Lipatti’s Final Essay

“…wanting to restore to music its historical framework is like dressing an adult in an adolescent’s clothes. This might have a certain charm in the context of a historical reconstruction, yet is of no interest to those other than lovers of dead leaves or the collectors of old pipes”

 

“Music has to live under our fingers, under our eyes, in our hearts and in our brains with all that we, the living, can offer it.”

 

Dinu Lipatti was a consummate artist whose playing was sublime.
As usual, the critics are limited by their own shortsightedness and  inadequacies. This essay explains why it is important to play music in our time even if it not of our time, and how striving for  authenticity can strangle creativity in performance.

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Watch an orchestra in action – LSO play

LSO play

The London Symphony Orchestra has launched a Flash website which allows you to get inside the orchestra with multiple viewpoints of the different sections playing Ravel’s Bolero.
There are up to four different views of the orchestra at the same time, and a live chart showing which sections of the orchestra are playing.
This is a great performance with Valery Gergiev conducting and a fascinating insight into orchestration and orchestral playing.
The music will be updated from time to time and it’s completely free! Definitely worth a play!

More here

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12 SILLY SONGS FOR 12 SILLY STRINGS

12 Silly Songs

Featuring numbers with titles like “A light dry table wine”, “Gooseflesh”, “Bed and Desk”, and together with the overall title of the collection, you would be right in assuming that the pieces are lighthearterd duets, possibly inspired by student days together.

Twelve Silly Songs For Twelve Silly Strings is a collection of up-tempo, light-hearted jazz/swing tunes written by Randall Avers and Rami Vamos.

“lively, infectious… a good-time vibe”
FANFARE: Robert Schulslaper


“fun, clever and novel pieces–we love to play them!”

Laura Oltmann & Michael Newman


“irresistible and delightful duets”

Stephen Aron, Oberlin Conservatory and Akron University


“laugh-out-loud funny…. This collection is a treasure”

Matthew Hinsley, President of Austin Classical Guitar Society

 

“Silly Songs is guitar music which has the rare quality of sounding wonderfully familiar,whimsical and totally unique simultaneously”
Ben Verdery, Yale School of Music

Here is Bed and Desk
and Cricket from the collection, which shows the essentially off beat humour and lightly worn musicality inherent in these pieces.

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Guitar in Space

Chris Hadfield is an astronaut who also plays guitar and sings. He is famous for being the first Canadian spacewalker and also for popular science experiments in zero gravity, as well as his guitar playing skills!

During his free time on Expedition 35, Hadfield recorded music for an album, using the Larrivée Parlor guitar previously brought to the ISS (International Space Station).
That’s a really smart way to travel! No problem with airline baggage handlers then!

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Ponce’s Secret Weiss – a list

While looking for information on Manuel Maria Ponce (1882-1948), I came across this illuminating article by Peter Kun Frary, Professor of Music at the University of Hawaii, Leeward. It charts the history of Ponce’s Baroque, Classical and Romantic pastiches written for Andres Segovia when he was in France.
Segovia would refer to these pieces as their little joke, and probably found a willing collaborator in Ponce who helped him fill out his concert programmes in a Kreisleresque manner.
One of the earliest pieces was attributed to Sylvius Leopold Weiss who was not very well known generally at the time, but conveniently shared a birth year with J.S.Bach who was Segovia’s first choice.
Apparently the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska heard the first performance and went backstage to say that Segovia’s attribution of the piece to Bach had been rumbled, at which point Segovia and Ponce admitted that it was by Weiss!

The inside story on this issue is available in print, in the words of Andres Segovia himself. See: Miguel Alcázar, (Ed.) The Segovia-Ponce Letters, translated by Peter Segal.

However, also see this discussion on the subject.

The pieces are certainly charming enough, and those which come clean – the Sonata Clasica and Sonata Romantica are substantial works.

Peter Kun Frary lists the following as Ponce’s “secret” compositions:
Balletto (Weiss)
Prelude (Weiss) (also for guitar and harpsichord)
Suite Antigua (A.Scarlatti)
Suite en La Mineur (Weiss)

This article is certainly worth a read and throws light on the different (some pirated) editions of Ponce’s pastiches as well as dates and circumstances of their composition.

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“I base my identity on being a composer, who does other things.” Ned Rorem

Another birthday – it was Ned Rorem’s 90th yesterday..

It’s an occasion that would be easy to miss. Apart from some concerts here and there, there has not been a fanfare, or any special mention in the media for this prolific American composer and Pulitzer Prize winner.
He became notorious for his diaries published from the 1950s and he is far better known in certain circles for his literary work than as a composer. As he put it to the Paris Review in 1999, his early diaries were “filled with drunkenness, sex, and the talk of my betters.
In an interview with WYNC’s Sarah Fishko in 2002 he reminisces about his teacher who introduced him to the music of Debussy, Stravinsky and Ravel, and also pointedly adds

I never go to classical concerts any more and I don’t know anyone who does. It’s hard still to care whether some virtuoso tonight will perform [Beethoven‘s] Moonlight Sonata a bit better or a bit worse than another virtuoso performed it last night.”

Here is the full article celebrating his achievements by of NPR Classical.

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Casa Margarita – 18th October 2013, South Hill Park, Recital Room, Bracknell

 

Doors open 7.30pm, starts 8pm.

A grand show in an intimate space!
Enter the lustrous interior of an ancient Spanish house and meet the characters that live there. Hear this achingly beautiful story of love told in words, stunning music, and improvised percussion. Feel the heat of an Andalucian night!

Come to Casa Margarita!

“Ravishing music and exciting rhythms this is an engaging concert with a great story” Oxford Times

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