himself? The other question is, did you ask to conduct this? Or did the BSO make the match of you and Dello Joio?

They asked me to do it. This is a piece that apparently was commissioned some time ago and was not finished in time for the planned premiere, so they’re finally doing it now. And it’s always a pleasure to work with Garrick Ohlsson, who’s one of the great, great pianists and artists.  It would please me to be part of any project involving Garrick.

I don’t know Justin Dello Joio’s music. It’s a new piece for me and a new composer for me. But you can get very quickly to the heart of a score if you’ve spent a lot of time studying new music.  And I have to say, his notation is very, very intelligent, very forward, and it’s been fun to spend time with this score. It’s also interesting that we’re going to have the composer himself on hand. It means I’ll be able to ask a lot of questions, which can be very helpful. That being said, a score is designed to be intelligible and understandable in the absence of the composer—that’s the purpose of notation. Composers generally write pieces that they expect to be interpreted. [continued…]

I’ve been revising chapters of my unpublished book, Melody and Texture in Music, hoping that the revised text will help to attract a publisher; meanwhile I have been posting fragments in these pages. My current revision is of Chapter 14, “Orchestral Texture,” which sometimes refers back to Chapter 10, “Contrapuntal Texture,” and Chapter 13, “Sonata Form.” Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, which I have long pointed to as a contrapuntal marvel, brings some of these things together.

Back in summer 1973, I drove across the country, listening on the radio to the Senate Watergate Committee hearings and John Dean’s riveting testimony.  At one point I stopped to visit friends in California; we smoked some local grass and listened to Mahler’s Fourth. [continued…]

While we may have heard off-the-record grumblings for some months from BSO staffers, we were hardly prepared for the swiftness of the remedy…if we are even right in so regarding the announcements of the simultaneous resignation of President and Chief Executive Officer Gail Samuel and appointment of Jeffrey D. Dunn as interim in that capacity as of January 4, 2023. Eighteen months ago the BSO had lots of hopes that Samuel, its first woman CEO, would bring some of her LA Phil liveliness and relevance to the comparatively staid BSO. Rather than hearing Schadenfreude in response to this turnover, we note expressions of sadness over the lost opportunities and early departure.

The BSO trustees, who guard the guardians, quote Samuel: “When I arrived at the BSO, I was dedicated to re-opening Tanglewood and Symphony Hall and to increasing creativity at the BSO by welcoming artists to our stages more broadly representing the rich diversity that exists in our city. After navigating the profoundly complicated re-opening matters and having successfully laid the groundwork for continued evolution at the BSO, I have decided to step down.” [continued…]

The year end finds me recommending two dozen superlative operatic offerings of different kinds, plus a smaller number of recordings in other genres. As in previous years, my list focuses mainly on lesser-known operas because that’s what I tend to be sent for review. But the list also reflects my belief that the operatic tradition is wider and deeper than our “standard rep” of Carmen and so on leads us to think. (And I’m one of the world’s biggest Carmen fans.)

Some of these operas are in languages that I don’t know; it took extra effort to follow the libretto and translation that in nearly all cases comes with the recording, but I was glad I did.

A few were recorded before the pandemic began, others were made without an audience or with the seats half-filled, and frequently the orchestral players (except those in the wind sections) were masked. A few are important re-releases that first appeared years earlier on a different label or that had been sitting unreleased, often in the “vaults” of European radio station. One came to my attention belatedly by26 years. [continued…]

The Aston Magna Festival and Foundation will be celebrating its 50^th anniversary in the coming summer. In the meantime, a special concert at Brandeis University Sunday, December 18^th (3pm, Slosberg Auditorium, Brandeis University), celebrating the 30^th anniversary of Daniel Stepner’s ascension to Artistic Directorship, will feature two Brandenburg Concertos, Vivaldi’s “Winter,” Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue, and Corelli’s Christmas Concerto. Stepner recently shared his thoughts with the Intelligencer. Tickets HERE. Note: This show was cancelled.

BMInt: Congratulations Dan on your 30 years directing Aston Magna! Wonderful to hear that Aston Magna will celebrate its 50^th next summer!

Thank you! Time flies when you’re having fun, and it is hardly believable to me that it’s been 30 years.

Were you involved in the birth of Aston Magna? [continued…]

Our fellow Bostonian Mark Kroll has published again. This time the harpsichordist, teacher and writer has written “Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti: Reception in Britain 1750-1850” for Cambridge University Press (available HERE as a paperback or E-book). We are pleased to reprint a review by the noted Dutch conductor, organist, harpsichordist, and musicologist, Ton Koopman.

The ‘Cambridge Elements’ series provides concise publications on a wide range of subjects, including music history. A recent issue in this series (mainly intended as an online publication but also available in “old fashioned” book form) is by Mark Kroll and deals with the reception and appreciation of the music of Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti in Britain in the century after their deaths. An interesting subject! I read this little volume with pleasure. [continued…]

The Handel and Haydn Society has invited acclaimed conductor, cellist, and keyboardist Jonathan Cohen to lead the nation’s oldest performing arts organization into its next chapter of musical excellence. At 44, he becomes the organization’s 15^th Artistic Director, and one of its youngest.

Cohen made his debut with the Society in 2020 in a memorable performance of Haydn’s Symphony No. 6, Le Matin and Symphony No. 92, Oxford, along with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. He returned in 2022 to tackle three jewels of the Baroque era, Vivaldi’s Gloria; CPE Bach’s Magnificat, and J.S. Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1. Cohen kicked off the 2022-23 Season in October to rave reviews with H+H with Glories of Bach, He is set to return December 15^th and 18^th to conduct H+H’s “A Baroque Christmas” at Jordan Hall.

We had a very interesting talk with him and H+H executive director David Snead:

FLE: After three years of getting rejections from one conductor, after another [laughter], you finally chose Jonathan Cohen as the Music Director Designate.

DS: We had a very thorough and deliberate process. I always said the search will take as long as it needed to and no longer and that’s where we ended up. [continued…]

The Handel and Haydn Society is set to take on one of anyone’s greatest works with its semi-staged interpretation of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. Raphaël Pichon, founder and artistic director of Pygmalion Ensemble, will lead on November 17^th and 18^th at 7:00 PM at Symphony Hall. World-renowned soprano Ying Fang as Susanna, soprano Jacquelyn Stucker as Countess Almaviva, bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum as Count Almaviva, and bass Krzysztof Baczyk as Figaro will be joining the H+H Orchestra and Chorus. James Darrah, Grammy nominated producer and Artistic Director of Long Beach Opera, will stage-direct and design the performance. We talked with H+H Executive Director David Snead and Darrah yesterday.

FLE: David, how did this week’s Marriage of Figaro come to be?

DS: Raphaël Pichon likes doing projects. His Pygmalion Ensemble from France doesn’t do seasons, they do events projects. He loves doing things at unusual venues. He did a Brahms Requiem in a submarine base, for instance. The idea of doing Figaro was his and it’s also a new experience for our musicians. Raphael had an incredible cast to recommend, so we just thought it would be a great thing to have to in our season.

He was a discovery for me. I had never heard of Pygmalion Ensemble before you sent the press release. I was very impressed with what I heard. He’s very engaged and emotional about his conducting.

It’s been a very big, exciting project to do in two weeks. It’s not just going to be stand and bark. There’ll be interactions and a lot of blocking. There’s going to be strong acting. The singers will be in costume and off book. [continued…]