In the last year, several prominent artists released albums highlighting their life-long journeys through an endlessly vast musical literature. Deutsche Grammophon released its long-awaited first solo album of acclaimed pianist Sergei Babayan, coinciding with the release of a duo album with his superstar student Daniil Trifonov. Two younger artists also made news this year. Pianist Jonathan Biss released his final volume of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, and pianist Adam Golka is soon to release his first volume of the same monumental cycle. In the orchestral world, the San Francisco Symphony provided MTT’s Keeping Score to virtual audiences free of charge during the closing of concert halls worldwide. The Tetzlaff Quartet’s new Beethoven album was also released on the Ondine label to great critical acclaim.

21st-century audiences reap enormous benefits of current technology when it comes to recordings, and never more so as during the COVID-19 pandemic, when public concerts have been shelved for safety concerns. Modern audiences also enjoy nearly limitless access to recordings from decades and even a century ago through YouTube, Spotify, and various archival projects, such as those of Allan Evans for Arbiter Records and Ward Marston for Marston Records. Over a hundred years of technological advances have created a world of difference in recording quality, yet today’s musicians are still encouraged to explore the mesmerizing performances of Cortot, Kreisler, and Casals, and even earlier performers such as Rachmaninoff, Leschetizky, and Toscanini. Beneficiaries of modern recording technology may very well ask, why ought one to listen to historical recordings with seemingly shoddy audio quality, narrow or distorted sound, and less accurate playing?

Times of crisis call for radical action. Clearly we can all agree we’re in a state of emergency as a global society, but specifically in the arts and live entertainment. As we’re already months into the problem, there are not many concrete answers. As the situation prolongs, we wait patiently for a recovery to “the good old days” of attending live concerts and events in-person. This is anxiously anticipated, obviously, but it does seem short-sighted from what I’ve seen and heard working within this space.

Conductor Marlon Daniel is the leading scholar on the music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He joins Classical Post to discuss premiering “Anonymous Lover”, documenting Saint-Georges works, The Festival International de Musique Saint-Georges and more.

On April 26, 2020 the Emruz Festival: Virtual Series presented “Iranian Female Composers Association Meet Up: Conversation & Music Performance” via Zoom. Around 30 members of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA) joined Bridgid Bergin (panel moderator) for an hour-long conversation. The conversation led to a longer form piece, showcasing how composers have been navigating quarantine life, interrogating gender identity and societal issues in Iran (as well as the broader new music scene), and highlights how IFCA has cultivated a community all within the digital realm, becoming an organization that truly amplifies and celebrates Iranian female-identifying composer voices.

Pulitzer Prize finalist composer Chris Cerrone and triple-Grammy-winning flutist Tim Munro discuss collaborating on Cerrone’s latest work, “Liminal Highway”.

Abigail Rollins’ first year as Executive Director of Berkshire Opera Festival has not gone as expected. The company initially pivoted their Mainstage Don Giovanni to a concert version of the work and now finally to a digital performance featuring the original cast but different music entirely. Despite these tumultuous times, Rollins and the BOF team have prioritized supporting their artists.

Grammy-winning composer Richard Danielpour has been commissioned by Oregon Bach Festival to compose a set of fifteen miniatures for celebrated pianist Simone Dinnerstein to be premiered on Sunday, December 6, 2020 at 2 PM PST.

April, 2020: It’s a few weeks into quarantine, and the music students are getting restless. While most other college programs continued virtually after the sweeping March shutdown, conservatories cut their semesters short and canceled all remaining rehearsals and performances, citing the infeasibility of conducting them online. I felt as though I had been unceremoniously plucked from my life of rehearsing string quartets and memorizing concertos and thrust into a vacuum. Mere weeks from the end of my graduate degree, my already-uncertain future was now on indefinite hold, and it seemed like my life in music would never look the way I expected.

Legendary mezzo-soprano Frederica “Flicka” von Stade returned to the stage on July 30 and August 1 for Classical Tahoe’s adapted 2020 season to sing works by Offenbach, Mahler, and Heggie for an intimate 25-person audience. Classical Tahoe ensemble members include principal New York City Metropolitan Opera Orchestra musicians Nathan Hughes (oboe) and Milan Milisavljević (viola). Frederica von Stade joins Classical Post to discuss this moving experience, which young opera singers have the most star power, what she’s been watching on Netflix and more.

Anderson & Roe Piano Duo discuss Musical Mixology, their upcoming Virtual Piano Extravaganza in collaboration with Portland Piano International, and share a special cocktail recipe for our 21+ readers to enjoy.

Leeds Competition winner Eric Lu replaced pianist/composer Michael Brown at 92Y’s opening concert of its streamed summer series coined Time and Other Travel – wishing Michael a speedy recovery.

A remarkable aspect about Ted Hearne, Saul Williams and Patricia McGregor’s 80-minute staged oratorio, Place, is that it holds so many stories and opens the door to numerous conversations. Writings about this work could be centered around how the performers in Place faced the effects of gentrification in their own lives, converting the work into a video piece during COVID-19, how Hearne composed the music, I could go on. But one aspect which gripped me is the collaborative process between Saul Williams and Ted Hearne in creating a libretto for Place. I spoke with Saul Williams and Ted Hearne separately about Place and this collaborative process and have created this piece in the spirit of that dialogue, allowing the reader to alternate between the perspectives of Williams and Hearne.

“Sad, moody, happy, funny or none of it,“ Lambert, German songwriter and musician describes the freedom to be “everything at the same time.” Releasing lovely works for several years, eliciting tranquility, many who know and love the music “see the visual part as the perfect description,“ despite some contradictions as darkness and loneliness are portrayed in accompanied videos such as one of our favorites “Sweet Apocalypse.” We were lucky enough to have a few questions answered by Lambert and look forward to following and listening closely as the Lambiverse evolves.

Virgil Boutellis-Taft’s playing throughout his debut orchestral album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Incantation, is brilliant, effusive and gripping. He glides above the orchestra while maintaining a core to the tone and unfolding gorgeous intricate phrases. But it is the depth of his relationship with the material, unique combination of works and history behind why he programmed this CD the way that he did that make this album exceptional. History had silenced Virgil Boutellis-Taft’s family violin. Through Incantation, the violin sings again in an unfurling of seemingly contradictory emotions which are all centered around melancholy.

David Lang’s concert-length work for treble vocal quartet love fail tells universal stories. They are about trust, interconnectivity, disappointment and of course love. Before speaking to Quince Ensemble about their recent recording of love fail, I had a hunch that there would be some overlap between the subject matter and their experience of working on this as an ensemble. The subject matter of interconnectedness, communication, compassion, faith and love are mirrored in Quince’s experience of bringing love fail to life. Quince Ensemble, composed of Kayleigh Butcher, Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, Liz Pearse, and Carrie Henneman Shaw, joins Classical Post to discuss.

Unsurprisingly, the first months of the much-anticipated “Beethoven 250” year have already seen several new releases of the string quartets. One standout is the Tetzlaff Quartet’s contribution, which highlights two major works (Op. 132 and Op. 130, with the “Grosse Fuge”) and—as we have come to expect from this formidable group through a patiently growing discography of thoughtful performances—features probing readings that take the artists out of the spotlight, foreground the music’s dynamism, and let these idiosyncratic, philosophical masterpieces stand front and center.

New Music Gathering, an annual three-day conference dedicated to the performance, production, promotion, support and creation of new concert music, has gone digital for the June 2020 conference. Two of its five organizers, composers Mary Kouyoumdjian and Angélica Negrón, join CP to discuss moving to an online format, making space within the community and balancing their own creative practices with their commitment to NMG.

Renowned soprano Karen Slack joins Classical Post to discuss her new series Konversations, building her career, how roles should be cast with ears instead of eyes, how fewer Black women have international careers these days and more.

Italian composer and pianist Ludovico Einaudi is one of classical music’s most streamed artists. His music draws from rock, jazz, American minimalism and from his teachers, avant-garde European composers Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) and Luciano Berio (1925-2003).