Reviewing the Borromeo Quartet.
Boston Globe, February 13, 2007.

For some reason I thought this wouldn’t run until tomorrow. When it rains, it pours.

Reviewing Garrick Ohlsson.
Boston Globe, February 13, 2007.

Reviewing Collage New Music.
Boston Globe, January 31, 2007.

Reviewing the Firebird Ensemble.
Boston Globe, January 24, 2007.

A profile of Susan Graham.
Boston Globe, January 21, 2007.

Somthing that didn’t make it into the article that’s worth mentioning is a piece I wasn’t familiar with, Ernest Chausson’s Poeme de l’amour et de la mer for mezzo-soprano and orchestra. (There’s a couple of free mp3s of questionable legality on the Web; I won’t link to them, but they’re not hard to find. Graham has recorded the piece as well.) Graham sang it on a European tour last year with conductor Phillipe Jordan, who learned the piece from his father, Armin Jordan, who used to perform the work with Felicity Lott. It’s a gorgeous slice of French Romanticism, kind of a Gallic counterpart to Elgar’s Sea Pictures.

Chausson is often dismissed mainly because he wasn’t Debussy, much the same way that 19th-century French academic painting is unfavorably compared with Impressionism. Chausson has something in common with those older painters—they take a dramatic situation or mood, then put a certain distance between the audience and the drama via careful composition and a polished surface. In Chausson, the result is a kind of reticent grandeur that I’ve always found intriguing.

Update (1/22): My taste is validated: it turns out that the Poèmes already have a formidable fan club led by Opera Chic.

Reviewing the Boston Symphony Chamber Players.
Boston Globe, January 17, 2007.

Reviewing the New England String Ensemble.
Boston Globe, January 9, 2007.