NEWS
It's always a pleasure to run into Leontyne again at the National Portrait Gallery!
Here for Barber's Violin Concerto, the last concert of the National Symphony Orchestra season - but something is different today. Hoping for a better season ahead.
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Now THIS is how it's supposed to sound! I was there for it, and it was brilliant. Nice review from EarRelevant.
Noseda leads vivid new ‘Vanessa’ with strong cast and orchestral sheen | EarRelevant
www.earrelevant.net
Noseda leads a new National Symphony Orchestra recording of Barber’s Vanessa, featuring a star cast and richly detailed orchestral sound.0 CommentsComment on Facebook
This is, I must agree, ultimately the truth of the matter...
(The troupe's aggressive acclaim-strain continues to confound, but has a lot to do with identity...)
‘Vanessa’ Review: Heartbeat Opera’s Strident Samuel Barber
www.wsj.com
The New York company offers a stark, taxing adaptation of the composer’s 1958 work, which centers on a woman waiting for her long-gone lover’s return.0 CommentsComment on Facebook
Caught this at Baruch College, pretty good! Causes one to long for the scale and grandeur of Barber's original orchestration, as this was just a few musicians in a basement black box, but the material is timeless and always a pleasure to revisit. Doubled down into melodrama, at odds with the already delicate balance between the score's intensity, and need for theatrical naturalism. But more troupes will rise to the challenge, to be sure! I'll keep listening to the Slatkin reading for now.
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A dear friend of Samuel Barber, who paid tribute until the very end at 101 years old - may she rest in peace.
Her last album, a wonderful magnum opus in 2022 warmly titled "My Life In Music," features this rare performance of Barber's "Fresh from West Chester: II. Let's Sit It Out, I'd Rather Watch": www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1itEKRSoH0
Ruth Slenczynska, pianist child prodigy thought to be Sergei Rachmaninov’s last surviving pupil
www.yahoo.com
Ruth Slenczynska, the pianist who has died aged 101, was thought to have been the last surviving pupil of Sergei Rachmaninov who, she claimed, had once proclaimed her “the greatest talent in the world...0 CommentsComment on Facebook
A peculiar pairing tonight, with Yarn/Wire on the first half of the New York Philharmonic program (whose newest evening-length concert film that I shot last year premieres next week), then a bounty of Barber on the second half: his timeless Knoxville: Summer of 1915 sung by Golda Schultz, and the much less frequently programmed Second Essay to climax the concert. Every once in a while, spoiled by such consummate musicians, my belief that Samuel Barber was the greatest composer of all time (yes, very dramatic!) gets affirmed. A lighter work by another composer took the bigger ovation as always, but Barber always accesses something much greater, for eternity, beyond instant gratification.
"And who shall ever tell the sorrow
Of being on this earth, lying, on quilts,
On the grass,
In a summer evening,
Among the sounds of the night.
May God bless my people,
My uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father,
Oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble;
And in the hour of their taking away."
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