A fine Monteverdi Vespers from the Tenet Ensemble

By Robert Levine, 23 June 2014

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Reviewed at St Jean Baptiste Church, New York City on 18 June 2014

Monteverdi, Vespro della Beata Vergine "Vespers of the Blessed Virgin" (1610)

Tenet Ensemble

Tuvan throat singing and holy minimalism at collected stories: “spirit”

Rebecca Lentjes, 23rd April

Employing khoomei, a style of singing that remains “a mystery to Western science”, each of the four performers was capable of producing up to four notes at once.

****1

TENET: Portraits in Song, Renaissance Italy from Ciconia to Petrucci

Amanda Keil, 3rd February

To accompany the exhibition “The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini,” the early music ensemble TENET held court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a lovely concert of musical portraits from the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

***11

More gold than corn: María Dueñas plays Korngold at the Barbican

Mark Pullinger, 22nd May

The young Spanish violinist proves an ardent advocate for a work originally dismissed as a “Hollywood Concerto” as the BBC Symphony Orchestra closes its Barbican season.

****1

The ears have it: Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas on the Cutty Sark

Mark Valencia, 21st May

Come away fellow sailors, your anchors be weighing! All board the Cutty Sark for a semi-staging of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists.

****1

Intimate colossus: Daniil Trifonov with the Rotterdam Philharmonic

Max Lima, 21st May

Late Brahms, early Schoenberg: under Lahav Shani and the Rotterdam Philharmonic draw tenderness from two monumental scores.

****1

Heavenly Mahler – and Strauss – from Lucy Crowe and the LSO

Roy Westbrook, 21st May

Songs and symphonies from Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra, concluding with a vision of “heavenly life” from Gustav Mahler.

****1

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Robert Levine

Robert T. Levine is a New York born-and-bred music writer with a particular interest in music for the voice. His work has appeared in many periodicals and newspapers. He is the author of many books, including The Story of the Orchestra, four volumes in the Black Dog & Leventhal Opera Library, and, most recently, Maria Callas: A Musical Biography.