Finally, my top 10 for the year. Okay, so I’m a conservative old fart…but these are the recordings I enjoyed most during the year. I gave most of the more adventuresome stuff to our crackerjack reviewers whom I hope will weigh in with their own choices. Number One Rilke Songs; The Six Realms; Horn Concerto Peter Lieberson Lorraine Hunt Lieberson mezzo soprano, Peter Serkin, piano William Purvis, horn, Michaela Fukacova, violoncello Odense Symphony Bridge Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s untimely death this year adds a bittersweet note to this extraordinary Grammy-nominated recording of husband Peter Lieberson’s settings of five Rilke poems, recorded live at the
Read moreOur friend Marvin Rosen will be airing the entire 6 hour seven minute version of Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2, by the Flux Quartet, beginning at 11 am, EST on Friday, December 29, as part of a special 9 hour Classical Discoveries program devoted to American contemporary music. Two members of Flux–Tom Chiu and Dave Eggar–will join Marvin to discuss the work after the performance. I believe it is safe to say that Marvin is the only broadcaster in America who both can and would undertake such a mission. Classical Discoveries is broadcast via WPRB 103.3 FM in Princeton, NJ. and over
Read moreAnthony Tommasini here. Manuela Hoelterhoff here. An Unamplified Voice here. Maury D’annato here. Jonathan at Wellsung. AP here.
Read moreWell, you’re too late for the $550 Center Parterre Premium seats or the $350 Orchestra Premium seats for tonight’s premiere of Tan Dun’s The First Emperor at the Met but if you hurry it looks like you can still grab one of the bargain $250 orchestra seats. (I have a couple of mere $80 seats in the alpine section later.) In the meantime, us poor people can read about the Mr. Tan’s opera foo young in the Met blog or perhaps lurk at the stage door for a glimpse of Placido Domingo or Elizabeth Futral or maybe even the great film director Zhang Yimou (To Live,
Read moreHere’s an obituary written by Carson Cooman. American composer Daniel Pinkham passed away on the morning of December 18, 2006 in Natick, Massachusetts, USA after a brief illness. Pinkham, one of America’s most active and well-known composers of music for the church, was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, USA on June 5, 1923. He studied at Harvard University and Tanglewood with Walter Piston, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Arthur Honneger, and Nadia Boulanger. As an organist and harpsichord he studied with Wanda Landowska and E. Power Biggs. For over forty years, Pinkham was music director at Boston’s historic King’s Chapel, where he
Read moreSteve Layton writes: “Our hip weekly in Seattle, The Stranger, has a yearly “Strangercrombie” Xmas-auction of unusual gifts. One of the music-related gifts up for grabs is this”: Alex Ross’s iPod New Yorker music critic Alex Ross set music nerds’ hearts aflutter last year on his national iPod Tour, lecturing on 20th-century composers from Ligeti to Bjork to Messiaen and playing samples from his iPod. Now here’s your chance to possess an Alex Ross-programmed iPod of your very own. The venerable Ross has programmed two playlists into this very iPod Nano (silver) in his own New York apartment with his
Read moreYou wouldn’t know it from the freakish weather (60 degrees today) here in the Center of the Universe but it’s Christmas time and that means it’s time for Phil Kline to lead a massive chorus of boomboxes through the streets of Greenwich Village in the 15th annual holiday presentation of his legendary UNSILENT NIGHT. The fun starts this Saturday, December 16 at 7:00 pm, at the arch in Washington Square Park. You know the drill: Kline puts the different parts of his composition on cassettes, and distributes them to those who show up at Washington Square. At the given signal, everyone simultaneously pressses PLAY. When the cassettes start
Read more