Tag Archives: simon rattle

Berlin Music Diary

All told, I attended eleven musical events over the course of three weeks. As is usual in my Berlin stays, none was a waste of time. Another way of putting it is that all were at least worth the 35 … Continue reading

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Britannia in Berlin

A couple of weeks ago I attended two terrific concerts as part of Berlin’s Musikfest, and both, by chance, had British links. This was not why I picked them—I chose them for their intriguing programs and their great conductors—but this … Continue reading

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Back in Berlin!

I’ve been here a little over a week now, and for the first time in seven or eight months, I am getting to hear live music again. It is so thrilling that I can barely analyze or even fully take … Continue reading

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Rattle’s Berlin Philharmonic

A great deal of what I know about music, it turns out, has accrued to me over the years through my attendance at Simon Rattle’s performances with the Berlin Philharmonic. When I first arrived in Berlin in 2003, Rattle had only recently taken … Continue reading

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Gerhaher

It never ceases to amaze me that critics can respond to a specific performance with such different takes. Sometimes I have trouble believing I was at the same concert as these other guys. This morning’s Times review of the recent … Continue reading

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A Three-Rattle Week

Even in Berlin, where he has lived for more than a dozen years while conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, you would be hard put to hear Simon Rattle in three different venues in the course of a week. But last week … Continue reading

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Bountiful Beethoven

Last week the Berlin Philharmoniker came to Carnegie Hall and played all nine Beethoven symphonies in the course of five nights. Two of the Times’s critics—Anthony Tommasini at the beginning of the cycle, and David Allen in his review at the … Continue reading

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Berlin Diary

I was in Berlin for nearly three weeks, so you’re not going to hear about everything I saw or heard. You won’t, for instance, hear about the Telemann Death of Jesus performed with a twenty-first-century Requiem, nor the piano recital accompanied … Continue reading

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Simon’s Band

I first came to love music, I mean really love music, by listening to the Berlin Philharmonic during  a semester spent in Berlin. I was an avid fan that whole fall, not only attending every concert I could get tickets … Continue reading

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Tetzlaff Times Three

In mid-March, as I was leaving the Carnegie Hall concert that Christian Tetzlaff had just given with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, I ran into a couple of friends. “Oh, we should have known we’d see you at this!” they said … Continue reading

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