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    Roger Norrington, Iconoclastic British Conductor, Dies at 91

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    His work, largely unknown outside Britain until late in his career, was often based on historical treatises. It was seen by many as refreshingly innovative.Roger Norrington, the English conductor who became a star of the historically informed performance movement by provocatively applying scholarly research about tempos and tone production to a broad expanse of the symphonic repertoire, from Beethoven to Mahler and even the modernist Stravinsky, died on Friday at his home outside of Exeter, England. He was 91.His death was confirmed by his friend and musical colleague Evans Mirageas, who is the artistic director of the Cincinnati Opera.Mr. Norrington was known for his brisk, lively and often audacious performances of Handel, Mozart and Haydn before he turned his attention to Beethoven and Berlioz; after that, he forged deeper into the 19th and early 20th centuries. He led both period-instrument and modern orchestras, using the same interpretive principles, and though some of his performances drew criticism for their brash iconoclasm, many listeners regarded them as insightful and refreshingly original.Lanky, bespectacled, bearded and balding, Mr. Norrington projected both affability and authority, and he loved making the case for his ideas — not only in interviews but also in seemingly off-the-cuff comments at his concerts. He often cited centuries-old treatises as well as his delight in the “pure” sound, as he put it, of strings playing without vibrato. He once famously referred to vibrato as “a modern drug.”Toward the end of his career, he preferred to conduct while seated, usually on a high swivel chair that allowed him to turn to the audience to smile conspiratorially at a light moment within the music, and even to encourage applause. He was known to tell audiences that they could applaud between the movements of a symphony or a concerto, a common practice in the 18th and 19th centuries that is frowned on today.He reveled in being provocative. In a 2021 interview with The Telegraph, he referred to his 2007 recording of Mahler’s Second Symphony as his “last hand grenade.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Only 5 Fingers Playing Piano, but the Sound of So Many Hands

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      When Nicholas McCarthy was 15, he telephoned a local music school to ask about taking piano lessons and mentioned that he was disabled, having been born without a right hand.The school principal didn’t take the news well. “How will you even play scales?” McCarthy recalled her saying, dismissively, before hanging up.Now, some 20 years later, McCarthy is set to prove anyone who doubted him wrong — and in a high-profile way. On Sunday at the Royal Albert Hall in London, McCarthy is the star name for a concert at the Proms, Britain’s most prominent classical music series.In front of thousands of spectators in the hall, as well a live TV audience, McCarthy, 36, will perform Maurice Ravel’s bravura Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, using the grand piano’s sustain pedal to elongate the bass notes while his hand leaps around the keyboard.“Ravel’s really created an aural illusion,” McCarthy said. “Everyone might be thinking, ‘Bloody hell, I’m only seeing five fingers playing, but I’m hearing so many hands.’”Nicholas McCarthy will perform Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Sunday.Hayley Benoit for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Des Moines, Big Operas and Big Ambitions Fill a Tiny Theater

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      Richard Wagner may be the opera composer most associated with epic grandeur: huge orchestras, huger sets. I never imagined I’d hear a full performance of one of his works while sitting just a few feet from the singers.But Des Moines Metro Opera, a four-week summer festival founded in 1973 and running this year through July 20, has made a specialty of squeezing pieces usually done in front of thousands into a startlingly intimate space. The company’s 476-seat theater wraps the stage around the pit and juts deep into the audience, drawing even the last row into the action.At the opening of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” in the last week of June, the bass-baritone Ryan McKinny could brood in a murmur as the endlessly wandering captain of the title, while the choruses of raucous sailors were ear-shakingly visceral. It registered when the subtlest Mona Lisa smile crossed the face of Julie Adams as Senta, whose romantic obsession leads her to sacrifice everything for the Dutchman. Try that at the Met.Miye Bishop as the Dragonfly in “The Cunning Little Vixen,” with high-definition LED video by the designer and filmmaker Oyoram.Kathryn Gamble for The New York Times“When you first get here, it’s a little intimidating,” said the mezzo-soprano Sun-Ly Pierce, a Des Moines regular in recent years. “There’s no hiding, or even trying to. Everything is in hyper detail. Everything is in close-up.”The effect would be striking enough in Mozart or chamber opera. But the company has made a habit of putting on big, challenging works of a sort rarely if ever done in theaters so small: “Salome,” “Elektra,” “Pelléas et Mélisande,” “Billy Budd,” “Peter Grimes” and “Wozzeck,” with modest adjustments to some orchestrations, given a pit that fits about 65 musicians.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Valery Gergiev, Shunned in West Over Putin Support, Will Conduct in Italy

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      Valery Gergiev, an ally of Vladimir V. Putin, is set to conduct in Western Europe for the first time since institutions there cut ties over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Valery Gergiev, the star Russian maestro who has been shunned in the West because of his close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, will appear this month at a festival in Italy, his first engagement in Western Europe since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Mr. Gergiev, a staunch ally of Mr. Putin who has helped promote the president’s policies, is set to conduct on July 27 at the Royal Palace of Caserta, a historic site north of Naples, the Un’Estate da RE festival announced last week. He will lead an orchestra from Salerno, Italy, in a program featuring performers from the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, which Mr. Gergiev leads.The announcement drew protests from Italian politicians and activists, who expressed concern that Mr. Gergiev was being allowed to perform again in the West. Mr. Gergiev, whose extensive international career once made him one of the busiest maestros in the world, has been declared unwelcome in the United States and Europe since the Russian invasion.Mr. Gergiev did not respond to a request for comment.The decision to engage Mr. Gergiev also drew criticism because the festival is bankrolled by the European Union. Its funding flows, via Italy’s national government, to a company owned by the Campania region, where the festival takes place. The company funds several cultural events throughout the region, including Un’Estate da RE.Pina Picierno, a left-leaning Italian politician who serves as a vice president of the European Parliament, said that it was “unacceptable that European funds are being used to finance the performance of a Kremlin supporter.” In a post on X, she called on the festival and on regional officials “to take immediate action to prevent Valery Gergiev’s participation and ensure that taxpayers’ money does not end up in the pockets of a supporter of a criminal regime.”Vincenzo De Luca, the center-left president of the Campania region, defended the festival’s decision to engage Mr. Gergiev in a statement. He said the invitation showed that “dialogue between people can grow and the values of human solidarity can develop.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Hunt for a 316-Year-Old Stradivarius Stolen in the Fog of War

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      The violin by the famed Italian luthier was plundered at the end of World War II and presumed lost or destroyed. Now experts say they believe it has resurfaced.As Germany devolved into chaos at the end of World War II, a rare violin from the famed shop of the Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari was plundered from a bank safe in Berlin.The instrument, crafted in 1709 during the golden age of violin-making, had been deposited there years earlier by the Mendelssohn-Bohnke family as Nazi persecution put assets owned by Jews in jeopardy.For decades after the war, the family searched to no avail for the violin, known as the Mendelssohn, placing ads in magazines and filing reports with the German authorities. The violin, valued at millions of dollars, was presumed lost or destroyed.The Mendelssohn Stradivarius is shown here in black-and-white photos before it was stolen. It bears striking similarities to an instrument that passed through a New York auction house in 2000, shown here in color.Carla Shapreau; Mendelssohn-Bohnke Papers; TarisioNow, the Mendelssohn may have resurfaced. An eagle-eyed cultural property scholar, Carla Shapreau, recently came across photos from a 2018 exhibition of Stradivarius instruments in Tokyo. She spotted a violin that bore striking similarities to the Mendelssohn, though it has a different name — Stella — and creation date — 1707 instead of 1709.“My jaw dropped,” said Shapreau, a senior fellow with the Institute of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, who had been searching for the instrument for more than 15 years.

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      We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lawrence Power Wants You to Pay Attention to the Viola

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      Lawrence Power’s instrument has been overlooked throughout its history. He has made a career of changing that.Hector Berlioz’s “Harold in Italy” is full of wandering. In his memoirs he wrote that, through this symphony with viola obbligato, based on the mood of Lord Byron’s poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” and inspired by the composer’s unfruitful time in Italy, he sought to make the viola “a kind of melancholy dreamer.”The violist Lawrence Power has spent his whole career playing “Harold in Italy.” But, he said in an interview, he has always been “completely uncomfortable and just confused by the whole piece.” It’s essentially a symphony, but completely different from a conventional one, with a viola solo part that drifts in and out of the action. Berlioz “obviously had something in mind to have the viola separate from the orchestra,” Power said, guessing that the composer “had something theatrical in mind.”In a dramatized performance of “Harold in Italy” with Aurora Orchestra at the Southbank Center in London late last month, Power leaned into that wandering, theatrical spirit, something that has also become a hallmark of his recent work. After whistling the piece’s idée fixe, or recurring theme, while strolling from a raised platform amid the ensemble, Power recited searching sections of Berlioz’s memoirs and wandered through the auditorium, playing sections of the obbligato part with a distant, slightly aloof expression.This is just another idiosyncratic project by Power, somebody who has championed the viola for the past 25 years, with a particular focus on new work. He’s not alone: Viola soloists often have to become champions for their instrument, which has been underappreciated throughout its history.“There’s no defined idea of what a viola is,” Power said.Kalpesh Lathigra for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      100 Years After His Death, Will We Ever Understand Satie?

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      If you’ve ever looked up a playlist to help you relax, focus or fall asleep, you’ve probably come across the music of Erik Satie.Most likely, you will have heard his “Gymnopédie No. 1”: a swaying foundation of chords that seem to step forward yet stay in place, somehow both independent of and supporting an instantly alluring melody.This piece’s popularity transcends genre, exemplifying the composer Virgil Thomson’s idea that Satie is the only composer “whose works can be enjoyed and appreciated without any knowledge of the history of music.”But Satie, while one of the most popular composers, is also one of the most enigmatic. He was a mystery to many during his lifetime and, a century after his death, remains elusive: a house of mirrors full of tricks, distortions and dead ends.Satie’s caricature of himself.API/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesThe more you try to understand Satie, the more difficult it becomes. His “Gymnopédies” are just a taste of a much bigger, stranger collection of works that are rarely heard. They were composed outside any fashion, and beyond traditional forms like the symphony and concerto, with scores idiosyncratic to the point of absurdity. To some they are a joke; to others they are disarming, a way to clear your mind and allow it to question the nature of music and performance. More

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      in Television

      Lalo Schifrin, 93, Dies; Composer of ‘Mission: Impossible’ and Much More

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      Lalo Schifrin, the Grammy-winning Argentine-born composer who evoked the ticking, ominous suspense of espionage with his indelible theme to the television series “Mission: Impossible” as well as scored movies like “Cool Hand Luke,” “Bullitt” and “Dirty Harry,” died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 93.His wife, Donna, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was complications of pneumonia.Mr. Schifrin had a startlingly diverse career as a composer, arranger and conductor in a wide range of genres — from classical to jazz to Latin to folk to rock to hip-hop to electronic to the ancient music of the Aztecs.He conducted symphony orchestras in London and Vienna, and philharmonic orchestras in Tel Aviv, Paris and Los Angeles. He arranged music for the Three Tenors. He provided what The Washington Post called the music of “rebellious cool” for Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood.When Mr. Schifrin won an honorary Academy Award in 2018, it was given to him by Clint Eastwood, a frequent collaborator.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesBut the prolific Mr. Schifrin, who wrote more than 100 film and television scores, was best known for “Mission: Impossible.” Interpretations of his propulsive theme have also been featured in the eight movies in the “Mission: Impossible” series, starring Tom Cruise, which began in 1996.Like John Williams, whose many compositions for film include the theme from “Jaws,” Mr. Schifrin was a master of creating jittery unease and peril. Both composers worked with a recognizable style and a distinct purpose.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More