March, 2018

48 Posts
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CHILCOTT, B.: Choral Music (All Good Things)
The Real of Heart From CHILCOTT, B.: Choral Music (All Good Things) (2017) Released by Naxos Chilcott: The Real of HeartBob Chilcott is one of Britain’s most popular and respected composers and his choral music is performed worldwide. He has
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Nemorino in Tokyo – An Interview with Saimir Pirgu
In discussing the wide-range of characters he’s sung and his current role, lyric tenor Saimir Pirgu says he likes the roles where he doesn’t die at the end, contrasting his current role of Nemorino in L’elisir d’amore at the National
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Idylls for String Quartet
When we think of an ‘idyll’ we think of a peaceful and happy time. In music this doesn’t all have to be set in the happy land of major, we need that darker minor side to set the major into
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Claude Debussy: “I need something to love”
The Scottish operatic soprano Mary Garden, who sung the part of “Mélisande” in the original production of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, was to later write about the composer, “I honestly don’t know if Debussy ever loved anybody really.
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Musical Voices of WWI (1914-18)
Kreisler, Caplet and Hindemith
In 1910, Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962) was at the top of his game! He had just premiered the Elgar Violin Concerto under the composer’s direction at Queen’s Hall in London, and he was revered as one of the finest instrumentalists of
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The Last Best Patron
We think of patrons in music associated with the music of earlier times: Florentine lords and leaders, the Pope, or all those Russian princesses who propped up Russian composers. In America, though, it was the daughter of Chicago wholesaler who
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At the Center of the Musical Universe
Vincenzo Bellini III
Here is what Robert Schumann had to say about Carl Czerny’s Fantasies Brillantes on Original Themes Op. 434, “A greater bankruptcy of imagination than that demonstrated in Mr. Czerny’s newest creation could hardly exist. One should force the esteemed composer
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Achille-Claude Debussy
Sonic Explorer and Visionary On 25 March 1918, Achille-Claude Debussy (1862-1918) lost his battle with rectal cancer at his Paris home. Aged 55, Debussy was universally acknowledged as one of the most important musicians of his time. His harmonic innovations
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