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Claire Black of the Scotsman meets American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in Milano (click the link for the full article): Pop stars, soap stars, Big Brother contestants – it seems that anyone can now be a diva as long as they behave badly enou (read full article)
So I’m spending the next year listening to a lot of American music and maybe finally getting to grips with Carter, the world’s oldest living composer. But, I’m starting at the simpler end with Copland. I’ve always thought Copland an excellen (read full article)
Is Scelsi the forgotten man of 20th century music par excellence? Well, perhaps not forgotten, as such. I do think that he didn’t, and doesn’t, fit neatly into the usual mould of musically and intellectually bankrupt avant-garde composers becaus (read full article)
Matteo Pericoli found fame with his 22ft fold-out drawing of the Manhattan skyline. His new book shows the city through the windows of New York resident musicians, artists and writers, from Annie Leibovitz to Philip Glass, David Byrne to Nora Ephron (read full article)
One of the approaches to Schnittke is to regard him in the same way as many do Shostakovich, i.e. in relation to the Soviet regime. The difference is whereas Shostakovich had to respond to an ideology which was still vital, Schnittke’s music is mo (read full article)
Composer David Cope has spent the last 30 years teaching computers to create classical music. Nothing more needs to be said about this. (read full article)
I remember fondly the BBC producing a series under this heading many years ago which highlighted works of great merit by lesser-known composers. Their craftsmanship, ideas and structure were in no way inferior to the works of the big names, but they (read full article)
The curators and administrators of the Handel House Museum in Mayfair, London, are now preparing to pack up their files, dismantle their desks and open up the rooms where Hendrix lived to visitors to mark the 40th anniversary of his death. Twin blue (read full article)
Heard part of Emmanuel Chabrier’s opera Briséïs today. Can’t imagine why Chabrier thought he was being “modernist” though – didn’t seem that different to me – lovely music, great harmonies and what a sense of drama. I thoroughly enjo (read full article)
Simon Callow writing in the Independent remembers the composer Stephen Oliver, who would have been 60 this year. I miss him still. He was instinct with the life force; his work was rich and witty and direct and accessible. He had achieved astonishin (read full article)
This is the first review of my music to appear in print. It was written by Ernest Bradbury (what an excellent name for a music critic) of the Yorkshire Evening Post and published on 5 March 1982. The String Quartet No. 1 was the first of my composit (read full article)
Use the interactive NMC Music Map like a microscope to examine the tiny water droplet in which UK composers are wriggling. (read full article)
Toru Takemitsu wrote a number of pieces inspired by Finnegans Wake, including “riverrun” for piano and orcestra, and the string quartet “a way a lone” which are the words which begin the final sentence “A way a lone a last a loved a long t (read full article)
I have to say I find the Walton and Susana story fascinating – and I am not necessarily sure I really believe all of it. However, I particularly like the story of their courting in Argentina, where he asks her on a daily basis (a woman he had not (read full article)
Someone asked me if the soundtrack to the film Gladiator could be regarded as classical music. Seriously. The conversation turned to the similarities between the battle scene and Mars from Gustav Holst’s Planets Suite. But he also asked if the zit (read full article)
“Every year, 200 litres of olive oil are pressed from Henze’s ancient grove.” Go to London to hear some Henze this weekend. Or pull out your own fingernails, it will be less painful. Hans Werner Henze likes to play the victim. His supposed “ (read full article)
The only pig in Afghanistan Wagner’s music has long been easiest to take in “bleeding chunks”, and indeed in chunks which are purely orchestral, from which that is to say the singers are excluded. The reason for the popularity of such chunks is (read full article)
Here are some of Stravinsky’s thoughts on other composers, taken from Robert Craft’s less than reliable book Conversations with Igor Stravinsky: I remember seeing Mahler in St. Petersburg. His concert there was a triumph. Rimsky was still alive, (read full article)
Pianist Lera Auerbach, who defected from the Soviet Union at 17, makes her New Orleans debut Friday, writes Chris Waddington @ nola.com: She was just 17. She had no money, no contacts, and couldn’t speak English. She knew that she might never see (read full article)
Of late, people have tried to reclaim Elgar from the charge of Edwardian bombast, pomp and circumstance, the sun never setting on the Empire, etc., etc. But for me, something seems to happen to Elgar when he gets near a symphony orchestra, and we ge (read full article)
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