Thomas Blunt News
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2024-03-26
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2024-03-15 12:11:22
Battersea Arts Centre, LondonDanielle de Niese took on twinned roles of dancer and singer Anna with great style, the evening introduced by João Barradas’s fiery accordionThe cathedral-like space of Battersea Arts Centre’s Grand Hall, with its high ceilings and distressed walls, is an atmospheric place for the London Philharmonic to decamp to for this performance of The Seven Deadly Sins, the 1933 “sung ballet” that was Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht’s last collaboration. That said, prosaically enough it would probably have worked better back home in the Royal Festival Hall. All those unbroken hard surfaces at the BAC make for a cathedral-like acoustic: pitted against a full orchestra, playing with bite and swing for the conductor Edward Gardner, all five singers had to be miked, and the sound system was Blunt. Singing the English version by WH Auden and Chester Kallmann, they worked hard but far too much text and […]
2023-11-30 11:53:50
2023-10-24 16:17:59
The English singer’s latest album slots neatly into his usual emotive pop groove
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2023-10-01 23:03:23
Gravity Waves and Curveballs: Sherman Remembered
[caption id="attachment_32597" align="alignleft" width="300"] Gravity abhors straight lines[/caption] We reprint our well-remembered 2016 feature and interview with Russell Sherman. He died last night at 93. Russell Sherman’s eagerly awaited annual faculty recital on April 3rd at Jordan Hall will feature works long connected with him: Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Piano, Op. 11, Beethoven’s Sonata for Piano No. 21 in C Major, Op. 53 “Waldstein”, Debussy’s Préludes, Book 2, and Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes (12) for Piano, S 139, No. 2 in A Minor: Molto vivace, No. 9 in A-flat Major “Ricordanza”, No. 10 in F Minor: Allegro agitato molto. He tells us he plays them differently each time. He can also imitate other famous pianists. He has lots to say in a free-form interview which follows the break. Youngish concertgoers and musicians who are not yet old will find it very difficult to imagine either the sea change that took place […]
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