Category Archive: Classical Music
Pierre Boulez
(26/3/1925 – 5/1/2016) I hold a box set of records of a Bayreuther Festspiele production of Die Walküre conducted by Pierre Boulez, who died on Tuesday last. Other conductors work hard to give audiences what they want to hear: the famous baton-less Pierre worked the crowd towards liking what he wanted: atonal purity and the trampling of populism. As Michael Tanner, in his Wagner, recounts, the Boulez/Chéreau production of The Ring in Bayreuth “moved from provoking physical violence in 1976 to unqualified triumph in 1981” (at page 57).He recognised the need to dare and to irritate – that failures paved…
Continue Reading →Go See the ASO in 2016!
Photo of ASO from "The Australian"
Great season ahead for ASO, in its 80th year, with newbie Nicholas Carter. He’s a Wagner fan (yay!) and opens the season (13/2/16) with Die Walküre, Act I. Dare we dream to ramp-up Adelaide again as a second Bayreuth? It’s a natural fit – small, picturesque, bankrupt as the Master, and full of chancers! But beautiful. Like the canon on offer this season – Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Brahms, Dvorák, Handel, Berlioz, Strauss, Ravel, Prokofiev, Smetana, Elgar, Mahler, Debussy, Sibelius, Delius, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Yes…The Varnished Culture has ranked them, not chronologically, but on merit. But see and hear what you can…
Continue Reading →Dante’s 750th
(Elder Hall, Adelaide University, 30/9/15) The Dante Society of SA gave a most agreeable concert to mark the 750th birthday of the Great Florentine, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). Professor Diana Glenn gave two readings from The Divine Comedy – first from Paradiso, Canto XXIII, where Beatrice and Dante gaze up at the infinite sunbeams of redeemed souls, and Dante swoons (as he was wont to do). Then Mekhla Kumar (above) performed Liszt’s Sposalizio, inspired by Raphael’s The Marriage of the Virgin. Konstantin Shamray (below) played Liszt’s Dante Sonata with its slightly cartoonish swerve between the hell and heaven, with its different (hellish and celestial) keys…
Continue Reading →Richard Wagner and the Modern British Novel
"Let's see what he makes of this brief..."
(by John Louis Di Gaetani) (1978) When P brought this obscure little tome at the Paradise Bookshop, L asked, not unreasonably, “What has Wagner to do with the modern British novel?” Oh ye of little faith and so many brains! Well, let’s see…. In this book, Dr Di Gaetani mounts the case that the operatic works of Wagner, and in particular the poetry and prose in his librettos, had a vital galvanising effect on five major British novelists maturing (if not all necessarily in their prime) during the Edwardian Age: Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. P read this…
Continue Reading →Verdi’s Requiem
Debut at L Scala, 25 May 1874, drawn by O. Tofani
SA State Opera Chorus, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, 26 August 2015 A very nice performance. Having a foretaste of the Requiem at the introductory session held by the Dante Society, The Varnished Culture settled back in the well worn and frayed Festival Theatre, with its ghastly art adorning the foyers (no longer ‘modern’ but eternally bad) for the full rendition of Verdi’s famous Requiem Mass. Coinciding with the staging in Adelaide of Faust, Timothy Sexton conducted the ASO, and, having rehearsed the State Opera Chorus, simultaneously conducted all 64 of them (plus kettle drum player) by alternately waving at the pit and the stage. The…
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