The Guardian

Tuning in to a Tuscan music festival

Where once gunfire tore apart the Tuscan estate of La Foce – as told in Iris Origo’s memoir War in the Val d’Orcia – now classical music brings people together.

Classic FM

Classic FM scoop Brand Of The Year at Sony Radio Academy Awards

Classic FM has been given the Brand Of The Year award at the 2013 SonyRadio Academy Award, as well as scooping a Silver award in the Best Promotional/Advertising Campaign category.

Legendary rock guitarist cites Paganini, Bach as influences

The Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, known for his extreme technical proficiency, has cited Paganini, Bach and Vivaldi as his main inspirations in his new autobiography.

Gramophone

BBC Proms reports record opening day ticket sales

Over 114,000 tickets are sold for the London summer festival on the first day of booking.

Classical Music Magazine

Hallé goes for matinées in 2013/14

The Hallé’s season plans for 2013/14 at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester include a major switch in scheduling for its most popular series: the ‘Opus One’ concerts.

Planet Hugill

17-19 May: Sacconi Chamber Music Festival

May 17 to 19 sees that Sacconi Chamber Music Festival filling Folkestone with some fine chamber music. The festival is organised by the young Sacconi Quartet, who open on Friday 17 May with a concert of quartets by Haydn, Ireland and Beethoven.

Classical Music Magazine

(Written on May 14, 2013 )

The Guardian

Cecilia Bartoli sings Bellini’s Norma: exclusive album stream

Listen exclusively to a new period-instrument recording of Bellini’s tragic opera that, with Cecilia Bartoli as the priestess, reveals the heroine as a woman of flesh and blood.

The scratch orchestra of Kinshasa

The members of the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste – the world’s only all-black orchestra – are self-taught and started out playing homemade instruments. Now the band’s founder is to be given a major international accolade.

The Telegraph

Proms booking ‘fiasco’ as BBC announces record-breaking sales

The booking system for this year’s BBC Proms has been condemned as a “fiasco” as customers waited more than four hours for tickets inly to find out touts selling them for £1,250 elsewhere.

The Times

Vladimir Jurowski, the Zen maestro of opera

Emma Pomfret meets Vladimir Jurowski, Glynedebourne’s spellbinding Russian conductor. Just don’t call him a ‘prodigy’.

Gramophone

Operatic stars join forces to record songs of John Denver

Album features such names as Plácido Domingo, Danielle de Niese, René Pape and Thomas Hampson.

The Washington Post (via Arts Journal)

Ballets Russes drove audiences away from modern music? Just the opposite.

The premiere of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” in 1913 is often cited as a flash point in the divide between new music and its audience. From this point on — so the claim goes — the chasm widened between composers pursuing their own agendas and audiences wishing they could just be left alone to hear Mozart.

The Telegraph

(Written on May 13, 2013 )

(Written on April 22, 2013 )

BBC News

BBC Proms appoints first female director for Last Night

BBC’s The Last Night of The Proms is to be led by a female conductor for the first time in its 118 year history.

Gramophone

(Written on April 19, 2013 )

Excitement certainly abounds in our office when the BBC Proms programme is announced. This year was no different, from Joyce DiDinato closing the season, Marin Alsop becoming the first female conductor to lead the Last Night of the Proms, to a number of our clients performing in this year’s lineup.

Another great asset to this year’s Proms was the inclusion of new commissions, along with more national and world premieres in the programme. Whilst it is still less than 20% of the Proms that include new commissions, it is still a fantastic effort by the BBC to bring new works to a new, and very wide, audience. We hope that this number continues to grow in future!

This year’s BBC Commissions include works by Julian Anderson, Frederic Rzewski, John McCabe and Charlotte Seither. A definite highlight of the Proms will be the BBC co-commission of Mark-Anthony Turnage, with the Royal Philharmonic Society and New York Philharmonic: Frieze in Prom 38.

One of the 8 UK premieres this year is Colin Matthews’ Turning Point in Prom 21, performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under the baton of Thomas Søndergård, in his Proms debut. Also appearing in this Prom is violinist Daniel Hope, who is playing Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2.

Daniel Harding conducts works by Mozart, Schumann and Sibelius at Prom 23 with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, while pianist Anika Vavic makes her Proms debut at Prom 64 with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski, also performing Prokofiev.

Prom 19 is a performance of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde including tenor Andrew Staples with the BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra.

We salute all of these great performers with a ‘Toi toi toi!’ and look forward to the summer and another great year of BBC Proms programming.

(Written on April 18, 2013 )

Gramophone

Deutsches-Symphonie Orchester performs Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible with new narration

Live concert recording, conducted by Tugan Sokhiev, will be released on the Audite label

The Guardian

Final Fantasy given classical twist

Palais des Congrès de Paris the venue for musical event where orchestra plays selection of scores from video game series

John Pearson, supported by Time Out backer, understood to have been close to a deal but baulked at asking price

BBC News

King Kong musical is ‘a puzzle’ says Elbow’s Guy Garvey

Elbow’s Guy Garvey says writing for a new King Kong musical was “like doing a very difficult word search”.

‘Music industry wants High Street shops’

The music industry does not want to lose its high street presence according to music business news service Complete Music Update.

The New Scientist

Why musical genius comes easier to early starters

Good news for pushy parents. If you want your child to excel musically, you now have better justification for starting their lessons early.

NPR

Naxos: The Little Record Label That Could (And Did)

This past year was a good one for Naxos Records.

Classical Source

BBC Proms Launches Its 2013 Search For Young Composers Aged 12 To 18

Returning for its fifteenth year, Inspire offers free creative workshops for young musicians, music teachers and school groups

The Strad

UK violinist Peter Mountain dies

BBC News

(Written on January 16, 2013 )

Classic FM

(Written on October 11, 2012 )

Emily Howard’s eagerly awaited UK premiere of her orchestral work, Calculus of the Nervous System, was a tremendous success at the BBC Proms on 21^st August 2012. The piece was first premiered in Vienna by the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by James MacMillan. For the UK performance Andris Nelsons conducted the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Prom 51 has since received wonderful praise.

Emily’s composition was inspired by neural networks and memories; focusing on the working of the human mind, what might be imagined, what might be real and what it might be capable of. She explains that; ‘In Calculus memories occur and recur in different ways… as though being experienced in different states of consciousness’. Tim Ashley from The Guardian expanded on this after hearing Emily’s motivations and watching the performance; ‘One of Lovelace’s aims was the creation of a mathematical model that demonstrated how the brain gives rise to thoughts, and Howard, in response, scrutinises the nature of memory as tone clusters and percussive throbs shift in and out of focus’.

Alongside Emily’s piece, the CBSO also performed Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony and Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila overture; an amalgamation that Robert Hugill commented ‘was so diverse… each showed a different side of the orchestra’. ‘Gripping’ and ‘profoundly atmospheric’, Hugill described the result as a fascinating and tantalizing piece; one which was superbly rendered by Nelsons and the CBSO’.

Gaining four stars from both Nick Kimberley for the London Evening Standard and Matthew Lynch of One Stop Arts, Calculus was commended for being an ‘evocative work’ that ‘really made you listen and drew you in’ with ‘moments that were so quietly enrapturing that none of the audience’s vast number dared so much as breathe’. Both reviews complimented the CBSO for showing themselves ‘to be more than a match for its considerable technical and emotional challenges’, involving themselves ‘fully inside Howard’s world’.

Visit Emily’s website for more information about her work:  http://www.emilyhoward.com/

(Written on September 11, 2012 )

Classic FM

Fungus makes violins sound ‘like Stradivarius’

The tone of a Stradivarius violin can be achieved on new violins by treating the wood with a particular fungus, a study has shown.

Paul Mealor: composers can do “anything they want”

The Classic BRIT-nominated composer says composers are no longer pigeonholed by the music industry.

The Guardian

The Proms audience: where do they go?

Some 6,000 people fill London’s Albert Hall for each of the Proms. But where does that audience go for the rest of the year?

The Telegraph

Why bandstands are making a noise again

Bandstand Marathon will be the biggest community event of the London 2012 Festival closing celebration.

The Arts Desk

3D: A First for the Last Night

How a British broadcasting institution acquired an extra dimension.

The New York Times

A Rare Breed: New Operas at the Met

ON Oct. 23 the Metropolitan Opera will offer a new production of an opera by a living composer.

BBC news Scotland

Scottish teaching union EIS critical of music fees

Scottish councils are making “profits” of almost £3m from fees charged to school pupils for instrumental music tuition, a teaching union has claimed.

Nicola Benedetti at The Last Night of the Proms, The Arts Desk.

(Written on September 10, 2012 )

Check out our Pinterest board for our September concert recommendations. Some of our highlights this month include Metropolitan Opera’s production of L’Elisir d’Amore with Anna Netrebko, Cameron Carpenter’s performance at the BBC Proms, English National Opera’s new production of Martinu’s Julietta. There’s also a performance by ”Britain’s best klezmer and Balkan music band”, She’koyokh at The Forge and King Lear at the Almeida Theatre.

(Written on August 28, 2012 )