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21.8.11

In Brief: Return to Dirty Looks Edition

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

  • Alex Ross has more praise for the Mark Morris Dance Group's latest performance, especially Morris's penchant for underscoring musical form with movement: "I seriously believe that all conservatory students should be required to see Morris's work: they will learn to play more intelligently and more vividly." Yes. My piano teachers over the years often told me that a piece I was playing "needed to dance": when you see a Mark Morris dance in action, you get a visual explanation of what that means. [The Rest Is Noise]

  • Online listening this week: from the Festival de la Chaise-Dieu, soprano Karine Deshayes with La Chambre Philharmonique and Emmanuel Krivine, and pianist Claire-Marie Le Guay with the Orchestre National de Lyon; the Sixteen with Tudor-era motets from the Festival de l’Abbaye de Lessay; Arabella Steinbacher with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo from the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon; from Bayreuth, Parsifal with Daniele Gatti at the podium and Lohengrin with Klaus Florian Vogt, plus Andris Nelsons conducting; Andreas Staier and Alexander Melnikov from the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence; Jordi Savall's Istanbul concert from the Festival de Fontfroide; plainchant from the Journée Diabolus in Musica in Tours; Gergiev's Swan Lake from the Proms; Turkish musicians performing Xenakis's Oresteia; Concerto Italiano performing Vivaldi at the Chapelle Royale in Versailles; and music of Berg and Hans Rott from the Salzburg Festival. [France Musique]

  • From London, Emmanuel Pahud and Eric Le Sage in recital, Thomas Dausgaard leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra, violinist Leonidas Kavakos, Susan Graham with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, Marc-Andre Hamelin playing Liszt, Glyndebourne's performance of Handel's Rinaldo, a Mahler sixth from the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Semyon Bychkov, Hildegard of Bingen paired with Birtwistle (!) from the BBC Singers, Maria João Pires with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and David Zinman, and Paul McCreesh leading a gargantuan performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah. Remember that there are only seven days of streaming after each performance. [BBC Proms]

  • In online video, Claudio Abbado at the Lucerne Festival, with symphonies of Mozart (no. 35) and Bruckner (no. 5). [ARTE Live Web]

  • You can also watch the closing concerts of the Festival de La Roque d'Anthéron. [Part 1 | Part 2]

  • On Friday night an unexpected Twitter hashtag back-and-forth erupted, revising song titles to make songs for or about classical music critics. Good ones came from Ladyloughridge ("Like a Virgil"), @BrianKUSC ("When All is Swed and Done"), and @MMmusing ("Lebrecht of the Edmund Fitzgerald"). My two best contributions, I think, were "I Knock You Down (But You Get Up Again)" and "Danke Schonberg." It was fun, but it was over before you knew it. [#songsaboutclassicalcritics]

  • The live stream of Britten's The Turn of the Screw at Glyndebourne is scheduled for this afternoon, 6 pm BST. The staging is by Jonathan Kent, whose work we have admired at Santa Fe Opera. [The Guardian]

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