One of the world’s greatest pianists, Andras Schiff, played his 60th birthday concert on Saturday – a hugely demanding programme of the Goldberg Variations by Bach and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Earlier he told the BBC’s Tim Franks why he gave the performance in London – and not in his homeland, Hungary. Andras Schiff takes me […]
Classical
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HELEN PIDD / MARK BROWN The ultimatum to English National Opera was attacked as ‘cultural vandalism’, but raised some hopes nearer Manchester https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/27/a-fight-at-the-opera-could-forcing-eno-up-north-work-out-manchester-arts-council
The director of the Marian Consort Rory McCleery talks to Editor Martin Cullingford about the ensemble’s latest recording, ‘Music for the Queen of Heaven’, an album of modern Marian motets, many of which were commissioned by the choir. The album is ….. Continues HERE
ERICA JEAL: I love this music and no-one seems to play it.” It’s only a slight exaggeration on Leif Ove Andsnes’s part to say that about Dvořák’s Poetic Tone Pictures; this beautifully recorded release is one of only a handful available, and he is the highest profile of today’s pianists to have recorded this baker’s […]
“Glenn Gould called it ‘the greatest song cycle ever written’, entitling his notes on the two versions of Paul Hindemith’s masterpiece ‘A Tale of Two Marienlebens’. Stravinsky had already insinuated ‘Last Year at Marienleben’. And my pupils recently produced a better wordplay: asked what the name meant, they shyly volunteered ‘Married Life…?’ Copies of […]
In August 2015 I assessed a clutch of new recordings of the four-hands version of The Rite of Spring and noted that Guy and Bavouzet were far superior to all their rivals, not least – but also not only – because they were performing their own arrangement on two pianos rather Stravinsky’s for a single […]
Martin Cullingford writes: Recently I used this space to praise those who support contemporary music, who ensure that music written today is an integral part of our listening life. The occasion then was that James MacMillan’s Stabat mater was our Recording of the Month. Well, three issues on, and this month we bestow that accolade […]
CHARLOTTE HIGGINS: England no longer values the profound, weird art of opera – and that leaves us all poorer I n Kyiv, daily performances at the National Opera of Ukraine are acts of brave defiance against the Russian invasion. They symbolise what the country is fighting for: life, culture. In Britain, untouched by war, we […]
Tim Ashley writes: Olga Peretyatko’s latest album is essentially an old-fashioned recital of coloratura show-stoppers, some drawn from the mainstream operatic repertoire, though others, like Alyabyev’s The Nightingale and Tosti’s Il Bacio, are party pieces associated with the great divas of yesteryear. As a technician, the Russian soprano is ……….. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/may/08/olga-peretyatko-arabesque-review
Geoffrey Norris (The Guardian) writes …. This trio of sonatas resumes Paul Lewis’s exploration on disc of Schubert’s piano music after a gap during which Beethoven was the prime focus. Lewis’s mature insight into the workings and emotional characteristics of these works lends … MORE
Madness – Welcome to the House of Vinyl As a collector myself, I’ve long believed that ‘collecting’ (like any addiction) is a sort of madness. For some unfathomable reason, you become convinced that certain things are worth far more than they really are. It’s not helped by idiot reviewers raving over certain discs as though […]
“BEIJING — The great Polish composer Frederic Chopin is one of the classical music world’s best-loved musicians, admired both for his lyrical piano compositions and romantic life story.The bicentennial of his birth has thus been marked by a seemingly endless series of concerts and commemorations. While many of these are in Poland (where Chopin was […]
Why is sexism still tolerated in our industry? We need an immediate and total change in attitudes across the board. Classical music is not dying (pace yet another overly-enthusiastic report at Slate.com) but there are clearly many problems in the industry. Most of them are brought on by those of us in the business […]
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/other/article/santtu-matias-rouvali-on-tchaikovsky-s-swan-lake
In the last movement of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, Patricia Kopatchinskaja takes the composer’s ben marcato seriously, using heavy accentuation to produce the effect of a pungent danse macabre. Even the contrasting legato melody is presented with a sinister, flautando sound. Janine Jansen’s performance (also with Jurowski and the LPO) is less extreme, with […]
Ralph Vaughan Williams’s extraordinary output for orchestra and voice is a central part of the repertoire – but not so his music for solo piano or piano duet. As he releases a new disc of the composer’s complete music for solo (or two) piano, Mark Bebbington reflects on a small but significant ….. Please click […]
ANDREW CLEMENTS “Seven years have passed since Paul Lewis’s last solo Schubert recording, and this latest collection coincides with his continuing series of Schubert recitals. It groups together the three sonatas of 1825 and 1826 – the earliest of them, in C major D840 just a two-movement torso, the others, in D D850 and G D894, perhaps […]
“Indian classical music is principally based on melody and rhythm, not on harmony, counterpoint, chords, modulation and the other basics of Western classical music. The system of Indian music known as Raga Sangeet can be traced back nearly two thousand years to its origin in the Vedic hymns of the Hindu temples, the fundamental […]
Rodney Chin, former Student of Musicology I’d like to think that Mozart would have enjoyed Chopin’s music; after all, it’s no secret that the latter held the former in the highest esteem, and Chopin was not in the habit of issuing compliments to others (and if he did, only grudgingly). However, he did genuinely enjoy […]
Are we experiencing a Golden Age of countertenor singing? The recordings highlighted here would certainly seem to suggest so… Continues HERE
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THE GUARDIAN: The Austrian composer’s first symphony meshed the imagination and narrative of the symphonic poem with the architectural cohesion of earlier models. His crazily ambitious project changed the genre for ever. It’s one of the most spellbinding moments of symphonic inspiration in the 19th century: the opening of Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony. It’s not […]
Gustavo Guardiola, Composer, bass player and professor of music composition for more than 22 years. He was certainly angry. On October 6th of 1802 Beethoven wrote a letter to his brothers Carl and Johann. This letter has been known as the Heiligenstadt Testament -or you can call it the testament of Beethoven. In this letter […]