Orchestras Looking Beyond Canceled Concerts

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A recent reflection by the veteran Philadelphia critic Michael Caruso.

“With the final series of concerts of the 2019-20 season of both the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia cancelled due to coronavirus and the lockdown in place to curb its spread, local classical music lovers are left looking longingly toward the recently announced 2020-21 season of both ensembles. While the fall resumption of major public performances in large concert halls is far from certain, it remains a hope many of us do not want to abandon.”

REVIEW 2: Shostakovich on the West Coast

Another review of last week’s Shostakovich at Music@Menlo.

“Jumping past the entire Stalinist era, the concert then arrived at Shostakovich’s Seven Romances on Poems of Aleksandr Blok, Op. 127. By this time (1967), Shostakovich was facing death and writing bleak, hollow music in disregard of any political context. The voice is accompanied by a piano trio, but only in the last song do the instruments all play at once. Even then they hardly form an ensemble, so thin and widely separated is the scoring. The accompaniment in the earlier songs varies from counter-melodies woven by Kim or Finckel unaccompanied to plain but deep chords which Solzhenitsyn ruthlessly hammered out on the piano.”
— David Bratman, Classical Voice

REVIEW: Shostakovich on the West Coast

A review of last week’s Shostakovich at Music@Menlo.

“Each of the three works on the program – the Shostakovich Piano Trio in C Minor, Op. 8; the Shostakovich Seven Romances on Poems by Aleksander Blok, Op. 127; and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Trio in A Minor, Op. 50 – achieved a pungent and lyrical illumination that took the modest but thoroughly enthralled audience by storm.”
— Gary Lemco

LISTEN: Busoni Violin Sonata No. 2

Twenty-five years ago, at the Marlboro Festival, my then-new friend Mark Steinberg, the great violinist, convinced me to program and perform with him a sonata by Ferruccio Busoni. Not being then—or now—especially devoted to Busoni, I was a bit skeptical, but reading together through the sonata immediately convinced me. Studying and performing the work left a strong mark, yet its memory faded gradually as the years went by. But this past summer Mark and I came back to this piece, and its visionary, almost cosmic impact was again revelatory for me. Here is the first movement - Langsam - from our performance: