Musical America | MEMETERIA by Thomas May

May 26, 2016 • 7:58 am Comments Off on Piatigorsky International Cello Festival

Piatigorsky International Cello Festival

May22_LunchConcert_NarekHakhnazaryan_01_crDanielAnderson_Full

Narek Hakhnazaryan in recital; photo by Daniel Anderson

Here’s my report for Musical America on the recently concluded second edition of the Piatigorsky International Cello Festival held in Los Angeles (behind a paywall):

LOS ANGELES—“Of all the titles applied to me, I like ‘teacher’ best of all,” the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky once said. And of the many angles that might be used to describe the festival devoted to his instrument and named in his honor, the most salient is a passion for sharing knowledge — not just musical knowledge, but the wisdom gathered from a life devoted to performance. More than anything else, the Piatigorsky International Cello Festival, which took place in Los Angeles between May 13 and 22, became an ode to omnivorous curiosity as the lifeblood of genuine musicianship.

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Filed under: cello, essay, Musical America, review

October 19, 2015 • 7:21 am Comments Off on Mark Padmore and Kristian Bezuidenhout at the White Light Festival

Mark Padmore and Kristian Bezuidenhout at the White Light Festival

Mark Padmore (l) and Kristian Bezuidenhout (r)

In my latest Musical America piece (behind a paywall), I review the second program in the remarkable Schubert Trilogy from last week at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival.

Tenor Mark Padmore and fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout teamed up for three evenings of Schubert lieder cycles (with a touch of Beethoven for the second program — Schwanengesang prefaced by An die ferne Geliebte, reviewed here). Here’s an excerpt:

In a brief introduction to his Tully Hall recital on Thursday, October 15, the tenor Mark Padmore remarked that the sense of longing encompassed by the German Sehnsucht — a word that defies easy translation — provided the link between the evening’s pair of cycles by Schubert and Beethoven, performed with keyboard partner Kristian Bezuidenhout.
[…]
The term recital sounds too coldly objective. Certainly it fails to do justice to the sense they achieved of a “through-composed” emotional journey, without the benefit of staging or design elements: Gesamtkunstwerk of music and poetry on an intimate scale….

Filed under: Beethoven, lieder, Musical America, review, Schubert