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From composer to transcriber to performer—less instantaneous than modern transmissions, but it’s how many works first came to be known by music lovers before the dawn of the age of technology. Around half of Liszt’s 800 compositions were transcriptions of other composers’ works. In this week’s podcast Raymond Bisha introduces pianist Sergio Gallo breezing through virtuoso transcriptions by Read More …
Canada’s Gryphon Trio was established in 1993 and its founding members remain the same to this day. Indefatigable as performers, teachers and administrators at institutions around Canada, the trio has commissioned over 75 new works since its inception. Raymond Bisha explores their latest recording of works by four distinguished Canadian composers: Brian Current, Andrew Staniland, Read More …
I was eleven years old when I paid my first visit to a Madame Tussaud’s waxworks. Lookalike film stars and world leaders held some interest for a youngster, but the much anticipated highlight was a visit to the Chamber of Horrors. The display of instruments of torture had the desired effect on the visitor as Read More …
Contemporary American composer Richard Danielpour calls them ‘siblings’: two discrete yet connected works that ponder the current endless cycle of brutalization and despair in the Middle East. Raymond Bisha introduces ‘Darkness in the Ancient Valley’ and ‘Toward a Season of Peace’, perfectly channeled subject areas for a composer who describes himself as “a 21st-century American Read More …
The ease of global communication nowadays brings home the frequency of natural disasters and their tragic consequences. The only positive offshoot of such terrible occurrences seems to lie in the artistic reflections that composers have made in trying to capture these events, born of the less comforting side of Mother Nature. Picking through the catalogue Read More …
Violinist, violist, pianist, conductor, composer, teacher, concert presenter and author—the impact of Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) on twentieth-century music is vast. Critic Paul Bekker said of him: “He doesn’t just compose—he musics!” Hindemith composed seven string quartets between World Wars I and II, and they have all been recorded and released on a highly-acclaimed cycle with Read More …
Based in the United States, Joan Tower is one of today’s most successful composers. A 2007 Naxos release of her orchestral music (8.559328) won 3 GRAMMY awards. Rick Phillips introduces the latest disc to feature three more of her fascinating and varied compositions for orchestra: Stroke, the Violin Concerto and Chamber Dance. Tower’s flexible style Read More …
‘New music’ doesn’t have to mean cacophonous ‘modern’ music: it can of course just be music we haven’t heard before. Nor does ‘modern’ music have to be particularly new. Even though we’ve had over 80 years to get used to Anton Webern’s Concerto for Nine Instruments, Op. 24 (1934), it can still seem like the Read More …
This week’s blog turned out to be Plan B. I’d originally looked forward to sharing with you the results of a bit of research into music at airports. Naxos has offices all over the world, but it’s headquartered in Hong Kong. That’s where I work, so I frequently find myself in the city’s rather splendid Read More …
George Frideric Handel: impresario, performer, composer. The Great Bear, as he was referred to in his time, remains an Ursa Major of the musical firmament to this day. Raymond Bisha illustrates Handel’s creative genius with Vol. 2 in pianist Philip Edward Fisher’s recordings of his Keyboard Suites. View album details of Handel’s Keyboard Suites Vol. Read More …