Early Music America Winter 2013 - (Page 2)

Editor'snote W When spiffy performances of Mozart, Telemann, and other Baroque and Classical composers on original instruments begin to pour from the ceiling speakers at the local supermarket (mine is Shaw's in Wareham, Massachusetts), an editor of a national early music magazine might well think it's time to retire. (And so I have- see page 5.) The recordings are programmed by an outside ﬁrm, Play Network, but Shaw's speciﬁes what they want to hear. Shaw's executive Steve Sylven says, "We generally select the genre of music in an effort to provide a pleasing experience for our customers." And pleasing it is; often the concertizing is good enough to stop me in the aisles, making me late to get home for dinner. I've always assumed that zarzuela was a 19th- or early 20th-century form of musical theater. For opera singer Placido Domingo, zarzuela is a family tradition. As his web site tells it, "he appeared in Moreno Torroba's Luisa Fernanda in Milan, singing-like his father many years ago-the baritone role of Don Vidal. Luisa Fernanda was also performed by Washington National Opera in 2004, at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 2006, and by Los Angeles Opera in 2007." I actually attended an entertaining, if somewhat incomprehensible, low-budget zarzuela production on the lower East Side of New York City in the early 1980s. What a pleasant surprise, then, to ﬁnd that zarzuela traces its roots (zarzas = brambles) back to the mid-17th century. "Let's put on a... Zarzuela!" by Rachel Penn Adams (page 29) tells how a dream of Orchestra of New Spain's director Grover Wilkins-staging Sebastián Durón's Las Nuevas armas de amor-germinated for two decades before it ﬁnally ﬂowered in Dallas's new City Performance Hall last February. Back in 1992 when Grover Wilkins ﬁrst envisioned his Baroque zarzuela production, Boston Baroque (née Banchetto Musicale) was already entering a kind of midlife crisis. A promising recording contract with Telarc required a change to a more marketable name. The transition, we now know, worked seamlessly, but if we take ourselves back to the organization's beginnings as described by Keith Powers in "A Banquet of Music 40 Years in the Serving" (page 36), we can appreciate the far-reaching early decisions made by director Martin Pearlman. If 40 years suggests a Biblical journey to you, think how long Johann Ludwig Krebs had to wait to come into his Promised Land-300 years after his birth! Now, musicians like Rebecca Pechefsky are taking a searching look at the quality (and humor) of Krebs's oeuvre, especially the less well-known chamber music, and, as she writes in "Honoring Krebs" (page 43), they are finding "a rhythmic vitality and willingness to play with the melodic and harmonic material in a way I can only describe as simply 'having fun with it.' " No matter how long you've been around in this field, it's encouraging to realize that there are still applecarts to upset. After conducting Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in Hawaii, James Richman concludes (page 64) that Dido was not all that captivated by the legendary hero of Troy. We should always be open to discovering new slants on musical history. Editor Benjamin Dunham editor@earlymusic.org Publisher Ann Felter ann@earlymusic.org Editorial Advisory Board Maria Coldwell Jeffery T. Kite-Powell David Klausner Steven Lubin Anthony P. Martin Advertising Manager Patrick Nugent ads@earlymusic.org Recording Reviews Editor Tom Moore recordings@earlymusic.org Book Reviews Editor Mark Kroll books@earlymusic.org Editorial Associate Mark Longaker emag@earlymusic.org Editorial Assistant Andrew Levy Early Music America (ISSN #1083-3633) is published quarterly by Early Music America, Inc., 801 Vinial Street, Suite 300, Pittsburgh, PA 15212. Subscription price (4 issues) Individual, U.S. and Canada $30; Institutional $80-$135; overseas add $10 for shipping and handling. Periodicals postage paid at Pittsburgh, PA, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Early Music America, Inc., 801 Vinial Street, Suite 300, Pittsburgh, PA 15212. Copyright © 2013 by Early Music America, Inc., and its contributors. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of any work herein without the express permission of Early Music America or other copyright owner is unlawful. EMA Office 801 Vinial Street, Suite 300, Pittsburgh, PA 15212 412/642-2278 Fax: 412/642-2279 Toll-free: 888/SACKBUT E-mail: info@earlymusic.org www.earlymusic.org 2 Winter 2013 Early Music America http://www.earlymusic.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Winter 2013

Editor's Note
Reader Forum
Sound Bytes
Musings: Time Traveling with Instruments
Profile: Pure Gold: Beiliang Zhu
Recording Reviews
Let's put on a... Zarzuela!
A Banquet of Music 40 Years in the Serving
Honoring Krebs
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: Dido and Aeneas Reconsidered

Early Music America Winter 2013