Burkhard Fritz News
opera singer, musician, performing artist
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2024-04-23
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2024-04-06 11:15:00
Bizet's Carmen at Covent Garden: gritty realism & a reluctance to add any local colour & movement, redeemed by musical performances
[…] singers, or mix and match?Bizet: Carmen, Act Two - Piotr Beczala - Royal Opera House (Photo: ROH/Camilla Greenwell)The programme book was resolutely vague as to the edition of the opera used, no-one was credited. The spoken text was described as after Meilhac, Halévy and Mérimée. What we heard in terms of the score was a largely traditional opera comique version, but there was passages in Act One in particular which suggested that someone had been raiding Fritz Oeser's attic. One of the attractions of Carmen is the way the Bizet has melded the traditional opera comique colour with a more dramatic story-line, particularly given the title role agency, she is far more than the conventional operetta bad girl. Yet there are plenty of colourful moments where the music cries out for dance, colour and movement. Michieletto and his designers set their faces resolutely against this, setting the production in a rather bleak Spain […]
Serenade (Western Classical Music in India)
2024-02-25 18:31:17
George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was premiered one hundred years ago, on the snowy afternoon of February 12, 1924, at Aeolian Hall on Manhattan’s West 43rd Street. The 25-year-old composer was at the piano, joined by the dance band of Paul Whiteman, the noted bandleader who commissioned the work. It was presented near the end of a marathon concert, organized and promoted by Whiteman, entitled, An Experiment in Modern Music. Purportedly in attendance were such musical luminaries as Sergei Rachmaninov, Fritz […] The post appeared first on Serenade.
2024-02-15 07:23:00
A Lionel Tertis Celebration: Timothy Ridout, Frank Dupree, James Baillieu; Harmonia Mundi
A Lionel Tertis Celebration - York Bowen, Rebecca Clarke, Vaughan Williams, Lionel Tertis, Frank Bridge, Brahms, Schumann, Faure, William Wolstenholme, Kreisler, W.H. Reed, Eric Coates, Cecil Forsyth, John Ireland, and Mendelssohn; Timothy Ridout, Frank Dupree, James Baillieu; Harmonia Mundi12 February 2024Timothy Ridout's warm tribute to Lionel Tertis moves between powerful dramatic utterance and more domesticated, salon pieces, with every piece in a finely judged performanceInspired by the supple violin playing of Fritz Kreisler, though entirely self-taught, Lionel Tertis (1876-1975) made it his mission to bring the viola back to the foreground in classical music. In order to create a repertoire, Tertis adapted existing material (famously creating a viola concerto from Elgar's Cello Concerto, see my review of Ridout's 2023 recording of this), as well as badgering composers for pieces. Like other such figures (his friend the cellist Pablo Casals, and the guitarist Segovia), Tertis' taste in music was relatively conservative and famously […]
2024-02-12 07:28:00
Something a little bit special: David Butt Philip & friends gala for St Paul's Opera in Clapham
[…] scene from Beethoven's Fidelio with David Butt Philip returning to a role he last sang on stage in 2020 (at Covent Garden) but which he returns to in Bavaria in March. This was a compelling performance, rendered more so as he did not feel the need to accompany thrilling yet moving account of the scene with unnecessary movement.David Stout - St Paul's Church (Photo: Craig Fuller Photography)To follow that, David Stout was movingly intimate in Fritz's nostalgic song 'Mein Sehnen, mein Wähnen' from Korngold's Die tote Stadt. Another scene came next, Rainelle Krause as Violetta in the final scene from Act One of La traviata, 'Sempre libera', with Krause's gutsy Violetta complemented by David Butt Philip's off-stage Alfredo (a luxury you don't usually get in concert excerpts). Alison Langer then returned as a poised yet feisty Countess with 'Dove sono' from Le nozze di Figaro'David Stout's account of 'Some Enchanted […]
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