Showing 1-8 of 8 results
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Mood swings and energy forces
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 03/06/2014
» No one can blame other young composers for any envy they may feel for Anna Clyne and Mason Bates. Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti appointed them as the orchestra’s composers in residence in 2010/11 and extended the appointment for the 2014/15 season. Listening to the two pieces that Muti and his Chicago musicians play on this programme, it’s easy to understand why he wanted to keep them on.
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Cruel comparisions to the classics
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 18/02/2014
» New operas certainly haven’t been in short supply over the past hundred years or so, but it is surprising how few have actually entered the repertoire, compared with the long list of favourites from the previous century. Alban Berg’s two masterpieces, of course, and some of Benjamin Britten’s are staples now, and we get performances of works by Schoenberg, Bartok, Adams, Stravinsky, Weill and a few others. But these are mostly treated as special events. New operas appear with much fanfare and then are rarely heard from again unless recordings preserve them in mummified form.
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Boulez and nothing else
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 01/04/2014
» A real windfall for contemporary music listeners.
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Solemn magnificence
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 15/10/2013
» Beethoven himself considered the Missa Solemnis, his second setting of the Latin mass text, to be his greatest achievement. Others might lean towards one of the late string quartets or piano sonatas, or his Symphony No. 9, but when we reach this level of genius, who's counting or assigning rank?
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On the same page
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 25/06/2012
» Great books have only rarely been made into great films. There are exceptions, most of them based on 19th-century classics, but the memorable movies that had their origins in books of fiction have usually been adapted from lesser novels or from stories.
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A Baroque favourite
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 07/02/2012
» J.S. Bach's six Brandenburgs are right up there with Vivaldi's The Four Seasons as some of the most popular works in the Baroque repertoire, but they are so musically rich that most listeners never tire of them. If you collect recordings of music by Bach, you probably have at least one set of Brandenburgs already, but this new release, in sparkling Blu-ray audio, is worth considering even if you already own several.
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Know the score
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 28/02/2012
» For whatever irrational reason, classical music listeners often think of film scores as a somewhat suspect genre. Discs of movie music won't be prominent in their collections. This prejudice doesn't hold true for movie music written by major composers _ people familiar with Prokofiev's scores for Alexander Nevsky or Lieutenant Kije must greatly outnumber those who have seen the films _ but many otherwise alert listeners are often oblivious, consciously, at least, to the artistic accomplishment represented by a good film score.
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Indulging a personal vision
Life, Ung-Aang Talay, Published on 06/01/2012
» Like almost all of Terrence Malick's earlier films, The Tree of Life, the latest, most personal, and most extreme of them, has divided critics and audiences. One of the most frequent charges made against it by its detractors has been that it is "self-indulgent".
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