Madelaine is a pianist and writer studying at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. As a winner of the Gladys Puttick Improvisation Competition as part of a dance-piano duo, she has an active interest in cross-arts collaboration. Visit here to find out more.
When we think of America, Dvořák and Milhaud are not among the first set of composers to come to mind, but it turns out they deserve to be among the second.
While early English Baroque is not an area of music which generally comes to mind when we think of controversial composers, it seems that the scores of composers we now associate with purity and conventionalism had their own streaks of radicalism in their time, political and otherwise, and a fair few were exiled.
Brahms, Chopin, Beethoven: the programme of he Royal Philharmonic Orchestra's most recent Cadogan Hall concert, under the baton of Fabien Gabel, was unashamedly mainstream. The opening item of the programme was the Brahms Tragic Overture. The opening strident chords managed to be agitated yet pensive, interrupted silence hanging in the air as each note dissipated once more.
There are very few musicians who could lay claim to a MacArthur Fellowship, and even fewer pianists, but then it seems that Stephen Hough is no ordinary pianist: writer, composer and recognised polymath, Mr Hough’s phenomenal playing skills still find time to shine alongside his many other extraordinary talents, and his performance at this recital was no exception.
Britain is a country not often historically associated with great composers, repertoire or music: apart from the occasional early music programme peppered with Purcell or production of Peter Grimes, there is a great tendency to overlook British classical music, both past and present, in favour of its Germanic and Slavic cousins.
A German Requiem and two German composers sounds like your standard concert menu, but this concert was an interesting juxtaposition of two very different halves, the first filled by German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s little-heard Ecclesiastical Action, and the second by the much-loved, much-performed German Requiem by Brahms.
Whenever Brahms is mentioned, songs and symphonies often come straight to mind: after all, the man was the master of all things symphonic, even his piano sonatas being called “veiled symphonies” by his mentor, Schumann.
It is not often you can say that the conductor’s outfit was as ornate and charming as the billed programme, but the entrance of a silver-coated Grzegorz Nowak proved that even a conductor’s first bow can be the perfect aesthetic prelude to an evening of similarly silvery, charming music.
Beginning with a work sprung from the minds of not one, but two great Russian composers, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Andrew Litton opened their latest distinctly Slavic programme at the Southbank Centre with Rimsky-Korsakov’s revised version of Mussorgky’s Night on Bare Mountain.
For the 2010/11 season, the London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Valery Gergiev, made a point of extensively exploring the works of Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Shostakovich and Shchedrin. For the 2011/12 season, it was Tchaikovsky and Stravinksy. This year, Gergiev has opted for a flavour of both Western and Eastern European music, juxtaposing the symphonic giant Brahms with another four-symphonied companion, the often overlooked Szymanowski.
What do you get when you cross Teutonic drama, Finnish sentimentality and Russian grandeur? The answer, it seems, as displayed by conductor Enrique Bátiz the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in their latest Cadogan Hall concert, is a vibrant and exciting evening of music.
The memory of Pierre Fournier is one not many would dispute as anything but an inspiration to even the most well-established cellists on the scene today: the highly acclaimed cellist was, among other things, known for his supreme tone quality and musicality; he sadly passed away in 1986.
In days gone by, if you went to see a Mahler Symphony, you wouldn't feel you’d had the full experience unless Gustav himself was waving the baton. Nowadays the privilege of watching a composer conduct his own work is a somewhat rarer one, though fortunately not yet a completely extinct practice, and watching Knussen’s Symphony No.
Mention Beijing in London at the moment and some allusion to opening ceremonies, sports or medals will undoubtedly follow (with an optional grumble about the transport system tagged on the end).
It is often said that the concert hall is the sanctuary of musicians and music lovers alike: frequent concertgoers flock to their favourite venues as regularly as Sunday service, dressed in their finest and observing the sacred rites and rituals of the classical concert.
It is not often you find Monteverdi and Stravinsky snuggled side-by-side on the same programme, but that was exactly what was packed into the latest instalment of The Bostridge Project: ‘Ancient and Modern’ series at the Wigmore Hall.
Many musicians would be grateful enough to know that a concert would one day be held in honour of their music, let alone their shadow, but the legacy of the great Mr. Ludwig van Beethoven was deservedly the focus of the final Conversational Concert of this series with pianist and lecturer Karl Lutchmayer.
