Last week at the Philharmonie in Berlin, the ensemble Pygmalion under conductor Raphaël Pichon performed a concert of sacred music from during and after the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). It was a brutally destructive conflict that by some estimates decimated the German population by half. And though religious tensions were among the causes for the […]
Tag: Early Music & Baroque
Posted inBarTálk
Fluid and Amorphous
A new autumn brings with it a new season from Vache Baroque, les nouveaux enfants terribles of Baroque opera. This year’s offering is André Campra’s 1699 opera-ballet “Le Carnaval de Venise,” which received its UK premiere 326 years overdue. Directed by James Hurley and conducted from the harpsichord by Vache’s cofounder Jonathan Darbourne, this production, […]
Posted inEssay
13 Ways of Looking at “Sheep May Safely Graze”
I: A NON SEQUITUR It’s March, and the wind is whirling, swaying oaks and hickories in the park where I’ve brought my five-year-old son to play. Dashiell picks up a fallen tree branch from the grass and makes it his staff. Today he is a shepherd, guiding me along paths that bend around a man-made […]
Posted inInterview
The Yin and Yang
On February 7 and 9, the Handel+Haydn Society in Boston will perform works by the former under their artistic director, conductor, cellist and keyboardist Jonathan Cohen, in a program featuring the soloist Joélle Harvey and titled “Love, Handel.” (“Love, Handle”?) Recently, I met Cohen—whose interpretations of the Baroque and Classical repertoire are unusual for their […]
Posted inEssay
Fall In Love Again and Again
It is no exaggeration to say that Antonio Vivaldi’s baroque masterpiece “The Four Seasons” changed the course of my life. Vivaldi’s monumental homage to the natural world is a work resplendent with fantasy, storytelling, tunes one can hum after a single listen, and particularly exquisite writing for the violin. Ostensibly a vehicle to show off […]
Posted inInterview
Puzzles and Courage
Masato Suzuki plays the harpsichord and leads the Bach Collegium Japan with a clean, pearly touch, creating performances with the delicacy of freshly trimmed and polished fingernails. The son of the ensemble’s founder, Masaaki Suzuki, Masato will lead the group’s latest European tour, beginning January 21. We spoke on video call about composing in the […]
Posted inEssay
Rough, Tender, Yielding
In England, the summer country house opera season is winding up. Dinner jackets fly south to the dry cleaner; wicker picnic hampers bed down to hibernate until the spring. Although there are summer opera festivals all over the world, the country house phenomenon is almost unique to the British: few other countries give such primacy […]
Posted inInterview
In Defense
Any day now, Stas Nevmerzhytskyi, the editor-in-chief of The Claquers, an independent Ukrainian online classical music magazine, will join the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A musicologist specializing in early music by training—“I graduated from the National Music Academy in Kyiv, which, unfortunately, still bears the name of Tchaikovsky,” he said—Nevmerzhytskyi founded the publication, with articles […]
Posted inInterview
Question Everything
I asked flutist Emmanuel Pahud what it was like working with harpsichordist and conductor Trevor Pinnock; Pahud answered that it was a gift from life. I asked soprano Carolyn Sampson; she said Pinnock is “the complete musician, combining talent, hard work, and care for the people around him.” A pioneer of the historically informed performance […]
Posted inBreaking
The Rest Is Silliness
“And they’re off! It’s very exciting—the beginning of a symphony is always very exciting. I can’t tell if it’s slow or fast yet because they keep . . . stopping.” It’s 1997, I’m six years old, and my family has just pulled into the driveway of our home. The local public radio station is playing […]