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    Category: Music

    Proms Matinee 2: Lapland Chamber Orchestra/Storgårds review wonderfully eclectic

      August 7, 2014
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    Cadogan Hall, London
    Peter Maxwell Davies's Sinfonia, a powerful and rarely performed work, was the highlight of a wide-ranging programme

    Based in Rovaniemi, Finland, just a few miles south of the Arctic Circle, the Lapland Chamber Orchestra is the European Union's most northerly professional orchestra. John Storgårds has been its artistic director since 1996, and he brought his 30-strong band to Cadogan Hall for its Proms debut with a wonderfully eclectic programme, which began with one of CPE Bach's Hamburg symphonies, in B minor, and ended with Sibelius's Rakastava.

    The last two of the Proms Saturday matinees will be 80th-birthday tributes to Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies, but the LCO also included works by them. The trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger was the soloist in Endless Parade, which Birtwistle composed for him in 1987, setting the solo instrument off on a series of dazzling virtuoso riffs over mostly placid strings, with a glinting vibraphone bridging the harmonic gap between the two. Hardenberger has performed it more than 60 times now, but still makes it seem utterly spontaneous and capricious.

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    SOURCE: Classical music | The Guardian - Read entire story here.

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    What became of Germany’s Beatles?

      August 5, 2014
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    The band was created by A&R executives to rival the Fab Four – but they produced some the 1970s oddest music. David Stubbs recounts the strange story of Faust.
    SOURCE: BBC Culture - Music - Read entire story here.

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    Prom 34: BBCNOW/Søndergård unwieldy start leads to emotional payoff

      August 4, 2014
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    Royal Albert Hall, London
    Mannered during the Mozart and Strauss, the Danish conductor was most at home with his idol, Nielsen

    The first of Thomas Søndergård's two Proms with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales placed Strauss alongside Mozart, his idol, and Nielsen, his very different near contemporary. It was, in some respects, an unwieldy evening. Fine conductor though he is, Søndergård is not a natural Straussian, and consequently this was a concert of two differing halves.

    Søndergård seemed uneasy with the discursive form of Tod und Verklärung, with which he opened, shaping it tentatively at times and taking the difficult final peroration too slowly. Fits and starts replaced the music's natural ebb and flow. The drama, meanwhile, occasionally seemed mannered, and solemnity replaced ecstasy at the close. Strauss's dark, orchestral sound turned overly dense and a bit brass-heavy. Things brightened with the Burleske in D Minor for piano and orchestra. Søndergård responded more sharply to its form, a straightforward single movement sonata. It was low-key for a work that, as its title suggests, aspires to comedy, though Søndergård nicely emphasised the underlying Brahmsian influences that Strauss, turning towards Wagner, would later play down. The soloist was Francesco Piemontesi, who was hard-hitting and energetic, yet admirably witty, debonair and flamboyant.

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    SOURCE: Classical music | The Guardian - Read entire story here.

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    Met Opera Sets Another Deadline For Contract Talks

     
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    Met Opera logo cube

    Federal mediators announced that the company’s new deadline for agreement is Sunday, August 17, just five weeks before opening night of the new season. Met general director Peter Gelb has been threatening a lockout if the deadline is not met.

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    SOURCE: ArtsJournal» MUSIC - Read entire story here.

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    Galanty Miller: Remember When the Music Didn’t Suck

      July 30, 2014
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    Two summers ago, I visited the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Rihanna's dress was on display, which is sort of like putting Joe Namath's jersey on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame. It doesn't really belong.

    Read more: Michael Jackson, Itunes, Emile Durkheim, Anomie, Disclosure, Radio, Top 40, Music, Collective Consciousness, American Idol, Prince, Comedy News

    SOURCE: Music on Huffington Post - Read entire story here.

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    Olivier Messiaen: beyond time and space

      July 29, 2014
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    Composed while he was a prisoner of war, Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time seems to touch the far edges of human experience, writes pianist Steven Osborne

    My interest in Olivier Messiaen's music started in my teens, when I heard a couple of his Vingt Regards sur l'enfant-Jésus. I was intrigued, but by no means bowled over. Still, I liked it enough to ask my mum to buy me the score, and thereafter found myself increasingly captivated by its remarkable musical language. In particular, I was fascinated by the juxtaposition of deep calm and great complexity. I have always been drawn to music with large contrasts. When I play, my default position is to reach for the extremes, to seek the greatest possible emotional range. It is rare that I find a piano I can play both as loud and as soft as I want. It feels slightly juvenile, to be honest: the desire to go from a tiny whisper to banging the drum as loud as I possibly can. But there we are those are my raw instincts, and Messiaen lets me give full rein to them.

    The Quartet for the End of Time is perhaps the first of Messiaen's works in which the contrast between movements becomes truly extreme: there is a new level of violence in the music. It is not hard to imagine why this might be, given the work's famous origins, written while Messiaen was a prisoner of war at the Nazis' Stalag VIII-A camp. The struggle to not only endure the terrible conditions, but also to incorporate the experience into his Catholic faith, must have been profound. (Henri Akoka, the clarinettist for the premiere of the quartet, asked Messiaen to join him in attempting to escape; Messiaen answered: "No, it's God's will I am here.") The result is a work more emotionally engaged than any Messiaen had written previously. To me, it is the most open and vulnerable of all his compositions, its religious certainties balanced with a palpable sense of longing.

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    SOURCE: Classical music | The Guardian - Read entire story here.

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    Diriye Osman: The Miraculous Sound and Story of James Day

      July 26, 2014
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    It's important that we support our artists and thinkers in order for the culture to move forward. James Day is a remarkable musician and, just as importantly, a resilient individual whose sound and story is nothing short of miraculous.

    Read more: Music Industry, Music, Music Interviews, Overcoming Adversity, Health, Soul, Entertainment News

    SOURCE: Music on Huffington Post - Read entire story here.

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