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At Tanglewood, a modernist oasis
LENOX - Something remarkable happened this week in the Berkshires. The Tanglewood Music Center for the first time in its history devoted its Festival of Contemporary Music to the work of a single composer - Elliott Carter - in honor of his 100th birthday this December. I do not know of any living composer who has been given a tribute ...
Classical picks
Tonight, David Zinman leads the Boston Symphony Orchestra in an all-Brahms program at Tanglewood . . . and the faculty of Longy's International Baroque Institute perform chamber works in Pickman Hall. . . . Tomorrow, Mass MoCA hosts the Bang on a Can Marathon in North Adams . . . the Keller Quartet takes on a hefty program at the ...
Instead of lounging by the lake
PLYMOUTH, N.H. - The violinist Gidon Kremer is one of the most brilliantly unpredictable performers before the public today. You never know where he'll turn up or what he might play. Once, in 1992, he helped the Boston Symphony Orchestra out of a jam by tossing off three violin concertos on a single program and then capping the affair with ...
Tanglewood forges ahead without Levine
LENOX - Tanglewood suffered from a kind of collective whiplash last week, as the high spirits left by the season-opening performances of Berlioz's "Trojans" were summarily doused by the news of music director James Levine's sudden withdrawal from the remainder of the summer. This week, he is scheduled to undergo surgery for the removal of a kidney due to a ...
For infants, musical exposure is simple and complex
I've never felt so paralyzed standing before my CD collection as the day I brought my newborn son home from the hospital and decided to play him his very first music. So much was at stake. Should it be modern or Baroque? Orchestral or opera? Would Mozart make him smarter? Would Schoenberg instill in him revolutionary tendencies? Would Wagner make ...
From Germany, an opera engulfed by shadows of war
NEW YORK - In Theodor Adorno's famous dictum, writing poetry "after Auschwitz" was a barbaric notion, but what about opera after the war? The genre was pronounced dead by modernists who wanted a clean break from the past. Pierre Boulez called for the destruction of all opera houses as relics of an obsolete tradition. Some went as far as implicating ...
Tanglewood opens with Berlioz epic
LENOX - There was a 10-foot-tall Trojan horse perched on a hill overlooking the Tanglewood grounds this weekend, but it was only for ceremony, hardly big enough to hold more than one or two orchestra members inside. Berlioz's epic opera "The Trojans" was the real vehicle out of which the Boston Symphony Orchestra stormed this weekend, launching the summer Tanglewood ...
Happy birthday to a minimalist pioneer
CAMBRIDGE - The wind in the local new-music scene often blows in decidedly uptown directions, but the 73d birthday of minimalist pioneer Terry Riley this week did not go completely unnoticed. The Boston-based art-rock band Birdsongs of the Mesozoic has been hosting a salon series at the postage-stamp-size Outpost 186. On Tuesday, by way of a Riley birthday tribute, Birdsongs ...
'Portrait' gets inside world of Philip Glass
How many contemporary classical composers could you pick out of a lineup? For most people, quite possibly, just this one. Philip Glass's celebrity, like his ever-undulating music, is a unique phenomenon in a field often consigned to the cultural periphery. Insiders often lament that even those who follow the latest trends in the visual arts and literature frequently take a ...
Dolling up the Pops, Palmer gives it her all
On Thursday night in Symphony Hall, Amanda Palmer brought some spark and much-needed edge to the Boston Pops's EdgeFest. On her own terms, Palmer, in strong gravelly voice, gave a richly satisfying performance that had this crowd roaring far more than most in Symphony Hall. But even she couldn't overcome the deeper tensions that make the EdgeFest a strained format.
Ah, the sounds of late June
Late June is a kind of liminal space for classical music in Boston, a drawn-out moment of transition between the bustling spring season and the relative quiet of summer. It's a time when Mozart and Beethoven and their ilk are busy packing their bags for the Berkshires, which also makes it a time when, like rebellious kids who have been ...
All dolled up at the Pops
Last night in Symphony Hall, Amanda Palmer brought some spark and much-needed edge to the Boston Pops's EdgeFest. On her own terms, Palmer, in strong gravelly voice, gave a richly satisfying performance that had this crowd roaring far more than most in Symphony Hall. But even she couldn't overcome the deeper tensions that make the EdgeFest a strained format.
In Rockport, glimpses of a future
The Rockport Chamber Music Festival, now in its 27th season, seems to have an extra spring in its step these days. Concerts are well-attended, the artistic level appears to be high, and momentum is building toward the construction of the festival's new performance center scheduled to open in June 2010. A lawsuit over zoning that had threatened to derail the ...