It’s October 2019 and Beethoven and Schumann are on the program… the good old days! This blog post has been sitting and waiting for a while and with everything that’s been happening this year, 2019 really feels like a lifetime ago. But before discussing the performance itself, there was something more noteworthy to anybody who … Read More →
Johann Sebastian Bach is NOT overrated. While it’s difficult to pick favourites among the greatest composers of classical music, when pressed, I just love Bach a little bit more than the other great musical geniuses and admitted as much in an earlier book review. In a slightly morbid thought-experiment, I sometimes find solace in the … Read More →
With the classical music season 2018/2019 in full swing, I already listened to a lot of wonderful concerts in the last couple of weeks and months. As always when attending live performances, there was more to them than just the music. While a lot of classical music has proven timeless (although even hundred-year-old classics come … Read More →
It took me much too long to write this post, but as they say ‘better late then never’. On December 10th, I was – like almost every week – at Lincoln Center. Beethoven’s 3rd piano concert, which is among my favourite 25 or so pieces in classical music, was to be played by Kun-Woo Paik in the … Read More →
Joshua Bell with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, at David Geffen Hall. Credit: Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Every now and then there are those memorable moments. In late March, I was invited to a such a very special musical evening in New York. The day after the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields performed Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major (Op.35) at David Geffen Hall, there was a small cocktail reception at the … Read More →
The Bach Collegium Japan was founded in 1990 by Masaaki Suzuki. Photo credit: http://www.creatio300.com. Originally, I had planned on publishing this post right after the actual concert on November 7th at Zankel Hall (part of Carnegie Hall, NYC). As it often happens I had to shelve it until now – when I am finally stuck on a plane for 12 hours and due to the simply unfathomable fact that … Read More →
David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center Having just returned home from David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, I had to take a few moments to relax. One doesn’t simply come home after a Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto and goes about daily business. Tonight’s program started off with The Isle of the Dead, which Rachmaninoff wrote with inspiration from the work of a … Read More →
It was a true privilege having been invited to the premiere of Lulu at the MET Opera in New York by a dear family friend. As someone who is very interested in works by the incredibly productive and innovative pre-war German writers and artists, I was particularly curious about Alban Berg’s Lulu. This was the first time … Read More →
