This section contains photos and news, in more or less chronological order – most recent first, that don’t seem to fit anywhere else
An extract from a Netrebko/Barenboim CD review in the June 2010 issue of Opera News
“It would be instructive to hear Netrebko with a different pianist. Barenboim is certainly no “accompanist,” nor is he a partner. If Netrebko only intermittently makes real unity of words and music, if she takes a worrisome number of catch-breaths, perhaps it’s because she is thrown into the middle of a piano recital. It is interesting to hear a Canadian bass-baritone, Gerald Finley, on a live Wigmore Hall recital disc, enjoy the sheer sound of the Russian language in Tchaikovsky’s songs more than Netrebko does, but Finley is working with Julius Drake. Barenboim turns “Den’ li carit” (Whether day dawns) into a piano etude; Drake is more attuned to the structure, the silences, the harmonic variety. Barenboim likes to create inner voices and give each note a separate twist of the knife. (Perversely, the only place he doesn’t do this is the tenor voice of Tchaikovsky’s lullaby, where the composer asks for it.) Barenboim stomps his feet, snaps the pedals, plays the piano relentlessly.”
Julius with the tenor Robin Tritschler and fellow Irishman Seamus Heaney at the Faber Poetry event at the Southbank Centre, London, 22 September 2009. Photo courtesy of www.juliusdrake.com
From Christianne Stotjin’s website. Photos by Marco Borggreve
Many thanks indeed to Sim Canetty Clarke for letting us use the photos below
