Contemporary - my/maSCENA

Valery Kuleshov

Video of the Day – “Stars and Stripes Forever”

By Weiyu Dang on 4 July 2016 Contemporary, Piano, Video of the day

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”

CD Review – Ives: Sonatas for Violin and Piano Nos. 1–4 (White)

By Kiersten van Vliet on 4 July 2016 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Violin

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…

Photo: Arthur Kaptainis

Concert Review: Orford Music Festival, Poulenc & Gounod

By Arthur Kaptainis on 2 July 2016 Chamber Music, Classical, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Romantic, Violin

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…

Daily News Roundup: 1 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 1 July 2016 Arts Industry, Classical Music, Contemporary, Daily News Roundup, Mainstream Jazz, Opera, Romantic, Scena Jazz, Violin

+ 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…

Lebrecht Weekly – Glazunov, Khachaturian: Violin Concertos (Avanti)

By Norman Lebrecht on 1 July 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic, Violin

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.…

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.…

Daily News Roundup: 28 June 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 28 June 2016 Contemporary, Daily News Roundup, Mainstream Jazz, Opera, Scena Jazz

+ 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…

Lebrecht Weekly – Lucas Debargue (Sony)

By Norman Lebrecht on 24 June 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

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…

“Mozart was born in New Orleans!” Paquito D’Rivera at FMCM Review

By Camilo Lanfranco on 19 June 2016 Chamber Music, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Mainstream Jazz, Scena Jazz, World Music

“The most beautiful piece written for the clarinet is Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major and we did a study on it at the Louisiana University of Jazz with my friend Wynton Marsalis… We arrived to the conclusion that Mozart was not from Austria, he is from the New Orleans! And that the right way to play Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major is as a blues, in fact, a New Orleans blues!” —Paquito D’Rivera, Pollack Hall, 17 June 2016 Winner of 14 Grammy Awards with a discography of more than 30 solo albums since he first started his career…

This Day in Music – Happy Birthday Gounod & Stravinsky

By Michele Duguay on 17 June 2016 Contemporary, Dance, Romantic, This Day in Music, Video of the day

Today marks the anniversary of Gounod’s (1818) and Stravinsky’s (1882) births. Winner of the 1839 Prix de Rome, Gounod studied at the Paris Conservatory. His musical legacy comprises a dozen of operas, oratorios, and several motets and songs. His 1872 piano piece The Funeral March of a Marionette, orchestrated in 1879, achieved fame in the 20th-century as the theme music for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. One of the defining figures of 20th-century music, Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky defied convention and achieved worldwide fame with his compositions for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris. The uproar caused by the premiere of The Rite…

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