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  • Pierre-Laurent Aimard is Artist-in-Residence at Mostly Mozart Festival
    Published: July 22, 2010

    Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s summer opened in Europe, where the “ferociously intelligent musician” (Financial Times) won esteem for his second tenure as Artistic Director of England’s fabled Aldeburgh Festival.  After returning to the UK to play George Benjamin and Mozart at London’s BBC Proms, the “brilliant French pianist” (Anthony Tommasini, New York Times) now turns his attention to festivals on this side of the Atlantic.  At Tanglewood (Aug 10) he performs chamber music by Bach, Ligeti, and Elliott Carter, as he will also do in his first appearance at New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival. 

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  • Johannes Moser releases new CD of British cello sonatas
    Published: July 21, 2010

    Hailed by Gramophone magazine as “one of the finest among the astonishing gallery of young virtuoso cellists,” Johannes Moser been recognized as “young, gifted, and intense…a major talent” (St. Louis Dispatch).  This week sees the release of the Tchaikovsky Competition-winner’s sixth album on the Hänssler Classics label.  A recital disc with Moser’s regular duo partner Paul Rivinius, the new issue features cello sonatas by three great British composers of the 20th-century, Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, and Arnold Bax; these three works aren’t collected together on any other recording.  

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  • “Music Makes a City” comes to New York, Sept 17
    Published: July 21, 2010

    Shortly after viewing Music Makes a City at a recent private screening in New York, Musical America’s Sedgwick Clark wrote: “Anyone interested in classical music should see this uplifting story of American ingenuity at its best.” This September, New Yorkers will have a chance to see this “tale of artistic vision” (Symphony) at the Quad Cinema (Sept 17 – 24).

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  • René Pape’s summer 2010
    Published: July 15, 2010

    Weeks after René Pape delivered his much praised role debut as Wagner’s King of the Gods, he traveled to the White Nights Festival where he reprised the role of Wotan in concert and recorded the opera with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra for later release on the Mariinsky label.  Pape fans don’t have to wait long, however, to hear a new Wagner recording from the German bass: his famous Gurnemanz can be heard on a fall release of Parsifal, also from Mariinsky, which represents Gergiev’s first Wagner recording. 

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  • Metropolitan Opera Guild news: August 2010
    Published: July 14, 2010

    In its upcoming August issue, Opera News celebrates the glorious music and musicians of France.The cover story investigates new music director Philippe Jordan’s plans for the Paris Opera, while additional features profile two great French opera composers, Meyerbeer and Massenet; the adventurous repertoire choices of coloratura soprano Patricia Petibon; and the controversial views of French composer/conductor/author Frédéric Chaslin.  The August issue also boasts profiles of sopranos Erin Morley, Renée Doria, and Régine Crespin; a consideration of Italian operas in French translation; and an attempt to name the top ten French operas of all time.

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  • EMI Classics & Virgin Classics July 2010 releases
    Published: July 13, 2010

    Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco continue acclaimed Handel Opera Series for Virgin Classics with Berenice; from EMI Classics, A Year at King’s. French pianist David Fray and Paris-based Ebène Quartet among Virgin Classics artists on tour of US this summer, both making major festival debuts.

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  • Judgment Day (1937) opens at Bard SummerScape 2010 on July 14
    Published: July 12, 2010

    The eighth annual Bard SummerScape presents Judgment Day (“Der jüngste Tag”), a gripping 1937 drama by Austro-Hungarian Ödön von Horváth (1901-38) – probably, after Brecht, the greatest playwright of the Weimar Republic, and one of the few who recognized the approach of fascism or grasped the social trends that produced it. A runaway hit of last fall’s London theater season, Judgment Dayimplicitly investigates the roots of Nazism among Austria-Hungary’s ordinary working people. 

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  • Alan Gilbert: summer 2010
    Published: July 11, 2010

    Following his enormously successful inaugural season as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert will give concerts on three continents this summer, including performances with the New York Philharmonic in New York City and in Vail, Colorado, and concerts with the NDR Symphony Orchestra, Hamburg at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and in Copenhagen, Denmark.  Gilbert also returns to Asia for the 2010 Music Masters Course Japan, which will feature concerts in Suntory Hall and Minato-Mirai Hall.

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  • Calleja a “thrilling Adorno” in Simon Boccanegra
    Published: July 09, 2010

    Last week tenor Joseph Calleja returned to London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, where he was last seen as Alfredo in La traviata, to take on the part of Gabriele Adorno in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra.  Adorno marks the third new role for Calleja in the past year (the others being the title role in Les contes d’Hoffmann and Ruggero in La rondine) and, remarkably for a 32-year-old tenor, the 28th leading role of his career.  

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  • Eighth Annual Bard SummerScape Festival opens today
    Published: July 08, 2010

    The Trisha Brown Dance Company kicks off the eighth annual Bard SummerScape festival today, Thursday, July 8 at 8 pm, with the trailblazing choreographer’s most recent piece, L’Amour au théâtre (2009); two of her legendary Rauschenberg collaborations, Foray Forêt (1990) andYou can see us (1995); and a duet from her 1996 piece,Twelve Ton Rose, which is set to music by Anton Webern. This performance and the company’s three subsequent SummerScape appearances (on Friday, July 9 and Saturday, July 10, both also at 8 pm, and on Sunday, July 11 at 3 pm) form a highlight of the company’s 40th anniversary season.

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