Classical Features
Simon Halsey on Tippett’s ‘A Child of Our Time’: ‘the biggest lesson was how to feel what he had written’Thursday, 26 September 2019
I was greatly privileged to know Sir Michael Tippett and to chorus-master his recording of A Child of Our Time. In my childhood, the two giants of English composition were “Tippett and Britten” - in that order. Since their deaths, Britten has flourished internationally and Tippett has slipped back a bit in the public consciousness. I hope the new Tippett biography by Oliver Soden will help rectify this. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Southrepps Music Festival - world-class young musicians return to North NorfolkMonday, 02 September 2019
When you've found some of the best young musicians in the world, and they've found that they love working in the peaceful surroundings of a magical spot in North Norfolk, you don't let go. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Pärnu Music Festival 2019 - super-orchestra, top clarinettists, transcendent stringsWednesday, 14 August 2019
Little has changed about Pärnu, with its concentric rings of eight-mile sandy beach and dunes, wooded gardens and wooden old town, in the five years I've been going there. Read more... |
theartsdesk at Itinéraire Baroque 2019 - a musical journey through the PérigordMonday, 05 August 2019
We’ve all had the experience of wandering into a church, only to discover it filled unexpectedly with music: the choir rehearsing for Evensong, a local orchestra practising, a soprano and organist getting ready for a weekend wedding. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Ravenna Festival 2019 - in heaven with Dante's Purgatorio and Estonian ritesFriday, 12 July 2019
Two years ago Ermanna Montanari and Marco Martinelli, the visionary partners who have powered Ravenna's revolutionary Teatro delle Albe since 1986, led local people and international visitors down through the circles of Dante's Inferno. In 2021, the 700th anniversary of the greatest Italian poet's birth, they will take us into the presence of God. Read more... |
'A product not only of his era but also of his travels': Ian Page on Mozart's cosmopolitan educationMonday, 08 July 2019
When Mozart was an established composer living in Vienna during the final years of his short life, a young student seemingly came to him to seek his advice. The would-be young composer said that he was planning to write a symphony, and asked Mozart what advice he could give to him. Mozart replied that a symphony was a complex undertaking, and suggested that the youngster should first write a few keyboard sonatas and string quartets before undertaking an orchestral work. |
theartsdesk in Treviso - cultural patronage, Italian styleFriday, 05 July 2019
Fortunate those Italian towns and cities whose Renaissance rulers looked to the arts to enrich their domain. Now neglect of cultural heritage can be laid at the doors of successive governments, but regional enlightenment can make a difference even in the era of Salvini. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Svalbard: cultural excellence at the top of the worldFriday, 21 June 2019
You should not die or be born on Svalbard, 1,985 kilometres above Norway's northernmost coast, and at 18 you work or leave for the mainland. Hunting is over, mining nearly so. Tourism, carefully managed, and Arctic research are the future; the Global Seed Vault is also here, and Syria has been the first country to take from it. Read more... |
Roger Wright on Oliver Knussen: ‘his challenge to us all to remain curious lives on’Friday, 14 June 2019
The composition course founded more than 25 years ago at Snape by composers Oliver Knussen and Colin Matthews is in full swing. The scene is the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings on the Suffolk coast. Like Colin, Olly's connections to Aldeburgh and Snape are deep and long lasting, including his Artistic Directorship of the Festival. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Gothenburg: concert-hall storytelling rivets at the Point Music FestivalThursday, 30 May 2019
There was a special celebratory aura to the start of Swedish city Gothenburg's first Point Festival. Earlier in the week its Symphony Orchestra's Chief Conductor, electrifying Finn Santtu-Matias Rouvali, had not only announced a renewed contract there but also been appointed to the same position with our own Philharmonia Orchestra, to succeed Esa-Pekka Salonen. Read more... |
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