The Hypergiant of Higdon's Universe

Whatever extraordinary things you’ve heard about Baltimore-native Hilary Hahn (Wiki) are true. I am probably the one classical devotee who’s never owned, borrowed, burned or downloaded a single track of Ms. Hahn’s playing, Brahms or otherwise. To experience her for the first time, live and seated four rows from the front, revealed she’s not a player…she’s a phenomenon of nature.

To have her precisely punctuate the intimacies and imagination of a composer new to me, Jennifer Higdon (Wiki), made for pure transfixion.

Read the rest…

Barred from using any concert hall — since Peabody shut up for the summer — a dedicated bunch of students just took over the Library for a night of musical hijinks more enjoyable than they were irreverent.  In case you’ve been missing CAGE (Conservatory Avant-Garde Ensemble), you’ll find your avant-garde fix in SONAR (not to be confused with the B-more venue). Here again, you’ll see the influence of violinist Courtney Orland, who oft turned CAGE into the worthiest offering on Peabody’s calendar. This time, she’s the inspiration, not its star player.

Headed up by artistic director Colin Sorgi (also a violinist), SONAR takes off where CAGE left off without missing a beat. Smart, quirky new music that takes risks and offers rich rewards, with surprisingly little audience effort.

Read the rest…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MP3: Claude Debussy – La Mer, 3. Dialogue du vent et de la mer

Welcome to a special treat courtesy of the graduate department at Peabody Conservatory. In honor of its degree candidates — in everything from instruments, vocals, and conducting — we’ve got an end of season festival of free music from the talented young peeps on the Baltimore Classical scene. I recommend you check out a few in the coming week.

Not every performance is a prize recital, but some of them should be. For what it’s worth, I’d crown debuting conductor Jacomo Rafael Bairos with my laurels.

Lucky for us, he assured me that he’s staying on at Peabody to pursue his Doctorate. So we’ll follow him in future posts. This fellow has good friends, and, if his ambition be judged by his repertory choices, he’s ready to tackle big things.

Read the rest…

Mahler's Ninth -- a Dance of Life

I thought I could walk away from three Sundays ago’s BSO performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and wash it all away with a little leftover Dom Perignon down at Sotta Sopra.

But I couldn’t. The Ninth haunts me. I’m walking down the street on a Tuesday, and suddenly, the first movement swells in my ears once again…flooding my brain. The very sidewalk under my feet seems to transform into an immaterial wave of string-song — I lose my bearings.

To quell the swoons, I’ve picked up a prescription: Lenny Berstein’s recording, as well as Mahler protégé Otto Klemperer’s take. But here’s where Marin Alsop started me off…

Read the rest…

A recent (and ongoing) celebration of the piano at Strathmore’s Music in the Mansion put the boys of Baltimore’s own Monument Trio on lavish display. The rich wood of the Shapiro music room cradled the tones admirably, allowing the higher notes to sparkle.

I’ve heard these boys play all the pieces on the evening’s ambitious program at various An Die Musik performances since 2005, where they are the trio-in-residence. They know how to charm even as they induct audiences into composers unknown – like Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939) – first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music.

Read the rest…

L.A. Debut: Calling the Woodwinds

Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 from Berstein Century (w/ NY Philharmonic)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MP3: I. Moderato

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MP3: II. Allegretto

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MP3: III. Largo

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MP3: IV. Allegro Non Troppo

Fresh from what was hailed as “back-to-back triumphs of a truly historic nature” in San Fran, pianist Martha Argerich didn’t miss a beat. In San Fran, her prelude was Gyorgi Ligeti’s ultra-haunting Requiem…in L.A.’s Disney Hall, that whizzing exercise in Belle Epoque decadence – Ravel’s La Valse - lubed us up for some Martha-Lovin’.

For that, thank Yannick Nézet-Séguin.  This 34-year-old conductor’s Los Angeles debut destines him for conquering.(Boston had him first. Cleveland’s getting him next, and I’m fixing to catch him when he debuts at the Met.) If he stays sharp, he’ll prove the Kurt Masur or Charles Dutoit of our era.

Read the rest…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MP3: Mozart – Requiem Mass in D Minor, III. Sequentia: Dies Irae

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MP3: Mozart – Requiem Mass in D Minor, V. Sanctus: Benedictus

Guest conducting this night: Jun Märkl, winging our way from the faraway Leipzig Radio Symphony and the Orchestre de Lyon. He led us on an unexpected journey from Neoclassical Greek pastoral to the hearty Dominus et Deus German Classicism of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem.

Our appetizer: the plotless ballet Apollo – a gem of calm, ordered balance – from the tone-filled brain of Ruskie exile: Igor Stravinsky. (Apropos of the occasion, I’m writing this dispatch from West Hollywood – WeHo – where Stravinsky made his home).

Whereas last week I berated the duration of Chicago’s Stravinsky-focused performance, I delighted as the BSO lingered over Apollo. Read the rest…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

MP3: Edgard Varese – Ionisation

If we’re keeping score — like in the Olympics — I’d say Cleveland Orchestra still leads. But that’s not at all the fault of Maestro Pierre Boulez — nor his Chicago Symphony players — but the pieces themselves. It was a night billed as daring, repertoire-bending modernism. Neoclassical Stravinsky is no longer a thing one loathes and physically berates with fistfights or catcalls, but it sure doesn’t have you quit the hall humming.

However, if you wanted to see a full squadron of 15 men and women take the stage with an arsenal of percussive aural projectiles – you couldn’t have picked a better night.

Read the rest…

Kurt Masur drove the Cleveland Symphony like a Maserati GranTurismo. He didn’t come screaming off the factory lot. A conducting legend doesn’t have to. But, by the time he brought the players into the grand galloping finale of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, the fortississimo seemed to be driving itself.

Now, I admit I’ve never driven a GranTourismo. But I’ll take Ben Harper of Bloomberg’s word for it: true Romance. Same goes for the Cleveland Symphony under the baton of Maestro Masur. And the interior of Severance Hall, like a sexy auto, shone with silver leaf and mocha-butter walls — a perfect Art Deco sounding board for every single note.

Read the rest…

With supple force, sometimes delicate, sometimes with iron fist, conductor Vasily Petrenko (pictured left) gave the BSO players room to conquer.

Riffs mounting to tensions that a lesser composer, say John Williams, would have to barter his soul for. And that was just the Shostakovich. “O a steep, stiff drink,” we all cried.  For after the Shostakovich #8, our souls were burning amber embers. Smoldering under a brute glory from Russia’s darkest days: 1943. Think Guernica in five movements.

But first, let me say I am proud to live in a city where on one Saturday night, I had to choose between hearing Shosta’s #8 at the Meyerhoff, Shosta’s #10 at Peabody, or avant-garde jazz at An Die Musik. ‘Tis the season. Don’t miss the glut of live music going on now.

I don’t regret my decision at all. One musician (who shall remain nameless and sectionless) prayed that Mr. Petrenko would come again, saying: “Sometimes this symphony is all dressed up with nowhere to go.” But the places they went that night! Read the rest…