Darmstadt feiert bis tief in die Nacht. Man hätte sich zweiteilen mögen an diesem Abend, der zu gleicher Zeit rasante Musik mit dem Ensemble Dal Niente und kontemplativere Klänge im Sitzkissen-Ambiente bot und hernach auch noch zum Weitertanzen einlud.
Es gibt immer wieder außergewöhnliche Plätze, an denen klassische Konzerte veranstaltet werden. Mit vier Veranstaltungen im Kesselhaus der Kulturbrauerei präsentiert sich „Klassik im Kessel“, eine neue Reihe des Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchesters Berlin für Kammermusik.
Pianist Steven Osborne explored stillness in music in an intense and beautifully-controlled performance of works by American composers Morton Feldman and George Crumb.
After four and a half hours of glacial, repetitive, soporifically quiet music... the crowd goes wild! This was the scene at Issue Project Room on Sunday evening as three members from the Either/Or Ensemble concluded Morton Feldman’s monumental trio For Philip Guston.
Marino Formenti only briefly introduced his eclectic whirlwind recital, “Liszt Inspections”, before calling out “Good luck!” and diving into one of the most attention-grabbing sequences of music that I’ve ever witnessed.
“Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. Do something else to it”. These are Morton Feldman’s own words on his Patterns in a Chromatic Field. And they are a concise and accurate description of what occurs during the piece. Patterns... is one of Feldman’s later works, composed in 1981.
The contemporary music festival Milano Musica is this year dedicated to the works of Morton Feldman, a man who professed to be more influenced by contemporary art and Persian rugs than he was by other music. The concert took place in Gallerie d’Italia, a former bank now a contemporary art gallery, and pulled together pieces for violin and piano by Feldman and his American contemporaries.
As a fan of contemporary music and, indeed, minimalism, I was disappointed to find the programme at Prom 50 underwhelming overall. This was not for lack of trying, however – I wanted to enjoy it. But after allowing the music time to sink in further and my thoughts to settle, my opinions only seemed to have become more resolute.The evening started promisingly.
On Thursday evening, the American Symphony Orchestra bid an effervescent farewell to 2012 and thereby rounded out a year-long celebration of the centenary of John Cage’s birth.
The story of how composers Morton Feldman and John Cage met is now famous: in 1950, feeling dismayed by an audience’s discourteous reaction to Anton Webern’s Symphony, Op. 21 at a New York Philharmonic performance, Feldman decided to leave the concert. In the lobby he encountered Cage, who was there for the same reason.
Ives Ensemble are one of today’s important ambassadors of Feldman’s later works. In November 2011 they performed the 90-minute Piano, violin, viola, cello (1987) in Felix Meritis, Amsterdam. I wrote about that impressive performance and the history of Feldman’s music on Bachtrack.
This, the final indoor concert of the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival (the closing Fireworks Concert takes place under the Castle Rock in Princes Street Gardens), was bookended by possibly the loudest and quietest sounds in the festival.Charles Ives' The Unanswered Question opens with a delicate mist of pianissimo strings.
Contemporary classical music is happening in all manner of unexpected venues in London at the moment, from Peckham car parks to pubs. But it isn't just getting edgier – it's also getting more respectable, if last night's suave affair in the Royal Albert Hall's Elgar Room is anything to go by.
Aisha Orazbayeva rests her violin under her chin as the welcoming applause subsides. She raises her bow and nonchalantly touches the screw at its tip against one of the strings, making an extremely quiet 'ting'. I, probably along with a good percentage of the Kings Place audience, am unsure as to whether or not the concert has started.It has done.
The Klangforum Wien is such a disciplined ensemble that for them ever to be remotely fazed or challenged by a piece, even those works with Ferneyhough-like unfulfillable demands, is scarcely imaginable.
Felix Meritis, located in central Amsterdam, is west Europe's oldest concert building. One of its concert series for fall 2011 is "News from the Front - 250 years of 'modern' music", offering performances by three renowned ensembles: the Van Swieten Society, the Ives Ensemble and the Asko Chamber Choir.
Two characters were already on the stage as the audience arrived in Hall Two of the Sage, clearly preparing for something. “Joe” wanders around in agitation, now mentally going over his lines, now raising his head and planning his declamation.
The Koorbiënnale in Haarlem is a biannual festival, organized for the sixth time this year. The opening night consisted of four exciting modern pieces and the world premiere of a new work by the Latvian composer Ēriks Eŝenvalds. The first piece played was Daan Manneke’s Topos for chorus and harmonium. It is a song cycle set to four poems by Arthur Rimbaud.
