I have been writing music reviews for a blog of music
performances in the Boston area sponsored by the Harvard Musical Association.
My reviews try to find a balance between aspects of
the music, the performances, and the sound of the venues. Several of them are however
primarily dedicated to the reasons that the venues sound the way they do, and they
may be the most interesting for readers of this blog. I have put them at the
top of the list. The first two in the list were my
attempt to put the best possible light on what I consider to be a disaster –
the new Calderwood Hall at the Gardner Museum in Boston. Perhaps I was a lot
too gentle. A good friend and well known acoustician
commented about the review that “I did not know you could be so kind”. I offered to send a copy of the review to Yasuhisa
Toyota. He was grateful for my “Acoustican’s Report”, which I wrote before I had heard the
hall in concert. But I was told by the local Nagata representative that it
would not be a good idea to forward the second review to Nagata.
Last Sunday afternoon a sold-out
crowd eagerly listened as Claremont Trio played in the new Calderwood Hall at
the Gardner Museum. This article relates my experience listening to the
performance from the first balcony in front of the musicians. My experience
there was good – not great. Listeners in other areas of the first balcony had a
much more variable experience, and on the whole they were
disappointed. [continued]
This report is my preview of the
eagerly awaited new music hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The new
Calderwood Hall is replacing the Tapestry Gallery as the site for concerts. My observations
are based partly on a guided tour a few weeks ago during which we heard no
music, and partly on my […]
New Music,
New Sound in the Brooks Hall
Last Friday the
Holy Cross music department celebrated the new Brooks Concert Hall with an
eclectic combination of new and old music. The concert highlighted the
strengths of the music faculty, as well as the acoustics of the newly renovated
space. [continued]
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Ed: The Rockport Chamber Music
Festival in Rockport, MA, is set to open its second season in its sumptuous Shalin Liu Performance Center on June 9, and concerts will
run through July 17. In honor of the first anniversary of the dedication of
Rockport Music’s new home, BMInt is pleased to
publish a very interesting […]
February 18, 2014
Spaces Speak,
and Now a Master’s Voice
Sound in an enclosed
space is subject to myriad variables, not just the source’s output pattern—how
the tonal balance changes with angle—but its reflections, how far away they
come from, and how their own tonal balance gets changed by the reflecting
surfaces. And finally, how where we listeners sit affects everything further.
The successful and […]
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Death and
Wonder from Masaaki Suzuki
In some ways Harvard’s
Memorial Church was the ideal setting for Friday’s brilliant performance by
Masaaki Suzuki and Yale’s renowned Schola Cantorum of three Bach cantatas. Although the concert was a
delight almost anywhere in the church, when the words are not completely clear,
something that Bach and Suzuki found of supreme value is
missing. [continued]
Asked to comment on John Newton’s
recent Intelligencer article on recording and archiving at the BSO and to the
comments therein here, BMInt writer David Griesinger
responded in extraordinary detail (for a comment). We publish his response as
an article. A reply to the comments after John Newton’s article would have to
be book length […]
February 4, 2014
Violinist
Susanna Ogata and keyboardist Ian Watson inaugurated their Beethoven Project
Monday for Cambridge Society for Early Music’s at Christ Church Cambridge, set
to include over time, the composer’s entire sonata literature for violin
and piano and solo piano. I felt the master vividly before me, as if playing his music his way on his own
instrument. [continued]
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November 11, 2013
A over-capacity
audience flocked to the Hammond Performing Arts’ concert in Old South Church
Sunday to hear two outstanding artists: Jan Müller-Szeraws, cello, and Ya-Fei Chuang, piano. [continued]
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October 28, 2013
Camerata Musics Carmina Burana Poetry
The Boston
Camerata (joined by the Amherst Madrigal Singers) opened its season Sunday at
the First Church of Boston with “Carmina Burana,” but certainly not the well
known version by Carl Orff. [continued]
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August 25, 2013
Three
German Romantics—One a Master
Cellist Ronald
Thomas of the Boston Chamber Music Society opened BCMS’s Saturday night concert
at Watertown’s Mosesian Theater with an aside: “I
hope everybody’s going to be having fun with Voříšek’s
Rondo, because I’m not going to be.” [continued]
January 28, 2013
Songs of Sorrow, Songs
of Delight
The
British/German tenor Rufus Müller, along with Stephen Hammer, oboe, Phoebe Carrai, cello, and Libor Dudas,
keyboards, gave an unusually moving faculty artist recital at Longy School of
Music of Bard College Sunday night. Müller has a gift for projecting music and
text with amazing vocal technique and emotional power. [continued]
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October 7, 2012
Bartok’s,
Beethoven’s Last-Minute Changes Shown
At the
Wellfleet Congregational Church on Saturday, Borromeo
Quartet’s Nicholas Kitchen projected manuscripts on a large screen and
described how the composers’ last-minute changes in Bartók’s String
Quartet No. 6 and Beethoven’s F-Major Razumovsky
Quartet dramatically changed structures and meanings. The Borromeo
then played the original upbeat ending of the Bartók
sixth and the Beethoven quartet as he altered it.
[continued]
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August 15, 2012
The Borromeo With The Strange and
Beautiful
Monday night
the Borromeo String Quartet treated us to a
seldom-heard Stravinsky quartet, a near-premier of a quartet by Daniel Brewbaker, and an old favorite, Schubert’s “Death and
the Maiden,” all dedicated to the memory of Francesca Rullman.
The venue, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, is a new and beautiful
space, fortunately designed for concerts as well as
art. [continued]
August 11, 2012
Precision,
Intensity from Jupiter in Wellfleet
The Jupiter
String Quartet, one of the finest of today’s rising ensembles, performed in
Wellfleet last evening. The group demonstrated precision and enthusiasm in
Haydn’s “The Joke” Quartet, but Bartók’s emotional
String Quartet No. 1 was the high point for me. Balance was a problem, though,
in the Franck Quintet in F Minor for Piano and Strings. [continued]
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August 10, 2012
Claremont
Shines with Shepherd’s Trio in Cotuit
The Claremont Trio
offered three fine performances on August 7th
at the Cotuit Center for the Arts. This was my second opportunity to
hear Sean Shepherd’s Trio (2012), commissioned for the opening of the
new Calderwood Hall at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The sound in Cotuit
was dry, crisp and clear. And the fine playing brought new
insights. [continued]
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April 10, 2012
The Mighty
Fisk Speaks at Harvard
The new Fisk
organ (opus 139) in The Memorial Church in Harvard Yard gave its first public performance
on Sunday as a lengthy prelude to the Easter Service. Christian Lane, Assistant
University Organist and Choirmaster at Harvard University, played a one-hour
program selected to show off the many voices of this fabulous
instrument. [continued]
April 9, 2012
Many Curtain
Calls for Charles Strouse
The honored
guest artist at the Nadia Boulanger Memorial Concert at Longy was Charles Strouse,
one of America’s most well known composers for musical
theater, who serenaded us with his favorite songs, after participating in a
delightful conversation with Longy Dean Wayman Chin.
After intermission we were treated by Longy students to some of Strouse’s early classical chamber
works. [continued]
March 23, 2012
Brentano’s
Clarity, Balance at Concord CMS
The Brentano
String Quartet performs throughout the world, garnering prizes and prestigious
positions. So it was with some anticipation that we heard their concert at
Concord Academy last Sunday, at the Concord Chamber Music series. They did not
disappoint. They presented three works by youthful composers whose names began
with a “B”: Beethoven, Busoni, and Bartók.
[continued]
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March 22, 2012
Run
to See Lowell House Snow Maiden
Run to Harvard for
Rimski-Korsakov’s Snegurouchka, (“The Snow
Maiden”), receiving its premier American performance as a fully
staged opera by Lowell House Opera Society. The music is gorgeous — Russian
folk melodies, Wagnerian leitmotifs, orchestration worthy of Ravel. Lidiya Yankovskaya conducted a
remarkably capable orchestra with authority and sensitivity; the singers
uniformly delivered both excellent Russian and acting in a production beyond
reproach. [continued]
March 10, 2012
Pellicano and Chin in Ravel, Mozart at Longy
Jullian Pellicano and Longy
Conservatory Orchestra presented a thoroughly enjoyable concert of Ravel and
Mozart to a capacity audience in Pickman Hall last
evening. The highlight was Wayman Chin’s performance
of Mozart’s Piano Concert No. 17 in G major. The evening opened with a lovely
performance of Le Tombeau de Couperin of
Maurice Ravel with an outstanding performance by oboist Asako
Furuoya. [continued]
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March 5, 2012
Joyous Bach,
Delight in Music-making
Harvard University
Choir under Edward Jones and Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra under Phoebe Carrai joined forces to present the music of Bach in
Memorial Church in Harvard Yard. Their delight in music-making shone through
the whole concert — Brandenburg concertos nos. 1 and 3, the motet Singet den Herrn ein neues Lied and the
cantata, Gott, der Herr, ist Sonn und Schild,
BWV 79. [continued]
March 4, 2012
Radius Ensemble
gave us a brilliant combination of music and performances last night at the
Longy School of Music. The goal was to bring unfamiliar music to a wider
audience. Radius succeeded in spades, and the sequence of the pieces was just
as important as the choice of music, particularly for the first two pieces on
the program. [continued]
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February 27, 2012
Sunday night in
Sanders Theatre the Boston Chamber Music Society regulars treated us to Beethoven and two seldom performed works. Harumi
Rhodes, violin; Ronald Thomas, cello; and Mihae Lee,
piano opened with Beethoven’s Piano Trio in D major. [continued]
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