Strauss
Schwanewilms, Connolly, Crowe, LSO, Elder, BarbicanFriday, 09 May 2014
Mozart usually makes a fine concert bedfellow for his most devoted admirer among later composers, Richard Strauss. With the proviso that the 39th rather than the 38th Symphony would have made a better prologue to excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier last... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Soprano Anne SchwanewilmsSunday, 04 May 2014
She is now the world’s leading interpreter of Richard Strauss’s Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, the aristocratic thirtysomething once forced into marriage with a far from ideal husband and determined not to let it happen to the sweet girl who... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Soprano Nicole CabellMonday, 07 April 2014
Last year a DVD appeared featuring the 15 winning performances from the start of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition up to 2011. I watched them all, skimming if any seemed a notch below par but staying with most. You could see the star... Read more... |
Die Frau ohne Schatten, Royal OperaSaturday, 15 March 2014
The big message of The Woman Without a Shadow, brushing aside the narrower, moral majority preaching that you’re incomplete without children, seems clear: fulfillment can’t be bought at the cost of another’s suffering. Yet the path towards that... Read more... |
A silver rose for Glyndebourne's 80thMonday, 10 March 2014
Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s 1911 “comedy for music” about love, money and masquerading in a putative 18th-century Vienna, is a repertoire staple around the world. Continental houses throw it together without a... Read more... |
Martinpelto, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterSunday, 09 March 2014
No one could accuse Manchester’s musical forces of short-changing Richard Strauss on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth. Under the title Strauss’s Voice, over two months three orchestras, eight conductors and a dozen soloists have... Read more... |
Kiri at 70Friday, 07 March 2014
Even more deserving of the sobriquet “the beautiful voice” than Renée Fleming, the natural successor who virtually copyrighted it, Kiri te Kanawa was one of the great sopranos of the 20th century. With those big, candid brown eyes and bone structure... Read more... |
Davislim, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterSunday, 02 March 2014
It’s the thought that counts. That’s what we say about presents. But when the gift is a song by Richard Strauss it is that and more. He made a habit of gifting songs, particularly to his wife Pauline. Several of the Six Orchestral Songs on... Read more... |
Schwanewilms, Hallé, Stenz, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterThursday, 06 February 2014
“How tired we are of travelling,” the soprano sings, underscored by a solo horn. The end is near: “Is this perhaps death?” No fuss, no drama, but weariness and a calm acceptance. Since Strauss and his wife Pauline were in their eighties and living... Read more... |
Williams, BBCPO, Hallé, Mena, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterSaturday, 25 January 2014
There are occasions when just one band isn’t enough. Hence the rare experience of the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic joining forces for a performance, in the Strauss’s Voice series celebrating the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, of An... Read more... |
Sherratt, Hallé, Znaider, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterFriday, 10 January 2014
It’s all about the voice – Strauss’s Voice, which is the title of the series of concerts being given by the musical forces of Manchester to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth. It is becoming a happy custom these days for the Hallé, the BBC... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Reginald King, Poulenc, StraussSaturday, 28 December 2013
Song of Paradise: Piano music by Reginald King Mark Bebbington (Somm)Reginald King (1904-1991) was a child prodigy, and taught at the Royal Academy of Music in the 1920s. In 1927 he formed a light orchestra to play in the restaurant of a West End... Read more... |
