Classical Features
The Seckerson Tapes: René Jacobs InterviewSunday, 05 September 2010
René Jacobs: singer, conductor, scholar, archivist, alchemist, teacher. In recent years he's been "rehabilitating" the Mozart operas for the Harmonia Mundi label, eradicating 19th-century retouchings and stylistic anomalies in order to restore these great works to their vibrant original colours. He and his handpicked performers have now arrived at Mozart's beloved Singspiel Die Zauberflöte and the results are quite revelatory.
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Sarah Willis, First Lady of the French HornThursday, 02 September 2010
No woman has ever achieved a higher profile on the French horn than Sarah Willis. Why? It's not as if she is a renowned soloist. But she is the first and only woman to join the brass section of the world's most celebrated and widely followed orchestra. It will be no surprise if this Saturday the BBC cameras as usual pick her out from row upon row of Teutonic males in the second of the Berlin Philharmonic’s two Prom 2010 appearances. Read more... |
theartsdesk from Colombo: A Pianist of the WorldSunday, 29 August 2010
Since winning the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka Concerto Competition at the tender (and record-setting) age of 16, Tanya Ekanayaka has become one of Sri Lanka’s pre-eminent concert pianists. Last month she was the first from her country ever to appear in the long-running Pianists of the World series at St Martin-in-the-Fields, with a programme featuring Bach, Beethoven, Ravel and her own improvised composition, Adahas: of Wings of Roots. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bregenz: The Genius of Mieczyslaw WeinbergSunday, 08 August 2010
Ever since I can remember, the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg has played a walk-on part in histories of Soviet music. If you find him in an index at all (probably under Vainberg or Vajnberg, and usually with the first name given him by a box-ticking Soviet border guard in 1939: Moisey, or even Moshe), you’ll usually end up reading one of those melancholy and unhelpful lists: “Shostakovich’s followers include...” Read more... |
theartsdesk in Verbier: Musicians Peak in the AlpsSunday, 01 August 2010
You want to see Yuri Bashmet, arguably the greatest living viola player, but you can't because you've chosen to go to a recital by Yevgeny Kissin, one of the world's top pianists, on the same evening in another hall. Even the option of dashing from one half to another is complicated by timing and distance. No, this isn't Berlin, London or Vienna. Read more... |
The Man Who Could Upstage Dame Judi At The PromMonday, 26 July 2010
It has just been announced that Dame Judi Dench will be making her Proms debut this Saturday. Sondheim at 80 is the occasion, and she will reprise her rendition of “Send in the Clowns” from the National’s 1985 production of A Little Night Music. “It’s yours now,” Sondheim told her when he heard her performance. She will line up alongside Bryn Terfel,... Read more... |
The BBC's new TV dawn for the PromsFriday, 23 July 2010
For the couch-bound classical music lover, keeping up with the Proms is pretty straightforward. Step one: open bottle of agreeable claret. Step two: turn on Radio 3 and listen, or watch selected Proms on BBC Two or BBC Four. Or, indeed, catch up on the iPlayer. But needless to say, there's a colossal amount of work going on behind the scenes to make it all happen. Read more... |
Performing Die Schöne MüllerinThursday, 22 July 2010
Few great works of art are as disarming as Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. With its folksong-like melodies and deceptively simple harmonic palate, it is quite hard to account for the cycle’s profound emotional effect. How is it that over the course of 20 songs we fall under the spell of a naïve and sentimental lover, a slightly effeminate, self-obsessed boy who, no sooner than he sees a rival, despairs and drowns himself? Read more... |
Remembering Charles MackerrasWednesday, 21 July 2010
Perhaps we can drop the "sir" here, as he preferred, though most of the contributors below only knew him in his knighted later years. No death of a musical great, at least since the departure of Mstislav Rostropovich, has caused such a flurry of tributes and reminiscences, even if many of us were long prepared for the end and marvelled at the way he soldiered on to give more great performances in his final year. Read more... |
Verbier Festival: an Alpine symphonyMonday, 19 July 2010
It becomes increasingly hard for a music festival to stick out from the crowd these days. But high culture, high summer and high altitude create a rousing major chord each July in Verbier, which can genuinely claim to be the only festival you reach by cable car. When you get up there you are greeted by an alpine symphony of glaciers slithering off peaks and pastures clanging with cowbells. Streams descant and trill along gutters between chalets. Read more... |
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