In the premiere of Matthew Qualye's "Gridley Paige Road" for string ensemble, it's the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra vs. Paul Henry Smith's digitally synthesized Fauxharmonic Orchestra. The Baltimore Sun's Tim Smith separates the G strings from the megabytes:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/music/bal-to.bcooct28,0,416493.story
Estonia is a locus of contemporary music, and the University of Richmond's Modlin Arts Center samples the Baltic nation's sonic riches, in print in Style Weekly, online at:
http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=18065
Oct. 25, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond
Awadagin Pratt, who created quite a stir as a young pianist in the early 1990s, is now 42, an established artist with an academic residency (at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music) and nearly 20 years 
In his first visit to Richmond since 1996, Pratt reprised two staples of his solo repertory, Beethoven’s Sonata in A flat major, Op. 110, and Harold Bauer’s transcription of César Franck’s Prelude, Fugue and Variations, and played his own arrangement of Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor.
Pratt is a power hitter when he chooses to be, and one would expect power aplenty in the Liszt. This performance was more striking, however, in its yearning treatment of the sonata’s recurring lyrical subject and brooding statement of the introduction and coda. The intervening pyrotechnics weren’t beside the point, exactly, but came across as episodes between weightier or more heartfelt matters.
The Beethoven sounded somewhat similarly inverted. This is one of the composer’s shorter and, as usually played, more understated sonatas. Pratt’s reading was assertive and nervy, high-romantic rhapsodic in its songful first movement, hard-edged and as sharply accented as a rustic folk dance in its second movement and fugal finale.
The Bach and Franck brought out the best in this pianist. Pratt audibly relishes the formal logic of theme and variations and the balancing act of right and left hands in a fugue. A substantive or expressive tune compounds his engagement.
His Bach arrangement was weighty and more austere than the typical romantic-era organ-to-piano conversion, and featured a nice jolt of humor in its brief quotation of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
The Franck was a labor of love, with the labor sublimated. Pratt caressed the big lyrical theme until it fairly purred and surrounded it with what sounded like an ecstatic improvisation. I doubt that any pianist at work today could improve on his interpretation of this piece.
Awadagin Pratt joins the Virginia Symphony for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 at 8 p.m. Oct. 31 and Nov. 6 at Christopher Newport University's Ferguson Arts Center in Newport News, 8 p.m. Nov. 1 at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk and 2:30 p.m. Nov. 2 at the Sandler Arts Center in Virginia Beach. Tickets: $23-$83. Details: (757) 892-6366; http://www.virginiasymphony.org/
Pratt returns to Richmond to join the One Voice community chorus in Beethoven’s "Choral Fantasy" at 7 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Greater Richmond Convention Center. Ticket information TBA. Details: (804) 231-0324; www.onevoicechorus.org
Virginia Opera, Peter Mark conducting
Oct. 24, Landmark Theater, Richmond
The Virginia Opera’s season-opening production of "Il Trovatore" is a consistently gripping piece of Italianate musical melodrama – strikingly staged, boasting a stellar tenor in Gustavo López Manzitti and a super-stellar 
Golbourne, as the tormented gypsy Azucena, is one of the most remarkable singing actresses ever to perform with this company. Her tone is both rich and biting, and bottoms out below conventional contralto range in a true female baritone. She projects her voice powerfully, and is an intensely dramatic presence, commanding any scene in which she appears. This is the second production in which she has sung Azucena; it won’t be long, I’ll bet, before she's singing the role in the leading opera houses.
Manzitti, as the troubadour (Trovator) Manrico, is a robust, animated and satisfyingly emotive leading man, in consistently good voice and quite capable of pitching the high notes to the rafters. He holds his own in his scenes with Golbourne – no small feat – and reins in his voice to complement others in this opera’s many ensemble numbers.
Baritone Nmon Ford, a regular in Virginia Opera casts in recent years, is a convincing and nicely nuanced heavy as DiLuna, Manrico’s rival (and, he learns too late, sibling). Soprano Eilana Lappalainen, who last appeared with this company as Violetta in a 1994 "Traviata," plunges gamely into the melodramatics of Leonora, object of the affections of Manrico and DiLuna, but struggles with the bel canto demands of the role. Bass-baritone Ashraf Sewailam is similarly taxed vocally as Di Luna’s lieutenant Ferrando.
Stage director Lillian Groag keeps a large cast moving and nicely frames leads in scenes with choristers and supernumeraries. Michael Ganio’s darkly minimalist sets and Richard Winkler’s moody lighting underscore the darkness of this music drama. The orchestra, drawn from Norfolk’s Virginia Symphony, sounds unusually full-bodied and punchy, and its winds and brass add nicely atmospheric sonority.
The final performance of this Virginia Opera production of "Il Trovatore" begins at 2:30 p.m. Oct. 26 at the Landmark Theater, Main and Laurel streets in Richmond. Tickets: $22.50-$87.50. Details: (804) 262-8003 (Ticketmaster), www.vaopera.org
Oct. 15, University of Richmond
On a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 733 points and CBS pollsters reported that more than one-third of both John McCain’s and Barack Obama’s supporters would "detest" the other candidate as president, what better way to spend the evening than to recall the musical amusements of Germany as it was about to slide into depression and political upheaval?
The timing of this performance by Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester, a singer and big band reviving songs and dance tunes heard in the nightclubs and dance halls of the late Weimar Republic, was coincidental – socioeconomic forecasting is not a factor in talent booking by the University of Richmond’s Modlin Arts Center. But the coincidence was pretty spooky.
Even the historically hyper-conscious, however, would have been hard-pressed to detect intimations of doom in this show, titled "Tonight or Never."
The selections were American Tin Pan Alley chestnuts garnished with German novelties, mostly naïvely romantic or jocular in tone, sung by Raabe, a lyric baritone who exudes a dry wit in place of the stereotypical cabaret leer, and played by a band that, in 1920s style, features fiddles and early jazz rhythm instruments (tuba, banjo, mallet percussion) alongside the standard brass and reed sections.
European pop and jazz of the ’20s are propelled by the same boop-boop-be-doop rhythmic energy of American music of the time, but with continental touches of gypsy and klezmer music and subtle echoes of the waltz and other European dances. Raabe and company strain this hybrid sound through a filter of art-deco elegance and an emotional tenor that can be perceived as detached or ironic. It’s escapist entertainment, but you can’t be sure what you’re escaping from or what refuge you should expect to land in.
Seeing and hearing a lanky gent with lacquered hair and garbed in white tie and tails singing "Bei mir bist du schoen" (and not mispronouncing "schoen") has the ring of authenticity. He’s still on fairly solid ground in "Singing in the Rain" and "Dancing Cheek to Cheek." But when he turns to "Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" a weirdly appealing cognitive dissonance begins to kick in. By the time he gets to "My Gorilla Has a Villa," we’ve lurched into infectiously giddy surreality.
Raabe inhabits much the same time warp as Leon Redbone, the veteran American revivalist of old-time popular song, and manages a comparable balance between period stylistic rigor and post-modern comic sensibility. The difference is that Redbone is generally a one-man band, while Raabe fronts a large ensemble of virtuoso musicians, several of whom are multi-instrumentalists (a trombonist doubling on viola!), and are willing and able to step into vocal ensembles and provide bits of shtick comedy.
Redbone's venue is a juke joint. Raabe plays the Palast.
Paul Lay of The Guardian recommends Bach's Cantata 168, "Tue Rechnung! Donnerwort!" ("Give an account of yourself! Word of thunder!"), as fitting accompaniment for the current economic crisis.
"Capital and interest must one day be settled," the tenor declares. Ach, so . . .
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/oct/14/credit-crunch-icesave-bach
The Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, whose Third String Quartet is being introduced this 
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/20081012_This_birthday_is_serious_business_for_Penderecki.html
