In England, the summer country house opera season is winding up. Dinner jackets fly south to the dry cleaner; wicker picnic hampers bed down to hibernate until the spring. Although there are summer opera festivals all over the world, the country house phenomenon is almost unique to the British: few other countries give such primacy […]
Tag: Early Music & Baroque
Posted inInterview
In Defense
Any day now, Stas Nevmerzhytskyi, the editor-in-chief of The Claquers, an independent Ukrainian online classical music magazine, will join the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A musicologist specializing in early music by training—“I graduated from the National Music Academy in Kyiv, which, unfortunately, still bears the name of Tchaikovsky,” he said—Nevmerzhytskyi founded the publication, with articles […]
Posted inInterview
Question Everything
I asked flutist Emmanuel Pahud what it was like working with harpsichordist and conductor Trevor Pinnock; Pahud answered that it was a gift from life. I asked soprano Carolyn Sampson; she said Pinnock is “the complete musician, combining talent, hard work, and care for the people around him.” A pioneer of the historically informed performance […]
Posted inBreaking
The Rest Is Silliness
“And they’re off! It’s very exciting—the beginning of a symphony is always very exciting. I can’t tell if it’s slow or fast yet because they keep . . . stopping.” It’s 1997, I’m six years old, and my family has just pulled into the driveway of our home. The local public radio station is playing […]
Posted inInterview
“We Disrupt What We Love”
On November 30, the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s revival of “Tannhäuser,” we had reached the engrossing song contest in the Wartburg Castle from Act II. Baritone Christian Gerhaher, making his house debut in the role of Wolfram, was singing “Blick’ ich umher,” the character’s song on courtly love. As the music and libretto […]
Posted inStuff I’ve Been Hearing
Mediums and Messages
As the landscape of Twitter continues to become more gnarled and Mad Maxian, are those who remain becoming more revanchistly retrograde? At this point, between the algorithm and the audacity, you’d think no tweet could still be so remarkable as to invoke a pile-on. Especially now that the app is limiting the amount of tweets […]
Posted inRankings & Roundups
Every Bach Cantata, Ranked
After ranking the complete Scarlatti sonatas and Schubert songs, you might think I’d have learned my lesson, both in time spent and in baffled—or worse—reactions received. Still, I admit when I decided to take on ranking the complete Bach Cantatas, I was a little naive about the time commitment required. With fairly regular listening, this […]
Posted inInterview
The Constraints of the Present
Since founding the early music ensemble Le Poème Harmonique in 1997, Vincent Dumestre has brought Palmeritan puppeteers to perform a forgotten opera about the mad Roman emperor Caligula; collaborated with circus players on 17th-century church music; and invited a diverse array of contemporary theater directors and choreographers to stage, among other things, a Spanish Baroque […]
Posted inEssay
Wood Made Flesh
“If Marina Abramovic had been a violinist, she would’ve been drawn to” Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber’s “Rosary” or “Mystery” Sonatas for violin and continuo, violinist Daniel Pioro tells me. With organist James McVinnie, Pioro performs the complete “Rosary” Sonatas at London’s Southbank Centre on January 22. The cycle is spread across three performances in […]
Posted inInterview
The Direction of History
Gambist and conductor Jordi Savall has recorded over 200 albums, most featuring music written before 1750—the year most mainstream conductors’ repertoire begins. Then, in 2018, Savall began a plan to perform multiple projects of Mozart and Beethoven. He was dipping his toe into the 19th century. Last week in Barcelona, Savall performed Schubert’s Eighth and […]