http://www.boosey.com/cr/news/Brett-Dean-interview-about-new-orchestral-work-Fire-Music/12335
One of the great pioneers of historically informed performance, Nikolaus Harnoncourt has died in Vienna aged 86. Just last year, on December 5, one day before his 86th birthday, the audience of the Concentus Musicus Wien, the ensemble that he founded in 1953, found a personal letter of farewell from him in its evening programme….
From the Deutsche Grammophon catalogue comes an 8 CD set of recordings The Originals, by some of the greatest legends of classical music (DG 4794110). Recorded at various times between 1965 and 1980 in venues like the Vienna Musikverein Grosser Saal, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Hanover Beethovensaal and the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin, the recordings were originally…
For their latest album Songs Without Words, (ABC Classics) guitarist brothers Slava and Leonard have gathered a collection of songs with and without words in novel and beautiful arrangements, by their father Edward for two guitars. The arrangements own a special understanding of the music and the performers; the playing by the brothers contains its own…
Opera Australia’s realist double-bill Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci opened in Sydney last week. Visually and musically sumptuous with dramatic performances, here are some images from Cavalleria Rusticana with images from Pagiliacci in the next post. Read our review from opening night. The double-bill runs till February 4 in Sydney and moves to Melbourne in May 2017. Scroll…
The death was announced yesterday of Russian soprano Galina Vishnenskaya. She was 86. It is the end of an era. Married to the iconic cellist Msitislav Rostropovich from 1955 until his death in 2007, she was part of a circle of artists who included Britten, Shostakovich and Solzhenitsyn. Both Britten and Shostakovich wrote especially for her – the glorious…
The Academy of Ancient Music presents the music of Dario Castello, the hidden genius of Venetian music in its latest album release, available from today on ABC Classics on CD and in digital form. A contemporary of Claudio Monteverdi, Castello was a composer and wind player who wrote in an innovative style that had a…