Concert Review: The Voice of the North

The Orchestra symphonique de Montréal returns to Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Kent Nagano. Photo courtesy Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. 

Ten years ago, Kent Nagano became music director of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. Once regularly recorded with a fat contract on Decca classics the ensemble had suffered a falling-off following the abrupt 2002 exit of artistic director Charles Dutoit. As a result. the past ten years have seen only infrequent visits to venues like Carnegie Hall. On Tuesday night, the OSM returned to that historic stage with a program of Ravel, Beethoven and Stravinsky, designed to show their many strengths and hopefully guarantee more frequent visits.

DVD Review: When the Children Cry

Die Gezeichneten from the Salzburg Festival.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Die Gezeichneten, Act III
Photo © Bernd Uhlig/Salzburg Festival

Franz Schreker's most famous opera (the title translates to "The Branded Ones" or "The Stigmatized") finally comes to DVD in this Salzburg production filmed in 2005. Schreker was a composer of brilliant, shimmering operas that probed the psyche. Since he was half-Jewish, his music was banned by the Nazis and quickly sunk into oblivion. This is the first DVD of Die Gezeichneten and a compelling opera by a critically ignored composer.

DVD Review: Night Of the Comet

The post-apocalyptic Baden-Baden Parsifal.

by Paul Pelkonen

Gurnemanz (Matti Salminen) presides over the devastation in Act I of Parsifal.Image © 2006 OpusArte/Baden-Baden Festival

The composer Richard Wagner once said, "Children, go do something new!" This new 3-DVD set, which captures Nikolaus Lehnhoff's remarkable production of Parsifal, filmed here on a good night in Baden-Baden takes the composer at his word. Lehnhoff is not the first director to stage a post-apocalyptic version of the Grail legend, but this desolate production (also seen at Covent Garden and the San Francisco Opera) is chillingly effective.