Que horas são em São Paulo, Brasil ?

quinta-feira, dezembro 28, 2006

wolf3


wolf3, originally uploaded by daCKY.

Taken at the Anglian Wolf Society in the UK

quarta-feira, dezembro 27, 2006

Lakota Wolf Preserve


Lakota Wolf Preserve, originally uploaded by Harrier.

Lakota Wolf Preserve

Located near the Delaware Water Gap, the Lakota Wolf Preserve is home to 27 wolves. These photos were shot during one of the daily Wolf Watch programs through the protective fence.

White Lion


White Lion, originally uploaded by samsarin42.

I Love Lions and this one here seams so "fancy" and posing like a model !

terça-feira, dezembro 26, 2006

Young Players Fulfill a Christmas Tradition at Carnegie Hall


The New York String Orchestra includes performers on woodwind, brass and percussion instruments, but why tamper with a name that has both cachet and tradition, however inaccurate it is nowadays. The group springs into being every December, when a few dozen young musicians (63 of them this year) come to New York from around the country for the New York String Orchestra Seminar. The program, 10 days of chamber and orchestra coaching for musicians between 15 and 22, is sponsored jointly by Carnegie Hall and the New School. It includes a pair of concerts at Carnegie Hall, the first always a relatively short, intermission-free program on Christmas Eve.


This year the Christmas Eve concert was devoted fully to Mozart, whose 250th anniversary year is quickly and, at long last, coming to a close; soon we’ll resume hearing Mozart all the time without having to give a reason.

There is of course ample reason for young musicians to spend quality time with Mozart, and the orchestra’s zesty, alert performances left a listener with the impression that these players were happy for the opportunity. Their performances, conducted by Jaime Laredo, were solidly unified, but flexible enough to provide the sudden, dramatic dynamic shifts that Mr. Laredo regularly demanded.

The concert was as much an opportunity to hear how Mr. Laredo’s conducting has changed over the years as to eavesdrop on the next generation of orchestral players. When he took over this orchestra in 1993, after the death of its founder, Alexander Schneider, Mr. Laredo adhered largely to his predecessor’s warmly Romantic approach, with fluid tempos, elongated phrases and even, at times, a hint of portamento applied to Baroque and Classical era works.

Gradually Mr. Laredo has updated his interpretive approach, and the orchestra’s sound. And on Sunday evening its Mozart was fully in the current style. The broadened chasm between piano and forte is part of it. So are relatively trim textures, and the breakneck tempos Mr. Laredo took, to the evident joy of the players, whose vigorous account of the “Impresario” Overture made it into something more than a curtain raiser.

In the Sinfonia Concertante, with Mr. Laredo conducting from the viola and Jennifer Koh as the violin soloist, the most notable moments were in the slow movement. There the violin, with its low-lying line, nearly matches the viola in tone, and Ms. Koh and Mr. Laredo played the serene dialogue with a meltingly beautiful sound.

The program ended with an appealingly rambunctious reading of the Symphony No. 36.

The ‘Ring’ Recycled, the Met Revitalized


LOOKING back over the year, I tried to compile a list of highs and lows in classical music. But call me irresponsible; I simply found too many exciting and meaningful achievements to dwell on the disappointments. So here are some of the most memorable events:




Gary Beechey
From left, Laura Whalen, Allyson McHardy and Krisztina Szabo in the Canadian Opera Company’s staging of “Das Rheingold.”
1. On paper a Britten evening may not have seemed the most daring way for the English tenor Ian Bostridge to begin his Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall. But that program, in Zankel Hall in March, presented this adventurous artist in Britten’s mercurial song cycle “Winter Words,” on poems by Thomas Hardy, and in the neglected Canticles, five unorthodox works for voices and instruments on texts ranging from Jacobean metaphysical poetry to T. S. Eliot. Mr. Bostridge gave haunting, deeply expressive and keenly intelligent performances.

2. The Shostakovich centennial was celebrated by the Emerson String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall and the Alexander String Quartet at the Baruch Performing Arts Center with competing cycles of the 15 quartets, performed in chronological order. It was a special privilege to hear the dynamic Alexander performances in Baruch College’s intimate 176-seat auditorium. Seldom have these anguished, playful, ironic and masterly works seemed so profoundly personal.

3. Two notable new productions of Wagner’s daunting “Ring des Nibelungen” came in close succession. In July, the Bayreuth Festival in Germany introduced an engrossingly modern staging by the playwright Tankred Dorst, which presented the gods, dwarfs and mortals as souls forgotten by the world who keep trying to relive their stories. The production was dominated by the organic, intense and insightful conducting of Christian Thielemann. Then, in September, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto offered an imaginative production with each opera staged by a different director, conducted vibrantly by Richard Bradshaw. But the big news there was the company’s splendid new home, an inviting, sleek and intimate house that seats just 2,000.

4. Peter Gelb, the new general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, deserves credit for his overdue, energetic and multifaceted public outreach efforts. And bringing Anthony Minghella’s visually arresting, highly stylized production of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” to New York in September was a bold way for Mr. Gelb to inaugurate his tenure.

5. The dramatic soprano Deborah Voigt had a career milestone at the Lyric Opera of Chicago with her first staged performances of the title role in Strauss’s “Salome,” beginning in October. After a long period of adjusting to her slimmed-down postsurgical body, Ms. Voigt looked vibrant and acted with abandon. But what mattered more was that she sounded vocally secure and confident, singing with unforced power, shimmering sound and supple phrasing. Imagine this punishing role actually sung, not shouted.

6. This month at Zankel Hall, the French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard brought his staggering technique, searching intellect and fantastical imagination to a program of 24 études that was itself an artistic creation. It was fascinating to hear musical resonances among varied works by Ligeti, Debussy, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Bartok and Liszt. As a last-minute surprise, Mr. Aimard also played the premiere of an impetuous, finger-twisting piano piece, “Caténaires,” by Elliott Carter, who was there to take a bow on his 98th birthday.

7. Happily, the year brought new recordings to assuage a loss. In July the incomparable mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died at 52. Two recordings released this year will enhance her legacy while enriching the repertory with recent works by her husband, Peter Lieberson. A highlight of a Lieberson recording on the Bridge label is a live 2004 version of his quizzical and harmonically spiky “Rilke Songs,” with Ms. Hunt Lieberson accompanied by the incisive pianist Peter Serkin. And just this month Nonesuch released a live 2005 recording of Mr. Lieberson’s “Neruda Songs,” settings of five love sonnets by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. This is music of subdued intensity and aching beauty, sublimely performed by Ms. Hunt Lieberson and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Levine.

Sadly, there were other notable deaths as well, including several legendary women of opera: the sopranos Birgit Nilsson, Anna Moffo, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Astrid Varnay, as well as the supremely gifted, if often chaotic, conductor and stage director Sarah Caldwell. Gyorgy Ligeti, a composer who loomed over the last decades of the 20th century, also died. Together, these artists gave us countless highs.

Feliz Natal e Feliz Ano Novo



Peço desculpas pe lo atraso, mas estive literalmente Off line durante uns dias e antes disso extermamente ocupada !
Agora estou em FÉRIAS !!!! ALELUIA !!!!!!

quarta-feira, dezembro 06, 2006

ANA NETREBKO - MUSICA DE RAIZ

Música de raiz



A história de Anna Netrebko poderia bem ser o libreto de uma ópera metalingüística. Estudante do Conservatório de São Petersburgo, trabalhava como faxineira do Teatro Mariinsky, berço de notáveis talentos da ópera e balé russos. O ofício lhe garantia contatos diários com os ensaios da companhia do teatro e permitiram, posteriormente, que fosse descoberta pelo maestro Valery Gergiev, por meio de um concurso. Daí para o reconhecimento internacional foi necessário apenas pouco mais de uma década e alguns discos. Só nesse ano foram quatro lançamentos, dois CDs e dois DVDs.
Entre os recém-lançados, Russian Album apresenta, somado à bela voz de Anna Netrebko, um repertório do que há de mais significativo da tradição operística russa. Após destacar-se em gravações dos mais pops dos clássicos da ópera, a soprano grava Tchaikóvsky, Rachmaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka e um trecho da Guerra e Paz por Prokofiev, faixa em que se percebe o inegável talento de Netrebko cantando na língua pátria.

O disco foi gravado com a Orquestra do Teatro Mariinsky, sob regência de Valery Gergiev, em dezembro de 2005 e em janeiro, maio e junho de 2006. Desse modo, Anna Netrebko não apenas reconstrói suas origens no repertório escolhido, como também por meio da casa na qual era faxineira e com o maestro que a descobriu. São estas as raízes da soprano que se revelou surpreendente e que tem sido aclamada pela crítica com algum exagero, à procura de uma sucessora de Maria Callas. Aparando os excessos da mídia, Anna Netrebko é uma voz que, sobretudo, merece ser ouvida. (Rodrigo Manzano)


ANNA NETREBKO
Russian album
Deutsche Grammophon
Preço médio: R$ 42

ADESTE FIDELIS - Vienna Choir Boys

terça-feira, dezembro 05, 2006

MAGNIFICAT - J. S. BACH - dia 17 de Dezembro as 18h30

IGREJA BATISTA EM PLANALTO PAULISTA
Alameda dos Guaicanãs, 103 - Planalto Paulista
Próximo ao Metrô Pça da Árvore/ travessa da Av. José Maria Whitaker



O "Magnificat" encontra-se no livro de
Lucas 1:46-55

O cântico de Maria

46-55
E Maria respondeu:
Oh, como eu louvo o Senhor! E quanto me alegro em Deus, meu Salvador! Porque reparou na sua humilde servidora, e agora, por todas as gerações, serei chamada bendita de Deus. Pois ele, o Deus santo e poderoso, me fez grandes coisas. A sua misericórdia estende-se para sempre a todos os que o temem. Como é poderoso o seu forte braço! Como faz fugir os orgulhosos e os arrogantes! Arrancou os príncipes dos seus tronos e exaltou os humildes. Fartou os famintos com coisas boas e mandou embora os ricos de mãos vazias. Socorreu o povo de Israel, que o serve! Não esqueceu a sua promessa de se mostrar compassivo. Porque prometeu aos nossos pais, Abraão e seus filhos,ser misericordioso com eles para sempre.