The piano is the ultimate celebrity instrument. American pianist Liberace, one of the 20th century's best-loved virtuosos, was the highest-paid entertainer in the world from the 1950s to the 70s. Many kinds of keyboard instrument existed in earlier times but the piano as we think of it was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori.
Read MoreA firecracker performance by Vladimir Jurowski and the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin giving urgency to music composed at a time that echoes our own. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreDaniel Barenboim inaugurated last month the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin. The most interesting feature of the hall lies not in its flowing architecture, but rather in its name: the Pierre Boulez Saal. One year after the French composer's death, what is his legacy? Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreGidon Kremer, long-time champion of Sofia Gubaidulina, joined the Berliner Philharmoniker and Christian Thielemann for a performance of In tempus praesens. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreKaija Saariaho is one of 20th century modernism’s most well regarded composers, with her mystical and enrapturing orchestral soundscapes winning admiration outside the avant-garde establishment.
Read MoreScores, a recent exhibition in Berlin, exhibited new ‘scores’ by four visual artists as artworks in themselves, alongside a series of concerts featuring their musical realisation. Published on The Cusp.
Read MoreJoseph Beuys, the German avant-garde artist and environmentalist, died 30 years ago this year. To mark his anniversary, Soloistenensemble Kaleidoskop mounted the premiere of a new surrealist theatrical work. Published on The Cusp.
Read MoreStasis, originally written for Ensemble musikFabrik, explores the boundary between sound and silence through a kind of symphony in space. Last weekend, the Ensemblekollektiv performed a new tailor-made version for the Akademie der Künste building in Berlin. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreRound the corner from the Bundestag in Berlin, seat of the German parliament, the Akademie der Künste is mounting a new exhibition of works responding not only to migration, but also to exile, occupation, division and alienation. Published on The Cusp.
Read MoreThe Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin is roaming around its hometown this season with a series of chamber music concerts in unexpected places. In a former ballroom in the up-and-coming Neukölln district, the orchestra’s chamber ensemble presented an eccentric programme of music by oddballs and outcasts. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreThis former brewery in East Berlin was the home to a three-day celebration of weird and wonderful musical machines. The Wir sind die Roboter festival featured an array of instrumental contraptions from across the globe, with installations and exhibitions accompanied by three nights of musical performances. Published on The Cusp.
Read MoreThe composer and artist Claudia Molitor challenges the idea of music and how we engage with it. Her work uses sound to explore locations and physical objects. Published on The Cusp.
Read MoreThe idea of using smells in art isn’t new, but its history isn’t particularly illustrious. Smell-o-Vision was voted one of the hundred worst ideas of all time; Scratch’n’Sniff didn’t fare much better. Osmodrama, a two-month festival in Berlin, was not deterred. Published on The Cusp.
Read MoreThe Musikfest Berlin presented their own ‘Hommage’ to Boulez with his complete works for piano performed by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreBerlin’s Konzerthaus Orchestra began its new season with works by two composers set against the artistic orthodoxies of their day. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreIsabelle Faust’s performance of Luigi Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura was an extraordinary time capsule back to the work’s première in 1988. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreNico and the Navigators are a Berlin-based theatrical ensemble describing themselves as ‘full body poets’, using music, dance and physical comedy in their evocative and often improvised avant-garde works. The hour that we knew too much of each other is the ensemble's bleakly humorous look at life and love in the time of over-communication and social media. Published on The Cusp.
Read MoreAlthough a British composer by birth, Rebecca Saunders is most respected in Germany, where she has spent much of her working life. Her latest project was an immersive choreographed programme with the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie based around her violin concerto still. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreWhen Judith Weir was announced as Master of the Queen’s Music in 2014, it was not only in recognition of her delicately crafted narratives that have earned her a reputation as one of contemporary culture’s foremost musical storytellers, but also of her tireless commitment to making music engage with contemporary society.
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