Otto Seele News
composer, music publisher, percussionist, music teacher, editor
Commemorations 2025 (Death: Otto Seele)
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2024-03-24
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2023-09-19 06:45:00
Vivid and strong-minded performances: Bach's Harpsichord Concertos from Steven Devine and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
[…] and outdoor musical season too!On this new disc from Resonus Classics, Steven Devine directs the Orchestra of the Age Enlightenment (OAE) from the harpsichord in four of Bach's keyboard concertos, those in D minor, BWV 1052, A major, BWV 1055, and D major, BWV 1054, along with Devine's reconstruction of that in D minor, BWV 1059 which survives in fragmentary form but which was going to be based on the opening sinfonia of the cantata Geistund Seele wird verwirret.Whilst the disc uses the instrumental forces of the OAE, of which Devine is principal keyboard player, there is not what we might think of as an orchestra. Just single instruments, Margaret Faultless and Kati Debretzeni, violins, Max Mandel, viola, Andrew Skidmore, cello and Christine Sticher, double bass, pluse Katharina Spreckelsen, oboe in the final concerto.Steven Devine plays a double-manual harpsichord by Colin Booth (2000) after a single-manual by Johann Christof Fleischer (Hamburg, […]
2023-07-06 15:50:00
Wigmore Hall Mozart: Sonata in D major for two pianos, KV 448/375a Busoni: Improvisation on JS Bach’s Chorale ‘Wie wohl ist mir, o Freund der Seele’, BV 271 Mozart-Busoni: Fantasia in F minor for mechanical organ, KV 608 Busoni: Duettino concertante after the finale of Mozart’s Piano Concerto no.19 in F major, KV 459, BV B 88; Fantasia contrappuntistica for two pianos, BV 256b Kirill Gerstein, Zoltán Fejérvári (pianos) Mozart ran like a golden thread through Busoni’s life and music—though, as for many composers, Schoenberg included, he only became more important as time went on. It was only fitting, then, that in the last of Kirill Gerstein’s Wigmore Hall series, we should be treated to a combination of the two, alongside the inevitable Bach. Joined by the equally outstanding Zoltán Fejérvári, Gerstein offered us a two-piano recital that will linger long in the memories of those who heard it. Here […]
2022-09-28 18:47:00
[…] emphatically as piano music and yet also as ‘letting the music speak for itself’, in that most necessary of clichés. Musical processes behind and beneath the melody revealed two—sorry, three—great minds at work. Brahms’s arpeggiated half-lights emerged, as if from his own piano music; they were never imposed. That attentiveness to material—a sort of dual authenticity, though not in the debased sense the later twentieth century made all too current—marked out ‘Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele’ as more yielding, yet similarly straightforward, and the ineffably lovely ‘Es ist ein Ros entsprungen’ as differently inward, Levit relishing Busoni’s modest interventions. The two preludes on ‘Herzlich tut mich verlangen’ were properly contrasted, the first speaking with a richness of tone apt for a more overtly Romantic outpouring (from both Brahms and Busoni), the second acting with ‘Es ist ein Ros entsprungen’ both to encase that passion, and coming closest to the Passions […]
2022-08-01 06:50:00
Serious Songs: Jess Dandy & Martin Roscoe in Schubert, Brahms, Wolf, Strauss at Wigmore Hall
[…] as then nice to hear the four songs Opus 27 done as a group rather than individual selections. The four were a wedding present for Strauss' wife, Pauline, herself a singer of Strauss' songs. Though rather ironically the final two have texts by the writer and gay activist, John Henry Mackay and it can be argued that the tests of both 'Morgen' and 'Heimliche Auffordering' were written from a same sex point of view. 'Ruhe, meine Seele' began with Roscoe's dark piano and Dandy's sombre voice. It was a performance of remarkably sustained intensity and very centred. 'Cäcilie' erupted into this, an unstoppable stream which reached a fine climax. 'Heimliche Auffordering' was urgent, flowing and impulsive leading to rapture. Then finally 'Morgen', very centred with beautifully even tone and fine emphasis on the words.We had an encore, with Dandy commenting that you could never have enough Schubert, they performed Wandrers Nachtlied.Never […]
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