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2024-03-25
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2023-07-26 06:50:00
I know nothing about music but I know what I like...
'People say, sometimes, timidly: I know nothing about music but I know what I like. But the important questions are answered by not liking only but disliking and accepting equally what one likes and dislikes. Otherwise there is no access to the dark night of the soul... Silence; Lectures and Writings by John CageRecent listening and reading:Edmund Rubbra: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4 - BBCSO, Sir Adrian Boult & Edmund RubbraCircling the Sacred Mountain, Robert Thurman & Tad WiseOregon in Performance - OregonTales of Protection - Erik Fosnes HansenThat Which Colors the Mind - Ali Akbar Khan, Zakir Hussain, Indranil BhattacharyaNo Place to Hide, Edward Snowden, the NSA & the Surveillance State - Glenn GreenwaldOriente Lux - Orpheus 21, Hesperion XXI, Jordi SavallZen Roots - Red PineMalcolm Arnold, Complete Music for Solo Piano - Benjamin Frith
2022-06-06 00:56:00
Ruth Reinhardt at San Francisco Symphony
Ruth Reinhardt made her debut conducting at San Francisco Symphony this past week, and drew a program of Mason Bates's new piano concerto, written for Daniil Trifonov, a short work by Lotta Wennäkoski, and Dvorak's Fifth Symphony. Wennäkoski's Om fotspår och ljus (Of Footprints and Light) didn't make a huge impression, and I was mildly disconcerted by a distinct change of style and tone partway through, undoubtedly where the composer incorporated music from a mid-20th c. work by a different composer. I also didn't take any notes, so, not much to say. The Bates....what to say. I had mixed feelings (which shocked one friend), but sure, I liked some aspects of it. Trifonov played with his accustomed fluency and smoothness; some of the musical materials were pretty and interesting to listen to. Overall, though? Well, none of the three movements had what I would call shape or […]
2019-05-19 07:00:15
Linbury theatre, Royal Opera House; Unicorn; St John’s Smith Square, LondonHenze’s voluptuous concert opera takes hold in a visceral Royal Opera production. And Dido for generation Z In theory we might try to ignore the circumstances surrounding a work’s creation. Sometimes, as in the case of Hans Werner Henze’s Phaedra, such high-mindedness is impossible. Between writing the opera’s two acts, Henze (1926-2012), then aged 79 and in morbid humour, fell into a two-month coma. One day he woke up feeling well, completed the opera and lived into his mid-80s. In a disturbing echo, Act 2 tells how the dead Hippolytus, stepson of Phaedra and object of her desires, is restored to life, or an approximation of it. A new staging by the Royal Opera’s Jette Parker Young Artists of this 2007 work, directed by Noa Naamat and conducted by Edmund Whitehead, reveals how wildly different Henze’s before-and-after music is. With […]
2019-05-10 07:48:25
Crossing the Border - the London Festival of Baroque Music
Sébastien Daucé and the Ensemble Correspondances at the 2018 London Festival of Baroque Music The year's London Festival of Baroque Music, which opens today (10 May 2019) takes Crossing the Border as its theme, with nine days of events exploring travel and discovery and their importance in the development of music. So there are themes arising out the the 18th century Grand Tour, looking at the styles of music travellers would encounter, as well as the music of the Conquistadors putting Spanish baroque music alongside music from Central and Southern America, with a host of other styles and influences too such as the development of flamenco out of Sephardic music of the Middle ages.One highlight of the festival will be Nicolette Moonen’s The Bach Players joining with baroque dancer Ricardo Barros’s Mercurius Company to express music by Telemann, Rebel and Vivaldi in terms of musical performance and dance. And […]
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- Chamber orchestras (Europe).
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): H...