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
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreNow 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.
Read MoreOver 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.
Read MoreJürgen 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.
Read MoreBerliner Philharmoniker’s interpretation of Das Paradies und die Peri reaches for the heavens. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreAperghis’ 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.
Read MoreBernd 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.
Read MoreBy 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.
Read MoreLaunching a new “Reflektor” series of short festivals, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie invited Bryce Dessner to curate two days of concerts. Published on Bachtrack.
Read MoreAfter 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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreI. Catterline in Winter for orchestra (2016)
Helen Grime’s Two Eardley Pictures is a two-part work inspired by a pair of paintings by Joan Eardley (1921-1963). The British artist, born in Sussex but growing up in Glasgow, spent the end of her short life in Catterline, a small fishing village in the North East of Scotland. Catterline in Winter and Snow are part of a series of landscapes depicting the rugged beauty of her home. These pictures stirred strong memories for Grime, who grew up in Macduff in Banffshire, not far from Catterline.
Grime was intrigued by the way Eardley returned to the same subject matter throughout her life, painting the same scenes throughout the year from different angles and at different times of day. In her own Eardley Pictures, Grime has not tried to depict the paintings in sound, but has used the artist’s approach to create different ways of handling the same musical material. In this case, both pieces are united by the subtle use of a local ‘Bothy Ballad’, The Scranky Black Farmer.
Catterline in Winter has a slowly evolving structure that uses the same material in different registers, rhythms and orchestrations. The piece begins from a pulsing string figure layered with brass chorale and clarinets, and emerges into a violent woodwind tutti. This slowly mutating material is interrupted by three exuberant episodes inspired by the sun breaking through the leaden darkness in Eardley’s picture. Submerged motifs burst from the gloom, and the piece ends with a vivid brightness.
Published by the BBC Proms 2016, Prom 27
II. Snow for orchestra (2016)
Helen Grime’s Two Eardley Pictures is a two-part work – the first of which was heard in Prom 27 – inspired by a pair of paintings by Joan Eardley (1921-1963). The British artist is well known for her portraits of street children in Glasgow and for a series of landscapes depicting the rugged beauty of Catterline, a small fishing village in the North East of Scotland where she spent the end of her short life.
Catterline in Winter and Snow both evoked powerful memories for Grime, who grew up in Macduff in Banffshire, not far from Catterline. Grime was intrigued by the way Eardley painted the same scenes throughout the year from different angles and at different times of day, and used the artist’s approach to create different ways of handling the same musical material.
In Snow, Grime captures the stark contrasts of the Scottish landscape. A clamorous woodwind tutti at the opening of the piece is intercut with a simple, plaintive clarinet melody. This is derived from The Scranky Black Farmer, a melancholic Bothy Ballad – named after the huts where the poor labourers lived – which forms the harmonic basis of both pieces.
Grime uses the piobaireachd principle (a form of theme and variations common to Scottish folk music) to transform this melody throughout the piece. By the time the original Scranky Black Farmer melody appears in the piccolo and trumpet towards the end of the work, it is combined with a highly ornamented woodwind motif, and is then woven into dense motivic string figures which end submerged in darkness.
Published by the BBC Proms 2016, Prom 30
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.
Read MoreThe history of Berlin Atonal provides a vivid snapshot of the capital’s progressive musical culture. Published on The Cusp.
Read MoreBarrie Kosky's landmark production at the opening of the 2017 Bayreuth Festival is a surreal fantasy in which Wagner plays a starring role.
Read MoreIf 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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreKsenija 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.
Read MoreHailed 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.
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