Matthias Röder
Trio Wanderer and Gérard Caussé: Mozart and Schedl
Today at twenty past seven my girlfriend got a call from a festival manager in Salzburg: “Can you be here in 10 minutes to turn pages in a chamber music concert?” She could … and she took me along, too. We had no idea what was on the program, nor did we know who actually […]
Word Creations #1
molldüster engelhaft süßes Tenortimbre flehentlich-expressive Nuancierung warme Baßfülle Julia Spinola on Mozart’s Betulia liberata at the Salzburg Festival. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 22, 2006, p. 31.
(5′ -> 3′) ATGGAATTCTCGCTC
Reading the program notes can sometimes be very illuminating. Yesterday, for instance, at the concert of the Ensemble Wien-Berlin and Denes Varjon (piano), I learned something about molecular biology and its application to music. York Höller’s Klangzeichen for piano and wind quintet is a piece based on a Klanggestalt, a melodic structure from which all […]
The Arditti Quartet plays Kyburz, Dusapin, Ferneyhough, and Lachenmann
One of the many good things about New Music concerts at the venerable Salzburg Festival is that a lot of people who have expensive tickets are leaving in the intermission. This comes in handy when the piece in the second half is Grido by Helmut Lachenmann, a composition that employs a lot of very quite […]
Premiere of Czernowin’s Zaide – Adama in Salzburg
Somewhere towards the end, there is a short moment of hope. The possibility of forgiveness. The possibility of reconciliation and fraternization. Everything is up in the air. Will Soliman, the despotic ruler of the Serail forgive the lovers Zaide and Gomatz who are desperately in love which each other and try to flee from him? […]
Great Conversations in Music
Summer leaves town. It’s getting colder, darker, and rainier in Berlin these days, and yet no opera season begins. What can one do? Listen to music, read books, write dissertations, and – of course – browse the web. Let me tell you, there is a lot to discover when you type “conversations about music” into […]
Shostakovich on a Green Meadow
In my neighbourhood in Kreuzberg there is a small bridge that reaches across a canal. On that bridge, during summer, the locals like to hang out in front of an antique caravan. From that caravan they buy drinks, refreshments, and ice cream. They sit on camping chairs that the owner of the caravan put out […]
Shopping
After weeks of abstinence I finally bought new CDs, scores, and books yesterday. For those of you who live in Berlin, check out the Kulturkaufhaus Dussmann. It has a huge collection of classical music CDs in the basement. Here is what I bought: 1) The Camerata Salzburg conducted by Sandor Vegh with Bartok’s Divertimento for […]
Musical Moments
In a recent blog post at On a Pacific Aisle, Joshua Kosman, the music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle, introduces us to what he calls a “magic moment” in Gustav Mahler’s 9th Symphony. The passage in question lasts only one quarter note, and in his article, Joshua shares with us his thoughts and feelings […]
Post Scriptum Figaro
Here is what the Deutsche Presse Agentur has to say about yesterday’s premiere of Le Nozze di Figaro at the Salzburg Festival. As always the premiere drew a very distinguished and elitist crowd of politicians, stars, artists, and business people. But not only those who were lucky and rich enough to get tickets enjoyed the […]
Anna Netrebko in Salzburg
Yesterday at the Orchesterhauptprobe (main orchestra rehearsal) for Le Nozze di Figaro at the Salzburg Festival I had the chance to hear, for the first time, the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko. What a big disappointment. It’s not that Netrebko is a bad singer (she is a fairly good one), or that she doesn’t look well […]
Untersberg
When I first came to Salzburg in 1992, 15 years old, I lived in a small room on Moos Strasse that had a beautiful view on the Untersberg. From that first day on, I wanted to climb this mountain which casts its shadow over the town on sunny days (and believe me there aren’t many […]
The Muezzin’s Silence
In Turkey five times a day all music stops. The loudspeakers on public beaches stop pounding dancing rhythms, the DJs in bars and clubs grant their audiences some time to get new refreshments, the shopkeepers’s radios cool down their tubes: all of Turkey listens to the Muezzin’s call to prayer (click here to hear a […]
Ästhetik des Performativen
Imagine a world in which there is no way to record music. Imagine a world in which there is no possibility to broadcast sound. A world without CDs, radio, cell phones that play mp3s, websites that stream music. A world in which music sounds only in live performances. Most people would find this world terribly […]
Concrete Balls
It’s all over. Yesterday night Germany lost against Italy. While I am trying to get over this, you should rush to DER SPIEGEL to read this news story about footballs filled with concrete. As soon as I feel better I’ll come up with something more illuminating.
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