Category Archives: Entertainment

The Met sits well in the age of Twitter and New Media

by

0

Empty Chairs no more?  It was illuminating, at intermission during the Metropolitan Opera’s opening-night presentation of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” (last) Tuesday, to scroll through comments about the performance posted on Twitter.The presentation on December 17th was the latest in the Met’s line of family-friendly holiday offerings, abbreviated and translated into English for young listeners with short attention spans. The fans are “all-a-Twitter!”

Image

“The Barber of Seville” Isabel Leonard and Rodion Pogossov star in this production at the Metropolitan Opera House. Photo: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

My take on A Late Quartet … No passion, no reason to play

by

0

Image

In STEPHEN HOLDEN’s New York Sunday Times (Nov 4, 2012) music review of the film, A Late Quartet, he states the credo of any musician worth being called a true musician:  The film “has an important point to make about classical music. For the musicians who play it, especially intimate chamber works in which the group members have to think, feel and breath as one, their instruments are vehicles for conveying strong emotion. Without passion, a performance, no matter how impeccable, is just a technical feat.”

Whether it is chamber music or a Mahler symphony, if there is no passion, no commitment, no personal understanding, no love, then there is no reason to be playing.