Every day the WildKat team scan the newspapers and blogs online to bring you a digested list of the day’s classical music.

The Times (£)

I, Culture Orchestra at the Festivial Hall

What’s the next best thing to an elixir of youth? If you are the 87-year-old Neville Marriner, the answer is an elixir of youth orchestra…

The Times (£)

Hallé/ Elder at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

London’s Beethoven symphony immersion with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Riccardo Chailly is now over, but Ludwig himself goes on for ever.

LA times

An open house at Los Angeles Opera

More than 6,000 visitors turned out Saturday for a Los Angeles Opera open house at the Music Center, taking part in activities that included listening to the company’s general director, Placido Domingo, getting a closer look at opera sets and props, and dressing up for a repast at a pretend Café Momus from “La Boheme.”

LA times

Yuja Wang and James Conlon with L.A. Philharmonic

When the Chinese pianist Yuja Wang made her Los Angeles Philharmonic debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall in early 2009, all attention was on the diminutive 22-year-old pianist’s flying fingers in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2.

(Written on November 8, 2011 )

Every day the WildKat team scan the newspapers and blogs online to bring you a digested list of the day’s classical music.

New York Times

Gather Online, Compose Globally, Perform Locally

That the Internet has profoundly changed what community can mean in the 21st century is a fact of life so firmly established and widely accepted that it hardly bears repeating.

Financial Times

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Barbican, London

Like the most imposing of Georgian houses, the symphonies of Beethoven demand constant surveying and restoration. Of the conductors in charge of the world’s leading orchestras, Riccardo Chailly is especially keen to look afresh at tradition and it was only to be expected that a complete Beethoven symphony cycle from him would say something new and interesting.

LA Times

 Mei- Ann Chen and Tchaikovsky together again.

The energetic conductor will lead the Pasadena Symphony in a performance of the Fifth Symphony, which has special meaning for the leader of orchestras in Memphis and Chicago.

The Evening Standard

Placido Domingo Celebration, Covent Garden

The 40th anniversary of Plácido Domingo’s Covent Garden début was always going to be one of the season’s hottest tickets. Domingo could have come on and recited the Royal Opera’s health & safety regulations and still commanded the standing ovation he received last night.

(Written on October 28, 2011 )

Leipzig-based music label ACCENTUS Music are due to release a DVD and Blu-ray disc of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “The Resurrection” and Symphony No. 8, performed with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Musical Director Riccardo Chailly. Both orchestra and maestro have already achieved legendary status, having received a number of awards and accolades for their previous collaborative performances.

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra performed both symphonies at the 2011 International Mahler Festival in Leipzig, which this year was held in celebration of the centenary of Mahler’s death in 1911. Mahler regarded his eighth symphony as his opus summum, and it is often referred to as the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’. Of the final movement of the Symphony No. 2, the composer himself said: “The increasing tension, working up to the final climax, is so tremendous that I don’t know myself, now that it is over, how I ever came to write it.”

Acclaimed Leipzig-born artist Neo Rauch was inspired to paint “Chor” after attending a rehearsal for Mahler No. 8, and he has allowed ACCENTUS to feature this painting on the front of the DVD and Blu-ray release. In addition, the painting “Morgenrot” was chosen by Neo to feature on the cover of the release of Symphony No. 2.

Both discs will be released in the UK at the beginning of October and in Germany in mid-September.

"Chor"

"Morgenrot"

(Written on August 17, 2011 )