Radio choir of the MDR based in Leipzig
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2018-11-11 21:40:00
Germans and Britons - Leipzig honours the End of the First World War
What real heroes did when it rained in the Somme (For my piece on Vladimir Jurowski's inspired Eternal Flame concert for ASrmistice day, please read here) From Leipzig Peterskirche, the Gedenkkonzert 100 Jahre Ende ertsen Weltkreig ( Memorial Concert marking 100 years after the End of the First World War) - Max Reger, Rudi Stephan, Walter aunfels, Gustav Holst, Ernest Farrar and Samuel Barber. Alexander Shelley conducts the MDR-Rundfunkchor und MDR-Sinfonieorchester, broadcast via BR Klassik. It's worth watching as well as listening, as the Peterskirche was bombed during the Second World War, remaining a ruin for many years. Appropriately the concert began with Max Reger's Totenfeier, a section from his incomplete Lateinisches Requiem Op. 145a. The word "Requiem" repeats, weaving through the orchestration like an unbreakable thread, epressing the idea of a funeral procession Rudi Stephan's Musik für Orkester in einem Satz (1910) followed. Stephan was killed in […]
2014-12-08 01:00:00
In the Name of Music: Great Austro-German Oratorios and Art Songs
Franz Schmidt's reputation is still debated due to his clear association with the Nazi regime at the time of the annexation of Austria (Anschluss) in 1938. The grand oratorio here presented (The Book with Seven Seals), based on the Book of Revelation, and only recently making a timid reappearance in our common repertoire, is a powerful work of art, whose style seems to encompass a wide lapse of some two centuries of German choral music history. Next to it, one of the greatest examples in that repertoire, by a man whose Jewish origins brought about the most ignorant and ruthless erasure by the Nazi cultural environment: "Mendelssohn was presented as a dangerous accident of music history, who played a decisive role in rendering German music in the 19th century degenerate. (Wiki) Surely, time has mended this outright injustice, and Mendelssohn has now finally total pride of place amongst the […]
2013-10-27 13:26:13
Sunday at the Philharmonie: Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder
Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder, a large-scale cantata based on an ancient Danish saga, is being performed for the second and final time tonight by the Berlin Philharmoniker and chief conductor Simon Rattle. Based on the evidence of Friday’s dress rehearsal, the gargantuan orchestral forces (8 horns, four harps, 7 clarinets!), choral component (three choirs are taking part - Rundfunkchor Berlin, MDR Rundfunkchor Leipzig and WDR Rundfunkchor Köln) and the six accomplished soloists combine organically to produce an overwhelming, full-on effect. Whether or not it stirs you will depend mostly on how you view this very self-consciously Wagnerian work, dripping with late Romanticism and, especially in the later parts indulgent Mahlerian coloristic outpourings. The most promising singers (based on Friday’s sneak peak) are heldentenor Stephen Gould as the grief-stricken Waldemar (Schoenberg had Tristan on the brain when writing the role) and the thrillingly full-throated lyrical Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski as the doomed Trove. […]
2013-03-28 01:00:00
Second Viennese School Essentials # 7 - Schönberg's Operas
This collections of masterpieces offers a quick overview on the most important stage works by the Austrian Genius (to be precise, the Gurre-Lieder are actually a Cantata, although quite operatic in style). With the exception of Von Heute auf Morgen (Schönberg's first dodecaphonic opera) and Erwartung (which we have presented here and will feature again in one of our next posts), all of the dramas by the Father of Modern Music are featured here. With Moses und Aron, we are facing a work of great complexity and beauty. I was once lucky enough to exchange a few words about this sublime masterpiece with one of its pioneers - Maestro Solti - who insisted one should listen to this music as if was by Brahms. Not sure what he exactly meant, but what I gathered was that one should let him/herself flow in the superb lyrical themes (Aron's role in particular […]
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