Music & the Arts
December 6, 2016 • 8:35 am Comments Off on Elgar’s Dream a Transformative Experience at Seattle Symphony
Edward Gardner © Benjamin Ealovega
At this late date, it’s surprising how relatively little-known The Dream of Gerontiusremains among American audiences. Edward Elgar’s masterpiece – even if not the composer’s own favourite among his great oratorio trilogy – contains all the goods to move a concert audience to its core. ..
Filed under: choral music, Edward Elgar, review, Seattle Symphony
December 1, 2016 • 6:09 am Comments Off on Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin: A Sea Apart
Excited about tonight’s opening: historic moment for the Met.
On Friday, 1 December 2016, the Metropolitan Opera will premiere its new production of Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin. It will mark the first time since 1903 that the company will have presented an opera by a woman composer.
Here’s my essay for the Met’s Season book on this stunning creation by Kaija Saariaho:
Since its world premiere at the Salzburg Festival in 2000, L’Amour de Loin has earned a place among the most acclaimed stage works of the 21st century. The opera won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Musical Composition in 2003 and has been performed in Paris, London, Santa Fe, Helsinki, Aspen, Darmstadt, and elsewhere. Yet it took years before Kaija Saariaho became convinced that opera could be a viable medium for what she wanted to express as a composer.
Filed under: Uncategorized
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MEMETERIA by Thomas May