Waffles, triangles & Jesus
Jim White
Emneord
Minder om
Das Rheingold
Richard Wagner
Prayer : voice & organ
Magdalena Kožená
I want to be evil - the wicked Eartha Kitt
Eartha Kitt
The Launy Grøndahl legacy, volume 4
Carl Nielsen (f. 1865)
Forår og sommer i Den Gamle By
Akademisk Kor Århus
Mahagonny : Ein Songspiel
Kurt Weill
I'm in your mind fuzz
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
The Thomas Jensen legacy, volume 12
Thomas Jensen (f. 1898)
A quiet place
Leonard Bernstein
Anmeldelser (5)
The guardian
d. 12. juli 2018
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Andrew Clements (musikanmelder)
d. 12. juli 2018
"Classical album of the week: Mason Bates's clever fusions of electronic sounds with big-boned orchestral writing have made his concert works very popular in the US. A Bates opera was a natural next step, and a stage work about the life of the Apple founder Steve Jobs made a neat fit for a composer whose use of technology and ability to commute easily across stylistic boundaries has won him so many admirers ... Musically and dramatically it's an assured enough first opera, if an unremarkable one ... The characters are cardboard thin - even Jobs himself, with all his contradictions and personal cruelties, hardly emerges in 3D, as portrayed by baritone Edward Parks. The striking moments come from the orchestra, conducted by Michael Christie, though Bates's music still sometimes falls back on second-hand rhetoric, just as his vocal lines lapse far too easily into a comfortably bland all-American idiom that is part Copland, part Bernstein, part Broadway".
MusicWeb international
2018 September
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Richard Hanlon
2018 September
"Recording of the month: I read many reviews of Mason Bates's and Mark Campbell's opera after its Santa Fe premiere last year ... Some were broadly positive, many critics ... but the real fascination to me of Mason Bates's Jobs opera relates to the question of how an artist treats a (clearly complicated and divisive) public figure whose untimely demise in 2011 was extraordinarily recent ... There is a small, busy, perfectly formed ensemble chorus who perform heroics in terms of contextualising and linking the diffuse scenes. The extended orchestra seem committed and thoroughly rehearsed, while the whole is seamlessly held together by the conductor Michael Christie. It is a live recording ... it adds to the electricity and excitement at what was clearly a much anticipated event. The huge audience shout and reaction at the end seems absolutely heartfelt - indeed I wanted to join in. It might well be that Mason Bates has written the first truly enduring opera of (and about) the computer age. I loved it and commend it to all. Pentatone's presentation is appropriately sumptuous".
Politiken
d. 18. juli 2018
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Henrik Friis (f. 1978)
d. 18. juli 2018
"Lytter man til komponisten Mason Bates' meget omtalte opera om Steve Jobs, er arbejdet i techbranchen en anden og jævnt kedelig historie ... Lidt sker der selvfølgelig i operaen ... Mandens fald fra tinderne viser sig i lange uendelige toner, længere og længere ned i dybet ... Omdrejningspunktet er udviklingen af den revolutionerende første iPhone, som Jobs får perfektioneret gennem en dybt urimelig, men meget effektfuld vedholdende overfusning af sine ansatte ... Musikken er meget enkel. Lidt kedelig og hverdagsagtig i en pudsig blanding af tango, minimalistiske mønstre og nogle svævende klange - med nogle lidt blege vokalmelodier til at tage sig af de mange ord".
BBC music magazine
2018 October
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Christopher Cook (musikanmelder)
2018 October
"Indeed Mark Campbell's libretto is as flat as an iPhone, wrapping itself around that ancient tale of a bad man saved by the love of a good woman ... and so many questions are left unanswered ... Sometimes the score banishes such questions, but Bates's music never entirely raises to that challenge ... Chugging jazzy rhythms we associate with Minimalism, and scurrying strings punctuated by electronic samplings ... Kelly Markgraf does his best for Jobs, and the splendid Sasha Cooke is an appealing Laurence ... And in the pit Michael Christie keeps the pot boiling, but it's thin gruel".
The gramophone
2018 September
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Tim Ashley
2018 September
"Bates's vocal writing can be taxing, though its challenges are all wonderfully met in the recording ... Edward Parks gives a terrific central performance as Jobs, capturing both this charisma and his cruelty in singing that swerves between persuasive elegance and caustic irony ... Christie conducts with plenty of energy and verve, and the playing and choral singing are exemplary in their precision ... I didn't alway share the audiences enthusiasm but it's an impressive achievement nevertheless".