In the darkest days of the pandemic, as I was sitting at home, it occurred to me that 2023 would be a significant year the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninov's I birth. Would I live to see another anniversary of such importance? Perhaps if I lived to 90! So, I thought to myself, "If we ever get though this, I'm going to celebrate properly."
Steven Fox, music director of New York's Clarion Choir, is speaking to me in a restaurant just a stone's throw away from 505 West End Avenue, the stately New York apartment where Rachmaninov and his wife Natalia eventually settled after fleeing the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Fox is telling me about his very special project for 2023 - to conduct all of Rachmaninov's major choral works. 'I had no worries that orchestras would celebrate the symphonies and that pianists would perform the concertos, but so little attention is given to his choral works in general,' he continues, and they were his favourite works. The two works he was most proud of at the end of his life were the All Night Vigil and The Bells - he even requested that part of the Vigil be sung at his funeral.'
Fox is a Russian music specialist, having studied the Russian language at school and at university - and subsequently making several trips to St Petersburg and Moscow during his tertiary studies at New England's Dartmouth College and London's Royal Academy of Music. The first time he heard Russian spoken by a teacher at his New York high school, he fell in love with its 'dark and mysterious sounds' and instantly gave up French so he could immerse himself in the exotic and captivating dialect.
Denne historien er fra April 2023-utgaven av BBC Music Magazine.
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Denne historien er fra April 2023-utgaven av BBC Music Magazine.
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Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day
Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day. For most people, undertaking a lockdown project meant learning to bake sourdough bread, getting fit with Joe Wicks, or taking up a language. But Professor Roger Parker, the eminent historian of Italian opera and emeritus professor at King's College London, had something far more ambitious in mind. He set about unearthing songs by Gaetano Donizetti - many of which had been lost since the composer's lifetime - and the enterprise turned into a two-year labour of love.
Composer of the month - Bohuslav Martinů - Though the Czech absorbed many influences from his exile abroad, his colourful music was always distinctively his own
The youngest of six, Bohuslav was a sickly child, and his father or older sister often had to carry him the 193 steps up to the tower. He was shy at school, too, though showed an early talent for the violin and gave his first concert at 14. By the following year, the future composer was off to the Prague Conservatoire to take the first, if faltering, steps towards a career in music.
Symphonies Beside the Sea- Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction
Before cinema, the wireless and coach trips cast them adrift, seaside orchestras were once a major holiday attraction. It's a dimension of music-making that once was integral to many a British holiday experience, yet now has all but vanished. The tide went out, you might say, on the professional seaside (or pier, or spa) orchestra many decades ago. In their glory days, though - perhaps a quarter-century on either side of 1900-these ensembles were everywhere, from Bridlington to Eastbourne, New Brighton to Worthing, Blackpool to Bexhill-on-Sea, Cleethorpes to Brighton... the list is astonishing.
Richard Morrison- Do Classical Works About Mortality Reveal More To Us As We Get Older? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise?
As we get older do we respond differently to that vast canon of music dealing with mortality? Is it inevitably true that, as we journey through the decades, we are better able to interpret or empathise with a profoundly death-obsessed masterpiece such as Schubert's Winterreise? Or do human beings possess such a flexible sense of empathy that we can relate to virtually any state of mind if it is evoked convincingly enough by a composer?
Do Notes Win Votes? - There are multi-dimensional ways that music is used by political campaigners and their supporters today.
It was a little bit of history repeating when Rishi Sunak announced the UK General Election to the heckling of his political opponents blasting out D:Ream's 'Things Can Only Get Better'.
Västra Karup Sweden
The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory
Federico Colli
\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music
Harmonic Progression
What happens when classical music-style levels of ambition, invention and sheer length are brought to pop? The answer, as Meurig Bowen explains, is Prog Rock
Golden years
Young musicians may be physically fit, but with age come the advantages of wisdom and experience
Sweet Sixteen
As The Sixteen celebrates its 45th birthday, founder Harry Christophers speaks to Andrew Stewart about directing a choral powerhouse
