Winner of the 2017 Gramophone Awards, vocal category – Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach – Johannes Brahms Vier ernste Ges‰nge and other Brahms Lieder. Here is why ! An exceptional recording, probably a new benchmark.
Year: 2017
A Prom of Transformation and Transcendence: RenÈe Fleming and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
This Prom was all about places: geographical, physical, pictorial, poetic, psychological. And, as we journeyed through these landscapes of the mind, there was plenty of reminiscence and nostalgia too, not least in Samuel Barber’s depiction of early twentieth-century Tennessee – Knoxville: Summer of 1915.
The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief: Opera della Luna at Wilton’s Music Hall
Billed as the ‘First British Performance’ – though it had had a prior, quasi-private outing at the Roxburgh Theatre, Stowe in July – Opera della Luna’s production of Johann Strauss Jnr’s The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief (Das Spitzentuch der Kˆnigin) at Wilton’s Music Hall began to sound pretty familiar half-way through the overture (which was played with spark and elegance by conductor Toby Purser’s twelve-piece orchestra).
VÈronique Gens: Visions from Grand OpÈra
Ravishing : Visions, VÈronique Gens in a glorious new recording of French operatic gems, with HervÈ Niquet conducting the M¸nchener Rundfunkorchester. This disc is a companion piece to NÈËre, where Gens sang familiar Duparc, Hahn, and Chausson mÈlodies.
Glyndebourne perform La clemenza di Tito at the Proms
The advantage of Glyndebourne Opera’s performances at the BBC Proms is that they give us a chance to concentrate on the music making. And there was plenty of high-quality music-making on offer at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday 28 August 2017 when Glyndebourne Opera performed Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito.
Rossini’s Torvaldo e Dorliska in Pesaro
The rare and somewhat interesting Rossini! Torvaldo e Dorliska (1815) comes just after Elisabetta, Regina di Ingleterra (the first of his nineteen operas for Naples) — a huge success, and just before Il barbiere di Siviglia in Rome — a failure.
Jakub Hr?öa : Bohemian Reformation Prom
At Prom 56, Jakub Hr?öa conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a programme on the theme of the Hussite Wars and their place in Bohemian culture showing how the Hussite hymn was incorporated into music by Smetana, Martin?, Dvo?·k, Jan·?ek and Josef Suk.
Wozzeck at the Salzburg Festival
South African actor, artist, multimedia artist, film and theater, now opera director William Kentridge has taken the world by storm over the past few years. In my experience The Magic Flute in Brussels, The Return of Ulysses (puppets) in San Francisco, The Nose in Aix, Lulu at the Met, Die Winterreise and his “One Man Show” in Aix. And now Wozzeck at the Salzburg Festival.
Lear at the Salzburg Festival
Undaunted by the bloody majesty of this 1606 Shakespeare tragedy, German composer Aribert Reimann embraced the challenge back in the cold-war era (1970’s). Its Munich premiere was in 1978, a Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production that then traveled to San Francisco in 1981. Of the Munich cast only Helga Dernesch as Goneril appeared in San Francisco.
Ariodante at the Salzburg Festival
From time to time felicitous circumstances create impromptu masterpieces, like the Salzburg 2017 Whitsun Festival production of Handel’s Ariodante that has continued just now into the 2017 summer festival.