Emmanuel Music in the News
2012-2013 Season
Judicial Review #11:
"The Great Gatsby" — A Great Opera?
The Arts Fuse | May 20, 2013
John Harbison’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was an opera a long time in the works: 14 years elapsed between Remembering Gatsby, a 1985 foxtrot for orchestra (which Harbison’s program note explains was adapted from an "abandoned" operatic setting) and the Metropolitan Opera premiere of The Great Gatsby in December 1999. more . .
John Harbison's The Great Gatsby in Boston
Lloyd Schwartz, New York Arts | May 17, 2013
"So we beat on, boats against the currents, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Nick Carraway’s concluding insight in The Great Gatsby is one of the great closing sentences in literature, and one of the great images of our human helplessness to escape the past. It’s also the line that ends John Harbison’s Gatsby opera, which—13 years after its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera—just had its first complete Boston performance, in a concert version produced by Emmanuel Music . . . more
A New Take on Dramatic Adaptation:
The Great Gatsby Opera
Jessica Monk, The Literary Traveler | May 17, 2013
Gone are the days when literature fans were ranting traditionalists, decrying other media besides quill and parchment. These days we’re as much dependent on the screen to feed our reading habits as anyone else. So how do we feel about an adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby, that makes the transition backward – to an older medium, from the page to the live action world of the stage? more ...
John Harbison's Opera The Great Gatsby
David Bonetti,
Berkshire Fine Arts | May 16, 2013
Talk about fortuitous timing. When Emmanuel Music set the date for its concert performance of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, it had no idea that a movie blockbuster based on the same novel was premiering the same weekend. Infected by the enormous publicity the Baz Luhrmann movie received, it seemed that everyone in town was buzzing about Jay Gatsby and his gin-fueled parties. more ...
A belated Boston premiere for 'Gatsby'
Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe | May 13, 2013
The theater world has an established tradition of developing new pieces over time through workshops and out-of-town tryouts, but the opera world has maintained, in certain quarters, a high-stakes tradition of what the composer John Harbison has called "the cold-bath opening night." Harbison’s vastly scaled third opera, The Great Gatsby, received one such cold bath in December of 1999, when it premiered on the not-so-out-of-town stage of the Metropolitan Opera. more ...
Pursuing Fitzgerald
Brian Schuth, Boston Musical Intelligencer | May 13, 2013
The Great Gatsby is the great elusive target of American literary adaptation, constantly pursued but never caught. Iconic and beloved, with a cool shell of distance wrapping a gooey center of pure romantic idolatry, it is so tempting, but I’m in the camp that believes any attempt to turn the novel into performing art is doomed from the start. This weekend has not disabused me of that opinion. However, both Baz Luhrmann’s art-direction orgasm of a film and John Harbison’s rather more sophisticated opera succeed in producing something of value as a result of their pursuits, even if what they created is not quite a complete success. more ...
Emmanuel Music gives a belated yet powerful Boston premiere for Harbison’s Great Gatsby
David Wright, Boston Classical Review | May 13, 2013
Even while demonstrating yet again how stoutly F. Scott Fitzgerald’s delicate novel The Great Gatsby resists adaptation into other media, Emmanuel Music under Ryan Turner and 12 vocal soloists made spectacular sounds Sunday afternoon with a vibrant performance of John Harbison’s opera version of the story. Like the dance band in Fitzgerald’s description, the ensemble that stuffed the stage of New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall was “no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums.” And much else besides. more ...
A truly great Gatsby: John Harbison's opera gets a thrilling performance in Boston
Roger Mortimer-Smith, bachtrack | May 15, 2013
Between Baz Luhrmann’s recent film The Great Gatsby, Northern Ballet’s The Great Gatsby currently at Sadler’s Wells, and Elevator Repair Service’s circulation-testing, eight-hour Gatz at the Noël Coward Theatre last year, Londoners such as myself could be forgiven for feeling all Gatsbied out (in truth, Gatz could probably have achieved that by itself). This perfect storm of Gatsbys seems to be pure coincidence – neither 2012 nor 2013 is a significant anniversary, either for the novel or Fitzgerald himself – so anyone asking why no major opera houses joined the party by staging John Harbison’s operatic treatment of the story could be answered that there was no reason for there to be a party in the first place. more ...
Borne Back Ceaselessly into the Present
Ryan Turner and Susan Larson, The Boston Music Intelligencer | May 6, 2013
Gatsby is back! F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age novel continues to haunt us with its portrait of glitter, frivolity and bad behavior. There have been TV, radio, theatrical, literary, even computer-game adaptations. The fifth major Gatsby movie is playing in theaters; and on May 12th at Jordan Hall, Emmanuel Music will present in concert form, the New England premiere of John Harbison’s brilliant Grand Opera The Great Gatsby. more ...
Harbison and Beethoven on Newbury Street
Lee Eisman, The Boston Music Intelligencer | February 11, 2013
Ryan Turner, artistic director of Emmanuel Music, described the programmatic glue of Sunday’s post-blizzard program as "theme and variations." The fine group of four Beethoven lieder he chose reflected this conception: their texts were all variations on the idea of the variegated nature—bliss and suffering, hope and ecstasy—of love, as in most lyric German poetry of that period: Liebe, Sehnsucht, Blume, and Grab are the watchwords. more ...
Obituary: Mary Ruth Ray, cofounder of the Lydian String Quartet
Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe | February 1, 2013
In a string quartet, the viola and the second violin are commonly referred to as the inner voices, less frequently in the spotlight, yet essential to the core of any ensemble’s sound. Mary Ruth Ray, as the founding violist of the Lydian String Quartet and as a key member of the ensemble at Emmanuel Music, was one of Boston’s most dependable inner voices. more ...
The Bach Institute offers concerts, seminars
David Weininger, The Boston Globe | January 3, 2013
The music of J.S. Bach is an enduring feature of Emmanuel Music. This is most evident at Sunday services, where a Bach cantata is performed nearly every weekend at Emmanuel Church, but one senses that the composer is somehow present there at all times. And for the third consecutive year, the ensemble is guiding a small group of students through an intensive study of Bach’s music. more ...
Joy and Tribulation at Emmanuel
Cashman Kerr Prince, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | December 2, 2012
Last night Emmanuel Music presented J. S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, to a crowded nave in Emmanuel Church. This was a marathon concert with many highlights. Bach composed this work for Advent season in 1734–35. The whole is divided into six parts, each a cantata in its own right, and originally designed to be performed on different days during liturgical services from Christmas through Epiphany. more ...
Emmanuel Music offers rare 'Christmas Oratorio'
Jeffrey Gantz, The Boston Globe | December 2, 2012
Unlike Handel’s "Messiah", Bach’s "Christmas Oratorio" has never been a Boston holiday tradition. Of course, it didn’t start out as a single performance piece in its home town of Leipzig. Bach composed (or recomposed — a lot of recycling was involved) the oratorio in 1734, and the six cantatas that make it up were first presented individually in the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas between Christmas Day and Epiphany of 1734-35. more ...
Beethoven and Harbison With "Divine Power"
James C.S. Liu, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | October 1, 2012
A capacity crowd filled the Parish Hall at Emmanuel Church in the Back Bay Sunday for the inaugural concert of the third season of Emmanuel Music’s traversal of the complete chamber music of Ludwig van Beethoven. The first two seasons focused mostly on early Beethoven; with this season Emmanuel makes the transition to the middle-period masterworks, adding modern counterpoints from John Harbison in each concert in the series. more ...
Bach Cantatas Resume at Emmanuel
Ryan Turner, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | September 15, 2012
On this Sunday, Emmanuel Music begins its 42nd consecutive season of Bach Cantatas with full orchestra. The series is integral to religious services for most of the Sundays in the liturgical calendar. This has been an astonishing run, well exceeding Bach’s 27 years at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. The late Craig Smith presided over the first 37, and then John Harbison and others took over the roles of conductor and music director on interim bases until Ryan Turner was appointed two years ago. more ...
2011-2012 Season
Music Only, Mercifully, in Tito
Andrew Sammut, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | April 16, 2012
While Mozart’s penultimate opera La Clemenza di Tito K. 621, (The Mercy of Titus) is often described in terms of its utilitarian genesis and dramatic shortcomings, on Saturday night Emmanuel Music simply, and powerfully, relied upon Mozart’s music. Their concert setting at Emmanuel Church sold a work that is often a tough sale for contemporary audiences more ...
Emmanuel Music does full justice to Mozart's "La Clemenza di Tito"
Angela Mao, The Boston Classical Review | April 15, 2012
La Clemenza di Tito is the least performed and most difficult to execute of Mozart’s mature operas. Not only does the score call for a castrato (taken by a mezzo-soprano or countertenor today) prima donna with both extraordinary fire and range, the serious work lacks Mozart’s usual light touch more ...
Emmanuel Music Performs Mozart's Rarely Staged Operatic Salute to Forgivness - "La Clemenza di Tito"
Susan Miron, Arts Fuse | April 15, 2012
Sellars' on Bach's Matthäus-PassionConcertgoers expect certain things from Emmanuel Music’s concerts: excellent singers, superb instrumentalists, and performances that are well-conducted, well-attended, and historically informed. Last Saturday night, all these criteria were met in a thoroughly engaging, un-staged version of Mozart penultimate, rarely heard opera, La Clemenza di Tito (K. 621). more ...
April 8, 2012
Recently uploaded, here's an hour-long interview of Peter Sellars with Simon Halsey (chief conductor of the Rundfunkchor Berlin) from April 2010 in the Berlin Philharmonie all about Bach's early music masterpiece, Matthäus-Passion more ...
Schumann’s scenes of childhood, unrequited love
Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe | February 21, 2012
The poet James Fenton has written about the purity and intensity of joy we experience as young children through activities as simple as dancing, jumping, and singing. There is a kind of mercy, he says, in what he calls the “primal erasure,’’ the forgetting of these moments, or else their loveliness might spoil us for life more ...
From Bach to Stravinsky at Emmanuel
Jeffrey Gantz, The Boston Globe | February 13, 2012
Just about any program of classical music written after his death, in 1750, could be called “Connected by Bach,’’ so pervasive is the master’s influence. But the quartet of pieces that Emmanuel Music assembled for its concert Saturday night at Emmanuel Church would have been welcome under any rubric: Bach’s own Orchestral Suite No. 4, John Corigliano’s “Fancy on a Bach Air,’’ Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks’’ Concerto, and then, for the second half of the evening, Stravinsky’s complete “Pulcinella’’ ballet. more ...
Stravinsky, Corigliano are colorfully connected with Bach by Emmanuel Music
David Wright, The Boston Classical Review | February 12, 2012
Emmanuel Music, founded to perform the cantatas of J.S. Bach, turned a refracting telescope on the master Saturday night at Emmanuel Church with a program of his orchestral music coupled with 20th-century works by Stravinsky and Corigliano. more ...
In sharing cycle of a love - and life - lost, tenor makes Sunday super
Harlow Robinson, The Boston Globe | February 8, 2012
While much of Boston was setting out the hors d’oeuvres for Super Bowl parties, a crowd packed into the parish hall at Emmanuel Church late Sunday afternoon to witness a more intimate kind of matchup. This one also lasted for about 60 minutes, but without any timeouts or halftime. It did not require protective clothing, but demanded no less stamina, conditioning, or psychological preparation. There were only two participants: tenor Frank Kelley and pianist Russell Sherman more ...
Kelley and Sherman Ably Tell the Tale
Anthony J. Palmer, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | February 7, 2012
Emmanuel Music continues to offer programs of unique interest to the Boston concert-going public. Franz Schubert’s first song cycle, Die schöne Müllerin, was given a thorough and heartfelt reading in Emmanuel Church on February 5 for an adoring crowd of some 300 listeners. Schubert made a major contribution to the Romantic legacy, and certainly established a song repertoire, not since surpassed, with some 600 solo works in his short life of 31 years more ...
Emmanuel Music Delivers
Susan Miron, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | January 23, 2012
For the fourth and last of this year’s concerts dedicated to Beethoven’s chamber music, Emmanuel Music presented some quite rarely heard works, all of which deserved a hearing. Four string players, two horn players, a baritone and a pianist took turns entertaining the full hall, and brought this series to an unusually delightful end more ...
Emmanuel Music’s Early Beethoven Banquet
James C.S. Liu, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | January 10, 2012
Emmanuel Music continued the second year of their Beethoven chamber series at Emmanuel Church on Sunday, January 8 with another program exploring Beethoven’s creative output in his earliest years. For quite a few years, Emmanuel Music has explored the chamber music of several composers in comprehensive fashion, playing little-known and under-appreciated works alongside art songs and more popular warhorses more ...
Emmanuel Music's B Minor Mass
Jeffrey Gantz, The Boston Phoenix | October 3, 2011
Johann Sebastian Bach wasn't the first composer to recycle previous material, but he might have been the first to put together his own greatest-hits album. Conceived in 1733, as an offering to the new Elector of Saxony, Bach's Mass in B minor wasn't completed till 1749, the year before his death, and he borrowed liberally from his cantatas and oratorios to create this affirmation of personal belief, a massive work spanning close to two hours (or more, if you're Otto Klemperer) more ...
Emmanuel brings mastery, if not mystery, to Bach’s B minor Mass
Matthew Guerrieri, The Boston Globe | September 27, 2011
Believe it or not, there are places in the world where performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s B minor Mass are fairly rare. In Boston, however, rare is the season that passes without at least one opportunity to hear that monument. On Saturday, it was Emmanuel Music offering the Mass as its concert season opener, led by its director, Ryan Turner. And the performance demonstrated both the advantages of such familiarity and, perhaps, the dangers. more ...
Much More Than Justice For Bach’s B-minor Mass
Cashman Kerr Prince, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | September 25, 2011
The nave of Emmanuel Church in Boston was filled on Saturday evening, September 24, for Emmanuel Music’s presentation of Bach’s B-minor Mass, BWV 23. TheMass is both a curiosity and a summation: the curiosity comes from a devout Lutheran writing a (not-quite Roman Catholic) Mass complete with Nicene Creed, a work the composer never heard performed; and a summation of the composer’s career, encompassing self-citation, range of compositional and contrapuntal technique, as well as a devoted setting of the text of the mass which must clearly owe something to the composer’s own religious feeling. more ...
2010-2011 Season
No Idle Hands in Emmanuel’s Excellent Rake
Geoffrey Weiting, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | April 19, 2011
Emmanuel Music ventured a bit off their “beaten path” on Saturday, April 16, presenting Igor Stravinsky’s famed opera, The Rake’s Progress, inspired by a series of paintings and engravings of that name by eighteenth-century artist William Hogarth. Ryan Turner expertly led a fine cast, orchestra, and chorus, and the performance was a virtually unqualified success. more ...
Honoring a lyrical lament of love lost
Matthew Guerrieri, The Boston Globe | April 18, 2011
In the first act of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress,’’ Tom Rakewell, a fledgling libertine, grieves for lost love. “How sad a song,’’ a chorus of prostitutes replies, “but sadness charms.’’ It took a little while, but Emmanuel Music’s concert performance of the opera on Saturday night eventually achieved that balance of charismatic, exuberant woe. more ...
Emmanuel’s Final Beethoven
Larry Phillips, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | March 3, 2011
The final Beethoven concert of the Emmanuel Music season took place in the Parish Hall of Emmanuel Church on the afternoon of Feb. 27. Unlike the others in this chamber music series, this one was all instrumental, taken from the composer’s early years. In his introductory remarks, Emmanuel Music Director Ryan Turner explained that these pieces reflected different aspects of Beethoven’s character: the street smart, the Mozartean, and the most popular piece in the composer’s lifetime (even though he disparaged it.) more ...
Focus on Beethoven’s Early Years in Vienna
Virginia Newes, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | February 15, 2011
The first of two concerts in Emmanuel Music’s Sunday afternoon Winter Beethoven Chamber series, on February 13 in the Parish Hall at Emmanuel Church, was devoted to songs and chamber works from Beethoven’s first years in Vienna. Having arrived there at the end of 1792, Beethoven set himself the task of mastering all the then-current musical genres. more ...
Attend the Service for Emmanuel’s Bach Cantata
David Schulenberg, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | January 19, 2011
Boston’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Newbury Street became famous among music lovers during the 1970s for the performances of Bach cantatas led by the late Craig Smith during its Sunday services. The tradition continues under Ryan Turner, Smith’s successor as church Music Director and Artistic Director of Emmanuel Music, the church’s resident ensemble. more ...
Harbison has faith in Bach translation
David Weininger, The Boston Globe | January 14, 2011
John Harbison’s first experience of singing Bach cantatas came in the early 1960s, when he was a student in Berlin. There he sang with a church school choir called the Spandauer Kantorei and was an assistant to its director, Hanns-Martin Schneidt. Harbison remembers Schneidt’s insistent focus on the cantatas’ words, and the impression those words made on his fellow singers, all of whom spoke German as a native tongue. more ...
Unusual Beethoven at Emmanuel
Larry Phillips, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | November 17, 2010
Emmanuel Music presented their second Beethoven chamber series at Emmanuel Church on Sunday afternoon, November 14. In the words of Artistic Director Ryan Turner, this series is “somewhat chronological” and ended with the “recreational” Beethoven, selections from the Scottish songs, op. 108. more ...
Felicities and Gloomy Songs from Emmanuel
Larry Phillips, The Boston Musical Intelligencer | November 2, 2010
Emmanuel Music, under new artistic director Ryan Turner, began its chamber music series on Sunday afternoon, October 31, at Emmanuel Church. In a nod to the late Craig Smith, founder of Emmanuel Music, the concert featured early works by Beethoven surrounding the somber Gellert songs, when the composer was experiencing deafness. more ...
Alexander’s Feast at Emmanuel, an Impressive
Introduction for Ryan Turner
Christopher Greenleaf, The Boston Music Intelligencer | November 17, 2010
After the shock of losing visionary founder Craig Smith in 2007, Emmanuel Music eyed its future with commendable restraint and, after a good think, placed the shaping of its course in the hands of another thinking man’s choral conductor, Ryan Turner. more ...
2009-2010 Season
Season Announcement
Emmanuel emerges from founder's shadow
David Weininger, Boston Globe | June 5, 2009From its creation in 1970, Emmanuel Music has been associated inextricably with the artistic spirit of its founder, Craig Smith. Even after Smith's death, in 2007, his influence has lingered. The organization's last two seasons had been planned by Smith prior to his passing. more…
2008-2009 Season
J.S. Bach - St. Matthew Passion
A mighty night for Emmanuel
Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe | April 4, 2009Since Craig Smith's death in 2007, composer John Harbison has been in a caretaker role at Emmanuel Music, serving as acting artistic director. This season, Emmanuel has been honoring Smith's legacy with a series of Bach concerts culminating this weekend with two performances of the composer's mighty "St. Matthew Passion." more…
Lindsey Chapel Series: Bach’s Cello Suites
Cello Mid-day Treats at Emmanuel
Larry Phillips, Boston Musical Intelligencer | April 3, 2009Emmanuel Music gave the Boston musical community a splendid present by presenting all six Bach cello suites by different cellists in free midday concerts on successive Thursdays in Back Bay’s intimate Leslie Lindsey Chapel. Performing between February 26 and April 2 were Rhonda Rider, Shannon Snapp, Joshua Gordon, Michael Curry, Beth Pearson, and Rafael Popper-Keizer. more…
A gold mine of six cello suites
David Weininger, Boston Globe | February 21, 2009 more...
Schumann Chamber Series: Final Year
Emmanuel Music Continues Schumann Concerts with Intensity, Balance, and Grace
David Griesinger, Boston Musical Intelligencer | February 2, 2009This week’s Schumann offering from Emmanuel Music, now in its fifth year of presenting all of Robert Schumann’s compositions, featured two guest artists, Ya-Fei Chuang and Robert Levin, with Emmanue Music regulars. The program consisted of Wilhelm Meister Lieder, Op 98a, with Kendra Colton, soprano, Mark McSweeney, bass, and Ya-Fei Chuang, piano. It was followed by the composer’s Toccata in C Major, Op. 7, Ya-Fei Chuang at the piano. The final piece was the Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 63, with Rose Mary Harbison, violin, Rhonda Rider, cello, and Robert Levin, piano. more...
CD: Lorraine at Emmanuel
Jeremy Eichler’s top CD picks of 2008
Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe | December 14, 2008From the archives of Emmanuel Music comes this moving disc of performances by the revered mezzo-soprano, mostly led by the late Craig Smith, a pillar of the local music community. more...
J.S. Bach – Brandenburg Concertos
Taking Bach in a clever direction
David Weininger, Boston Globe | September 20, 2008Emmanuel Music's 2008-09 season is the last to have been planned by its late founder, Craig Smith, and is dedicated to his memory. Smith was not a man to do things halfway; comprehensiveness was his mantra. So it comes as little surprise that he would have programmed all six of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos for Thursday's opening-night concert. more...
2007-2008 Season
Collaboration with Mark Morris Dance Group: Dido and Aenas
Morris’s next step is with a baton
David Weininger, Boston Globe | May 23, 2008 more...
Bach: Mass in B minor
Emmanuel’s Bach B-minor Mass
Lloyd Schwartz, Boston Phoenix | April 15, 2008 more...Difficult season ends on the right note
David Weininger, Boston Globe | April 14, 2008 more...
Bach: St. John Passion
Great Gifts
Lloyd Schwartz, Boston Phoenix | March 12, 2008 more...A Passion to rouse and soothe the spirit at a time of loss
David Perkins, Boston Globe | March 11, 2008 more...A passion to carry on
After the death of founder Craig Smith, Emmanuel Music looks to the future
David Weininger, The Boston Globe | March 7, 2008 more...
Craig Smith Memorial
Recalling a conductor who built grandly at home
Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe | February 2, 2008 more...Love and loss, Classical: 2007 in review
Lloyd Schwartz, Boston Phoenix | December 18, 2007 more...Craig Smith, 60; with Emmanuel, he created a nexus of joy and music
Jeremy Eichler, Boston Globe | November 15, 2007 more...
Russell Sherman: J.S. Bach – English Suites
Unconventional Bach of the highest order
David Weininger, Boston Globe | January 29, 2008 more...
Schumann Chamber Series, Year 4
A lovely showcase for Schumanns’ work
David Perkins, Boston Globe | October 17, 2007 more...
Bach: Art of Fugue
The art of … Bach at Emmanuel
Lloyd Schwartz, Boston Phoenix | October 16, 2007 more...