Archive for May, 2008
Berlioz, Les Troyens, a Concert Performance and a Symposium
Les Troyens is so widely accepted as Berlioz’s greatest work, that the progress of the Berlioz Renaissance is punctuated by performances of it in the opera house and in concert, beginning, arguably, with Sir Thomas Beecham’s moderately abridged 1947 BBC broadcast. Now Boston music-lovers may consider the Berlioz Renaissance to be something of a noble fiction, since his music has had its own secure place in the Boston Symphony repertoire for many years, maturing with Charles Munch’s arrival in 1949. During his tenure he and the BSO performed and recorded several of Berlioz’s most important works, and the recordings are still considered among the best. Later, both Jean Martinon and Seiji Ozawa continued the tradition most capably, and Berlioz has been one of James Levine’s great enthusiasms since early in his career.
Gala Restaurant and Bar at the Orchards Hotel
Gala Restaurant and Bar | Orchards Hotel 222 Adams Road, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 01267. Tel: | Fax: Email Price: Moderate | main courses $23-$39. As summer visitors converge on Williamstown, beginning with the Williams commencement and continuing on through the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which will conintue through late August, it will hardly occur [...]
I blinked… [more arts critics eliminated at major papers]
…and now I have several items of bad news to report. Absorbed in the intricacies of first-year Latin and stunned by the Karajan Renaissance, I missed a few weeks of music world news. It seems to happen in the spring, whether it is in Atlanta or Minneapolis. Cutting costs right and left, managers in the [...]
Cutbacks in Classical Music Coverage Worry Critics, by Michael Miller, from BFA, 6/12/07
When a “regular” disappears for a while, one always wonders… At Berkshire Fine Arts we don’t bother with markers for vacations or the like. It serves no purpose anyway. When I read “Paul Krugman is on vacation.” in the New York Times, I still worry. In fact, I took an informal sabbatical to finish a [...]
Oh no! He’s not back again, is he? [revised]
Herbert von Karajan, Wax Effigy in Miracle’s Wax Museum. Vienna For many years Norman Lebrecht has managed to maintain an entirely undeserved amount of attention as the Thersites of the music world, the coarse, obtuse outsider, who doesn’t get the point of the war. Polemics can make almost anything interesting, even Mr. Lebrecht’s warped [...]
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