Classical Music

I have offered some thoughts to a New York Times reporter on how the competition can outlast its founder. And I will add one comment of mine which was not used in the report: There is justified and growing suspicion of the judging panels...
I have offered some thoughts to a New York Times reporter on how the competition can outlast its founder. And I will add one comment of mine which was not used in the report: There is justified and growing suspicion of the judging panels and the pre-selection. One of the Cliburn judges has, I think, nine [...]
about 5 hours ago
In today’s Orange County Register online, I review Friday night’s performance of “The Marriage of Figaro” by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel. Jean Nouvel provided the setting; Christopher Alden st...
In today’s Orange County Register online, I review Friday night’s performance of “The Marriage of Figaro” by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel. Jean Nouvel provided the setting; Christopher Alden staged it. Click here to read my review (subscription or one-day pass required), or pick up a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper. photo: Craig T. Mathew & Greg Grudt/Mathew Imaging
about 5 hours ago
Graphic Designer: “R” you serious right now?
Graphic Designer: “R” you serious right now?
about 5 hours ago
Utterly mad but absolutely right - Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not "about" Greek myth so much ...
Utterly mad but absolutely right - Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not "about" Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. His music is a clue. There are, of course, references to Mozart, but these are prettified and tarted up. Are Strauss and Hofmannsthal suggesting that the Composer courts success rather than art for arts sake? He is, after all, writing for "the richest man in Vienna". The Music Master (Thomas Allen) clashes with the Major-domo (William Relton), but the firework display takes priority. Ariadne auf Naxos is an indictment of the system..The Vorspeil and Opera are distinct, but only up to a point. Strauss pits art against artifice, disguisng the true, radical meaning of his work behind a veneer of elegant stylization. But these are mind games. As Zerbinetta tells the Composer, "Auf dem Theater spiele ich die Kokette, wer sagt, dass mein Herz dabei im Spiele ist? Ich scheine munter und bin doch traurig, gelte für gesellig und bin doch so einsam" (In the theatre I play the coquette. But who says my heart is in the game? I seem cheerful, but I'm sad. I play to the crowd, but I'm so alone".)Katharina Thoma's staging is erudite. Years later, firebombs would destroy many German theatres, symbolically wiping out the German musical tradition. Obviously this was nothing in comparison to the destruction wrought by politicians and their philistine followers, but to a man like Strauss, whose world revolved around Dresden and Munich, the bombings were a metaphor for mindless barbarism. "The holiest shrine in the world", he wrote "Zerstört!". Although Strauss could not forsee the future, Ariadne auf Naxos was written during the First World War. As a modern audience, we cannot forget the far more destructive war that came after. There are relevant connections between Ariadne auf Naxos and Metamorphosen, which is perhaps Strauss's most explicit comment on the madness that is war. Until we stop giggling when someone opens his cloak to reveal RAF logos, we have learned nothing. Strauss's score gives us other clues. The stock characters reference standard commedia dell'arte where figures are hidden behind masks. Greek myth itself uses archetypes as metaphor. If Ariadne were a "real" person, she'd be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, given her obsessive delusions about Theseus and suicide. Given that she and Bacchus both come from family backgrounds where women have sex with gods and monsters, they have a lot in common. But what psychiatrist would countenance that? Soile Isokoski sang the glorious aria "Ein Schönes war" so beautifully that we could feel Ariadne's tragedy as if it were personal and universal. "Und ging im Licht und freute sich des Lebens!" became a brave cry of protest against the hospital where "normal" people don't understand her extreme personality. Yet like Zerbinetta, Ariadne will not be silenced. In the end, she (sort of) gets what she needs, escaping the mundane world in which she's trapped into a kind of warped apotheosis of love, death and delusion. Strauss had mixed feelings about Tristan und Isolde. His own take on the Liebestod is delicously delirious. The references to the "drink" is particularly ironic, given that mental hospitals dispense chemical solutions just as Brangäne dispensed a drink that didn't do what it was supposed to. Strauss writes the nurses's last song so they have to warble like mad Rhinemaidens, totally uncomprehending what's going on round them. Against his better instincts, Bacchus (Sergey Skorokhodov) cannot help but succumb. At the end, Thoma's staging shows the hospital curtains billowing out like the sails of a ship, heading out at last for the freedom of the seas. The "sails" are lit by a red glow. Is this sunset or fire ? Is Valhalla burning ? O
about 6 hours ago
This coming Wednesday, 22 May, is THE bicentennial day of celebration of the birth of Richard Wagner and we don't know of a single on-the-boards...
This coming Wednesday, 22 May, is THE bicentennial day of celebration of the birth of Richard Wagner and we don't know of a single on-the-boards...
about 7 hours ago
The tenor Angelo Loforese, born 27 March 1920, is still going strong. Very strong.
The tenor Angelo Loforese, born 27 March 1920, is still going strong. Very strong.
about 7 hours ago
Claus Peter Flor, who aided and abetted a hardhat management in unfairly getting rid of some of the best players in the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, has himself been laid off. If you have tears to shed, save them for a better cause....
Claus Peter Flor, who aided and abetted a hardhat management in unfairly getting rid of some of the best players in the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, has himself been laid off. If you have tears to shed, save them for a better cause. The MPO remains under an international musicians’ boycott. Conductors should resist this unsavoury temptation. [...]
about 7 hours ago
One line in a recent review of the latest blockbuster:No matter. As with Brown’s other works, it’s more fun to read “Inferno” when you accept that every whoa-ful tidbit is true[....]This is still striking me as essentially, it’s more fun...
One line in a recent review of the latest blockbuster:No matter. As with Brown’s other works, it’s more fun to read “Inferno” when you accept that every whoa-ful tidbit is true[....]This is still striking me as essentially, it’s more fun to read the rubbish after your lobotomy.
about 8 hours ago
Peter Greenaway is to make his first movie in Britain since The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, quarter of a century ago. Apparently the funding breaks are better over here, and the canals are just…. Venetian. Anyone wri...
Peter Greenaway is to make his first movie in Britain since The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, quarter of a century ago. Apparently the funding breaks are better over here, and the canals are just…. Venetian. Anyone written a British opera on the subject?
about 9 hours ago
Hook, last night. Hoffman, Hoskins and Williams (oh, and Maggie Smith) are big positives, the inevitable pools of Spielbergian sentimentality are moderate negatives. Julia Roberts has neither my blessing nor my curse.Oh, and the script i...
Hook, last night. Hoffman, Hoskins and Williams (oh, and Maggie Smith) are big positives, the inevitable pools of Spielbergian sentimentality are moderate negatives. Julia Roberts has neither my blessing nor my curse.Oh, and the script includes one of Spielberg’s top 5 bee-fart-sniffingest dud jokes, as Williams whips out a checkbook in response to Hook’s challenge, “Draw your weapon!”Always a bit tickled by Phil Collins’s cameo.
about 9 hours ago