Three vie for Boston podium
NewsIt’s Harry Christophers’ last season at the head of the Handel and Haydn Society.
New faces include debuts by conductors Václav Luks, Raphaël Pichon, and Laurence Equilbey (pic).
High noon.
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Václav Luks, Raphaël Pichon, Laurence Equilbey, plus
Jonathan Cohen.
(Collegium 1704, Pygmalion, Insula/Accentus, Arcangelo)
Fantastic musicians, all of them.
And the Handel and Haydn society at the moment has the wonderful countertenor Reginald Mobley on the artistic staff.
Early music heaven. Almost makes me wish I lived in Boston (or Prague, or Paris).
Jonathan Cohen also is MD of Les Violons du Roy, in Québec. I’d be surprised to see him take on a third job just a few hours away.
Mobley should keep quiet about programming. He brings politics into what should be an an arts organization. Artistic decisions should be made by the conductor. Not a committee.
Ah, the god conductor makes a comeback, and classical music retreats to an ivory tower.
I (in)sincerely hope Luks doesn’t get the job. I want to keep him in Prague and Dresden. Phenomenal conductor; every concert is a revelation. Esp. when he does Zelenka. Or anything else.
‘the wonderful countertenor Reginald Mobley’
There’s no such thing as a wonderful countertenor. If I insisted on speaking to you in falsetto, I’d consider it quite justified if you punched me in the face.
Vaclav Luks is one of the only HIP conductors who’s as good as Christophers and would be a magnificent traditional choice. Equilbey is not quite as masterly a conductor, but as an innovator she’s without parallel in the choral world. Accentus is a gamechanger of a choir, one of the world’s greatest musical organizations that moves the threshold of what music’s capable of doing. If H&H is looking to change what they do, they could not do better than Equilbey.