Sacred music began tumbling from heaven to earth in the late 16th century, when the words it was sung to became something more than liturgical reference points. It took on more qualities of human speech and a greater intensity of meaning. The turn of that century was the essential tipping point from the rules-based music of the Renaissance to the more emotion-based music of the … [Read more...] about Fear and loathing in the Renaissance church: Stile Antico sings Victoria’s Holy Week music

Karlheinz Stockhausen has only been gone a little over ten years, but the infamous, trailblazing composer (1928-2007) seems like a name from the past, provoking as much suspicion as awe with music that seems purposefully opaque - one smoke screen after another, with the core being hard to locate, much less understand. At least in the U.S. That’s why the two days of … [Read more...] about Rehabilitating Stockhausen with a KLANG: Does less mystique enhance his stature?

Are we there yet? That classic question was inevitable after a weekend packed with early-music concerts in New York - including the New York City Opera production of Rameau's Pigmalion, the TENEbrae Pathway to Light concert of sacred music by Buxtehude, and The English Concert's annual Handel opera at Carnegie Hall, this one being Rinaldo. The performance of Baroque music … [Read more...] about Historically informed performance: How does it translate into the real world?

Though not a stranger to New York, Kirill Petrenko showed every sign of being discovered by some highly engaged Carnegie Hall audiences during a two-day visit by the Bavarian State Opera - first in an all-orchestral Brahms/Tchaikovsky program and then with a complete concert performance of Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier. Two threads ran through both evenings: The bearded, … [Read more...] about Who is Kirill Petrenko? The incoming Berlin Phil chief conductor – at least for the moment – can do no wrong

Anne-Sophie Mutter has long maintained supreme artistic poise in the classical violin world, but the wild card in her repertoire has often come from her ex-husband, the multi-Oscar-winning composer André Previn. Now 88 or 89 (depending on whom you believe), he has written ten works for her, and though his new piece The Fifth Season (given its world premiere on Sunday at … [Read more...] about Anne-Sophie Mutter and André Previn: Music from the divorce that didn’t work