tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-126173612009-11-20T12:05:53.609ZEuroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.comBlogger163125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-70950086271937829512009-11-20T12:01:00.003Z2009-11-20T12:05:53.616Z

I have been aware of the veteran American conductor, Lorin Maazel, for years, and to my great delight last night saw him in action. He collects orchestras as well as the plaudits of the critics. He is or has been musical director of the New York Philharmonic, the Philharmonia, the Clevedon Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic (a new one to me),the Bavarian

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-34988376147798125232009-10-30T16:31:00.003Z2009-10-31T08:05:54.771Z

Following on my last posting, I was at the Colston Hall in Bristol last night to hear the first programme there of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under their new principal conductor, the young Ukranian, Kirill Karabits. As he appeared on the platform the audience welcomed him warmly, but he is the antithesis of a showy extrovert, and having briefly acknowledged the applause, he turned to face

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-22816906252679135672009-10-14T17:02:00.003+01:002009-10-17T13:44:47.414+01:00

There have been quite a few changes on the orchestral scene recently and I have picked up references to three conductors who have mounted the podium for the first time as musical directors of orchestras. The most sensational of them is of course the 28 year old Venezuelan, Gustavo Dudamel, who has featured in these blogs before (and in many other places!). He opened his tenure as director of the

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-24800168456987351072009-08-30T11:54:00.004+01:002009-10-14T17:07:02.987+01:00

I am missing my annual visit to the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in London’s Royal Albert Hall. My first visit was in 1947 and in the following year I had a season ticket, and have tried most years to go to one or two concerts since. But thanks to B.B.C. TV I have watched several of this year’s programmes, and it has been almost as good as actually being there. I think the programming has been a

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-4150083105937163622009-08-23T16:10:00.001+01:002009-08-23T16:13:38.944+01:00

This has been a remarkable weekend at the London Promenade Cocerts. Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has performed in three programmes, the first and third of which were televised. The orchestra itself is an event. Conceived by Barenboim and his friend the Palestinian born critic Edward Said, who died in 2003, it comes together each summer and consists of young musicians from

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-22560025876299883802009-05-27T09:07:00.001+01:002009-05-27T09:10:28.260+01:00

May into June : time again for the Bath Music Fest which opened this weekend with a brilliant firework display. We are going to several concerts and on Monday I was part of an enthusiastic audience at the Assembly Rooms hearing a popular programme played by Freddy Kemp, a virtuoso of the key board, but a person of quiet and modest manner. Before the concert there was an interview with Kemp by

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-80076570329615009942009-04-27T10:46:00.002+01:002009-04-27T10:50:57.417+01:00

The prospectus for the 2009 Henry Wood Promenade Concerts in London is now on sale and you can check on the programmes by looking them up on bbc.co.uk/proms. Each year the style of music is expanded to embrace many genres and performed in a variety of venues, more this year than before. But the classical repertoire is the mainstay of the concerts, and most of them – 76 in total - will be held in

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-80699316125938192062009-02-11T13:22:00.005Z2009-02-13T08:48:28.916Z

Haydn wrote a hundred and four symphonies, but Beethoven, Bruckner, Vaughan Williams and Mahler only managed nine (though the latter was on his way to a tenth when he died). The British composer, Derek Bourgeois however has written forty four symphonies, more than any other contemporary composer.* With a sound musical training and positions of responsibility in the world of young people’s

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-26246940947663766262009-01-16T10:34:00.005Z2009-01-16T11:45:38.736Z

Dies Irae - Day of Wrath - is the name of the greatest of all medieval Latin hymns, the Gregorian Chant of the Dead, part of the Requiem Mass. It is a powerful description of Judgment Day at the end of the world – a day of divine wrath and a day of mourning - and a prayer to Jesus for mercy. It was probably written by Friar Thomas of Celano (who died circa 1256), a Franciscan who knew St.

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-12807546255772472242009-01-05T11:13:00.002Z2009-01-05T11:17:51.222Z

I am an unashamed devotee of Rachmaninoff’s music and have just been playing a 1990 CD, recently re-released, of his Third Symphony, stunningly performed by the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra under Pavel Kagan (on the bargain alto label). It’s a favourite work of mine and hearing it on this re-mastered disc has been a revelation. On the same disc is another superb performance of his Symphonic

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-35755011186436884812008-12-05T15:43:00.000Z2008-12-05T15:44:59.314Z

I was at the Colston Hall, Bristol yesterday for the third of three orchestral concerts, each of which featured a violin concerto. I wrote about the first on November 14th : an intense performance of the Sibelius by Henning Kraggerud, with the Halle Orchestra, which in the days of John Barbirolli, was an early champion of that composer. On the second occasion it was the Brahms concerto, again

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-80555671590592713472008-11-24T12:02:00.002Z2008-12-09T13:13:44.277Z

We were in Bristol yesterday afternoon to hear this remarkable Ukrainian men’s choir as they come to the end of an intensive month’s tour in this country. They have been making annual visits to Britain since 1992 and although once financed by the U.S.S.R. they are now completely reliant on ticket sales and overnight hospitality from their growing number of supporters. They travel by coach and

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-35318244880939152982008-11-14T09:54:00.002Z2008-11-14T09:59:04.364Z

Ralph Vaughan-Williams once called John Barbirolli, ‘Glorious John’. In 1943 (see one of our blogs) he had returned from his six years as conductor of the New York Philharmonic to rescue the remains of the broken Halle Orchestra. With barely thirty players he built it up into one of Britain’s finest orchestras, remaining with them for most of the rest of his life. It is our oldest orchestra and

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-32015199058278037362008-11-10T12:14:00.002Z2008-11-10T12:18:02.923Z

This is another of the numerous festivals that are typical of the city where we live, and perhaps - with the exception of the International Music Festival –the most prestigious. Well financed by a charitable trust and other generous donors, it attracts some of Europe’s finest musicians and is supported by enthusiastic devotees, many of whom seem to be as pleased to see each other as to hear fine

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-84654668541771741162008-11-07T15:34:00.000Z2008-11-07T15:35:20.196Z

To Birmingham on Wednesday (‘Obama Day’) for another concert by the City’s excellent Symphony Orchestra, in their resplendent Symphony Hall. I had booked the concert some time ago because of my great respect for its conductor, Vernon Handley whose unostentatious manner on the podium revealed his dedication to music rather than to style. I have only seen him conduct once, many years ago, but have

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-6084708150262475142008-09-28T16:19:00.002+01:002008-09-28T16:22:37.998+01:00

Ina radio programme this afternoon the conductor Mark Elder said of his or any orchestra that it should always be based in the community. That is certainly true of Manchester‘s Halle Orchestra which just now is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its foundation by the German émigré, Charles Halle. It both contributes to and enriches the life of that great city.The same is abundantly true of the

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-47367087244595176282008-08-14T11:50:00.000+01:002008-08-14T11:51:12.379+01:00

I was amongst the audience at the Promenade Concert in London’s Royal Albert Hall this week when Vaughan-Williams Piano Concerto received one of its rare performances. Unfamiliar with the work I had prepared myself a little by buying a CD of the recording ( Lyrita : Howard Shelley and the R.P.O. conducted by Vernon Handley). Hearing it at home a couple of times I found it difficult to get hold of

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-733457603856215582008-07-31T12:11:00.002+01:002008-07-31T12:18:29.411+01:00

I have this incurable habit of liking what others might call ‘second rate’ music, music which has never won mass approval, and therefore for many people, waits to be discovered. I carry this hope that composers of undoubted talent but no great popularity might one day be more widely recognised and valued. Several of them belong to the pastoral, or as it has been unfairly characterised the ‘

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-39196779363662384452008-06-02T10:02:00.002+01:002008-06-02T10:05:54.579+01:00

Bath, where we live, seems to have a festival every other week. Currently we are in the middle of the longest and most prestigious of them, the International Music Festival and the streets have been full of wet and bedraggled visitors looking for where their tickets tell them to go, and seeking sanctuary and sustenance in one of the many of the city’s excellent bars, pubs and restaurants.The

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-35206237538163897572008-05-11T13:02:00.001+01:002008-05-11T13:05:45.537+01:00

This is the title of Placido Domingo’s new CD. Spanish Coplas are passionate and fiery songs that often tell the story of a woman's life; frequently blighted by the behaviour of an unfaithful man. The songs were hugely popular during the 40s and 50s, and now they are back in fashion, often appearing in the Spanish pop charts. Still in amazingly good voice, Domingo sings these highly emotional

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-61752093276570448682008-04-05T12:21:00.001+01:002008-04-05T12:21:51.276+01:00

Music critics in Europe and N. America agree that Paul Lewis, is a master pianist of the first order. In a review of one of his concerts, Tim Page of the Washington Post says that he ‘seems incapable of playing anything in a bland or nerveless fashion. His sense of meter is infinitely elastic, and yet the pieces hold together organically. One almost had the sense that Lewis could have stopped in

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-25943053659868631452008-03-30T10:59:00.001+01:002008-03-30T11:01:56.257+01:00

At last! I have been wanting to go to the this concert hall ever since it opened in April 1991 and on Wednesday of last week I actually got there, with the added advantage of hearing the City of Birmingham Orchestra on its home territory. It’s a huge building; the arsenal of fearsome organ pipes the focus at one end, and a precipitous gallery near to the roof at the other. The honey-coloured pine

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-2280750549999342382008-03-06T10:09:00.003Z2008-03-06T10:15:41.917Z

Charles Mackerras is one of those versatile musicians whose art encompasses many genres. Born in Schenectady, New York, in 1925, he was in fact raised in Australia, where he studied oboe, piano, and composition at the New South Wales Conservatorium in Sydney. In 1945 he joined the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as principal oboist (later he became their chief conductor), but came to Europe in 1947. I

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-31401867411455156682008-02-16T18:15:00.003Z2008-02-16T18:26:05.974Z

Daniel Barenboim, whom we have already met in these postings (see 28th.May 2007) comes to the end of a series of sell-out performances of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas in London’s Royal Festival Hall tomorrow evening. He is performing the cycle in several major European cities. When the Argentinian pianist was only an eleven year old, he was described by the great German conductor Wilhelm

Euroresidenteshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09720730325379243865noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12617361.post-75528409796307320232008-02-12T11:05:00.001Z2008-02-13T09:19:49.746Z

Born in Nottinghamshire but educated at Manchester Grammar School, John Ogden was the greatest English pianist of his generation. He studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music in the illustrious company of the composers Harrison Birtwhistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr and the conductor Elgar Howarth. Together they formed the New Music Manchester group to publicise and perform

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