Axel von Kothen News
Finnish singer and composer
- Finland, Grand Principality of Finland
- singer, composer, instructor, writer
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2024-04-24
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2024-01-25 07:51:00
Leipzig 300: Dunedin Consort celebrates Bach's appointment at St Thomas' Church with his music alongside that of his rivals
When Bach took up his appointment at St Thomas' Church, Leipzig in 1723 one of his main duties was to write music for the Sunday services. He was in fact third choice for the post, but would dutifully (and perhaps gladly) labour for years, producing a weekly cantata as well as larger scale works such as Passions. Bach's previous appointment, as kapellmeister in Köthen, had not needed any sung church music as his employer, Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen had been a Calvinist. With the pressure of a weekly cantata and more, Bach's imagination seemed to take off. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that his cycles of cantatas for Leipzig helped change the course of Western classical music.When the post at St Thomas' Church was being filled, both Telemann and Graupner were successful in the applications. Each composer came to Leipzig for an audition, performing two new cantatas at a service. Only […]
2024-01-24 07:29:00
Norfolk-based arts writer, Tony Cooper, enjoys a musical heritage tour to Leipzig, a relaxing and inviting city to visit awash with so much musical history.
The Gewandhaus at the Augustusplatz in Leipzig-Mitte with the Mendebrunnen at night (2016)(Photo: Wikimedia - By Ichwarsnur - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0) Come 2025, the Leipzig Gewandhaus will be staging a major international festival in honour of Dimitri Shostakovich marking the 50th anniversary of his deathA frequent visitor to Germany attending Ring cycles here, there and everywhere, Tony Cooper recently enjoyed a short break in Leipzig taking in a concert by the Gewandhausorchester conducted by Alan Gilbert featuring Shostakovich’s 10th symphony whilst also enjoying a rare performance of Thea Musgrave’s opera, Mary, Queen of Scots. With so much musical history and knowledge wrapped up in Leipzig’s cultural portfolio, Tony also took adventurous steps by way of trekking the Leipzig Music Trail stopping off to visit the Bach-Archiv, conveniently situated opposite St Thomas’ Church and the Mendelssohn House Museum not forgetting, of course, the Schumann House while soaking up the city’s illustrious […]
2022-04-19 08:26:50
Bach's Brandenburg Concertos recorded in a room that Bach would have known and played in
Collegium 1704 in Hall of Mirrors at Köthen Castle, photo Emilian Tsubaki 2021 was the 300th anniversary of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, works that he wrote/arranged whilst working for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen, in Köthen, and which Bach sent to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt in the hope of getting a further rung up the musical ladder (reader, the ploy failed and Bach's presentation manuscript of the concertos simply sat in a library). Most of the concertos in the set are based on ones that Bach had already written, so it is highly appropriate that for their new recording of the concertos, Prague-based period instrument ensemble Collegium 1704 and conductor Václav Luks recorded them in the Hall of Mirrors at Köthen Castle, a room that Bach would have known and undoubtedly played in. The concertos are being released next month on DVD by Accentus.
2021-07-21 06:43:35
Encounters: York Early Music Festival with Tudor motets, Elizabethan viol music, baroque cantatas and the madrigal re-imagined
Encounters, this year's York Early Music Festival at the National Centre for Early Music (NCEM) took place both live and online. The festival's ten online events are available on NCEM's website until 13 August 2021, and I have been dipping into some of the delights on offer with The Gesualdo Six in English Motets, the Rose Consort of Viols in Elizabethan Encounters, Matthew Brook (bass-baritone) and Peter Seymour (harpsichord) in Amore traditore: Cantatas for bass and harpsichord, and The Monteverdi String Band and Hannah Ely (soprano) in The Madrigal Reimagined. The Gesualdo Six have been spending lockdown learning new repertoire and for their programme English Motets they returned to the English repertoire from Tudor composers, music that they all grew up singing. The 200 years covered by the programme was a turbulent time, with composers such as Tallis and Byrd writing for both Catholic and Protestant monarchs with Tallis' works […]
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