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Chinese tech giant Huawei recently announced its latest smartphone had composed a completion of Franz Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony No. 8. But away from PR stunts, new technological developments are making a real impact on the way we interact with classical music. Published in Askonas Holt, The Green Room Magazine
In 2019, Karsten Witt Musik Management celebrated its 15th anniversary. In celebration, it produced a special anniversary magazine featuring interviews with the company’s artists, directors and content from guest authors including Eleonore Bühning and Patrick Hahn. The English-language version, which I edited, is available to read online.
Now entering his second season as Chief Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Robin Ticciati is keen to show the breadth of his repertoire and the extent of the orchestra’s abilities. Published on Bachtrack.
Over 10 years after his death, Karlheinz Stockhausen still occupies a complex and difficult place in the canon of contemporary composers. This year's Musikfest Berlin featured a Stockhausen focus, of which the "creation ceremony" Inori was the climax. Published on Bachtrack.
Jürgen Flimm bowed out of his role as Intendant of the Berlin State Opera with the German premiere of Salvatore Sciarrino's Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo. Published on Bachtrack.
Berliner Philharmoniker’s interpretation of Das Paradies und die Peri reaches for the heavens. Published on Bachtrack.
Aperghis’ migrants and a new arrangement of Janáček’s The Diary of One who Disappeared by Schöllhorn were well-handled treatments of their subject matter, yet burdened by an overwrought conceptual framework. Published on Bachtrack.
Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s music was the starting point for this year’s Ultraschall Festival, marking what would have been his 100th birthday. Read more on Bachtrack.
By the time he died in 2016, Tony Conrad had accrued a mythic aura. A new documentary, Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present, shown at a special screening at the Volksbühne Berlin, is a rounded portrait of Conrad’s boundless creativity and experimental spirit. Published on The Cusp.
Launching a new “Reflektor” series of short festivals, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie invited Bryce Dessner to curate two days of concerts. Published on Bachtrack.
After Jonathan Meese's Parsifal staging was rejected by Bayreuth, he channelled his frustrations into an "arch-Parsifal" which shoots the titular hero into space, with a musical re-imagining of Wagner’s score by Austrian composer Bernhard Lang. Published on Bachtrack.
In L’Invisible, which had its première last weekend at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Aribert Reimann has condensed three plays by Maeterlinck into bite-size chunks that vanish before they can be savoured. Published on Bachtrack.
Vladimir Jurowski is fond of grand statements, and sometimes off-the-wall programming – genius when it works, baffling when it doesn’t. Published on Bachtrack.
The history of Berlin Atonal provides a vivid snapshot of the capital’s progressive musical culture. Published on The Cusp.
Barrie Kosky's landmark production at the opening of the 2017 Bayreuth Festival is a surreal fantasy in which Wagner plays a starring role.
If Johann Sebastian Bach is the fountain from which Western music springs, then Leipzig is its source. Three concerts over one day at the opening weekend of the Bachfest Leipzig provided a chance to tip one’s toe into Bach’s enormous legacy. Published on Bachtrack.
The Staatskapelle brought a showcase programme to the Berlin Philharmonie under chief conductor Daniel Barenboim. With it, the orchestra made a case for themselves as one of the best ensembles performing today. Published on Bachtrack.
Ksenija Sidorova is a leading accordionist, who is widely celebrated for her eye-watering technique, and has done great things for the Squeezebox’s sex appeal. Published on The Cusp.
Hailed as the ‘bright young thing’ of British contemporary music in the 1990s, composer, conductor and performer Thomas Adès burst on to the scene whilst still a student.
In Berlin, the ‘FREE! Music’ festival at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt celebrated musical freedom fighters of all kinds, including Harry Partch, a rebel of a more esoteric kind. Published on The Cusp.
Overshadowed by its Hanseatic cousin Hamburg, Antwerp recently celebrated the opening of its own new concert hall. In his Symphony no. 2, Wim Henderickx tested the hall's capabilities with a multi-media extravaganza. Published on Bachtrack.
The curators of a new exhibition on Julius Eastman, a recently rediscovered composer from the New York experimental scene in the 1970s and 80s, think he was far more than a political provocateur. Published on The Cusp.
Teodor Currentzis, bad boy of early music, appeared at the Konzerthaus Berlin with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and MusicAeterna for a performance that turned it up to 11. Published on Bachtrack.
Vikingur Ólafsson, a daring and unique artist, never repeated himself in a performance of Philip Glass' Etudes for piano as part of the Berlin Konzerthaus' "Festival USA". Published on Bachtrack.
‘We refuse to accept a fascist America.’ A recent celebration of electronic Mexican music was politically pointed. Published on The Cusp.
John Adams and Peter Sellars' biblical oratorio given a fine concert performance by the Berliner Philharmoniker under departing chief conductor, Sir Simon Rattle. Published on Bachtrack.
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.
A 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.
Daniel 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.