A must-see

Originally I had intended to take a leave from blogging for a couple of days; there were just too many concerts to write about and some more will follow later on this week. But then I came across this post on Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s fantastic New Music blog. Tim has posted a couple of New Music [...]

Addenda

1) Les grands spectacles II. Just a couple of words on this exhibition at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg. After yesterday’s boring display of traditional stage setting, it was refreshing, fascinating, and shocking (in the cases of Hermann Nitsch and Christoph Schlingensief) to learn more about the history of stage design. The exhibition that [...]

Mozart: La Finta Giardiniera

This is the second time that I am reporting from the Landestheater in Salzburg. The first post was on Zaide/Adama by Mozart and Czernowin. This time I’ll write about the premiere of Doris Dörrie’s staging of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera. Doris Dörrie is a well-known TV and film director in Germany, who debuted in opera [...]

Premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Gogo No Eiko

Three years ago the Salzburg Festival staged the world premiere of Henze’s L’Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe, a huge success at the time. It is thus no wonder that today’s performance of Gogo No Eiko drew a lot of media attention. The aging composer himself was present for the concert premiere of the third [...]

A Music Search Engine

UMI is a good thing. If you ask them nicely they will send you information about and links to all the newly uploaded doctoral dissertations in North America. Today I came across an interesting thesis from McGill University by Ian Knopke (reference below). Ian worked on a music search engine that, unlike the standard search [...]

Trio Wanderer and Gérard Caussé: Mozart and Schedl

Today at twenty past seven my girlfriend got a call from a festival manager in Salzburg: “Can you be here in 10 minutes to turn pages in a chamber music concert?” She could … and she took me along, too. We had no idea what was on the program, nor did we know who [...]

Word Creations #1

molldüster
engelhaft süßes Tenortimbre
flehentlich-expressive Nuancierung
warme Baßfülle

Julia Spinola on Mozart’s Betulia liberata at the Salzburg Festival. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 22, 2006, p. 31.

(5′ -> 3′) ATGGAATTCTCGCTC

Reading the program notes can sometimes be very illuminating. Yesterday, for instance, at the concert of the Ensemble Wien-Berlin and Denes Varjon (piano), I learned something about molecular biology and its application to music. York Höller’s Klangzeichen for piano and wind quintet is a piece based on a Klanggestalt, a melodic structure from which all [...]

The Arditti Quartet plays Kyburz, Dusapin, Ferneyhough, and Lachenmann

One of the many good things about New Music concerts at the venerable Salzburg Festival is that a lot of people who have expensive tickets are leaving in the intermission. This comes in handy when the piece in the second half is Grido by Helmut Lachenmann, a composition that employs a lot of very quite [...]

Premiere of Czernowin’s Zaide - Adama in Salzburg

Somewhere towards the end, there is a short moment of hope. The possibility of forgiveness. The possibility of reconciliation and fraternization. Everything is up in the air. Will Soliman, the despotic ruler of the Serail forgive the lovers Zaide and Gomatz who are desperately in love which each other and try to flee from him? [...]

Great Conversations in Music

Summer leaves town. It’s getting colder, darker, and rainier in Berlin these days, and yet no opera season begins. What can one do? Listen to music, read books, write dissertations, and - of course - browse the web. Let me tell you, there is a lot to discover when you type “conversations about music” into [...]

Shostakovich on a Green Meadow

In my neighbourhood in Kreuzberg there is a small bridge that reaches across a canal. On that bridge, during summer, the locals like to hang out in front of an antique caravan. From that caravan they buy drinks, refreshments, and ice cream. They sit on camping chairs that the owner of the caravan put out [...]

Leere

There is simply nothing to report from Berlin. Maybe I have more to say next week when I will be going to the Salzburg Festival again. Take care for now.