Paul Wells: Every performance could stand to be more relaxed. Explain patiently why silence is part of the modern tradition of this music. And then accept any reaction, and welcome everyone who took the trouble to show up.
Tag Archives: Mozart
Should Canadian opera fix Mozart’s casual racism?
Critics are split on Wajdi Mouawad’s recasting of Mozart’s The Abduction. Can modern playwrights rewrite the classics for the 21st century?
Mozart in the Jungle brings the sex, drugs and oboes
But is the Amazon series any good for classical music?
Mozart meets ‘Married At First Sight’: a fix for opera?
If we can have opera as funny and contemporary as ‘A Little Too Cozy’—’Cosi fan tutti,’ get it?—who needs Mozart at all?
Canadian classical prodigy Jan Lisiecki releases his first album
The 17-year-old virtuoso, signed with one of the oldest classical labels, sticks with the tried and true
Music: Mozart’s stand
A few times a season, if I am a very good boy, the National Arts Centre Orchestra invites me to speak to audiences before their concerts, or to interview musicians onstage after. Last Thursday and Friday were a little nervous-making because for the first time I interviewed the orchestra’s music director, Pinchas Zukerman, who doesn’t fake it if he’s not having a good time. My luck held, because the superb young Danish-born violinist Nicolaj Znaider was on hand, and Zukerman is very fond of Znaider, so we had a blast. I learned a lot.
Mozart vs. the thugs
Classical tunes signal to thugs that they don’t belong in a given environment
Music: Haydn and everything after
Two episodes from my occasional attempts to figure music out, and share my discoveries with the curious:
Wait—Mozart didn’t write that!
A new recording of The Magic Flute takes a lot of liberties with the original score
Move over, Mozart!
Once a musical pariah, composer-conductor Gustav Mahler is now, 150 years after his birth, box-office gold