Amid the whirring of the coffee machines and the intense crowds of tourists leaving Harrods, Sunday afternoon at the National Geographic London Store saw flautist Katherine Bryan launch her new CD, featuring the first-ever British recording of American Christopher Rouse’s concerto. Bryan gave a theatrical performance of the highest calibre, including Poulenc, Debussy, Martin and...
Carrie Cracknell’s ENO production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck was a mixture of immensely powerful and marginally confusing in parts – for what is essentially a very simple story line, the plot felt slightly complicated. However, the last thirty minutes, from when Wozzeck finally kills his wife Marie, are hugely intense, powerful and gripping. Imagery and psychological turmoil...
Faster Than Sound is a groundbreaking series curated by Aldeburgh Music that joins the dots between musical genres and digital art forms and bringing the Aldeburgh festival into the 21st century. In five week-long residencies each year, the Faster Than Sound series places strong emphasis on emerging technologies to help create new cross-art collaborations. The...
notesonnotes global has just been launched, featuring a daily collection of posts drawn from classical music blogs around the world, spanning musicology, interviews, reviews, new classical music and more… Please let me know if you have any suggestions of more blogs you would like follow and any feedback gratefully received. Thanks!
The beginning of a classical music websites directory with a few of my favourite sites: Video & music on demand The Space Interesting collection of vidoes, podcasts and digital essays – a ray of clarity in the digital noise! Particularly interesting is Will Self’s digital essay, ‘Kafka’s Wound’ Classical Clips Database of classical music...
If: Monteverdi was the first composer to find musical expression for human passion; and Beethoven, what a terrible struggle it is to be human and to aspire to be godlike; Mozart the kind of music we’d hope to hear in heaven; Bach is the one who bridges the gap. He helps us to hear the...
The Easter Bach Marathon took place yesterday at the Royal Albert Hall with an amazing collaboration marking Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s 70th birthday. Having tuned in throughout the day, a particular highlight was Gardiner’s explanation and analysis of Bach’s Easter Cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden which brought the work, its background and the 22-year-old Bach...
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, which has sparked countless controversies over its conception, composition and performance, is centered on the idea of the power of the collective over the individual; the haunting ritual performed before the sacrifice of a young maiden. Stravinsky’s preoccupation with rite, ritual and myth pervades many of his large-scale theatre works as...
2013: Wagner Year 2013 is the year of both the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth (22nd May) and the 130th anniversary of his death (13th February). Celebrations are taking place around the world to mark his bicentenary, particularly in Leipzig and Bayreuth, and at The Met, Royal Opera House and La Scala. The project ‘From...
A hilarious amalgamation of questions that composer Thomas Goss has been asked over the years in interviews, apparently all true… (Start at 0:26)
An Indian music infographic showing swaras, raags and thaats to be used according to the time of day. Given these specific connections between music, time and everyday life, is perhaps Indian music most similar to our Church music, where particular music and modes are played and used at certain times of day?
Philip Glass – hailed as the most well-known living composer today – celebrates his 75th birthday this weekend at the Barbican with a live screening of Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi. Reggio created a ‘visual tone poem’ tracing the collision between man and technology with juxtaposing images of American landscapes and cities. Glass wrote the...
