Mercoledi Musicale

The past 18 months in Roma have given me the opportunity to hear and see artists that I knew from broadcasts and CDs but had never experienced live: Antonio Pappano, Danielle Dessi, the Labreque girls, Andreas Scholl, Georges Prêtre, Lorin Maazel, Cecilia Bartoli and the list goes on. Coming up in the next little while will be Marianne Faithful (yes that Marianne Faithful), Lang Lang (with Ceci,)more Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Philippe Jaroussky, Fabio Biondi, Juan Deigo Florez, Kate Alderich and again the list goes on. It has been a rich musical time here.

One singer that I would love to hear is Thomas Quasthoff but his current schedule shows him more active in North America than here in Europe. My dear friend OC had the chance to see him in Milan in February doing Schubert's Winterreisse with Barenboim at the piano and as always made me envious because she was there and I wasn't.

Quasthoff is known not just for his glorious voice but for his gift of communication with his audience. Whither he is doing lieder, opera or crossover (he is an accomplished jazz singer) he seems to get to the heart of the material and bring out depths previously unheard. Here he is doing an old standard but making it sound as new as it must have sounded to the audience that first heard it back on November 15, 1927 at the National Theater in Washington, D.C.



Given the immaculate diction its had to believe that his mother tongue is German.

22 aprile - San Virginio