Browsing: Contemporary

+ Cleveland Classical talks with guitarist Denis Azabagić about winning prizes, his wife and duo partner flautist Eugenia Moliner, and practice philosophy. “I remember when I came to the U.S. more than a decade ago. I opened the yellow pages and found an ad that said, ‘Learn to play the piano without practice.’ I thought, who in the world could put out such an ad? I mean how can you lie like that — because that’s impossible. We would all like to get our things in life the easy way, but music is something that certainly doesn’t happen like that.…

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Splitting time between recording Beethoven concertos, directing music festivals, and conducting the Camerata Ireland, which he founded, Irish pianist and composer Barry Douglas is a well-travelled, decorated artist. To “Tiny Desk Concert,” Douglas brings his heritage in the form of Celtic folk songs. Rippling left-hand waves, impish alternating chords, and gossamer trills come together to capture an image of pastoral Ireland from its rugged cliffs, crisp breeze, and sylvan freshness. Barry Douglas – NPR “Tiny Desk Concert”

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For another American themed video, here’s Russian-born American virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz’ piano transcription of the iconic American bandmaster and composer John Phillip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” 00Horowitz wrote this famously difficult transcription on occasion of his naturalization as an American citizen. Valery Kuleshov – Horowitz’ transcription of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”

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Interest in American modernist Charles Ives, as these things often happen, spiked after his death. Even as the post factum father of American modernism for his use of experimental techniques as well as his quotation of American melodies from Protestant hymns to Stephen Foster, it is still difficult to find Ives on disc and in the concert halls. In fact, the only other full recording of his four violin sonatas (1906–1913) that springs to mind is Hilary Hahn’s 2012 release. The first sonata is easily the least accessible of the bunch, beginning with a cyclical creeping melody that refuses to…

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ORFORD – Orford Musique, as the festival in the Eastern Townships now calls itself, got under way Friday night, almost a month after it started. The educational camp fires up well before the concert calendar. Thus the first non-student program, paradoxically, represented a farewell for at least a few of the teachers who had spent most of June in residence. It also represented the kind of event that I would gladly cross several county borders to hear. Louis Spohr’s Duo for Two Violins in A minor Op. 67 No. 1? Just try to hum that one. Or more to the point, just…

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+ The marriage between text and music in contemporary opera is more important than ever, says William Littler, citing Fellow Travelers (Cincinnati Opera) and Les Feluettes (Opéra de Montréal) as recent examples. “Perhaps today, more than at any other time in the recent past, librettists are coming into their own as something approaching full partners with composers in the creation of successful opera. And tied to this development is the heightened importance in an age of film and television of casting singers who can give visual credibility to their roles. Tenor Aaron Blake and baritone Joseph Lattanzi both looked and…

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The archetype Russian violin concerto – Tchaikovsky’s – looms so large over the musical landscape that all others seem no more than sidebars. Two concertos (each) by Prokofiev and Shostakovich are rooted in political circumstances, inseparable from their history. Miaskovsky’s concerto never took off, despite the advocacy of David Oistrakh, Weinberg’s is emerging too slowly to be counted and the rest barely make up a respectable quorum. Apart from the present pair. Alexander Glazunov wrote his concerto in 1905 for the violin professor Leopold Auer, a formidable authority who once refused to premiere Tchaikosky’s concerto unless he made extensive changes.…

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+ 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.…

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+ Alan Fletcher, the CEO of the Aspen music festival in Colorado, asks why great American symphonists are neglected by American orchestras. + From the Archive: Jon Vickers interview from 15 March 1985 in The Guardian. “The foundation on which I stand as an artist is that all art must appeal to the intellect. Then we’re making a contribution to civilisation, to the uplifting of man. But if we chose to indulge ourselves and chase dollars and fame at the expense of artistic integrity, if we smear the line between entertainment and art, we’re in trouble. “And the operatic world…

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This is a great time for piano lovers, a terrible one for young pianists. The past four years have flung up the most phenomenal range of new talent, more than listeners can take in. Daniil Trifonov, the 2011 Tchaikovsky winner, set a new benchmark. Since then, the 2015 Chopin competition has yielded Seong-jin Cho and Charles-Richard Hamelin, the Van Cliburn has brought forth the prodigious Beatrice Rana, the BBC Young Musician winner Benjamin Grosvenor has quickly made a name for himself and there are more coming through all the time. And then there’s Lucas Debargue. Placed fourth in the 2015…

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