Jeremy Denk, piano Union College Memorial Chapel, Schenectady December 2, 2011 Sometimes there’s just too darned much talking at classical concerts. Whether it’s welcoming the crowd, thanking the donors and pleading for more contributions, or explicating what’s about to happen in the music, all that verbiage gets tiresome. Yet along comes a musician like Jeremy Denk who’s almost as good with words as he is at playing the piano.  Denk made his third appearance at the Union College Concert Series on Friday night and offered rather extensive remarks throughout the night.  Though he’s...

“Great Music, Right Here” is the apt motto of the Glens Falls Symphony.  Since the orchestra and its music director Charles Peltz regularly venture into contemporary music, “Right Now” might be an appropriate tag. Sunday afternoon’s program featured something far better than a risky premiere.  Instead, it was Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto, which was written in 2009 and received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music.  That award doesn’t always mean enduring quality but Higdon’s concerto has got the stuff. One of today’s most widely performed composers, Higdon writes in the current...

It’s amazing how Leon Botstein and Bard College’s SummerScape series keep coming up with “overlooked masterpieces” from the operatic repertoire.  At least that’s what the scholarly support materials tell us they are. The reality of what’s heard and seen on stage is often another matter. This year’s entry is “Die Liebe der Danae.” Richard Strauss’ second to last opera, it was completed in 1940 but only premiered in 1952, three years after the composer’s death.  The piece’s New York staged debut opened on Friday night and was seen on Sunday afternoon at the Fisher Center. Besides...

“We’ve only just begun” or some other ‘70s hit from The Carpenters was about as daring or off the beaten path as “Voigt Lessons” was expected to get.  After all, how much more could The Glimmerglass Festival and its new boss Francesca Zambello really expect from the great diva Deborah Voigt?  She was already starring in “Annie Get Your Gun” and doing it on the back roads of upstate New York for two long summer months. Throwing in one afternoon recital was going to be a nice added touch.  But renditions of some standards and maybe a few arias would have sufficed, right?  If she...

It was good to actually hear the Philadelphia Orchestra, rather than hear about the Philadelphia Orchestra. When it filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, the venerable institution became a sad symbol for the fragile state of the economy and the arts in general. Only the near demise of the New York City Opera — once an annual visitor to Saratoga — has been bigger news. Meanwhile the orchestra keeps playing and awaits its young music director Yannick Nezet-Seguin, whose tenure is still more than a year from starting. It’s a period of transition for the annual summer residency at...

CARMEN Glimmerglass Festival Opening Night, 7/2/11 In the new production of “Carmen,” which opened at the Glimmerglass Festival on Saturday, the action grows more tight and focused throughout the night until Carmen and Don Jose are alone in a ring.  In a daring moment of surrender, Carmen stops her tormenting ways and prostrates herself before her angry and jilted lover.  She seems to think better of it, but it’s too late. The knife plunges. The lights are at their brightest in that climax.  The evening began in a washed out haze with only fleeting bits of color against a jumbled set of...

Nico Muhly and Craig Lucas’ “Two Boys,” supposedly the first cyber age grand opera, debuted at the English National Opera on June 24. The reviews are mixed, but 29 year-old Nico continues to cast his spell, as the normally curmudgeonly Norman Lebrecth (“Who Killed Classical Music?”) raves that it’s the future of the art form. Below are some excepts and links to reviews plus trailers on the opera, which heads to the Metropolitan Opera in 2013.   Two Boys, which opened on Friday, will attract expostulations of outrage from all the usual suspects for its...

Looking for that rare sign of economic health in the arts?  Consider the growth trajectory of the Boston Early Music Festival. Founded in 1980 by a band of stalwart devotees of music from the Medieval and Renaissance, the organization has expanded over the last 30 years into an international powerhouse that’s a unique combination of opera company, concert series, touring company, trade show and record producer. The most recent biennial festival ran June 12-19 and was attended by several thousand professional musicians, instrument builders, music publishers and loyal fans.   A highlight of...

Albany Symphony Orchestra David Alan Miller, conductor Nathan De’Shon Myers, baritone Carnegie Hall, May 10, 2011 How appropriate that a festival called Spring for Music resulted in a new blossoming sound of an orchestra. It was the Carnegie Hall debut of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, a reprise of an all-American program titled “Spirituals Re-Imagined.”  A great accomplishment long in the planning, the concert should make music director David Alan Miller and the community that supports his efforts immensely proud. A more than respectable-sized audience turned out, including about 500 devoted...

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Thursday April 28, 2011 Troy Savings Bank Music Hall There was magic to be heard, but little slight of hand to watch on Thursday night at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.  The occasion was a concert of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, in a return presentation by the Troy Chromatics. With up to 33 players onstage but no official leader, one expected to see more demonstrative gestures — nods of the head, swaying bodies, jiggly eyebrows — than there actually was.  The group is now in its 39th season of tackling large and small works without an overlord conductor to...