In 1965 English artist John Jones set off to the US, his objective, to spend a year interviewing America’s greatest artists. The resulting taped interviews provide the material for The American Art Tapes. It’s been a while since I’ve been so gripped by an art book. All of America’s key artists feature, and through them it…
Category: review
Vital organ: Anna Lapwood, ‘Images’
No matter how long I’ve listened seriously to classical music – and with a mere decade of doing so behind me, I’m still one of the beginners – it’s always a good thing to be reminded that I’ll remain a learner for the duration, until my senses fail. There are always new sounds and new…
Solem Quartet plays Thomas Ades
For their debut album the Solem Quartet embrace the theme of night and day. Heading up the line-up of contemporary composers on this concept album, we have Thomas Adès, with Solem Quartet’s new commission of Four Quarters. Commencing with Nightfall, febrile violins denote ancient stars in distant galaxies with groaning cello and viola signifying earth. In Morning Dew, plucked violin strings…
Memorials in music on the twentieth anniversary of September 11th
9/11 : 20 Memorials on the twentieth anniversary of September 11th Adam Swayne, piano British pianist Adam Swayne’s latest disc marks the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 – a date which is deeply, painfully etched on our collective modern memory – and seeks to demonstrate ways in which composers memorialise or commemorate disaster through works by…
Rock opera: ENO’s ‘Tosca’ at South Facing Festival
Once there was a time when I would have been fully on top of such exciting news: a rock festival just down the road at Crystal Palace Bowl. Only a few stops on the train, or a mere jaunt on the bus, without any need to negotiate the seething metropolis. In fact, the news reached…
Olena Tokar – the soprano with soul
With her album Charmes, Ukranian soprano Olena Tokar shows her love of female song repertoire from the 19thand 20th century. Women composers have historically been thin on the ground, but the ones who received public attention, either in their time or more recently, were, and remain, utterly fascinating. On the album, we have the feisty Alma Mahler, who threatened…
‘Historical Fiction’ Forshaw brings sax to the baroque.
Karine Hetherington from ArtMuseLondon caught up with composer and saxophonist, Christian Forshaw, and soprano Grace Davidson, shortly before the release of their latest album, Historical Fiction. Christian’s arrangement of Handel’s ‘Eternal Source of Light Divine’ has already attracted 36,000 views on YouTube and was featured on Classic FM. Christian and Grace, what are your earliest musical memories? C: Beatles and choral…
Manc union: Prom 20, Manchester Collective with Mahan Esfahani
Back to the ‘dome from home’ for another evening, and for what turned out to be one of the most thrilling Proms I’ve ever attended, for a whole host of reasons. Mainly, I think it was the sheer energy sustained throughout – the performers set out to electrify the audience, and succeeded. Rewind to what…
‘The Piano: A History in 100 Pieces’ – a must-read for pianophiles & music lovers
It was perhaps inevitable that pianist and writer Susan Tomes would turn her attention eventually to the extraordinarily broad repertoire of the piano – her instrument, and mine, and that of countless others, both professional and amateur players. While her previous books have been concerned with the myriad aspects of “being a pianist” – from…
‘De Profundis Clamavi’ – Duncan Honeybourne, piano
This recent release by Duncan Honeybourne on the EMR label makes a persuasive and enjoyable case for lesser-known English composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Recorded in August 2020 at Potton Hall, between lockdowns, as it were, Duncan Honeybourne, by his own admission, feels this is his best work to date. While many of…
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