Alexandra Ivanoff is an American journalist who, after singing for five seasons with the San Francisco Opera, lived for eight years in Istanbul, where she began her career as a music journalist with Time Out magazine and Today's Zaman newspaper in that city. After one year in Berlin and now in Budapest, she reviews from various cities and festivals in Europe, as well as Istanbul, New York, and Los Angeles. She has degrees in music from the Eastman School of Music in NY and Yale University Graduate School of Music.
The score of Goldmark's opera is filled with lovely orchestral surprises, in addition to stunning arias, but is often filled with an abundance of slow tempos.
Polish opera director Michał Znaniecki created a new version of Zoltán Kodály’s 1927 The Spinning Room, a short one-act which is basically a collection of 21 Hungarian folksongs that Kodály had selected from the Székely region.
A master at clever programming, Maestro Iván Fischer surrounded Dutilleux with well-known pieces by Debussy, Ravel and Satie as part of the week-long French Days segment of the Bridging Europe 2016 series at Budapest’s Müpa.
Where does one go to hear some of the world’s greatest pianists? To Jerusalem. More specifically, the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, the annual ten-day musical delight in the Holy City in early September.
Playing repeatedly in my mind as I walked home on 24 July was the spine-chilling orchestral performance of the "Dance of the Knights" from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in the Franz Liszt Academy’s superb Solti Hall.
Known for her powerful interpretations of the blockbuster Italian mezzo roles, the great Hungarian diva Ildikó Komlósi dominates the new production of Aida in Budapest.
Budapest rolled out the red carpet for its legendary composer György Kurtág, who, amidst a celebratory week, was the honoree at his splendid 90th birthday concert.
In the wide world of impersonal, take-a-number singing competitions, Istanbul’s Leyla Gencer Voice Competition stands out for its unusual TLC of young singers. And its generous selection of prizes.
Discovering Enescu through the lens of his folkloric genes was the beginning of the musical adventure that awaits listeners in the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in Austria.
