Happy 50th Birthday, Roberto Alagna!!

Posted at 7:55 AM on June 7, 2013 by John Birge (0 Comments)

Dinner's at his place:

Minnesota Opera: Mozart meets Méliès

Posted at 3:56 PM on June 6, 2013 by John Birge (0 Comments)

Here's a dazzling trailer of Mozart's "The Magic Flute" as you've never seen it. Unless you saw it at the Berlin Comic Opera, that is. And you'll be able to see it at Minnesota Opera next season. The projections make it look like Mozart meets Méliès (Georges Méliès, the experimental film maker memorialized in the movie "Hugo"). Toss in some Tim Burton too, along with William Kentridge,the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the Brothers Quay. Spectacular!

The Rite of Appalachian Spring

Posted at 9:26 AM on May 29, 2013 by John Birge (2 Comments)

Today is the 100th anniversary of Stravinsky's ballet "The Rite of Spring."
October 30, 2044 is the 100th anniversary of Copland's ballet "Appalachian Spring."

I'm glad that musical genius Michael Monroe didn't make us wait 31 years to combine them into one beautiful, brilliant spring mashup:

Thinking of Dawn Upshaw

Posted at 9:20 AM on May 28, 2013 by Emily Reese

It breaks my heart that Dawn Upshaw's six-year artistic partnership with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is drawing to a close this weekend.

Dawn Upshaw is one of my favorite living musicians human beings.

She has an admirable dedication to new classical works, and premiered six new pieces with the SPCO during her tenure there. Ms. Upshaw also happens to have one of the most beautiful soprano voices you'll hear (my personal favorite).

If you're unfamiliar with her voice and work, here are some more wonderful ways to hear her sing:

One of her most famous recordings is of Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 with David Zinman and the London Sinfonietta. It nearly stops my heart each time I listen.

Anything she recorded by Osvaldo Golijov.

This entire Schubert record with another favorite, Richard Goode.

She sang (in the final movement of) Mahler's 4th Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra and Christoph von Dohnanyi.

If you prefer something older, check out this, where she sings Purcell and Bach.

One of the most impressive aspects of Dawn Upshaw is her versatility. Schubert, Bach, Mahler, Crumb, Schoenberg, Purcell, Haydn, etc.

And of course, Maria Schneider.

If you want to catch her before she's finished with her SPCO collaboration, you'd better grab tickets to one of the three shows scheduled this weekend in various community venues around the TC.

And, Ms. Upshaw, thank you for being a part of our community. Thank you for singing for us. Thank you for bringing us new music, and thank you in advance for the many times I hope you'll return.

Beethoven for iPad or iPhone

Posted at 2:13 PM on May 21, 2013 by Emily Reese

Certainly one of the most addicting apps I've downloaded in quite some time, Touch Press's "Beethoven's 9th Symphony" will make you fall in love with Beethoven all over again.

Commissioned by pianist David Owen Norris, the app features four recordings of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, all from the Deutsche Grammophon label. You can hear the Berlin Philharmonic in 1958 led by Ferenc Fricsay's, or Herbert von Karajan's 1962 one with the same orchestra. Leonard Bernstein's 1979 recording with the Vienna Philharmonic includes video of the performance, and John Eliot Gardiner rounds out the four with the recording made in 1992 by the Revolutionary and Romantic Orchestra.

When you press play, you have some options. You can watch the score scroll by in real time, and touch a different conductor's name to hear their version. The switch happens instantly (a little shocking since Gardiner's orchestra is tuned a half-step lower), making comparisons easy.

If you don't read music well, but appreciate the idea of it being presented similarly to a score, you can instead listen to the recordings while viewing a simplified score. Rather than notes and rhythms, the music appears as colored blocks.

But the most enlightening way to hear and watch the music is the BeatMap option, which grants a color to an instrument, plops all those colored dots into the shape of an orchestra, and the dots blink each time that section or instrument plays during the Symphony.

I don't have an iPad, only an iPhone, so I can't enjoy all the features of the app. The iPad app includes more than 90 minutes of interview clips from musicians like Gustavo Dudamel and Gardiner, as well as a book about the symphony written by Norris.

The app is what's called 'free-to-play', which means the app is free, but the free version only allows access to the 2nd movement. It costs $7.99 to unlock all features of the app.