Ecstatic Living Room

Memorial Day has something of a split personality, especially on the kind of gorgeous day we had today in Upstate New York.  Despite the parades, the holiday itself has a somber character and purpose, paying tribute to those who have served and died while serving in the armed forces.  But with the picnics and barbecues, not to mention all the usual commercialization, it’s taken on new qualities if not a completely different identity.  It’s now pushed as the official beginning of the summer, not to mention the Hollywood blockbuster season, and my inbox today received no less than 20 special Memorial Day sale offers to buy everything from sneakers and workout gear to outdoor furniture and cars.

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Xuefei Yang is an internationally acclaimed classical guitarist, performing for audiences across the globe. Her talent was recognized early – at the age of 14 she made her Spanish debut in Madrid, with the composer Joaquin Rodrigo attending her concert. She is the first Chinese guitarist to become a professional musician on the international music scene. She performs in the world’s major concert halls, plays concertos with the world’s leading orchestras and has an exclusive recording contract with EMI Classics. Her first EMI CD, Romance De Amor achieved a gold disc, and her second, 40 Degrees North, was recognized in China as the best classical CD of 2009, and CD of the month in Gramophone.

Xuefei has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs, including a successful performance at the BBC Proms, and an interview for “Woman’s Hour” on BBC Radio 4. In 2009 Xuefei performed at the Brit Awards at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Xuefei was the subject of a documentary by CCTV in China.

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A few days ago, I almost flew off the treadmill running at full-sprint speed – that is, I was going at more than 10 miles per hour! Everyone in the gym threw a look my way, some gasping, as my running shoe made a loud, squeaking sound as it hit the part of the belt that DOESN’T move and I lurched forward like a game animal that had been hit with a tranquilizing dart. I pretended that there was something wrong with the machine, turned bright red from embarrassment, and told people that I was okay and that they should return to their workouts. But the real reason I almost flew off the device is that I was air conducting the finale of Brahms’s First Symphony and with a particularly bold downbeat I had lost my balance. I just missed a total wipeout, which would have been a very ugly (and bloody) scene indeed!

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Italian-born Giuseppe Filianoti has won acclaim around the world for his superb performances in the Bel Canto repertoire. The well-read family man appears May 12-25 as Nemorino (opposite Diana Damrau) in Laurent Pelly’s staging of L’Elisir d’Amoreat Covent Garden.
His beautifully sonorous voice has been heard on all the great opera stages including New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Milan’s La Scala and London’s Royal Opera House. Describing his performance in January 2009 in Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Met, the New York Times praised his “virile, bright voice with Italianate ping in his upper range” and “limber and youthful appearance.”

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Cabell – who shot to fame after winning the 2005 BBC Singer of the World Competition in Cardiff – graces the Met stage as Adina inL’Elisir d’Amore through April 22. She is the latest to donate her time and musings to our Q&A.
After her stint in the Donizetti classic, the soprano heads to Europe for concerts in Prague and Copenhagen. She returns to the U.S. later this spring for a jazz cabaret series at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, and a role debut with Cincinnati Opera as the Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

Cabell has a successful and critically acclaimed solo CD, Soprano – on the Decca label – and her Musetta was recently singled out for praise in the Robert Dornhelm film, now on DVD, of La bohème, with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon.

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In the midst of a cross-country U.S. recital tour (which includes an April 14 stop at Zankel Hall), Biss filled out our questionnaire- providing detailed answers and insights, some of which may surprise you. He wraps up his current traveling program April 20.
Since making his New York Philharmonic debut in 2001 when he was 21, Jonathan Biss’s international career has flourished through his orchestral, recital, and chamber music performances in North America, Europe, and Asia, and through his acclaimed EMI Classics recordings. Mr. Biss is a former student of Leon Fleisher at The Curtis Institute of Music and the third generation in a family of musicians that includes his grandmother, cellist Raya Garbousova, and his parents, violinist Miriam Fried and violist/violinist Paul Biss.

His diverse repertoire ranges from Mozart and Beethoven, through the Romantics to Janáček and Schoenberg as well as works by contemporary composers, including commissions from Leon Kirchner and Lewis Spratlan.

With a reputation for intriguing programs, artistic maturity and versatility, the 28-year-old American pianist has been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2005 Leonard Bernstein Award and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. Mr. Biss’s newest recording as an EMI Classics artist is a CD of Mozart Piano Concertos 21 and 22 with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Two previous recordings—all Beethoven and all-Schumann recitals—won an Edison Award and a Diapason d’Or Award, respectively. Mr. Biss blogs about his life as a musician at www.jonathanbiss.com.

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I’m probably the last person in the United States to see The Shawshank Redemption (I finally got around to Netflixing it, and watched it last night over my favorite meal – a plate of cheese ravioli with home made tomato sauce), but for me it was worth the wait. Obviously, it’s one of the most inspirational films ever made, but for a classical music lover it’s an especially heartening experience to hear music from a Mozart opera take center stage at one of the film’s key moments. Tim Robbins, playing the wrongfully convicted banker who refuses to have his spirit broken by prison life, has briefly barricaded himself in one of the prison offices and decides to treat his cellmates to some music over the Shawshank loudspeaker system. Sitting back in his chair, Robbins’s character, Andy Dufresne, sinks into reverie as Gundula Janowitz (The Countess) and Edith Mathis (Susanna) sing the Duettino (little duet) “Sull’Aria” (“on the breeze”) from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Andy gets time in solitary confinement for the infraction, but it’s a small price to pay for the transcendent moment he has given himself and his fellow inmates. His unlikely prison friend Red (played by Morgan Freeman) sums up the experience this way:

“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

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Some music-loving friends find it corny (but that’s why it’s so much fun, of course) that I coordinate so much of my listening to the changing seasons. Part of the reason I do this is that my imagination makes certain connections early on and the rest of me just can’t let go. On balance, I think it’s a good thing because it prevents me from overdosing on some of my favorite works. For example, I can’t listen to Mahler’s Third Symphony until the first day of summer (more on that work in a future post); I save that same composer’s “Song of the Earth” until the fall because there are colors and shadows in this music that remind me of late afternoon autumn light. Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, “Winter Dreams,” has helped me welcome in this most forbidding season each year since I first heard it in college (I’m not much of a winter person, so music definitely helps keep my spirits up until spring returns). When a conductor programs Tchaikovsky’s First or “Nuctracker” ballet in the summer I think, “Hey, what’s up with that?”

As is evidenced above, seasonal words sometimes sneak into the titles of certain works, but those aren’t the only works I connect with particular seasons. Mahler’s Fourth Symphony doesn’t have a seasonal subtitle or a nickname, but for me it’s definitely summer music, the slow movement passing like high clouds against a bright blue sky as you gaze at them from a hammock. Ravel’s Dapnhis and Chloe ballet is summer muic for me as well, conjuring up sunlit Greek Isles and brilliant white-sand beaches. On the other hand, Sibelius’s seven symphonies are mostly winter fare for me: I’m sure Finland (the composer’s homeland) has perfectly beautiful summers, but for me much of his music has a bracing, wintry quality that’s both awesome and imposing.

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One of today’s most eminent Schubert lieder interpreters, the English tenor’s newest album features the composer’s Schwanengesang song cycle. Bostridge generously took time to share some thoughts, favorites and opinions in this Q&A feature.

Ian Bostridge is widely acclaimed for his deeply expressive and intense performances on the opera stage, in the concert hall with the world’s leading orchestras, and in solo recitals.

The London native was a post-doctoral fellow in history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, before embarking on a full-time career as a singer. His Oxford historical monograph, “Witchcraft and its Transformations 1650 to 1750,” was published in 1997.

Bostridge’s extensive discography, mostly for EMI Classics – with whom he records exclusively – includes many award-winners and Grammy nominations. His latest project, Schubert: Schwanengesang, was released on the label last month. Frequent collaborator Antonio Pappano serves as conductor/pianist.

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My name is Albert Imperato. I’m the founder and co-managing director of 21C Media Group, an independent public relations, marketing, and consulting firm specializing in classical music and the performing arts. I’ve been working in music promotion since 1987, and many of my friends and family are still very curious about what exactly I do for a living.“I promote classical music,” is my express answer, to which I get responses from the genuinely fascinated to the completely perplexed. Over time, though, these same friends and family members invariably come in contact with the music I am promoting, whether because I’ve played something for them on my stereo or iPod, given them a CD to try out, or actually take one of them to a concert or an opera. For the most part, these people find themselves intrigued by their contact with the music, and invariably I am asked, “”What’s the best way to get to know classical music?” My initial reply is, “Just listen to it,” which usually gets the response, “well, what exactly should I listen to?”

Well, there are many potential answers to this question. Back when I worked for a record company it was easy to just hand a bunch of CDs to someone – the “Mad About” series that I helped produce for Deutsche Grammophon – and tell them to listen and let me know what they liked, but I was still surprised over time when people would tell me that the problem wasn’t just “what” to listen to but also “when.”When, as in, “I was having people over for dinner, and I put on one of those CDs you gave me and while some of the tracks were perfect, some of them were really distracting.”

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