By Dan Wolfe

Burlington, VT. 1 July 2011. The second concert in this superb summer series, entitled "Intensely Romantic" featured music of Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)and Johannes Brahms(1833-1897). Grieg was a well-known concertizer in England as was his wife. The piano concerto (1870) and his music for piano and other works were gathered together in the 1940s to be the score for a musical comedy about Grieg. The Six German Songs, Op.48, were sung by baritone Valentin Lanzrein and Wonmin Kim, piano. The six songs were: Gruss; Dereinst,Gedanke mein; Lauf der Welt;Die verschwiegene Nachtigall; Zur Rosenzeit; and Ein Traum. Lanzrein has a well-cultivated voice, but to say that his rendition of the songs was characterless is only made all the more obvious in that the program was called "Intensely Romantic", undoubtedly to the chagrin of Lanzrein.

By Dan Wolfe

Burlington, VT. 29 June 2011.  Now its sixth summer season at the University of Vermont, the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival has achieved a stellar position together with the Green Mountain Opera Festival and they are the places to be for high-quality music performance during the months of June and July.  This year's programs have an overall purpose of looking at the major musical styles and some leading exponents and how they were the focal points for the transitioning into the next style. The first concert, entitled "Classical Journey", that was offered this year on Wednesday, 29 June at 7:30pm at the Redstone Recital Hall, located on South Prospect, south of Main Street. It is a grateful space for performers.

By Dan Wolfe

Barre, VT, 19 June 2011. The Green Mountain Opera Festival presented the second performance of their sixth season to a highly receptive audience from all over Vermont. Barre is located in central Vermont, yet no matter how far the audience members had come, if they had attended previous productions by the company they knew they had a sure thing.  It wasn't simply because their production this year was of  Bizet's (1838-1875) Carmen (1873), one opera that is never out of favor; add to that fact the incredible Lucia they mounted last year (June 2010) containing the original scoring that included a glass harmonica in the mad scene where previous snippets of melody from earlier in the score have returned to haunt her crazed mind;  add also to that one of the finest productions (2009) of  Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro that I have ever seen,  remarkable for its absolutely gorgeous sets and costumes, as well as the fact that the singers showed themselves to be innovative in the best sense in the way that they approached and executed Mozart's arias and recitatives. The audiences were right on target: Carmen was a hit at all levels.

By Dan Wolfe

Burlington, VT,  20 May 2011. The Cathedral Church of St. Paul was the setting for pianists Elaine Greenfield and Janice Meyer Thompson, aka The Transcontinental Piano Duo, in which they gave their yearly concert, always a concert awaited with great expectations.  This year's concert was no exception.