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13.11.11

In Brief: Oedipus Edition

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

  • Do not miss your chance to watch George Enescu's opera Œdipe, in a rare staging from Brussels. [Théâtre de la Monnaie]

  • Listen to a performance of Benjamin Britten's Rape of Lucretia, from the Aldeburgh Festival this summer, with Angelika Kirchschlager in the title role. [France Musique]

  • Watch Paavo Järvi conduct the Orchestre de Paris, in a program of Messiaen's Les offrandes oubliées, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, and Schumann's piano concerto with Thai Son Dang as soloist. [Cité de la Musique Live]

  • Hear a performance by organist Christian Lane, winner of the first prize at last month's Concours International d’Orgue de Montréal, on the Casavant organ of the Basilique Notre-Dame in Montréal. Lane is assistant organist at Harvard University. [France Musique]

  • After an astounding and long career, Marian McPartland, now 93, will step down from her legendary "Piano Jazz" program on NPR, a show that had an enormous influence on me as a young pianist. [Chicago Tribune]

  • Listen to a fascinating program of music by C. P. E. Bach, performed by baritone Peter Harvey and Stradivaria, a Baroque music ensemble from Nantes, at the Cité de la Musique. [France Musique]

  • With hat tip to Anastasia Tsioulcas, "The hardest ['Jeopardy'] category for contestants is 'Classical Music,' at least among categories that have appeared a minimum of 50 times. Just 72 percent of its clues are solved." Classical music is in good company, in my opinion: "Art and Artists" is at 76 percent, and "Word Origins" is at 79 percent -- rounding out the most difficult categories. [Slate]

  • More exciting Baroque music from mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux and Concerto Köln, opera arias and instrumental music, recorded at the Schwetzingen Festival this summer. [France Musique]

  • In spite of the inevitable headaches it will bring to the Metropolitan Opera and English National Opera, the two companies are co-producing a staging of John Adams's excellent opera The Death of Klinghoffer. [Jessica Duchen]

  • Also from the Schwetzingen Festival, the Takács Quartet and friends playing two quintets by Schubert. [France Musique]

  • A discussion of the finer points of Latin declension in a line of Virgil's Aeneid, which then evolves into many more wonderful things. [Languagehat]

  • From the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Ludovic Morlot conducts the Orchestre National de France and Chœur de Radio France in Ravel's complete ballet music for Daphnis et Chloé and Poulenc's Gloria, with soprano Hélène Guilmette. [France Musique]

  • Nicolas Angelich plays a recital in the Grand Théâtre de Québec, centered on Schumann's Kreisleriana, recorded back in March. [France Musique]

  • I was able to make it to only one of the events in the PostClassical Ensemble's Ives Project at Strathmore last week. Their artistic director, Joseph Horowitz, has some final thoughts on Ives the Man. [The Unanswered Question]

  • From the George Enescu International Festival and Competition, this past September in Bucharest, a concert by the London Symphony Orchestra, with Horia Andreescu conducting Mahler's sixth symphony and the prelude from Wagner's Lohengrin, plus Nicola Benedetti playing Glazunov's A minor violin concerto. [France Musique]

  • From the Mosel Music Festival, Mario Venzago conducts the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern in an intriguing program of Weber, Paganini, Bruckner (the first symphony), and Bruch's first violin concerto with Vadim Repin as soloist, in the church of St. Maximin in Trier. [France Musique]

  • From the Festival Musica Strasbourg, Pascal Rophé conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg in a program of music by Webern combined with recent works by Johannes-Maria Staud, Christophe Bertrand, and Philippe Manoury. [France Musique]

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