Classical Buzz
Welsh Week: Dinefwr, Adain Avion, Llangollen, BrynFestThursday, 28 June 2012
This Friday afternoon at five o’clock, the National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke will recite a new poem and initiate a seismic week of Welsh cultural exploration. The inaugural Dinefwr Literary Festival will bring writers and musicians from Wales and beyond to a National Trust house and park in Carmarthenshire. Unlike other literary festivals in Wales – notably Hay and Laugharne – this one will straddle the border between English and Welsh. Read more... |
Four Brits among 20 shortlisted for conducting competitionMonday, 25 June 2012
Twenty young conductors have been shortlisted to compete in the Donatella Flick/London Symphony Orchestra Conducting Competition in late September. The top prize is a cash award of £15,000 and an attachment to the LSO as Assistant Conductor. The 20 comprise four from the UK - Joolz Gale, Ben Gernon, Jonathan Lo and Gemma New - Irishmen Daniel Stewart and Robert Tuohy, three from Spain, two each from Italy, France, Greece and Germany, a Hungarian, an Austrian and a Portuguese. Read more... |
Arise, Sir Kenneth Branagh and Dame Zaha HadidSaturday, 16 June 2012
Zaha Hadid, visionary architect of the London Olympics Aquatic Centre, becomes a Dame and three new knights of the arts are created in the Queen's Jubilee Birthday Honours announced this morning. Read more... |
The best and worst national anthems? Time to award the medalsSunday, 15 April 2012
The onerous task of recording all 205 national anthems for playing at the Olympics medal ceremonies has fallen on the London Philharmonic Orchestra. An edited group of 36 players has recorded the anthems at the Abbey Road Studios in 60 gruelling recording hours over six days. But which would try their patience most? Read more... |
Captain Scott's Desert Island DiscsWednesday, 11 April 2012
Centenaries are sizeable business in 2012. It just so happens that the Olympics are coming to the United Kingdom for the third time in a year which finds us thinking very hard if being British still means what it did 100 years. Then, two momentous calamities singed themselves into the national psyche: the Titanic sank, and Captain Scott and his four companions failed to return from the South Pole. Read more... |
YouTube hoaxer makes a very convincing MozartSaturday, 07 April 2012
Norman Lebrecht, the seasoned and ever-alert musical commentator, thinks he and his readers may have uncovered someone making a very good stab at being Mozart. Three pieces have been discovered on the internet DIY-video channel being played by a pianist whose face can't be seen, all purporting to be new or obscure works by Mozart, Haydn and Mendelssohn. Read more... |
Cash for arts: should it be bums-per-pound or pounds-per-bum?Saturday, 31 March 2012
The organisation that channels public money to generate today's new classical music has been resoundingly condemned this week by all of Britain's most important composers. Read more... |
Bach Cantatas: celeb seeks crowd-fundingTuesday, 20 March 2012
Fancy buying a new recording of Bach’s Cantatas? It’ll cost only slightly more than a regular CD. The only snag is it hasn’t been recorded yet, which is where you come in. Read more... |
Sport and classical music: they should hang out moreWednesday, 22 February 2012
Classical music and sport: should they spend more time together? The idea was posited more than 20 years ago that football and opera made for ideal bedfellows, so long as the football was being played in Italy and the operatic aria was Nessun Dorma, sung by Pavarotti. Since then no major tournament or Olympiad passes by without the BBC making the effort to hoik improving classical sounds into the broadcasting mix. Read more... |
No go Glasgow's SNO MaidenThursday, 08 December 2011
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra's Glasgow concert tonight has had to be cancelled because of what my Scots godson, in far less extreme conditions down in the Borders, once described as "horrifying wind and rain". The programme? Read more... |
Pages
inside classical music
latest in today
Mlima's Tale, Kiln Theatre review - simple, powerful ta...
The work of the double Pulitzer-winning ...
First Person: conductor Edward Gardner on some of his questi...
“If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.”
“What is best in music is not to be...
Warhol, Velázquez, and leaving things out: an interview with...
Motion Sickness (1991) is the second novel published by the writer, art collector...
Peter Grimes, English National Opera review - not quite the...
Britten’s biggest cornucopia of invention seems unsinkable, and no-one seeing his breakthrough 1945 opera for the first time in this revival will...
Expend4bles review - last ride for the over-the-hill gang?
Thanks to numerous arguments and disagreements over script, casting etc, nine years have elapsed since Expendables 3 hit the multiplexes...
Mahler 9, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review...
For someone who said when he first took the helm at the Hallé that he “didn’t do much Mahler”, Sir Mark Elder has a pretty good track record. He’s...
Album: Kylie Minogue - Tension
Two years after the release of her rather flaccid Disco album and five since her somewhat inadvisable foray into country-ish music, 2023...
It's Headed Straight Towards Us, Park Theatre review -...
An impressive performance by Samuel West as one of two warring hams stuck on-set in a trailer over a not-so-dormant volcano in Iceland...
First Person: 'America's sweetheart organist'...
I have always had a fascination with concert programmes. I did my Doctorate thesis on this subject. I remember vividly as a youngster attending...
R.M.N. review - ethnic cleansing in rural Romania
If you think we’ve got culture wars, then welcome to Transylvania. This rugged...