Updates from the world's leading classical music label
I live in the city of Canterbury, in the south east of England. It attracts many visitors, principally for its magnificent cathedral and plentiful other reminders of mediaeval life, from its city walls and towers to 14th-century pubs and Dane John, a strategic defence mound cited in the Bayeux tapestry. Step inside the 15th-century Three Read More …
As July turns to August many of us will be enjoying the sunshine and thinking of vacations past and present, so here’s a clutch of examples of classical music seasoning to set the mood. Once heard, never forgotten: few melodies conjure the languid spirit of the season as effectively as Summertime by George Gershwin, from Read More …
Nadia Boulanger was born in 1887 on the date of today’s post, 16 September; she died in 1979 at the age of 92. She was a French pianist/organist and the first woman to conduct leading orchestras in Europe and America; she also composed. But she’s remembered chiefly as a teacher, who was responsible for the Read More …
In 1951, Arnold Schoenberg died. And I was born. Which hardly constituted a fair exchange on the Muses’ creativity balance sheet. But the year itself has always intrigued me by its habit of popping up in history’s list of milestones, as it did recently, when I tuned into a BBC World documentary. It took as Read More …
As July turns to August many of us will be enjoying the sunshine and thinking of vacations past and present. For music lovers, few melodies conjure the languid spirit of the season as effectively as Summertime by George Gershwin, from his 1934 opera Porgy and Bess (8.110287-88) which is, paradoxically, a tale of hardship and Read More …
John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan Garners Two Wins: Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Best Classical Vocal Performance; The Pacifica Quartet Wins Best Chamber Music Performance for Elliott Carter’s String Quartets Nos. 1 & 5; The Los Angeles Opera Production of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny Read More …
Note: This post is over a month old. You may want to check later in this blog to see if there is new information. The Recording Academy® honored artists from labels Naxos, Chandos, EuroArts, CPO, Naïve classique and Artek-with a combined 15 nominations across 11 categories this year, thus capturing 23% of the available classical Read More …
To some, Frederic Rzewski might seem like a composer full of contradictions. His music, after all, includes minimalist and quasi-serialist works as well as collage-type pieces. For example, we all discovered during the pre-concert chat with series producer Ara Guzelimian that Elliott Carter has been a long time friend and mentor to Rzewski. I was Read More …