Henri Dutilleux will be remembered not only for the singularity of his musical language - profoundly beautiful, perfect in discourse, luminous in sonority - but also, by those of us lucky enough to know him, for his personal grace, generosity, and purity of spirit. Few composers express the level of gratitude to his or her interpreters which Dutilleux showed to the artists who performed his works, and to those who helped bring about those performances.

In the context of his long relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Munch and Ozawa were his gods. Yet just as important in his eyes, were the young composers he befriended during his visits to Tanglewood - friendships he maintained for years afterwards. We are lucky to have enjoyed a unique relationship with this great, great figure.

left: Boylston St. following the Boston Marathon bombing (Anne Mostue/WGBH)
right: Nicholas Roerich's sketch of costumes for the 1913 production of The Rite of Spring (via Wikipaintings.org)

April 24, 2013

May 29th marks the 100th anniversary of the infamous premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. The New England Conservatory Philharmonia is celebrating the occasion by performing the work tonight on a program that also features another celebration of Spring, Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 1, and the Polovtsian Dances by Alexander Borodin, one of the other works on the program on that historic night at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

What could not have been anticipated when this concert was planned well over a year ago was that, just a week before the concert, the young musicians performing it would bear witness to an historical event as violent and senseless as that portrayed in Stravinsky's music. I talked to several members of the orchestra, and they shared their stories and observations on what it was like to be in downtown Boston last week while working on The Rite of Spring. To hear their thoughts, click on "Listen" above.

For more about the NEC Philharmonia's performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, visit the New England Conservatory.

Executive Director Gary Dunning details the classical music highlights with Classical New England's Brian McCreath. Read about the season below, and to hear the conversation, click on "Listen" above.

	Orchestras In March of 2014, the Israel Philharmonic and conductor Zubin Mehta visit Boston's Symphony Hall to perform Bruckner's Symphony No. 8. In that same month, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Gustavo Dudamel perform John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5.
	Mark Morris's Acis and Galatea Mark Morris creates a new production of Handel's opera Acis and Galatea in a Celebrity Series co-commission. The culmination of the 75th anniversary season in May, the performances feature Mozart's arrangement of Handel's music, with the the chorus and orchestra of the Handel and Haydn Society and conductor Nicholas McGegan.
	Piano Marc-André Hamelin curates and performs a three concert series, including a solo recital, a duo concert with Emanuel Ax, and a chamber music concert with violinist Anthony Marwood and clarinetist Martin Fröst. Other pianists appearing during the season include Yuja Wang, Benjamin Grosvener, András Schiff, Kirill Gerstein, Cédric Tiberghien, and Evgeny Kissin.
	String Quartets The Takács Quartet the six quartets by Béla Bartók over two concerts in March and April. Also, Quatuor Ebène visits Boston for a program of Mozart, Bartók, and selections from the ensembles vast jazz repertoire. In addition, the Jerusalem Quartet and Danish Quartet make their Boston debuts.
	Vocalists Soprano Deborah Voigt visit Boston twice during the season. In November, she'll bring her one-woman show, Voigt Lessons, developed with playwright Terrence McNally and director Francesca Zambello to the Calderwood Pavilion. Then, in April, she'll return for a recital at Symphony Hall. Also, baritione Gerald Finley and pianist Julius Drake perform Schubert's Winterreise at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in February. Other vocalists performing during the season include soprano Natalie Dessay, tenor Nicholas Phan, and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Watch The Abolitionists Extended Preview on PBS. See more from American Experience.

“Any good crusade requires singing,” reformers like to say, and in the 19th Century, no cause was more righteous than in the decades-long crusade to abolish slavery.

As WGBH’s American Experience presents The Abolitionists on television, Classical New England brings you Let Freedom Sing: The Music of The Abolitionists. To hear the program, click on "Listen" above.

• Henry Russell, the barnstorming Anglo-Jewish pianist and singer dubbed the master of “chutzpah and huzzah,”
• the Milford, New Hampshire-based Hutchinson Family Singers, remembered as America’s first protest singers,
• Stephen Collins Foster, America’s greatest – and most misunderstood – songwriter of the 19th century, who brought the rhetoric of the Abolitionists into America’s middle-class piano parlors,
• Chicago publisher turned composer George F. Root, author of the anthemic "Battle Cry of Freedom,"
• and songwriter Henry Clay Work, author of the Emancipation anthem "Kingdom Coming."

Watch Appraisal: 1922 Giuseppe Pedrazzini Violin on PBS. See more from Antiques Roadshow.
 

In this season's premiere of Antiques Roadshow, a gentleman brought in a violin he found that had been set out with the trash. Much to his surprise, the appraisers on the program informed him that the violin was from Cremona, Italy, home to many great violin makers in the 17th century. They estimated the value of his violin to be about $50,000. One man's trash really is another man's treasure!

Hear Managing Director Benjamin Roe discuss the find with Antiques Roadshow executive producer, Marsha Bemko.

At the end of their conversation, violinist Cecilya Arzewski performs the Prelude to the solo Partita No. 3 in E major by Johann Sebastian Bach. Arzewski is the concertmaster of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and she plays on a 1714 Petrus Gaurneri, another of the many great violin makers from the area of Cremona, Italy.

If this makes you want to run to your attic and grab that old trumpet, don’t get too excited. Most items brought in to Antiques Roadshow are estimated to be worth less than $500, but if you do have an object you think might be worth a lot, take Ms. Bemko’s advice for how to get an accurate appraisal.

"If you are seeking information on the value of one of your antique items, take it to someone who isn't interested in buying it," she said.

You can also take your find to Antiques Roadshow during the 2013 tour:

June 1 - Detroit, MI
June 8 - Jacksonville, FL
June 22 - Anaheim, CA
June 29 - Boise, ID
July 13 - Knoxville, TN
July 27 - Baton Rouge, LA
August 10 - Kansas City, MO
August 17 - Richmond, VA

For more information visit Antiques Roadshow.

Elliott Carter, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the most signifcant musical voices of the last century, has died at the age of 103.

Ursula Oppens Plays Carter

Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, Berlin Philharmonic, and Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Hear Elliott Carter's Flute Concert in concert, recorded at Symphony Hall on Nov. 19, 2011

Rowe's description of the piece reveals the character of both the music and the composer:

Elizabeth Rowe on Carter's Flute Concerto

Exactly one month before Election Day, October 6, 2012, I witnessed another periodic rite that dates back to the beginning of the republic: the Induction Ceremony of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. The collective brilliance of the population of Sanders that day was truly staggering.

The Jewish High Holidays, beginning with Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and extending through Yom Kippur, is a time of celebration, reflection, and renewal. This year those qualities are deepened through the release of Eternal Echoes - Songs and Dances for the Soul on Sony Classical.

Three living legends came together to create Eternal Echoes: the renowned classical violinist Itzhak Perlman; Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot, who keeps the ancient cantorial tradition alive from his pulpit at Manhattan's Park East Synagogue; and Hankus Netsky, a pioneer in the revival of klezmer music. Their musical common ground finds its roots in the Ashkenazi tradition, the Jewish culture of Central and Eastern Europe.

Like Yiddish, the language common amongst the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe, the musical language of the Ashkenazi is a fusion of modern European and ancient Middle Eastern styles. It expresses the full range of human emotions, from exuberant joy to deep introspection to heart-wrenching sorrow.

Those emotions come through in the music the same way they exist in life itself, occupying the same space almost simultaneously: the harmonies switch constantly from minor to major, the rhythms from straightforward to syncopated, and a tune that starts out slow and sad is likely to end fast and happy.
As Hankus Netsky, the founder of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and the Contemporary Improvisation Chair at the New England Conservatory explains, "I liken it to the blues. When Jews prayed, they cried. We have a word, krehts, meaning to groan - like the blues have a moan or a wail. The Jews have a sobbing kind of feeling, even when they're happy. That's why this music is universal."

You’ll hear that on Eternal Echoes, which brings in yet another dimension: a tune that starts out with a solemn prayer frequently ends in a joyous dance. While many traditional cantorial melodies and klezmer dance tunes have common folk sources, the connection between them has never before been made this explicit.

Netsky, the album's musical director, freely admits that bringing together different strains of Jewish music is an "agenda" of his and is in line with his idea that klezmer is not just a re-creation of music from the past, but a "living tradition."

Join me for conversations with Itzhak Perlman and Hankus Netsky, along with excerpts from Eternal Echoes, all this week on Classical New England. See the schedule and listen on-demand above, and to purchase Eternal Echoes, visit ArkivMusic.
 

Richard Wagner, one of history's most complex and confounding figures, becomes a little more understandable at his Swiss villa. But only a little.

It's hard to think of an individual who embodies more extreme contradictions than Richard Wagner. The dark side of Wagner generates a list of characteristics unleavened by their familiarity: an ego of gargantuan proportions; a flagrant home-wrecker; a financial manipulator usually one step (barely) ahead of his creditors; and, of course, an outspoken anti-Semite.
 

Hear Discovery Ensemble and conductor Courtney Lewis perform Siegfried-Idyll in our Fraser Performance Studio

The positive side starts with the music: revolutionary, seductive, majestic, overwhelming. In the context of his creations, how important is Wagner's dark side? It's the perennial question surrounding a person whose incredibly outlandish artistic vision was matched only by a series of equally outlandish life events.

My background as a trumpeter pre-disposes me to have some kind of affection for Wagner's music, I suppose; it's simply a thrill to play. But moving beyond those trumpet parts and into the operas themselves and then into the circumstances of Wagner's life has always been daunting to me. So having the chance to visit Tribschen, Wagner's Swiss home in exile, with a group of Classical New England listeners during our 2012 LearningTour was an opportunity to at least try to understand Wagner the person.

It helps - and quite a lot, in my opinion - that Tribschen is the setting for one of the more charming stories from Wagner's life. (I know. "Charming" and "Wagner" ... not easy to integrate.) It was at Tribschen in 1870 that Wagner wrote Siegfried-Idyll, a 20 minute, loving, musical birthday card to his wife Cosima, the woman he married earlier that year. (The story of their relationship takes us back to that bafflingly dark side, but let's not go there, at least for the moment...) It was apparently performed for the first time at the bottom of the stairs as Cosima's birthday morning wake-up call.
 

Since then, the Idyll has been inextricably linked to the place, and, indeed, the score in Wagner's manuscript holds pride of place in what is now a Wagner museum at the house. The Idyll even constituted the first music to be performed at the newly inaugurated Lucerne Festival in 1938 and has been programmed during the festival each year since.

Being there, at Tribschen, meant standing in the same room in which Wagner was a host for Liszt, Nietzsche, and King Ludwig II. It meant gazing across the lake to see the same view that Cosima saw from her bedroom window. Did it all make Wagner more understandable? Yes and no.

As at similar sites I've visited - St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where Bach worked; the Budapest Opera House, where Mahler's Symphony No. 1 was premiered; Bertramka, the home where Mozart stayed while visiting Prague - I could picture Wagner's life in more detail. I could imagine him putting the finishing touches on Die Meistersinger. I was in awe of his regular treks in the nearby Alpine mountains. And that story of the premiere of the Idyll has far more specific surroundings than before.

But all those dark characteristics still seem just as dark.

There's never a necessity to relate personally to the creators of art. If the art has integrity, we relate to it, not the artist. In the case of Wagner, the picture of the creator is more detailed and colorful than ever before for me. Hearing and watching his music and operas will carry with it some meaningful added context after visiting one of his homes. Wagner remains an artist whose genius is indisputable. And he remains someone whose life, to me, is even more fascinatingly improbable than before.



 

Patriots Day is a holiday unique to Massachusetts, commemorating the first shots fired in the American Revolution. Classical New England brings you a day of programming throughout the day on April 16 to both celebrate and remember that earth-shattering event at Lexington Green.

Boston Camerata

Esa-Pekka Salonen, one of the rare individuals to hold world-class status as both a conductor and composer, visits Boston.

The music world has seen very few musicians who have risen to the top of the field as both composer and conductor since the days of Gustav Mahler. As one of the many superb musicians to emerge from the Sibelius Academy in Finland, he was a conducting student of Jorma Panula and a composition student of Einojuhani Rautavaara. Like many composers, he initially learned to conduct in order to have his pieces performed. But very quickly, that became the focus of his career.

As a conductor, he came to the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Music Director in 1992, transforming an already excellent major orchestra into one of the most exciting artistic vehicles of its kind in the world. He was, along the way, instrumental in spearheading the construction of Walt Disney Hall, the orchestra's spectacular concert hall.

He left that post in 2009, largely motivated by a desire to return to a more balanced existence as both composer and conductor. Now his Violin Concerto, composed as he was preparing to leave Los Angeles, has been chosen as the winner of the 2012 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition.

Salonen hasn't conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1988, and his return as a guest conductor with his Violin Concerto serendipitously coincides with Discovery Ensemble's scheduled performance of Mania.

To hear more about Salonen's dual existence as conductor and composer, click on "Listen" above.

Here is a performance of the Violin Concerto by Salonen in two parts:





(image of Esa-Pekka Salonen by Stefan Bremer, courtesy of the artist; photo of Walt Disney Concert Hall by Jon Sullivan, via Wikimedia Commons and pdphoto.org)

The Passion, or the story of the capture and execution of Jesus, is the heart of belief for Christians. For non-Christians, the Passion can be a powerful story of great emotional weight, especially when told through great works of art and music.

New England audiences have an opportunity to hear three of those musical interpretations in concerts given by Boston's Handel and Haydn Society and by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. H&H gave the first complete performance of J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1879, and as part of the crescendo towards the ensemble's 200th anniversary, Artistic Director Harry Christophers leads H&H in this pinnacle of Bach's sacred works on March 30 and April 1. Classical New England broadcasts the April 1 performance live from Symphony Hall.
 

On April 6, Boston Modern Orchestra Project performs a concert entitled "Dual Passions" with Artistic Director Gil Rose, conductor Andrew Clark, and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum. The concert begins with the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning composition, the little match girl passion, by David Lang, with the second half devoted to Arvo Pärt's Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Secundum Joannem, a setting of the Passion according to St. John written in 1982.

I talked with both Harry Christophers and Gil Rose about the Passion and the particular ways these three composers bring this transformative story to musical life:
 

Here is an extended interview about David Lang's the little match girl passion and Arvo Pärt's Passio Domini with conductor Gil Rose:
 

For more with Harry Christophers and Bach's St. Matthew Passion, hear a two-part series of The Bach Hour:

The St. Matthew Passion on The Bach Hour, Part One

The St. Matthew Passion on The Bach Hour, Part Two

More about these concerts can be found by visiting the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

Its status as an icon of Bach recordings secure, Glenn Gould's 1955 account is also just the starting point for exploring a wealth of other performances.

Just as Miles Davis' Kind of Blue was one of those jazz albums you saw in the collections of people who otherwise didn't listen to jazz, Glenn Gould's 1955 LP of Bach's Goldberg Variations stuck out in record collections otherwise devoid of classical music.

Gould's Goldbergs introduced millions of Americans to a breathtakingly new sonic landscape. Davis achieved his unique sound by introducing ancient musical modes to the world of jazz. Gould, on the other hand, unlocked the hitherto unknown emotional depths of Bach's powerfully mathematical musical intellect.

In short, Glenn Gould gave Bach soul — and Bach gave Gould great source material. Picking five great recordings of the Goldberg Variations these days without mentioning Gould is a little like leaving Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band out of a list of greatest rock albums of all time.

Love Gould or hate him, without him we wouldn't be discussing this — or any other — list of recordings of what has been called the longest, most ambitious and most important solo keyboard work written before Beethoven. As you ponder that, consider what else Gould wrought: His was the first prominent album devoted to Bach's magisterial 32-movement work. The tally of recordings today is no fewer than 193. So, leaving Gould to his own category, here are some highly personal and subjective recommendations.
 

Busoni's Vision

Ferruccio Busoni, arguably the most ardent champion of Bach in his — or any — time, was the first to revive the Goldbergs in concert (1914), though characteristically he performed them in his decidedly personal and virtuosic style, lovingly recalled in this recording by German pianist Claudius Tanski. Busoni also decided that the entire piece was too long and unsuited for the concert hall; hence the Busoni Goldbergs omit 10 of the 30 variations and divide the rest into three parts. At least Busoni got the use of three parts right — some musicologists argue that Bach's choice to bookend his aria with 30 variations was a deliberate attempt to express "the trinity times ten fingers."

Purchase

Listen to Busoni's version of the Goldberg 'Aria' with pianist Claudius Tanski:

Landowska the Pioneer

Any survey of the Goldbergs has to include Wanda Landowska's original 1933 account — the first full recording of the Goldberg Variations. Much as in Glenn Gould's LP recording from 22 years later, you can hear the sound of history being made as Landowska carefully and somewhat quirkily charts the maiden voyage through the Goldberg archipelago on her sturdy (if wholly inauthentic) Pleyel harpsichord. Also noteworthy is the fact that Landowska was the first of a series of fiercely individual female keyboard artists (including Rosalyn Tureck, Angela Hewitt and more recently Simone Dinnerstein) who have made some of the most distinctive Goldbergs recordings around.

Purchase

Listen Landowska's Variation No. 5:

Perahia's Perfection

In the modern piano era, there are dozens of worthy candidates for a "straight ahead" version of the Goldbergs — clean, unhurried, technically unassailable yet emotionally rich performances. For my money — or, more to the point, your money — look no further than Murray Perahia. Critic David Hurwitz gets it right when he says these Goldbergs offer "incontestable evidence of Perahia's penetrating musical intellect, sensitivity to emotional nuance, and exceptional technical gifts." A can't-miss choice.

Purchase

Listen to Perahia's Variation No. 1:

Staier's Kaleidoscopic Harpsichord

You can't have a "Great Goldbergs" list without including at least one recording on the instrument for which it was intended: a two-manual (that is, two-keyboard) harpsichord. Point of fact is that playing the Goldbergs on a single keyboard instrument means that a pianist has to resort to tricks, compromises, fudging or outright studio chicanery to play all the notes as Bach wrote them. Happily, harpsichord recordings — and the quality of both the instruments and their performers — have long since evolved from being mere academic curiosities. Case in point is this 2010 recording by German harpsichordist Andreas Staier on a reproduction of a 1734 instrument "with so many stops with exotic colors and textures that suddenly the piano seems challenged," in the words of my WGBH colleague Brian McCreath. It comes with a fascinating bonus DVD for confirmed Goldberg geeks.

Purchase

Listen to Staier's Variation No. 20:

Sitkovetsky's Game Changer

From Glenn Gould in 1955 to Simone Dinnerstein's debut in 2005, every decade seems to have its game-changing Goldbergs. In the decade before Dinnerstein, it belonged to Russian-born violinist Dmitri Sitkovetsky, who in 1995 made this transformative recording of his own string orchestra arrangement with the New European Strings. "Sitkovetsky has turned the Goldberg Variations into a tone poem," raved one critic. The sensitive, nuanced recording confirmed that the greatness of the Goldbergs could go far beyond the keyboard, opening the floodgates for new interpretative possibilities, which in recent years have included solo harp, string trio and even a band of Renaissance viols.

Purchase

Listen to Sitkovetsky's Variation No. 30: