The centerpiece of the CD is a shatteringly beautiful performance of Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time,” a deeply spiritual piece of music written while Messiaen was a prisoner in a German POW camp. The clarinetist for whom he wrote the piece was a fellow prisoner, an Algerian Jew named Henri Akoka.
February 6, 2014 St. Paul, Minn. — Matt Haimovitz is helping the Minnesota Sinfonia celebrate its 25th anniversary season with a series of concerts Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Haimovitz was […]
It’s been more than a dozen years since Matt Haimovitz first took Bach’s solo cello suites on tour across North America in nontraditional venues. On Saturday, he brought them to Georgetown’s Dumbarton Church, where he presented the six suites — split in two back-to-back performances — in a refreshing old-meets-new light.
In Kurtág’s Double Concerto, cellist Matt Haimovitz joined Kretzschmar and two identical chamber ensembles. The work was anchored in the duo’s imitative lines, surrounded by clouds of spiky droplets in paired harps, celestas, mallets, and cimbaloms, large hammered dulcimers common in Hungarian music. In later sections, antiphonal brass choirs supplied complementary bombast to Kretzschmar’s enormous dynamic range and precise, frenetic fingerwork.
“What an amazing piece the Kurtag is!” said Haimovitz. “I did not know the Double Concerto. It’s an ingenious and complex microtonal score with each soloist in charge of an ensemble within the orchestra.
“I would have agreed to play it in Siberia….but I’ll take Miami.”
January 8, 2014 This weekend, the Chamber Music Society of Detroit presents a pair of noteworthy concerts with a couple of first-rate, and deliciously unconventional, musicians. Christopher O’Riley, in addition […]
Pianist Christopher O’Riley and cellist Matt Haimovitz will be appearing in concerts sponsored by the Chamber Music Society of Detroit this weekend. On Thursday, Jan. 9 at 3 p.m. they’ll be guests of Chris Felcyn on The Well-Tempered Wireless program of WRCJ 90.9 FM. Tune in and find out which Jimmy Stewart co-star has become a big fan of their music.
During the past decade, Christopher O’Riley has been quite busy, hosting From the Top, concertizing, and recording his adaptations of pop songs by Radiohead, Nick Drake, and Elliott Smith. But he hasn’t released an all-classical CD since a Scriabin disc in 2004. That is, until 2013, when his two-CD recording of music by that barnstormer of barnstormers and finger-buster of finger-busters, Franz Liszt, saw the light of day.
2. Christopher O’Riley, “O’Riley’s Liszt” (Oxingale): I love the way pianist O’Riley moves from fascination to fascination with each new recording. This double-disc feels like a concept album: nothing but Liszt transcriptions of works by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Wagner (“Prelude and Liebestod”) and (the pièce de résistance) Berlioz, whose “Symphonie fantastique” is rarely heard in this titanic version for solo piano. It unfolds like an ancient exploration, straight to the scaffold and the “Witches’ Sabbath.”
December 12, 2013 Philip Glass This Concerto grew from music Glass composed in 2001 for Naqoyqatsi, his third collaboration with the innovative documentary director, Godfrey Reggio. Glass had completed […]
December 12, 2013 Replete with images of war, death, conflict and pain, Naqoyqatsi is arguably the darkest and most disturbing depiction of ‘life out of balance’ in Godfrey Reggio’s […]
November 27, 2013 Head bobbing and curls flying, Matt Haimovitz plays the cello like a rock star, leaning into his instrument to conjure forth a bold sound that captures your […]
November 6, 2013 The Ontario Philharmonic led by Marco Parisotto is developing into a must-hear orchestra. Maestro Parisotto has shaped his players into a fine music-making instrument, fully capable of […]
November 5, 2013 Cellist Matt Haimovitz prepares to perform with the Ontario Philharmonic on Tuesday night at Koerner Hall (John Terauds phone photo). The Ontario Philharmonic made a powerful statement […]
November 5, 2013 Cellist Matt Haimovitz gets his kicks out of mixing it up, playing Arcade Fire at a pop-up concert one day, then restringing his instrument with gut strings […]
October 17, 2013 “There.” “Do you hear it?” At the beginning, there is only the voice of Jeremy Irons. Then, the sound of strings: high, sparkling filaments of sound that […]
Oxingale Records 