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San Antone

#120
September 20, 2015, 08:01:40 AM
Who was Allan Pettersson?



He answered the question himself with his music, in particular in the Barefoot Songs, and also in interviews: "A voice crying in the wilderness that is nearly drowned by the noise of time", was how he described himself.  (Allan Pettersson Society in Sweden)

This is a belated acknowledgement of Petterrson's birthday, who was born on 19 September 1911.

https://www.youtube.com/v/KMG-QHu5QFs

San Antone

#121
September 20, 2015, 03:14:52 PM
Gilles de Binchois : born 1400 – dies 20 September 1460



Binchois is often considered to be the finest melodist of the 15th century, writing carefully shaped lines which are not only easy to sing but utterly memorable. His tunes appeared in copies decades after his death, and were often used as sources for Mass composition by later composers. Most of his music, even his sacred music, is simple and clear in outline, sometimes even ascetic; a greater contrast between Binchois and the extreme complexity of the ars subtilior of the prior (fourteenth) century would be hard to imagine. Most of his secular songs are rondeaux, which became the most common song form during the century.

https://www.youtube.com/v/VYrjtDickmo

San Antone

#123
September 21, 2015, 08:07:15 AM
New on MusicaKaleidoskopea



EBERHARD WEBER AT 75

This past January marked Eberhard Weber's 75th birthday.  His recordings for ECM in the early 1970s were in large part responsible for defining the ECM sound and Euro-Jazz in general.  His style bridged jazz, classical, minimalism, chamber jazz and included some ambient elements.  He regularly recorded with other ECM artists such Gary Burton (Ring, 1974; Passengers, 1976), Ralph Towner (Solstice, 1975; Solstice/Sound and Shadows, 1977), Pat Metheny (Watercolors, 1977), and Jan Garbarek (10 recordings between 1978 and 1998).

jlaurson

#124
September 22, 2015, 11:04:07 AM Last Edit: September 22, 2015, 11:07:16 AM by jlaurson
Fresh from Forbes:



SEP 23, 2015
"Wozzeck" Opens Zurich Opera Season
With Uncommon, Resounding Success

...Had I gone to Zurich to see Falstaff (the opera next up on their program) I
would probably have experienced that disappointment. The kind of fluffy high
camp of which I got a glimpse at the dress rehearsal – even when it has Bryn
Terfel as the central character – just isn't my thing. But then again, neither is
Falstaff, really. Alban Berg's Wozzeck meanwhile is rather my thing. Easy,
perhaps, since it's one of the truly great dramatic operas written... so
embarrassingly good, it's hard to make a muck of it. Dense, gripping, and
succinct, Georg Büchner's 1837 drama conveys the nuanced struggle of its
characters across nearly two centuries with ease. As adapted by Berg in 1922
– right between Büchner and us on a timeline – it even allows for a little time-
travel by entering that time just before the outbreak of wide-spread material
prosperity and the ensuing runaway individualism...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2015/09/22/wozzeck-opens-zurich-opera-season-with-uncommon-resounding-success/

Wozzeck, Christian Gerhaher
Picture courtesy Zurich Opera, © Monika Rittershaus

latest on ionarts:
Ionarts-at-Large: Involuntary Exclusivity
At Mozart's Home



Violist Julia Rebekka Adler and pianist Axel Gremmelspacher presented a program—
and their latest CD—in the sub-basement of the Mozart House in Vienna, just in
the shadow of St. Stephen's Cathedral. The program and disc are titled "Viola in
Exile", concocted of composers, threatened, prosecuted, and eventually forgotten,
that they all huddled at the very back of the alphabet: Leo Weiner, Karl Weigl,
Mieczysław Weinberg, and Erich Zeisl.

I've followed the projects of Mme. Adler (assistant principal viola of the Munich
Philharmonic, in her day job) with keen interest ever since writing a feature interview
about her and her Weinberg solo viola project for the pages of Fanfare, some years
ago. As part of that project, she had found and arranged Weinberg's Sonata for
Clarinet and Piano for the viola, one of the catchiest piece of this often thorny
composer and the opening work of this evening's proceedings.

Viola in Exile:

It was an unusual concert in that it took place before an audience of seven or—deducting the record producer, his wife, the music critic, friends of the performers and the page turner...

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2015/09/ionarts-at-large-involuntary.html

San Antone

#125
September 24, 2015, 05:02:49 AM
Andrzej Panufnik : Born in Warsaw on 24th September 1914



"In all my works, I attempt to achieve a true balance between feeling and intellect, heart and brain, impulse and design."

Andrzej Panufnik is one of the most important and original symphonic composers of the 2nd half of the 20th century. His output includes ten symphonies, with Centenary commissions from Sir Georg Solti for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa for Boston.



RTRH

San Antone

#126
September 25, 2015, 04:21:33 AM
George Frederick Pinto : potentially the English Mozart



As a musician he excited an extraordinary degree of admiration from well-qualified critics. Samuel Wesley said that 'a greater musical Genius has not been known'; Salomon remarked that 'if he had lived and been able to resist the allurements of society, England would have had the honour of producing a second Mozart'; J.B. Cramer, William Ayrton and others joined the chorus of enthusiasm. The chief source of their admiration seems to have been Pinto's compositions. Yet within a few years of his death, his name was almost forgotten by the public.



San Antone

#127
September 27, 2015, 04:23:51 AM
Gerald Finzi : British composer



Finzi wrote two masterpieces - his Cello Concerto, completed in 1955 and his choral work Intimations of Immortality -a setting of words by William Wordsworth.  In 1951, however, Finzi learned that he was suffering from Hodgkin's Disease, a form of leukaemia, and was told he had between five and ten years to live. The discovery in no way lessened his activities, particularly those undertaken for other composers.  Finzi finally lost the fight against his illness and he died on September 27, 1956. His Cello Concerto was first broadcast the night before he died.

San Antone

#129
September 30, 2015, 05:19:48 AM
Alican Çamcı : new music from Turkey



Alican Çamcı's (b. 1989) output includes works for small and large ensembles, solo instrumental music and electro-acoustic compositions.

Wandering Aengus

#131
October 04, 2015, 05:40:40 PM
More a 'literary blog', though I do post a few classical music videos from time to time (I have to restrain myself!).  But it's mostly postings of poetry and bits of philosophy -- from Homer to Geoffrey Hill, from Aristotle to Arendt:

http://litterarum-lumen.tumblr.com


'And pluck till time and times are done...' - Yeats

jlaurson

#132
October 08, 2015, 01:56:38 AM
Fresh from Forbes:



SEP 29, 2015
Vienna: Premiering Beethoven Symphonies All Over Again

...Comparatively little has been done by way of research into how audiences be-
haved or listened on, or for that matter: where. And whatever has been done,
it hasn't been made visible or audible to audiences in the same way. No matter
how authentic "17th century" the band plays in front of us, audiences still sit on
the other side of the fourth wall as if it were 1977. We treat music from Monteverdi
to Stockhausen as if it were Parsifal. The lights are dimmed, we listen in awed quiet,
are embarrassed if caught snoring, and duly hiss if someone has shown his or her
appreciation at a point that doesn't fit the current convention of when to show
appreciation. (I call those hissers the "Vigilant Applause Police", an odious faction
that happens to overlap considerably with the only slightly less annoying "Eager
Early Clappers"; see the scientific looking, albeit completely speculative Venn
diagram below.)

Historic Venues

Doing just that – researching where music was played – is the raison d'être of
the "Resound" project of the Orchester Wiener Akademie (the Vienna Academy
Orchestra) under organist-cum-conductor-cum-impresario Martin Haselböck.
In seven concerts over two concert seasons, the orchestra will have performed
Beethoven's Nine Symphonies more or less in the venues they were premiered
in. Interestingly that is possible ...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2015/10/07/vienna-premiering-beethoven-symphonies-all-over-again/

jlaurson

#133
November 09, 2015, 05:55:29 AM


Fresh from Forbes:



NOV 8, 2015
Bang-Bang: The European Union Youth Orchestra's
Summer Shenanigans

...Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as surprise...

A good youth orchestra has at its disposal a terrific weapon of surprise, namely
that it somehow lulls you into sus-pecting less than you would from a big name
professional orchestra... and then delivers more...

Angela Gheorgiu, one of the most difficult and by all accounts least pleasant
people to work with in the music world (thrice winner of the Kathleen Battle medal
for excellence in the Art of being a Diva), wouldn't have a career if her voice were
even just a shade less glorious. In her repertoire – dramatic Italian opera foremost
– she can conjure beauty and power that can evoke an imaginary Golden Age of
opera. There was nothing to quibble with the two arias for which she came and
after which she went... assuming one doesn't mind overlooking...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2015/11/08/bang-bang-the-european-union-youth-orchestras-summer-shenanigans/



Not so fresh:


Fresh from Forbes:



OCT 23, 2015
New Principal Conductor For The Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra

...Fischer is a fairly big name for an orchestra with so little name recognition, although the
orchestra has a proud tradition. It's just that one has to go back a while... namely to 1833,
when Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy led them for three seasons. Before him, Louis Spohr
and Ferdinand Ries had subbed; after him came Ferdinand Hiller (1847–1850) and then of
course Robert Schumann (1850–1854) who led them incompetently but with enthusiasm.
Big-ish names graced the orchestra again in the mid-20th century when Jean Martinon
(1960–1965) and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos (1966–1971) led the band in back-to-back,
one-term stints.

Picking a new music director for orchestras at this level of fame-purgatory is tricky; old
but famous hands who phone it in don't do the trick but unknown young music directors
can backfire if they don't turn out to be the next miracle man....

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2015/10/23/new-principal-conductor-for-the-dusseldorf-symphony-orchestra/

San Antone

#135
November 13, 2015, 08:23:04 AM
Amandine Beyer & Christophe Rousset : Carrying the Baroque Torch



Amandine Beyer and Christophe Rousset are both accomplished French musicians who have devoted much of their careers to promoting music from the Baroque period, much of it not well known.  Each has formed a performing ensemble, Gli Incogniti by Beyer and Rousset's Les Talens Lyriques for this purpose.  While the Baroque is the primary concern, each also has resurrected works from later periods if there is a sense of their being relatively unknown or ripe for reinterpretation.

jlaurson

#136
November 26, 2015, 01:15:52 AM
Fresh from Forbes:



NOV 25, 2015
The Real Top 10 Bach Recordings

Bach, the Grand Master

There is something about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach that puts it in a category of its own.
Bach is the P.G. Wodehouse and the Shakespeare of the musical score rolled into one. He is the
only composer on whom I cannot overdose, and while his music seemed dated to his own, slightly
embarrassed sons, it strikes us as perfectly timeless now. His works pillars of mankind's culture,
and his music constitute the first tracks etched onto the golden record Voyager record that sails
toward hypothetical distant galactic civilizations. I should think that potential aliens might rather
get too sanguine an impression of us* ... but there we go: Bach is the bee's knees, and anyone
who knows Bach but doesn't love his music is going to be suspect to me, lest I learn a exculpatory
reason for their lamentable deficiency.

The Gramophone Bias

Gramophone Magazine is the only English language magazine that combines serious CD-reviewing
with the glossy, popular magazine approach. I used to read it religiously and got many of my first
hints, tastes, and opinions from its pages. BBC Music Magazine gets close; Classic FM Magazine
lasted nearly twenty years but wasn't taken seriously by the cogniscenti. No-nonsense, no-picture
publications like the American Record Guide or Fanfare Magazine (both American), which exude the
charm of telephone books, are total geek literature, arcane, loved by the few dedicated readers, and
more or less published out of the basements of their respective, dedicated publishers... private
ventures and labors of love that, like the lamented International Record Review, won't likely survive
their founders.

In my time as a clerk at Tower Records, we would sometimes make fun of Gramophone Magazine's
rather obvious pro-English biases. "Proximity bias" or "mere exposure effect" might be the appropriate
euphemism for them being unabashed homers. And indeed, when they published a "10 Best Bach
Recordings" list published early last year, they topped it in such a ridiculous way that it needed soft
rebutting which I hope to provide hereby...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2015/11/25/the-real-top-10-bach-recordings/

jlaurson

#138
December 09, 2015, 01:07:17 PM
Fresh from Forbes:




DEC 9, 2015
The 10 Best Classical Recordings Of 2015 (New Releases)

It's fair to say to say that such "Best-Of" lists are inherently daft if one clings too
literally to the idea of "Best." Still, I have been making "Best of the Year" lists for
classical music since 2004, when working at Tower Records gave me a splendid
oversight (occasionally insight) of the new releases and of the re-releases that
hit the classical music market. Since then, I've kept tabs on the market as much
as possible. (The 2014 Forbes list for new recordings can be found here, the one
for re-issues here.)

(The entire list on Amazon for CDs and mp3s (incomplete) can be found here.
The complete-as-possible Spotify playlist here. Links to iTunes (where available)
and the high-fidelity streaming/download platform Qobuz are provided individually.)

Making these lists is a subjective affair, aided only by massive exposure and
hopefully good ears and a discriminating, if personal taste. But then "10 CDs
that, all caveats duly noted, I consider to have been outstanding in 2015"
does not make for a sexy headline. You get the point. The built-in hyperbole
of the phrase is a tool to understand what this is about, not symbolic of
illusions of grandeur on part of the author. Because the market lends itself to
it, I distinguish between new releases and re-releases. This is the Top 10 of
the former, the Top 10 of the re-issues will follow. Let's get right to it:...



http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2015/12/09/the-10-best-classical-recordings-of-2015-new-releases/

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