ionarts (10 unread)

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  Classical Month in Washington (March)

  Posted: 22-February-2012, 8:45pm CET by Charles T. Downey

  Last month | Next month Classical Month in Washington is a monthly feature. If there are concerts you would like to see included on our schedule, send your suggestions by e-mail (ionarts at gmail dot com). Happy listening! March 1, 2012 (Thu) 7:30 pm Rite of Spring (piano, four hands) Bowen McCauley Dance Company Kennedy Center Terrace Theater March 1, 2012 (Thu) 7:30 pm Dieter Flury (flute)

  
  

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  Happy 53rd Birthday, Rossini

  Posted: 29-February-2012, 3:08pm CET by jfl

  Fifty-three is no age for a composer and so it is little wonder that Rossini - or at least his music - is alive and well. Born on February 29th, 1792, Gioachino Antonio Rossini soon discovered a penchant and talent in culinary appreciation as well as note-churning. The latter he put to use for the creation of almost 40 operas, the former to support his stately appearance.So much has been written

  
  

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  Classical Music Agenda: March 2012

  Posted: 29-February-2012, 8:00pm CET by Charles T. Downey

  March is an outrageously busy month for classical music here in Washington. To whittle the monthly picks down to the maximum limit of ten took considerable effort, but here it is, our top picks for the month of March. For the full calendar for March, follow the link at the bottom of the page: it will run through the sidebar, too. CHAMBER MUSIC: The last time we had the chance to hear the

  
  

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  Ionarts-at-Large: BBC Symphony Orchestra

  Posted: 29-February-2012, 2:00am CET by jfl

  Many thanks to Robert R. Reilly for this review from Barbican Hall in London. Friday, February 24th, the BBC Symphony Orchestra presented an enticing program of early 20th-century music from northern climes at the Barbican , with Kirill Karabits conducting. This included the Sibelius Symphony No. 4, the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1, and Stravinsky's Petrushka. Karabits took a slow, deliberate

  
  

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  Jonah Kim @ Phillips

  Posted: 28-February-2012, 4:47pm CET by Charles T. Downey

  Charles T. Downey, Jonah Kim?s musical pedigree for naught in awkward Phillips Collection concert Washington Post, February 28, 2012 Cellist Jonah Kim has an impeccable musical pedigree: child prodigy, discovered by Janos Starker, studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, early success as a soloist with major orchestras. In a Sunday afternoon concert at the Phillips Collection, he showed

  
  

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  Holy German Art: Katharina Wagner's Meistersinger

  Posted: 28-February-2012, 7:15pm CET by jfl

  Lustily booed at its 2007 premiere in Bayreuth, Katharina Wagner?s production of Die Meistersinger gave instant rise to polemics and controversy. Very aptly Bayreuthean, that. Detractors find it is, at best, a great cast wasted on an absurd production. It?s not an absurd production, though. It?s just too darn clever and with many superficial distractions that torpedo the traditional expectations

  
  

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  Wagner on Record ? The Mastersingers

  Posted: 27-February-2012, 2:30pm CET by jfl

  R.Wagner, The Mastersingers, R.Goodall / Sadler?s Wells Opera / Soloists Chandos Stereotypes exist because they relate to some reality, even if they lack nuance, tact, and are misleading when we fail to distinguish between sweeping claims and individual instances. Applied to musicians they can attain a life of their own, especially the negative ones coloring our perceptions before we?ve

  
  

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  Baltimore Symphony off the Cuff

  Posted: 27-February-2012, 1:44am CET by Michael Lodico

  Friday evening, Music Director Marin Alsop brought the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to the Music Center at Strathmore for an "Off the Cuff" performance of Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5. The intermission-less program began at 8:15 pm, with a thirty-minute introduction by Alsop and excerpts interspersed by the orchestra, followed by the fifth symphony in its entirety. Loosely based on Leonard

  
  

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  Miller's School for Lovers

  Posted: 27-February-2012, 7:11am CET by Charles T. Downey

  Joel Prieto (Ferrando), Elizabeth Futral (Fiordiligi), Renata Pokupi? (Dorabella), and Teddy Tahu Rhodes (Guglielmo) in Così fan tutte, Washington National Opera, 2011 (photo by Scott Suchman) Così fan tutte, Mozart?s final collaboration with Lorenzo da Ponte, is something of a sphinx, an opera that asks questions and makes you wait for answers, whether they come or not. It is also an opera that

  
  

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  In Brief: Leap Day Edition

  Posted: 26-February-2012, 8:42pm CET by Charles T. Downey

  Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond. For Leap Day this week, there will be online video of a performance of Camille Saint-Saëns's Le Carnaval des animaux by the group Solistes des Siècles. [Cité de la musique Live] Renee Fleming stars in a production of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, from the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, conducted by Christian