CD REVIEW | Seiji Ozawa's Exciting Berlioz Remastered
By Paul E. Robinson on April 12, 2015
Review: Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique Op. 14. Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa
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By Paul E. Robinson on April 12, 2015
Review: Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique Op. 14. Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa
(Continue reading)By Paul E. Robinson on April 4, 2015
Very few recordings I’ve heard in recent months have given me as much pleasure as this one. While Dvořák is one of my favourite composers, the Violin Concerto has always seemed to me more impressive on paper (score) than in live performance or on a recording...
(Continue reading)By Paul E. Robinson on March 28, 2015
Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt has played so much Bach and played it so well she has become known as one of the great Bach players of her time. In fact, her Bach reputation is so great that it is often assumed that she plays little else. Nothing could be further from the truth and this new CD provides conclusive evidence...
(Continue reading)By Paul E. Robinson on March 19, 2015
These performances were recorded live during the Pull Out All the Stops Festival launching the refurbished Royal Festival Hall organ, fully operational again for the first time since 2005. The organ sounds terrific and the performances are first-rate...
(Continue reading)By Paul E. Robinson on March 14, 2015
Elgar is practically part of the DNA of a certain group of Canadian classical music lovers; it goes with their Anglo-Saxon heritage and recognition of the Queen of England as their sovereign. For many classical music lovers in the United States and beyond, it is a different matter. Elgar’s music, while regularly programmed by British orchestras, was never widely performed or appreciated in the USA or Europe in the past and that is still the case today...
(Continue reading)By Paul E. Robinson on March 6, 2015
On the day that I played this new DVD celebrating the opening of the new Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, world news networks were reporting that prominent Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov had been murdered on the street near the Kremlin in Moscow. Yet another example of the ruthlessness of the Putin regime? Perhaps...
(Continue reading)By Paul E. Robinson on March 2, 2015
German baritone Christian Gerhaher recently performed in Toronto and those who heard him won’t have to be told what a fine artist he is. This new recording provides even more evidence, as if it were needed, of the beauty of his voice and the keen intelligence with which he uses it. This is somewhat esoteric repertoire, but the collaboration between Gerhaher and conductor Daniel Harding is consistently compelling...
(Continue reading)By Paul E. Robinson on February 22, 2015
The most memorable performance of Ein Heldenleben I ever heard was in Washington, D.C. January 24, 1965 with Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a glorious performance. There was an extra-musical dimension to this performance which made it that much more special; Winston Churchill had passed away that morning and Karajan dedicated the performance to his memory. If ever a man had lived a hero’s life, Winston Churchill was surely that man, and watching a German conductor like Karajan, a one-time member of the Nazi party pay tribute to him with this piece engendered in me thoughts and emotions that would last a lifetime...
(Continue reading)By Paul E. Robinson on February 15, 2015
San Antonio, Texas | Even part-time Texans like myself (my wife and I have been living part of each year in Austin since 2005) tend to forget that San Antonio is the second largest city in Texas. Houston is No. 1 with about 2.1 million people, but San Antonio is not far behind at 1.3 million. In the latest census, Dallas came in at 1.2 million. Actually, the Dallas-Ft.Worth Metroplex is over 2 million. That said, San Antonio is still one of the largest cities in Texas and growing rapidly...
(Continue reading)By Paul E. Robinson on February 12, 2015
Tchaikovsky wrote ten operas, but only two of them, Eugen Onegin and Pique Dame, are performed with any regularity in opera houses outside Russia. His last opera, Iolanta, composed just before the Pathétique symphony, has recently received a good deal of attention, thanks to Anna Netrebko’s interest in it. In addition to being the subject of this new recording starring Netrebko, the opera is currently in production at the Met and will be screened Feb. 14 (encore/Feb. 18) as part of the Met’s Live in HD movie theatre series. Finally, tenor Sergey Skorokhodov will appear in a Dallas Opera production of Iolanta conducted by Emmanuel Villaume (April 10-18)...
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