Has Max Reger’s time come at last?

This weekend, cellist Iris van Eck opens her Chameleon Musicians series in Fort Lauderdale with music by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Max Reger.
The music includes two string trios: Beethoven’s Op. 9, No. 3, in C minor, and the Schubert B-flat, D. 471. Schumann’s powerful E-flat major Piano Quartet, Op. 47, is also on the program, [...]

Library meditations, and a new arts project

Began the other day to read Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night, and already I find it captivating. There’s something special about the bookish book for bookish people, and I’m glad people are still writing them.
Right at the beginning, Manguel writes about his own personal library in France, and he gets across a feeling with [...]

The legacy of Prokofiev

Simon Morrison’s new book on Sergei Prokofiev’s Soviet years, which included the peak of his career and the end of his life, raises some fascinating points about this composer, things I wasn’t fully aware of.

I’ve read The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years once through, and it’s my normal practice to read important nonfiction works such [...]

Holidays near, and it’s ‘Messiah’ time

Last year I wrote an arts column for The Post that didn’t make it into print, but as the holiday season is just about upon us, I took a look at this again and updated it for this year:
In the cold early March of 1827, the Viennese physician Andreas Wawruch tried to tell one of [...]

Concert notes: Rachael Price, Vivaldi

Two short notes on recent concerts:
Jazz singer Rachael Price is just 23, but judging by her performance Saturday night in Boca Raton, she already has the instincts and perseverance of a road veteran.

Price, a Boston-based singer who just earned a jazz studies degree at the New England Conservatory of Music, appeared at the tiny Willow [...]

Review: Master Chorale’s ‘Elijah’

POMPANO BEACH — In its first concert under the hand of a new director, the Master Chorale of South Florida delivered a steroid-fueled reading Friday night of Felix Mendelssohn’s Elijah in which the drama of the text was painted in broad strokes of color and the music delivered atop nothing less than a sonic wallop [...]

For the weekend: ‘Elijah,’ jazz, Vivaldi and organ music

The classical season hereabouts is heating up, and here are the things I’m thinking about seeing:
Tonight: The Master Chorale of South Florida introduces its new director, Joshua Habermann, in a performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a full performance of this oratorio, and I’m looking forward to it. The [...]

A good word for Stenhammar

Here’s an interesting piece from On an Overgrown Path, written last year to mark the 80th anniversary of the death of Wilhelm Stenhammar, the Swedish late Romantic who always comes to mind as the one composer of all the underappreciated writers who really deserves wider recognition over here.

There’s nothing about Stenhammar’s style that is inconsistent [...]

Remembering World War I

I have never understood why World War I broke out, and the more I read about it and study it, the more I listen to the speeches, the more I read the contemporary coverage of it, the more mysterious it becomes.
The best conclusion I can draw about the origins of the war is that it [...]

See Janacek’s ‘Vixen’ for free online

I’m a fan of medici.tv, which this summer offered live concerts from the Aspen Music Festival and other first-class summer gatherings.
Currently, and through Dec. 31, viewers can see the entire Cunning Little Vixen, the Leos Janacek opera from 1924, in a production from the Paris National Opera with conductor Dennis Russell Davies. (I watched the [...]