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
News & Features
April 23, 2018
Cook Licks Own Fingers
by BMINT STAFF
Shakespeare Concerts will give the world premiere of The lady doth protest too much, by the composer Joseph Summer, as well as works by Serge Prokofiev, Howard Frazin, Binna Kim, Benjamin Pesetsky (also a BMInt contributor), and Thomas Schnauber on Friday April 27th at 8pm at Jordan Hall. A similar program repeats the next evening [continued]
April 18, 2018
The Lost World of Florence Price
by Nathaniel Meyer
The Du Bois Orchestra will revive Price’s Mississippi River Suite in the second of a three-part series at the University Lutheran Church in Cambridge commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of W.E.B. Du Bois. [continued]
April 16, 2018
Moving Right Along at 150
by BMINT STAFF
We’re all used to hearing fine New England Conservatory performances of all sizes in its Jordan Hall. Next Wednesday, as part of the celebration of the conservatory’s 150th birthday, the NEC Philharmonia will move down the street to Symphony Hall. Stanford and Norma Jean Calderwood director of orchestras Hugh Wolff, marking his 10th anniversary at [continued]
John Oliver (1939–2018): An Appreciation
by Stephen H. Owades
One of the great figures in American choral music, John Oliver, died Wednesday April 11th after a long illness. He founded the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the chorus of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, in 1970 and led it until his retirement in 2015. Before the formation of the TFC, the BSO had worked with a variety [continued]
April 15, 2018
Tristan and Iseult Entangle at Longy
by BMINT STAFF
The mythical couple emerges from the misty past next week at Longy in Boston Camerata’s “Tristan & Iseult: A Medieval Romance in Poetry and Music.” This iteration of the ancient love story, drawn entirely from authentic medieval sources, proposes a powerful and surprising rendition of the tale for modern audiences. The internationally acclaimed scenario and [continued]
April 13, 2018
Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Announces 2018 Winner
by Bettina A. Norton
At its annual meeting, the Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund board unanimously chose as its 2018 competition prizewinner the 25-year-old pianist Jean Sélim Abdelmoula, from Switzerland, granting him a prize of $5000. Judge András Schiff had nominated Abdelmoula. “An uncommonly poetic musician”, according to The New York Times, Abdelmoula received first prizes at the 2012 Edvard [continued]
April 9, 2018
Operatic Immersion at JP Brewery
by BMINT STAFF
Thought about being young, penniless, and in love? Ever wanted to share a drink with the denizens of Café Momus? Did you like Rent? If the answer is yes to two out of three of these questions, then by all means plan to experience Boston Opera Collaborative’s site specific La Bohème, where industrial racks will [continued]
April 5, 2018
BSO’s Economic Muscle Grew 40% in the Last Decade
by BMINT STAFF
Beyond the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s benefits (tangible, musical, spiritual) to the 1.2 million people who attended its concerts in the past year, the organization’s activities led to $261 million in “economic impact” in our Commonwealth. An analysis the BSO commissioned from Williams College economics professor Stephen Shepard shows the impact to have grown 40% over [continued]
March 31, 2018
Club Commissions Daniel Strong Godfrey
by Marcus Thompson
Each season since 2013, the Boston Chamber Music Society Commissioning Club, made up of nearly 30 households of patrons and subscribers, has supported the creation of a new work that features our member musicians and strengthens our commitment to the continuation of our art in our time. Past composers include George Tsontakis, Pierre Jalbert, Harold [continued]
March 25, 2018
NEC Quartets To Be Fêted
by Lee Eiseman
New England Conservatory celebrates its Professional String Quartet Training Program with three concerts in seven days, recognizing six of the ensembles that have participated since the program’s origins, in September 11th, 2001. The three Jordan Hall concerts, also marking NEC’s 150th anniversary, take place on: April 1st – Jupiter and Parker Quartets, 7:30pm; April 4th [continued]
March 22, 2018
Symphony Announces 2018–19 Season
by Stephen H. Owades
Because the Boston Symphony includes three “brands”—the BSO, the Boston Pops, and Tanglewood—for which tickets and subscriptions are sold in the spring, they traditionally space out the three announcements and ticket sales. This year they’re providing the full details a week earlier than usual. [HERE]. The orchestra begins the fall with a two-week tour of [continued]
March 20, 2018
Concert/Meditation To Recall Robert Honeysucker
by Lee Eiseman
At St. Mary Church Charlestown, on March 25th at 3:30, distinguished organist Heinrich Christensen, pianist/choirmaster Daniel Sauceda, and the Charlestown Community Choir will offer music from Bach’s meditations on the Palm Sunday liturgy. Soprano Sirgourney Cook and baritone James Dargan will intone two of the most powerful arias from Bach’s Passion music and in memory [continued]
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March 16, 2018
Brewing the Electro-Classical Music of David Ibbett
by BMINT STAFF
We’ve witnessed Beethoven’s Fifth amongst hops bags and experienced solemn solo celloing in the shadows of giant fermentation tanks; at various times, Aeronaut Brewery, Short Path Distillery, and Slumbrew have all presented what could be called concert music. Next week we expect to run a feature on Boston Opera Collaborative’s April run of La Bohème [continued]
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March 3, 2018
Papa Bach Reborn Again at FLC
by Jonathan Wessler
The music of Johann Sebastian Bach, born on March 21, 1685, unquestionably stands at the high-water mark of the Lutheran musical tradition [or any other tradition for that matter]. Every year on a Saturday near Bach’s birthday, The First Lutheran Church of Boston celebrates this musical giant and his myriad contributions to music, both sacred and secular, [continued]
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March 2, 2018
Mindful Jorja Fleezanis (Concert Cancelled)
by BMINT STAFF
“Searing intensity” characterizes the playing of Indiana University music professor and Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Jorja Fleezanis according to BMInt in 2011; anyone who witnessed her ordering NEC masterclass students to walk around rhythmically as they played might modulate that description down a step to effective-for-young-artists intensity. The String Masters Series at BoCo-Berklee’s [continued]
February 27, 2018
Long Soul’s Journey into Spanish Mysticism
by BMINT STAFF
The third and final candidate for the directorship of Boston Cecilia, George Case conducts the chorus in the Boston premiere of Kile Smith’s Canticle, on Sunday March 11th at 3pm at All Saints in Brookline. The work is based on the English translation of the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross, the 16th-century Spanish [continued]
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February 26, 2018
Temporary Digs Beckon
by BMINT STAFF
Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms Society’s conductor Steven Lipsitt has occasionally been known to compose. Ten years ago, he celebrated his 10th season leading the Boston Classical Orchestra, by doing that very thing. Breaking a 30-year drought, his Terzettino/Terzettone, a trio-concertino or sinfonia concertante for English horn, bass clarinet, and contrabassoon runs through seven variations on [continued]
February 21, 2018
Revolutionary Music: Commemorating Du Bois
by Nathaniel Meyer
Three years after the Civil War, the African-American polymath William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, traveled widely for his education, earned Harvard’s first doctorate awarded to a black person, and went on to become a great and important (and tireless) educator, writer, sociologist, activist and advocate for human rights, notably black [continued]
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February 19, 2018
Zander Takes a Measure of Tchaikovsky 4
by Benjamin Zander
Something fresh and intriguing this way comes with Boston Philharmonic’s subscription concerts Thursday through Sunday. In anticipation the concert of Mussorgsky’s ‘Khovanshchina’ Prelude, Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Alexander Korsantia, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, Music Director Benjamin Zander opines on his recent discoveries: In every recording of the Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony, come to [continued]
February 18, 2018
Three Takes on Orpheus and Oedipus Complexes
by BMINT STAFF
The Orchestra and Chorus of Emmanuel Music under the direction of Ryan Turner will present “Metamorphoses: Orpheus in Oedipus” featuring Matthew Aucoin’s The Orphic Moment, John Harbison’s Symphony No. 5 and Igor Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex with the Harvard Glee Club at Sanders Theater on Friday February 23rd. On the 1ooth anniversary of the American premiere of Stravinsky’s Rex, the Harvard Glee Club will reprise its role [continued]
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February 16, 2018
Rzewski Makes the Political Personal
by BMINT STAFF
Dog bites man is famously not news, and violinist and pianist playing Beethoven and Bartok sonatas isn’t either, but a brand-new work from Frederic Rzewski, not only co-commissioned by the Celebrity Series of Boston but tuned politically to the present—that’s news. For the Celebrity Debut Series at Longy’s Pickman Hall at 8pm on Wednesday March 7, [continued]
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February 5, 2018
Two Orchestras and One World
by Christoph Wolff
At a gala at the Boston Public Library Monday night, leadership of the Boston Symphony Orchestra declared “Leipzig Week” underway. Lectures and performances throughout the week mark a new partnership between the BSO and the Gewandhausochester Leipzig (GHO), a major German orchestra hailing from the city once home to J.S. Bach, Felix Mendelssohn, and others. [continued]
February 2, 2018
Hearing Leipzig in Symphony Hall
by David Griesinger
Our BMInt colleague David Griesinger has agreed to preview a short lecture on the acoustics of Boston Symphony Hall that he will deliver during a free public symposium at the Boston Public Library Tuesday February 7th from 6 to 7 pm, part of a celebration of the collaboration between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the [continued]
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January 29, 2018
Leipzigers To Partner with BSO Volk
by BMINT STAFF
The announcement in September 2015 that Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Andris Nelsons would also become the 21st Kapellmeister of the 275-year-old Leipzig Gewandhausorchester included the news of a “…strategic alliance [that] will allow Andris to consolidate the core of his European work in a place that shares a musical heritage with the BSO.” The [continued]
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January 27, 2018
E Duo Unum
by Basil Considine
Quite au courant, the story depicts an individual navigating a gender transition. Two singers, one male, one female, portray “Hannah Before” and “Hannah After,” both remaining onstage from start to finish. Boston Opera Collaborative’s production (running through Sunday) of Laura Kaminsky’s As One, to a libretto by Kimberly Reed and Mark Campbell opened Thursday night [continued]