composers
graham.rickson
Oliver Knussen: Violin Concerto etc Various artists/Oliver Knussen (NMC)Collecting music written between the early 1970s and 2010, this NMC disc is an enthralling tribute to one of the greatest of contemporary composers. Oliver Knussen has never been prolific. And, in Colin Matthews’s words: “One of the reasons that Knussen’s output is relatively small… is that he takes such pleasure in discovering new things when instead he should be composing… every bar that he writes is measured against all the music he knows and loves.” Unsurprisingly, as a conductor he's an inspirational Read more ...
stephen.walsh
It’s hard to imagine that a composer’s death at the age of 103 could be a loss to music, in the sense of possible future work, as well as a personal loss, which of course death will always be. But Elliott Carter was a unique exception. Not only was he still writing music up to a few weeks before his death on 5 November, but the dozen or so works he had completed since his 100th birthday showed none of the negative traces of old age one would normally expect to find in the music of somebody even four-fifths his age.The nearest significant parallels I can think of in modern times are Verdi and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Hans Werner Henze, the composer who died on Saturday aged 86, wrote the music for one of Margot Fonteyn's signature ballets, Ondine, a ballet about an inhuman spirit who longs to be joined to a man - but when she does, he must die. It might almost be a metaphor for the death of the thought the moment it is realised.A 1958 collaboration with Britain's major choreographer Frederick Ashton, Ondine was the first full-length ballet score to be commissioned by the emerging Royal Ballet, and it was, for the very young, and creatively fluctuating Henze, a process that confirmed his instinct that Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Rio Ferdinand did four years' ballet training as a child, England manager Graham Taylor sent the national squad to dance classes, while the Royal Ballet once ran an active football team. Ballet and football have long been secret lovers backstage. But they have only been rarely seen out together in public.The tidy formations and rehearsed moves that please in dance theatre aren't compatible with the unpredictable spontaneity of football, and while kings of grace such as Ronaldinho, Zinedine Zidane or Dennis Bergkamp bring tears to the eyes with their individual flair, it's the overall arc of a Read more ...
theartsdesk
Southbank Centre’s current season has included weekends devoted to three contemporary giants: Pierre Boulez, Conlon Nancarrow and George Benjamin. But it closes with a festival devoted to not to one contemporary composer but 20. The New Music 20x12 weekend, initiated by the PRS for Music Foundation, is a Olympic celebration of the range and diversity of new British composition. Indeed, the only thing all 20 pieces will have in common is that – you’ve guessed it - they will last 12 minutes.Performances will take place all over the Southbank Centre, and 14 of them will be freeSome of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
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. In an open letter, signed by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Colin Matthews, Nicola LeFanu, Julian Anderson and 250 more, the British contemporary music-making establishment accuses Sound and Music - set up by the Arts Council three years ago - of having alienated virtually all the composers it was set up to work with.The letter, published on Tuesday, accuses Sound and Music (SAM) in the frankest terms of Read more ...
Ismene Brown
On Thursday the London Symphony Orchestra plays a night of epic movie music by the man who gave America’s cowboy heroes their most stirring tunes. Dimitri Tiomkin was one of Hollywood’s film-score giants, John Wayne’s choice as composer for The Alamo, Wayne’s magnum opus, and Tiomkin's was the music that urged Gary Cooper and Clint Eastwood to ride out in iconic glory in landmark adventures such as High Noon or Rawhide.He was also a composer of suspense, of the knife-edge when a young wife is framed by her husband for murder, of the fateful convergence that brings two strangers together on a Read more ...
hilary.whitney
Niccolò Paganini was the most controversial classical musician who ever lived. Although widely acknowledged to be one of the most brilliant performers of his lifetime, he provoked wildly contradictory opinions amongst his contemporaries and was constantly denounced as a charlatan in league with the devil – a spell in gaol for a paternity suit gave rise to the myth that he had acquired his dazzling technique from a pact with the devil during his incarceration. The ultimate showman, Paganini encouraged such rumours although this, combined with his vast wealth - in one season he earned five Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Twelfth-century abbess, healer and mystic Hildegard of Bingen had no formal musical training. Perhaps because of this her music – exquisite arabesques of chant melody, animated by the conviction of her religious beliefs – creates a language all its own, a “swaying bridge between heaven and earth”, as she characterised it.Contemporary composer Stevie Wishart herself provided a bridge between the medieval mysticism of Hildegard and the more earthly concerns of Harrison Birtwistle and Benjamin Britten, in a Proms Saturday Matinee at Cadogan Hall that invited its audience to meditate upon the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Composer and music producer Nitin Sawhney (b 1964) is known for his variety of musical projects, reflecting his background fusing Indian and British heritage. He has written music for films, television, dance productions, studio albums and concert performance, and is increasingly developing the possibilities of video games.Born in Rochester, Kent, he took music lessons in Asian, classical and flamenco, and dropped out of law studies and an accountancy job, as his urge to become a musician took over. He made his first breakthrough teaming up with Sanjeev Bhaskar on what would become the BBC TV Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
We critics often find ourselves "embarrassed by historical facts", as Craig Raine once put it. Raine was trying to explain why so many people still value Wilfred Owen's poetry - to him, the most overrated corpus of the 20th century. "[Owen's] life and death as a soldier make literary criticism seem invalid and pedantic," he argued, before proceeding to a very validly pedantic demolition job. Music has its own Wilfred Owens. Viktor Ullmann is one. His reputation (which was showcased last night in a rare staging of his only opera, The Emperor of Atlantis, at the Arcola Theatre) seems to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This hugely entertaining first instalment of a three-part investigation into what makes pop songs tick took as its theme "The Ballad", perhaps the most bomb-proof of pop's traditional forms. Mind you, the programme's definition of a ballad was pretty loose. For instance, I would say Sting's "Every Breath You Take" is merely medium-paced rather than a ballad. I'd just file Culture Club's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" under "Pop Song".No arguments about "Candle in the Wind" or "Everybody Hurts" though, while Jennifer Rush's "The Power of Love" is the epitome of the so-called "Power Ballad", a Read more ...