PARSiFAL GOES MIDDLE EAST
PRELUDE I have a confession to make: I don’t quite get Parsifal. It is not the music that is the problem. Some of it is exceptionally easy on the ear. But the message remains mysterious and the metaphors can be […]
HAENCHEN’S NINTH PARSIFAL HITS HOME
All Wagner pilgrimages eventually must lead to Bayreuth. And If you only see one opera there, let it be Parsifal. After all , Parsifal is the only work that Wagner actually composed specifically with his Festspielhaus in mind. This was […]
A FESTIVAL FIT FOR A BAROQUE PALACE
Moritzburg Chamber Festival, Germany 6-21 August The other night the Moritzburg Festival kicked off at the Gläserne Manufaktur, Volkswagen’s transparent factory on the outskirts of Dresden. Unfortunately I can’t attend this year, but I don’t mind doing a puff piece […]
TILL DEATH DO US PART: Tristan und Isolde, Bayreuth
Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner, 1 August 2016, Bayreuth The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was fascinated by Tristan und Isolde and he wrote that for stress release he preferred Wagner’s opera to hashish. This drama in three acts certainly has […]
BBC PROMS IS WHERE GIANTS MEET, MAHLER/HAITINK
PROM 18, 29 July 2016, MAHLER 3 with LSO conducted by Bernard Haitink Bernard Haitink’s appearances at the Proms are one step ahead of his age. At 87 the Dutchman has just conducted his 88th performance at the BBC Proms. […]
VERBIER SCALES MUSICAL HEIGHTS
Review of the Verbier Festival will appear here soon
HAIL TSAR BRYN TERFEL, PROM 2
Boris Godunov M. Mussorgsky Saturday 16 July 2016 Prom 2 Have concert performances of operas become better and more popular over the last decade or have I just learned to appreciate them? The original 1869 version of Mussorgsky’s Boris […]
PAINTING AT THE TAIL END OF THE EARTH
Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective at Tate Modern (until 30 October 2016) Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1 is still the most expensive work of art by a woman artist sold at auction. It fetched $44.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2014 […]
CHELSEA BEATEN BY HAMPTON
Year on year you struggle to purchase the tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show. Right? When you’ve finally made it to that most prestigious floral show in the English social calendar, you wish you could crane your neck like a […]
RATTLE CONDUCTS PELLÉAS AND MÉLISANDE
Debussys’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande is based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s symbolist play. Let me first establish that symbolist in this context equals mysterious. Most prominent symbols: water and (female) hair. The character of Mélisande remains a mystery throughout and the music […]
RATTLE THINKS LSO WORKS TOO HARD
Sir Simon Rattle is the London Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director Designate after Valery Gergiev last autumn took his leave of London’s oldest symphony orchestra. I can’t pass a fair judgement on the Russian’s performance, as I was not based in […]
RATTLE HAS THE MEASURE OF DEBUSSY
Sir Simon Rattle will this weekend ( 9-10 January 2016) lead the London Symphony Orchestra in a semi-staged performance of Debussy’s only opera Pelléas et Mélisande at the Barbican in London. This is yet another collaborative effort between Rattle and the […]