Aimé Paris News
French music educator and inventor of writing system (1798-1866)
- France
- music teacher, lawyer
Last update
2024-05-13
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2024-05-05 03:24:00
New York Philharmonic. Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello. May 1, 2024.
[…] the challenges with ease. I suspect this piece is so "standard" that the ensemble would put in a solid performance even without a conductor. Salonen, who recently quite the San Francisco Symphony, was certainly enjoying himself.Four harps (!) used in the Berlioz piece.Sitting in Row J, we could clearly see Salonen enjoying the concert. What's not to like?In Berlioz's own words. I suppose this was translated from the French, especially the composition was premiered in Paris.All in all a great concert. One could ask how these two pieces found their way into the same program. I can offer up one compelling reason: both pieces rely heavily on their respective themes. We talked about Shostakovich earlier, and in Berlioz's case it was the "idee fixe" that did the job. Well, Dies Irae didn't hurt, either.Regardless, this was an immensely enjoyable concert; and I didn't even have to prepare for it.We were […]
2024-05-04 09:04:00
A willingness to explore: Stéphane Fuguet on recording Monteverdi and Lully at Versailles with his ensemble, Les Épopées
[…] admires him because whilst his voice can be very sunny, round and emotional, he is also willing to try things out, there are no limits. I was interested to know what a French ensemble that performs a lot of 17th French music made of Italian declamation in operas like L'Orfeo, but Stéphane turns the issue around, pointing out that French declamation comes from the Italian, with the young Lully listening to Italian opera in Paris and trying to notate it. For Stéphane, Italian opera is the beginning. He has taught at the Paris Conservatoire for the last 12 or 13 years and performs two or three operas per year with the students (some staged, some in concert) and they have done a lot of Italian 17th-century operas by Cavalli, Rossi, Peri and Monteverdi. This has involved working on the recitatives, which he feels are very close to talking. And […]
2024-05-03 11:55:00
Mozart in 1774: Samantha Clarke, Jane Gower, The Mozartists, and Ian Page on stylish form at Wigmore Hall
[…] still discuss the exact dating order, mainly because they want to hear Mozart's development in them. But in fact, these are works where youthful engagement and exuberance often bubble up.They are still relatively small-scale, compact works. The Mozartists performed with 12 strings, double woodwind, horns and trumpets, making the music feel like extended chamber music, but it is clear that as the composer gets older and his ambitions develop (his next symphonies will be the Paris symphonies from 1778 in 2028), The Mozartists' venues will have to expand similarly.We began with Symphony No. 28 in C major, scored for strings, oboes, horns and trumpets. The first movement alternated brisk gestures and crisp detail, with hints of Sturm und Drang in the development. There was a lyrical elegance to the slow movement, but with quite busy movement underneath and a striking use of the horns to change the atmosphere in the […]
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2024-05-02 16:01:01
[…] by Sargent hangs in the ISG Museum. Ironically, as Johnson points out, this very cosmopolitanism compromised his later reputation, at a time when a populist Americanism was all the rage, and composers who gave titles to their works in foreign languages simply would not do (though what could be more American than a self-invented history?) And one could profitably ponder the anomaly that people such as Aaron Copland, whose esthetic was formed through study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, led this crusade. Writing in 1929 for the Boston Journal, Nicolas Slonimsky observed that “Loeffler is the Anatole France of music not only by the outward traits of countenance. His music is not so easily accountable…Its elusiveness, an eclectic style with a strong observant mind in constant attendance, its half-said words and half-sung melodies, all this is tantalizing and deceptive of simplicity. Loeffler remains aloof, and detached from the body […]
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