It’s almost ten years since French pianist Bertrand Chamayou recorded Ravel’s complete piano works, and now, in this the 150th anniversary year of Ravel’s birth, he has released an album which he calls “a modest contribution” to the “anniversary celebrations of a composer who has been my tireless companion since childhood”. ‘Fragments’ is a portrait…
Tag: Classical music
Communicating Without Words, a Family Speciality
Great performances of chamber trios and quartets often rely on the special relationships of players who communicate without words. But brothers and sisters have a natural advantage, having learned music from childhood together. Body language, discreet nods and the composer’s own “dialogue” work best among groups of siblings. The Pascal Trio (father and two sons)…
Roman Rabinovich plays Goldberg Variations in a live stream at Wigmore Hall
The Goldberg Variations has done more to widen the circle of appreciation for classical music than perhaps any other musical work. It certainly gets the youth vote, and one can see why. Regarded as the holy grail for professional pianists, it’s been interpreted by many young, world-class, artists, often male, but not exclusively so –…
‘The Rite of Spring’ in Strasbourg. Interview with conductor, Aziz Shokhakimov.
The Rite of Spring is probably the most exciting piece of orchestral music ever to have been written. Composed by Igor Stravinsky, and conceived originally as a ballet score, it first hit the stage in Paris in 1913 with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company. A riot famously erupted that first night at the Champs- Elysées theatre where…
Learning to Listen – a Lost Art Recovered
It’s funny how some random experiences can teach us important lessons in life. On an Air France flight across the Atlantic recently, I clapped on a new set of Bose wireless headphones and within minutes a stewardess was squeezing my shoulder. I looked up and saw her mouth flapping – but she made no sound….
Playing Debussy on his Blüthner was a ‘head-spinning experience’
French pianist François Dumont has still not quite recovered from ‘the excitement, the anxiety’ of playing “Clair de Lune” on Debussy’s own Blüthner piano in a remote French museum. Dumont is one of the select few pianists ever allowed to touch the instrument, now fully restored and in mint condition. It was his credibility as…
New tradition: an African Concert Series update
Back in 2018, pianist Rebeca Omordia released a solo recital CD called ‘Ekele’, which showcased African art music – that is, works by African composers who had studied and were influenced by Western classical repertoire. To me – and no doubt many others who came across the album – it was an ear-opening journey into…
ENO orchestra accompanies NOS young artists to stardom at Sinfonia Smith Square
Have you ever wondered how opera stars are made? One tends to think of a simplistic scenario, one in which opera stars are born with a god-given voice, which, eventually, projects them to fame. But life is not a TV competition. For most young artists, there is a process, and it can be lengthy, lonely…
Martha and Marios duo – a match made at the Barbican
To the Barbican Centre I went last week to see Martha Argerich perform Beethoven’s Concerto no. 2 in B flat major with the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra. On the program also, Samuel-Coleridge Taylor ‘s Ballade in A minor and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No 4 in F minor. Outside the Barbican auditorium a long queue snaked around the pillars of…
Pianist Joanna Kacperek produces a captivating album with ‘Variations’
With ‘Variations’, pianist, Joanna Kacperek, has chosen to focus on the humble variation. Like many other composers before them and since, Beethoven, Robert and Clara Schumann, Brahms and Chopin, composed many variations. On this album, Kacperek artfully displays the creative possibilities of these variations, which were a way of exploring a theme for these composers,…
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