We all know Bess’ song from Porgy and Bess: ‘Summertime, and the Livin’ is Easy’. We decided to do a survey of what other composers thought about summer and were surprised at the very different moods and modes composers used
Latest article
Spotlight
-
In touch with Dimitri Maslennikov September 2nd, 2014 Thank you for agreeing to being interviewed by Interlude.HK! We have several questions that we think would be of interest to our readers and those who will attend your upcoming concert in Guangzhou with the St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in -
Mahan Esfahani September 1st, 2014 ‘You didn’t just wake up, did you?’ After many Facebook messages, negotiating times here and there to try and arrange a convenient time to talk, my phone finally buzzes unannounced on a Saturday morning, causing me to leap up and -
Auguste Mustel: Celesta
The silvery sounds of Heaven August 31st, 2014If you listen to Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from the Nutcracker, you are acutely aware of a silvery, ethereal and otherworldly sound coming from the orchestra. That sound, similar to that of the glockenspiel—a percussion instrument composed -
My Three Stand Partners
Aide-de-Camp Marriages pt 1 August 31st, 2014The time you spend with a stand partner in an orchestra frequently exceeds the time you spend with your spouse. I had three long-term stand partners all vastly different in approaches. My first stand partner was the veteran and irascible -
Marc Blitzstein
A Forgotten Father of American Song August 30th, 2014It’s hard to imagine someone who called the music of Kurt Weill (the composer of ‘Mack the Knife’) ‘drivel’ eventually writing musicals and popular songs himself. Yet for Marc Blitzstein, this huge shift in aesthetic was just the start – -
Cousin Marriage
Giacomo Meyerbeer and Minna Mosson August 30th, 2014The fictional HBO series Game of Thrones, already in its fourth season and slated to run for at least another 2 years has once again garnered a number of impressive awards and accolades. Loosely based on the novel A Song -
From Screen to Stage
Erich Korngold: Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 August 29th, 2014The Romantic Violin Concerto Erich Korngold (1897-1957) was a modern composer with a Romantic touch. He is considered, along with Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind) and Alfred Newman (Wuthering Heights / How the West was Won) as one of -
Marc Blitzstein August 28th, 2014 In search of an identity for Classical music Marc Blitzstein: Piano Sonata The enormous political and cultural changes that flooded Europe in the first decade of the 20th century led to a dismantling of political, social and artistic structures. As