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2024-04-23
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2024-04-12 10:29:00
Turkey's leading orchestra, the German national youth orchestra plus ensembles from Tokyo, Prague, Vienna, Buenos Aires: 2024/25 Zurich International Orchestra Series at Cadogan Hall
Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic OrchestraThe 2024/25 Zurich International Orchestra Series at Cadogan Hall has recently been announced and as ever it is a chance to hear orchestras that do not always make it to London's bigger halls. The season opens on 7 October with Theodore Kuchar conducting the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine in a programme of Sibelius, Brahms and Beethoven but which begins with Ukrainian composer Yevhen Stankovych's Chamber Symphony No. 3.2024 also sees visits from the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo with Christian Tetzlaff in Beethoven's Violin Concerto, plus the 'Dance of the Seven Veils' from the ballet, Salome by Japanese composer Akira Ifukube (1914-2006), known also for his film scores including the 1954 Godzilla; Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra with its British chief conductor Jonathan Darlington; Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Rachmaninov, Beethoven and Liszt.Moving to 2025, however, and we get some real highlights. First off, the German National Orchestra […]
2024-04-11 06:53:00
A little bit of magic: Victoria's Tenebrae Responsories sung one to a part at the original pitch by I Fagiolini and Robert Hollingworth
Victoria: Tenebrae Responsories; I Fagiolini, Robert Hollingworth; COROReviewed 9 April 2024Just one voice to a part, just intonation and a wonderfully expressive approach to line, all combined with lovely poise to make this disc a little bit of magic.Victoria's Tenebrae Responsories are completely wonderful and few choristers can be entirely ignorant of them, most ensembles attempt some of them at some time. Usually performed in modern editions for standard SATB at a pitch that makes them work, they were intended for a rather different line up using either low-soprano, high-tenor, baritone and bass or two sopranos, high-tenor and baritone. And almost certainly with only one voice to a part, sung a four lower than written according to the conventions used at the time.This original arrangement has rarely made it onto disc. Famously the music was recorded at high pitch, without the expected transposition, by the choir of Westminster Cathedral in the […]
All the conducting master class
2024-04-03 14:34:13
25 – 30 Aug, 2024 August 25 – 30, 2024, Olomouc, Czech RepublicMaestro Tomáš Netopil & the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra Orchestral conducting masterclass with Maestro Tomáš Netopil and the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra (full-size professional symphony orchestra)The 6-day intensive course for conductors offers participants lessons accompanied by two experienced pianists, gives students the opportunity to work with a professional symphony orchestra as well […]
2024-03-30 10:53:00
St Thomas’s Church, LeipzigBach: St John Passion, BWV 245 (first version, 1724) Elisabeth Breuer (soprano)Jakub Jósef Orliński (countertenor)Daniel Johannsen (tenor)Benjamin Appl (bass: Christus)Tomáš Král (bass: arias)Thomanerchor LeipzigLeipzig Gewandhaus OrchestraAndreas Reize (conductor) At Good Friday Vespers, 1724, in St Nicholas’s Church, Leipzig, the city’s new Thomaskantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, led the first performance of his St John Passion. Three hundred years later, on Good Friday, Bach’s masterwork will return to the same church, performed by the latest incarnation of the composer’s own choir and an orchestra closely related, conducted by the twelfth successor to Bach as Kantor, Andreas Reize. I attended not that performance, but one the previous evening of Maundy Thursday, at the more customary St Thomas’s; it is close enough, I think, to count, without troubling ourselves with complications of lunar versus solar calendars. (For what little it may be worth, the Gregorian calendar had been in use there […]