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Daily News Roundup: 29 June 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 29 June 2016 Classical, Contemporary, Daily News Roundup, Opera, Piano, Romantic, Scena Jazz

+ A CD review of English composer Granville Bantock’s epic late-Romantic oratorio Omar Khayyam, re-released from the 1979 Lyrita version with the BBC orchestra and chorus under Norman Del Mar. + The results of the Seventh Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition, held in Fort Worth TX, are in. + David Lang talks with The Guardian’s Kate Molleson about writing music for memorials. A classic daunting Lang commission: construct exactly the right music for collective remembrance. “Right,” he nods, but he doesn’t look daunted. “How to write something that seems ancient, like a kind of music whose origins we don’t question.…

This Day in Music – Pleyel

By Michele Duguay on 18 June 2016 Baroque and Early, Classical, This Day in Music, Video of the day

Austrian-born composer Ignaz Joseph Pleyel was born on June 18 1757. Living in Strasbourg during the Reign of Terror, he avoided the consequences that could have been brought on by his “foreign status” by composing highly patriotic French music. Upon moving to Paris in 1795, he founded a music publishing business and eventually started manufacturing pianos. His son Camille eventually took the reins of Pleyel and Cie, who provided pianos to Frédéric Chopin. Watch a performance of a Chopin waltz on a restored 1848 Pleyel grand piano.

Lebrecht Weekly – Joseph Haydn: Violin concertos (Panclassics)

By Norman Lebrecht on 13 May 2016 Classical, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

It must be a seasonal thing. When fresh mushrooms simmer and asparagus gently steams, it starts raining …Haydn. Sure enough, four Haydn releases have landed this month. Decca has a positively frisky set of four symphonies, 78-81, from Ottavio Dantone and the Accademia Bizantina. The period-instrument precision is awe-inspiring, a worthy counterpoint to that epochal Decca set (1969-73) of Haydn symphonies from Antal Dorati and the Philharmonia Hungarica. Dorati changed the weather for Haydn while, with 104 symphonies, confirming the prejudice that the composer wrote too much. Other conductors gave up midway. I like Dantone’s note-perfect approach very much and…

Lebrecht Weekly – Beethoven: Symphonies 4 and 5 (Sony)

By Norman Lebrecht on 9 May 2016 Classical, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

In May 2015, visibly frail, the august Nikolaus Harnoncourt stood before his Concentus Musicus Wien and directed two Beethoven symphonies in a reading that followed closely what the composer had written in his score. If Beethoven gave a primitive horn an impossible low D to play, that’s how Harnoncourt wanted it played and not, as others do, switched it to the bassoon. It’s a vital question, he said at the time, of “whether it is possible to achieve your goals.” Harnoncourt and his Concentus had spent their lives together trying to achieve a literal understanding of great art, written by…

Lebrecht Weekly – FolksLied: Beethoven, Britten, Haydn (BR Klassik)

By Norman Lebrecht on 25 March 2016 Art Song, Classical, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Viennese masters, always short of cash, picked up commissions from rich British tourists for composing drawing-room settings of national heritage. Haydn and Beethoven filled their boots with Scottish and Welsh ballads for two ducats a song. Haydn wrote about 200, dressed up with piano, violin and cello accompaniments. Easy money. The first surprise in this absorbing recital by Christian Gerhaher is that he sings the Haydn ditties in German, in a 1920s translation. It’s disconcerting at first but gradually deepens with hints of the nearness of these simple sentiments to the core topics of German Lieder: springtime, love and loss.…

Luca Buratto, Winner of the Honens Piano Competition

By Camilo Lanfranco on 1 October 2015 Arts Industry, Classical, Classical Music, Piano

Author : (Camilo Lanfranco)

With its CAN $100,000 top prize and half-a-million dollars career development package program, the Honens Piano Competition is the biggest piano prize worldwide. Accepting only 50 pianists selected via auditions in London, Berlin and New York, Honens claims a special self-imposed challenge: finding the Complete Pianist, a performer defined as “an awe-inspiring virtuoso, a communicator, a risk-taking explorer, a dreamer.” The finalists were all top-level piano virtuosos, Henry Kramer (US, 28), Artem Yasynkyy (Ukraine, 27), and young Luca Buratto (Italy, 22), who showcased masterful control, strong technique and inspiring skills before 1,600 enthusiasts in early September in Calgary. “We’ve always…

Le Festival de Lanaudière du 8 juillet au 10 août

By Justin Bernard on 8 July 2014 Classical, La Scena Online, Orchestral, Piano, Romantic, Strings

par Justin BernardPour cette 37e édition, le pianiste Alain Lefèvre, ambassadeur artistique du festival, fera le concert d’ouverture. Au programme, une œuvre de Bach transcrite par Liszt, une sonate de Haydn et une autre de Rachmaninov, les 24 préludes de Chopin et La Valse de Ravel. 8 juillet.Pour souligner le 150e anniversaire de naissance de Richard Strauss, trois des œuvres du compositeur seront interprétées : le poème symphonique Don Quichotte avec solistes, accompagnés par l’Orchestre du Festival, que l’on pourra entendre dans un autre poème symphonique, Don Juan, et dans la suite orchestrale extraite du Chevalier à la rose. À la…

Don Quixote Rides Again at Stratford

By Paul E. Robinson on 8 July 2014 Classical, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Strings

by Paul E. RobinsonMan of La ManchaWritten by Dale Wasserman with music by Mitch Leigh and Lyrics by Joe DarionDirector: Robert McQueenChoreographer: Marc KimelmanMusical Director: Franklin BraszMiguel de Cervantes/Don Quixote: Tom RooneySancho Panza: Steve RossAldonza: Robin HuttonStratford FestivalAvon TheatreJune 20, 2014Man of La Mancha opened on Broadway in 1965 and quickly entered the ranks of the classics of the American musical theatre. It is an inspired treatment of Cervantes’ Don Quixote story and continues to delight audiences all around the world. More than that, it is recognized as part of a genre that was created with commercial success in mind…

Electifying Korngold and Bach with Gil Shaham/Austin Symphony

By Paul E. Robinson on 16 April 2014 Classical, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Orchestral, Violin

by Paul E. RobinsonLiszt: Les PréludesKorngold: Violin ConcertoDvořák: Symphony No. 7 in d Minor Op. 70Gil Shaham, violinAustin Symphony/Peter BayLong Center for the Performing ArtsAustin, TexasWhen the still boyish Gil Shaham comes bounding on stage, violin in hand, with a huge smile on his face, you know you are in for a special kind of music-making. Shaham, now 43, still seems the charming prodigy he was when he first came to international attention. Before playing so much as a note, he has the audience in the palm of his hand. This is clearly a young man who loves music and…

A New Nagano Generation: The Artistry Continues

By Paul E. Robinson on 1 April 2014 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Classical, Piano, Strings

Flash version here. Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 12 in A major K. 414 & No. 13 in C major K. 415 Karin Kei Nagano, piano; Cecilia String Quartet Analekta AN2 8765 (51 m) Is it in the genes? No, but genes play a major role in the creation of musical talent, especially so in the case of 15-year-old Karin Kei Nagano. Her father, Kent Nagano, has been the music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal since 2006 and recently renewed his contract until 2020. Karin’s mother, Mari Kodama, is herself a fine pianist with an international reputation. Against this background,…

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