The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Here are the classical music nominations for the 2017 Grammy Awards. They make a great holiday gift list of gives and gets
5 Comments
By Jacob Stockinger
This posting is both a news story and a holiday gift guide of classical recordings you might like to give or get.
It features the classical music nominations for the 59th annual Grammy Awards that were just announced this past week.
As you can see, several years ago, the recording industry decided that the Grammys should put more emphasis on new music and contemporary composers as well as on less famous performers and smaller labels as well as less well-known artists and works. You don’t see any music by Bach, Beethoven or Brahms this year, although you will find music by Mozart, Handel, Schumann and Dvorak. And clearly this is not a Mahler year
The winners will be announced on a live TV broadcast on Sunday night, Feb. 12, on CBS.
BEST ENGINEERED ALBUM, CLASSICAL
“Corigliano: The Ghosts of Versailles” — Mark Donahue & Fred Vogler, engineers (James Conlon, Guanqun Yu, Joshua Guerrero, Patricia Racette, Christopher Maltman, Lucy Schaufer, Lucas Meachem, LA Opera Chorus & Orchestra)
“Dutilleux: Sur Le Même Accord; Les Citations; Mystère De L’Instant & Timbres, Espace, Mouvement” — Alexander Lipay & Dmitriy Lipay, engineers (Ludovic Morlot, Augustin Hadelich & Seattle Symphony)
“Reflections” — Morten Lindberg, engineer (Øyvind Gimse, Geir Inge Lotsberg & Trondheimsolistene)
“Shadow of Sirius” — Silas Brown & David Frost, engineers; Silas Brown, mastering engineer (Jerry F. Junkin & the University Of Texas Wind Ensemble)
“Shostakovich: Under Stalin’s Shadow: Symphonies Nos. 5, 8 & 9” — Shawn Murphy & Nick Squire, engineers; Tim Martyn, mastering engineer (Andris Nelsons & Boston Symphony Orchestra)
PRODUCER OF THE YEAR, CLASSICAL
Blanton Alspaugh
David Frost
Marina A. Ledin, Victor Ledin
Judith Sherman (pictured below with the Grammy Award she won last year. She came to Madison to record the double set of new commissions for the centennial of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet)
Robina G. Young
BEST ORCHESTRAL PERFORMANCE
“Bates: Works for Orchestra” — Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor (San Francisco Symphony). You can hear excerpts in the YouTube video at the bottom.
“Ibert: Orchestral Works” — Neeme Järvi, conductor (Orchestre De La Suisse Romande)
“Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5 In B-Flat Major, Op. 100” — Mariss Jansons, conductor (Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra)
“Rouse: Odna Zhizn; Symphonies 3 & 4; Prospero’s Rooms” — Alan Gilbert, conductor (New York Philharmonic)
“Shostakovich: Under Stalin’s Shadow – Symphonies Nos. 5, 8 & 9” (below) — Andris Nelsons, conductor (Boston Symphony Orchestra)
BEST OPERA RECORDING
“Corigliano: The Ghosts of Versailles” (below) — James Conlon, conductor; Joshua Guerrero, Christopher Maltman, Lucas Meachem, Patricia Racette, Lucy Schaufer & Guanqun Yu; Blanton Alspaugh, producer (LA Opera Orchestra; LA Opera Chorus)
“Handel: Giulio Cesare” — Giovanni Antonini, conductor; Cecilia Bartoli, Philippe Jaroussky, Andreas Scholl & Anne-Sofie von Otter; Samuel Theis, producer (Il Giardino Armonico)
“Higdon: Cold Mountain” — Miguel Harth-Bedoya, conductor; Emily Fons, Nathan Gunn, Isabel Leonard & Jay Hunter Morris; Elizabeth Ostrow, producer (The Santa Fe Opera Orchestra; Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program for Singers)
“Mozart: Le Nozze Di Figaro” — Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor; Thomas Hampson, Christiane Karg, Luca Pisaroni & Sonya Yoncheva; Daniel Zalay, producer (Chamber Orchestra of Europe; Vocalensemble Rastatt)
“Szymanowski: Król Roger” — Antonio Pappano, conductor; Georgia Jarman, Mariusz Kwiecień & Saimir Pirgu; Jonathan Allen, producer (Orchestra of the Royal Opera House; Royal Opera Chorus)
BEST CHORAL PERFORMANCE
“Himmelrand” — Elisabeth Holte, conductor (Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen, Ragnfrid Lie & Matilda Sterby; Inger-Lise Ulsrud; Uranienborg Vokalensemble)
“Janáček: Glagolitic Mass” — Edward Gardner, conductor; Håkon Matti Skrede, chorus master (Susan Bickley, Gábor Bretz, Sara Jakubiak & Stuart Skelton; Thomas Trotter; Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra; Bergen Cathedral Choir, Bergen Philharmonic Choir, Choir of Collegium Musicum & Edvard Grieg Kor)
“Lloyd: Bonhoeffer” — Donald Nally, conductor (Malavika Godbole, John Grecia, Rebecca Harris & Thomas Mesa; the Crossing; below)
“Penderecki Conducts Penderecki, Volume 1” — Krzysztof Penderecki, conductor; Henryk Wojnarowski, choir director (Nikolay Didenko, Agnieszka Rehlis & Johanna Rusanen; Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra; Warsaw Philharmonic Choir)
“Steinberg: Passion Week” — Steven Fox, conductor (The Clarion Choir)
BEST CHAMBER MUSIC/SMALL ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE
“Fitelberg: Chamber Works” — ARC Ensemble
“Reflections” — Øyvind Gimse, Geir Inge Lotsberg & Trondheimsolistene
“Serious Business” — Spektral Quartet
“Steve Reich” — Third Coast Percussion (below)
“Trios From Our Homelands” — Lincoln Trio
BEST CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTAL SOLO
“Adams, J.: Scheherazade.2” — Leila Josefowicz; David Robertson, conductor (Chester Englander; St. Louis Symphony)
“Daugherty: Tales of Hemingway” — Zuill Bailey; Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor (Nashville Symphony)
“Dvořák: Violin Concerto & Romance; Suk: Fantasy” — Christian Tetzlaff; John Storgårds, conductor (Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra)
“Mozart: Keyboard Music, Vols. 8 & 9” – Kristian Bezuidenhout
“1930’s Violin Concertos, Vol. 2” – Gil Shaham; Stéphane Denève, conductor (The Knights & Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra)
BEST CLASSICAL SOLO VOCAL ALBUM
“Monteverdi” — Magdalena Kožená; Andrea Marcon, conductor (David Feldman, Michael Feyfar, Jakob Pilgram & Luca Tittoto; La Cetra Barockorchester Basel)
“Mozart: The Weber Sisters” — Sabine Devieilhe; Raphaël Pichon, conductor (Pygmalion)
“Schumann & Berg” — Dorothea Röschmann; Mitsuko Uchida, accompanist
“Shakespeare Songs” — Ian Bostridge; Antonio Pappano, accompanist (Michael Collins, Elizabeth Kenny, Lawrence Power & Adam Walker)
“Verismo” — Anna Netrebko; Antonio Pappano, conductor (Yusif Eyvazov; Coro Dell’Accademia Nazionale Di Santa Cecilia; Orchestra Dell’Accademia Nazionale Di Santa Cecilia)
BEST CLASSICAL COMPENDIUM
“Daugherty: Tales of Hemingway; American Gothic; Once Upon A Castle” — Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor; Tim Handley, producer
“Gesualdo” — Tõnu Kaljuste, conductor; Manfred Eicher, producer
“Vaughan Williams: Discoveries” — Martyn Brabbins, conductor; Andrew Walton, producer
“Wolfgang: Passing Through” — Judith Farmer & Gernot Wolfgang, producers; (Various Artists)
“Zappa: 200 Motels – The Suites” — Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Frank Filipetti & Gail Zappa, producers
BEST CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL COMPOSITION
“Bates: Anthology of Fantastic Zoology” — Mason Bates, composer (Riccardo Muti & Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
“Daugherty: Tales of Hemingway” — Michael Daugherty, composer (Zuill Bailey, Giancarlo Guerrero & Nashville Symphony)
“Higdon: Cold Mountain” — Jennifer Higdon, composer; Gene Scheer, librettist (Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Jay Hunter Morris, Emily Fons, Isabel Leonard, Nathan Gunn & the Santa Fe Opera)
“Theofanidis: Bassoon Concerto” — Christopher Theofanidis, composer (Martin Kuuskmann, Barry Jekowsky & Northwest Sinfonia)
“Winger: Conversations With Nijinsky” — C. F. Kip Winger, composer (Martin West & San Francisco Ballet Orchestra)
Tags: 59th Annual Grammy Awards, Andreas Scholl, Andris Nelsons, Anna Netrebko, Anne-Sofie von Otter, Antonín Dvořák, Antonio Pappano, Arts, Bach, ballet, Baroque, Bassoon, Beethoven, Berg, Bonhoeffer, Bonhoffer, Boston Symphony, Brahms, CBS, CBS-TV, Cecilia Bartoli, Cello, Chamber music, choral music, Christian Tetzlaff, Christopher Rouse, Christopher Theofanidis, Classical music, Cold Mountain, Compact Disc, concerto, David Frost, David Robertson, Dvorak, Early music, Frank Zappa, George Frideric Handel, Gesualdo, Gil Shaham, Grammy, Grammy Award, Grammy Award for Album of the Year, Grammy Award for Record of the Year, Handel, Hemingway, Henri Dutilleux, Ian Bostridge, Ibert, Jacob Stockinger, Janacek, Jennifer Higdon, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Adams, John Corigliano, Josef Suk, Judith Sherman, Karol Szymanowski, Keyboard, Leila Josefowicz, Los Angeles, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Mahler, Manfred Eicher, Mason Bates, mass, Michael Daugherty, Michael Tilson Thomas, Mitsuko Uchida, Monteverdi, motel, Mozart, Nashville, Nathan Gunn, New York Philharmonic, Nijinsky, opera, Orchestra, Patricia Racette, Penderecki, percussion, Piano, Pro Arte Quartet, Prokofiev, Romance, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Santa Fe Opera, Schumann, Seattle Symphony, Shakespeare, Shostakovich, singer, Sonata, songs, St. Louis Symphony, Stalin, Suite, symphony, tenor, The Ghosts of Versailles, The Knights, The Recording Academy, Thomas Hampson, trio, TV, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, vaughan williams, Verismo, Violin, Violin concerto, vocal music, Warsaw, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, YouTube, Zuill Bailey
Classical music: Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who pioneered an originality and difference that changed our appreciation of early music, has died at 86
Leave a Comment
ALERT: The UW Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of music director UW-Madison Professor James Smith, will perform a FREE concert on this Sunday night at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall. The program features “Mathis der Mahler” by Paul Hindemith and the Symphony No. 1 by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius.
By Jacob Stockinger
The pioneering conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt (below) died this past week.
He was 86. He had been ill, and died only three months after his last public appearance on the concert stage.
He leaves behind a huge recorded legacy, some 560 entries — including many multiple-disc boxes — according to a search at Amazon.com.
Harnoncourt started as a concert-level cellist who was especially well-known for who conducting early music. But he also worked with more modern orchestra groups and soloists in a lot of big mainstream music. (Below, in photo from Getty Images, he is seen conducting in 2012.)
True, it for his Johann Sebastian Bach, his Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Ludwig van Beethoven — done with the group he and his wife Alice founded, the Concentus Musicus Wien — that The Ear will most remember him for. They were strong and forceful. No music box Mozart for Harnoncourt!
But Harnoncourt refused to be pigeonholed into smaller Baroque ensembles.
The Ear also likes him with much larger modern groups in mainstream Romantic fare such as the symphonies and concertos by Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner and Antonin Dvorak with the Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic. He even conducted Johann Strauss waltzes for the New Year’s Concerto from Vienna.
Harnoncourt often found beauty in unexpected places, in music that we thought had nothing new to say after so many performances and such a long history. But he loved vibrancy and modernity. He did what Ezra Pound advised poets to do: Make it new.
And boy, did Harnoncourt — a thoughtful and passionate advocate — ever make music new, whether it was Baroque, Classical or Romantic! Although he was not a pioneer of new music per se, he always seemed to turn early music or whatever else he touched into new music.
The Ear recalls with relish some of the ways he put percussion and brass forward in early music, giving incredible rhythm and impulse or momentum to it. The same goes for using boy sopranos instead of women in the cantatas, oratorios and passions by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Harnoncourt always seemed less interested in authenticity as a justification than in the results he got from such changes or such different interpretations.
Often Harnoncourt had certain differences he wanted to emphasize. They were not always convincing, but they were usually convincing. And they were always interesting and illuminating, even if you disagreed with them.
In the special memorial YouTube video at the bottom is the Sinfonia from J.S. Bach’s Cantata BWV 156 in a performance by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus of Vienna:
Here are some illuminating obituaries:
From The New York Times:
From the Deceptive Cadence blog on NPR (National Public Radio) by Anastasia Tsioulcas:
http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2016/03/07/469505636/remembering-nikolaus-harnoncourt
From The Guardian in the United Kingdom:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/06/nikolaus-harnoncourt-obituary
From The Washington Post:
And finally, here is a story from MTV, which called Harnoncourt the “punk genius of classical music,” a description The Ear likes and which he suspects Harnoncourt himself would have liked:
http://www.mtv.com/news/2750555/nikolaus-harnoncourt-was-classical-musics-punk-genius/
Do you have an observation about Nikolaus Harnoncourt to share?
Is there a specific composer, work or recording of his that you hold special?
Leave word in the COMMENT section.
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: amazon.com, Amsterdam, Anastasia Tsioulcas, Anton Bruckner, Arts, Austria, Bach, Baroque, Beethoven, Berlin, Berlin Philharmonic, brass, Bruckner, Cello, Chamber music, choral music, Classical era, Classical music, concerto, Deceptive Cadence, Dvorak, Early music, Europe, Ezra Pound, Finland, Franz Schubert, Germany, Hindemith, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Strauss, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, modern, Mozart, Music, Music director, National Public Radio, New Music, New Year, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, NPR, opera, Orchestra, percussion, punk, Romantic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Schubert, Schumann, Sibelius, symphony, The Guardian, UK, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Vienna, Vienna Philharmonic, vocal music, Waltz, Washington Post, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, YouTube
Classical music: Here are news items. Elusive and eccentric pianist Grigory Sokolov signs with Deutsche Grammophon. Italian maestro Daniele Gatti is named director of the famed Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra remains silent and locked out. And THIS AFTERNOON is your last chance to hear the Madison Symphony Orchestra and pianist Olga Kern in an all-Russian program of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich.
Leave a Comment
ALERT: Today at 2:30 p.m. in Overture Hall is the final performance of this season’s second concert by the Madison Symphony Orchestra under the baton of John DeMain. Pianist Olga Kern (below) is the soloist in Sergei Rachmaninoff‘s Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor. Other music includes the Suite from the ballet “Swan Lake” by Peter Tchaikovsky and the Symphony No. 6 by Dmitri Shostakovich. For information about tickets, the artists and the program, visit:
http://www.madisonsymphony.org/kern
Here are reviews of Friday night’s opening night performance:
By John W. Barker of Isthmus:
http://www.isthmus.com/daily/article.php?article=43817&sid=665cd87de278be4a3d198906d0365515
By Jess Courtier for The Capital Times:
And by Greg Hettmansberger, who writes the Classically Speaking blog for Madison Magazine:
By Jacob Stockinger
The much admired but elusive, eccentric and enigmatic Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov (below) has signed up with Deutsche Grammophon and will release a live recital –- he refuses to make studio recordings – in January.
For the news plus an interesting interview and profile of Sokolov, here is a link to a story in the British magazine Gramophone. It includes some of his quirks such as not playing pianos older than five years and his specific repertoire favorites:
Italian conductor Daniele Gatti is named the new maestro of the famed Dutch Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He starts in 2016 and sounds like he might be quite a bit of a contrast to past Concertgebouw conductors such as Bernard Haitink. Here is a story:
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra continues its lockout over labor disputes, thereby postponing or canceling the opening of the new season. But last weekend ASO music director Robert Spano conducted the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in the German Requiem of Johannes Brahms.
Here is a link to a story on NPR (National Public Radio) to yet another turmoil in the world of American symphony orchestras:
Tags: "Goldberg" Variations, Amsterdam, Arts, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Bach, Beethoven, Capital Times, Carnegie Hall, Chamber music, Classical music, Classically Speaking, Compact Disc, Daniele Gatti, Deutsche Grammophon, Faure, Greg Hettmansberger, Grigory Sokolov, Israel, Isthmus, Italy, Jacob Stockinger, January, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Adams, John DeMain, John W. Barker, Los Angeles Times, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison Magazine, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Mariss Jansons, Metropolitan Opera, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Music, Netherlands, New York City, New York Times, Orchestra, Palestine, Palestinian, Piano, Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff), Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Sergei Rachmaninoff, sonatas, terrorist, The Death of Klinghoffer
Recent Comments
The Well-Tempered Ear 