Romantic - my/maSCENA

Carl Czerny

This Day in Music – 1857: Death of Carl Czerny

By Weiyu Dang on 15 July 2016 Piano, Romantic, This Day in Music

Composer, pedagogue, and Pianist Carl Czerny was known primarily for his immense contributions to the intermediate ranges of piano music. A prodigy, Czerny studied with Beethoven from the age of ten when the young Czerny impressed the old master with renditions of Pathétique and Adelaide. In his own teaching career, Czerny would have as pupil the little-known pianist Franz Liszt who later dedicated his Études d’exécution transcendente. Although his compositions have been considered dry and formulaic by icons as Robert Schumann, his pedagogy is considered the foundation upon which modern piano technique is based. Vladimir Horowitz – “Rode Variations”

Nikki Chooi

Daily News Roundup: 8 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 8 July 2016 Classical Music, Daily News Roundup, Mainstream Jazz, Musical Theatre, Opera, Popular Music, Romantic, Scena Jazz

+ Canadian violinist and winner of the OSM’s Manulife Competition in 2004, Nikki Chooi has been named the new concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera. + China’s Cultural Revolution made listening to Beethoven a political crime, but half a century later, the relationship between Chinese people and western classical music has evolved in unpredictable ways. “When it comes to ways of listening, the Chinese have long been open to other cultures and to change – not in a revolutionary way, but through a process that builds on its long musical tradition.” + Video of the Day: Lullabies with Alessio Bax on…

Lebrecht Weekly – Felix Mendelssohn: Songs without words (BIS)

By Norman Lebrecht on 8 July 2016 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

As a general rule, I would rather eat porridge that has been left to stand overnight than listen to music of the romantic era being played on what is supposed to be a period instrument and is actually a modern replica, made the year before last. In this case, a reproduction of an 1830 Paris Pleyel that was manufactured by Paul McNulty in 2010. I mean, why….? Then again, ask any composer if he or she wanted their music to be played on the best possible soundboard or on a washboard and you’ll get an answer far more conclusive than…

Lila Downs. Photo credit: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin, 2016

Daily News Roundup: 6 July 2016

By Kiersten van Vliet on 6 July 2016 Choral, Contemporary, Mainstream Jazz, Piano, Romantic, Scena Jazz, World Music

+ 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.…

This Day in Music: July 4 Independence Day

By Weiyu Dang on 4 July 2016 Popular Music, Romantic, This Day in Music

For American Independence Day, it seems apt to feature an American themed post. In 1831, the 55th Independence Day, Samuel Francis Smith’s “My Country (‘Tis of Thee),” the defacto anthem for the 19th century, was first sung in Boston by a children’s choir. Earlier that year, a friend had asked Smith to translate German songs that were the basis for “God Save the Queen.” Instead, Smith would pen what he called “America,” later known as “My Country (‘Tis of Thee).” Smith’s original lyrics invoke the muse of America as a “Sweet land of liberty” protected and entreated by God 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.…

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…

Browsing: Romantic