On April 22-23 the brightest scientific minds will be explaining how music works and how it affects people.

Colin Currie presents the first concerto recording on his own label, a pair of works by the innovative composer, conductor and chansonnier HK Gruber, with conductors Juanjo Mena and John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic, To be released 19 March. To write one masterpiece for solo percussion and orchestra may be regarded as an adventure; to write two combines for a colossus. Such is the case for the dual works on this recording, which span the full creative freedom, magic, daring and brilliance of Mr HK Gruber, or ‘Nali’ to those who know him. If that work encapsulates the very latest in contemporary percussion endeavour, Rough Music (1982-83), for all its swagger, is an early example of a percussion concerto.

Channel Classics are celebrating their 30th anniversary with a very special star studded concert recorded Nov 29th, to be broadcast on their Facebook page on Thursday. The 30th Anniversary concert features Anna Fedorova and other performers include Rosanne Philippens, Ragazze Quartet, Nicholas Schwartz, Dana Zemtsov and Paolo Giacometti.

On Thursday December 17th at 7pm GMT. Recorded live in Muziekgebouw Eindhoven. The performing Channel Artists include Rosanne Philippens, Ragazze Quartet, Nicholas Schwartz, Dana Zemtsov, Paolo Giacometti and Anna Fedorova. The programme consists of works by Claude Debussy, Ludwig van Beethoven, Caroline Shaw, Borys Fedorov, William Kroll, Frédéric Chopin and George Enescu. The concert ends with a work written by David Jay Murray for all of the participating musicians together, featuring themes of Mahler’s First Symphony, Happy Birthday and some other festive melodies. 

Chandos Records have signed as an exclusive artist.
For her first release on the label, Dego pays homage to
Niccolò Paganini with a recording of works inspired by the great
violinist. Dego plays Paganini’s violin, the legendary ‘il Cannone’
made by Guarneri del Gesù in 1743, one of the most important
musical instruments in the history of Western music which has been heard on record just a handful of times. The album is due for release in late February. Future projects include the Mozart concertos with Sir Roger Norrington and the RSNO.

From Avie: Philadelphia-based period-instrument ensemble Night Music re-creates an afternoon of music making from October 1801 at the Austrian capital’s Palais Arnstein, with a flamboyant Quintet for flute and strings by Joseph Kraus, a duo by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf for the unusual combination of viola and double bass, and a chamber arrangement – by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon in the same instrumentation as the Kraus Quintet – of perhaps the most notorious of symphonic surprises.

Violist Dana Zemtsov and pianist Anna Fedorova are performing a CD presentation concert for “Silhouettes”, released on Friday 26^th June and was BBC Radio Scotland’s album of the week. The concert will be held on  1^st July at 19.15 BST and will be livestreamed through Channel Classics facebook page, with filming by 4 professionally operated drones:  https://www.facebook.com/channelclassics/. This is also the very first day which people are allowed back into concert halls in The Netherlands.

Robert Trevino is one of the fastest rising young conductors, known for his fresh and vivid interpretations of both standard repertoire as well as contemporary works. This new Beethoven symphony cycle with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra is the conductor’s debut release on the ONDINE label.

Trevino currently holds the tenure as chief conductor of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra and as music director of the Basque National Orchestra. After studies with conductors David Zinman, Seiji Ozawa and Michael Tilson Thomas, Trevino worked closely as Leif Segerstam’s assistant before making his debuts with a number of leading symphony orchestras worldwide. Robert Trevino’s star has risen rapidly since he burst into the international spotlight at the Bolshoi Theatre in December 2013, leading a new production of Verdi’s Don Carlo. He was nominated for a Golden Mask award, and one reviewer wrote, ‘There has not been an American success of this magnitude in Moscow since Van Cliburn.’

Continue reading →

BMOP/sound’s recording of Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox has received a 2020 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording; this marks BMOP/sound’s seventh nomination and first win. 2020 GRAMMY AWARD: Best Opera Recording: PICKER: FANTASTIC MR. FOX (Gil Rose, conductor; John Brancy, Andrew Craig Brown, Gabriel Preisser, Krista River & Edwin Vega; Gil Rose, producer (Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Boston Children’s Chorus)

The Miró Quartet, generally considered as one of the most impressive of US classical ensembles, makes its PENTATONE debut with a complete recording of the Beethoven string quartets. This collection offers the results of 15 years of playing and recording Beethoven, and not only anticipates the 2020 commemoration of the composer’s 250th birthday, but also the 25th anniversary of the Miró Quartet itself. The music is presented in a lavish boxset with a fresh, Miró-inspired graphic design of four circular paint brushes that symbolize the quartet’s four players, with the individual CD wallets creating a colourful narrative in line with Beethoven’s musical development.

David Fraser of ECM/Proper Note writes: Georgian composer Giya Kancheli has died in Tblisi, aged 84. A highly original musical thinker, Kancheli often attributed his artistic independence to his early listening. It was a love of jazz, firstly, that brought him to the composition classes of the Tblisi Conservatoire with dreams of writing for big band after the manner of Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton.  A performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring turned his world upside down, as he put it, as did exposure to the music of Bartók and Webern. “If everything had happened in logical sequence”, Kancheli once said, “my scale of values would have been different, and I would, correspondingly, have written different music.” Coming late to the full scope of contemporary composition, hard to hear in the Soviet Union of the 1950s, he looked to Shostakovich’s work for guidance: “His symphonies were almost my only models of contemporary art under the conditions of my information isolation.” Lasting friendships were gradually formed with other composers of his generation, composers with whom he felt a spiritual affinity, including Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov. Kancheli’s music however is its own universe, often distinguished by extreme dynamic contrasts, from a whisper to a thunderous roar. At all volume levels a yearning, deeply melancholic quality resonates in its timbres. In 1991 Kancheli moved to the West, first to Berlin and later to Antwerp, always remaining resolutely Georgian in spirit. Kancheli’s moving song cycle Exil, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski and released on ECM New Series in 1995 – with settings of verses of Paul Celan and Hans Sahl – was interpreted by some critics as an autobiographical work, a view Kancheli strove to dispel: “Nobody expelled me from anywhere. If I had left in Soviet times, when you couldn’t go back, it would have been an entirely different matter.” He travelled frequently to his homeland, where he was a revered figure, widely known for his writing for film and theatre as well as for his orchestral works. Giya Kancheli’s music was first heard on ECM New Series in 1992 with Vom Winde beweint, performed by his long-term supporters violist Kim Kashkashian and Dennis Russell Davies, who was also the conductor on Trauerfarbenes Land, Caris Mere (including clarinettist Eduard Brunner), Abii ne viderem and Diplipito. Mstislav Rostropovich who appeared together with conductor Jansug Kakhidze on Magnum Ignotum, said: ‘I love this composer for his independence. Olivier Messiaen revealed for me the limitlessness and endlessness of time, and the same is true for Kancheli.’Gidon Kremer is one of the most loyal interpreters of Giya Kancheli’s music, first appearing on Lament, which was recorded in the composer’s homeland Georgia with the Tblisi Symphony Orchestra. On Chiaroscuro, Kancheli’s most recent ECM release, Kremer played together with Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Further musicians and friends who served Giya Kancheli’s wide musical oeuvre with their artistry are Thomas Demenga, Oleg Maisenberg, the Hilliard Ensemble, Dino Saluzzi and Jan Garbarek.