Véronique Gens (soprano), Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano), Laurence Kilsby (tenor), Stéphane Degout (baritone), Susan Manoff (piano), Julius Drake (piano) – all performing on Friday 13 September 2024 at the Wigmore Hall
The Gabriel Fauré Centenary Celebrations open with a song gala involving some of Fauré’s finest contemporary interpreters, who explore the composer’s output at various stages, and all of whom share in the performance of his cycle La bonne chanson.
The concert will take place on Friday 13 Sep 2024, 7.30pm (click here for tickets) – and marks the start of a celebration which will cover the French composer’s celebrated chamber music.
You can read about the celebrations at the Wigmore Hall website, where you will find details of the five-day festival planned and curated by Steven Isserlis and friends, running from Friday 1 November to Tuesday 5 November. The programme will include all of Fauré’s chamber music, put in context of his friends and contemporaries. It will also give us the rare opportunity to hear both of the piano trios by his good friend Saint-Saëns.
published by Ben Hogwood, with text appropriated from the press release
Nonesuch Records releases Jeremy Denk’s Ives Denk on October 18. The pianist, known as a champion of Charles Ives, is acclaimed for his performances of the great American composer’s works. Ives Denk, released in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Ives’ birth, features the composer’s four violin sonatas, performed with violinist Stefan Jackiw, as well as remastered versions of his Sonatas No. 1 and 2 for piano, from Denk’s 2010 debut recording, Jeremy Denk Plays Ives. ‘In the Barn’, the second movement of Sonata No. 2 for violin and piano, is available to download and can be listened to here:
In his liner note, Denk says that Ives’ “deepest dream was to create an original musical style, a fresh and uniquely American voice. He achieved this. But it was a voice most didn’t want to hear, and still don’t. He is one of history’s least popular populists … Ives’ writing – especially the later ones, when he was in terrible physical decline – are… often unhinged with anger, full of mean-spirited nicknames and simplistic binaries, they reflect some of the worst angles of America. One thing that saves Ives’ music from these dangers is his sense of humour, and his willingness to embrace failure.”
“If there is one piece that sums up for me Ives’ difficult virtues, it is the slow movement of the first violin sonata, a jagged musical reflection on the Civil War, so eerily relevant now, with America split into red-blue madness. It is interesting to compare this kind of piece, profound yet unloved, with the far more identifiably American voice of Aaron Copland … Ives is optimistic but always messy, always falling apart at the seams. His music suggests America will just have to muddle through, and wrestle with its own failure. At this particular historical moment, Ives seems to be more right than ever.”
“‘In the Barn’ is a joyful disaster,” Denk says of the second sonata movement, above. “It starts with country fiddling, slips slyly into urban ragtime, and as time passes, every imaginable genre makes a cameo – overheated Wagnerian Romanticism, fashionable exoticism, a dizzying tour of the early twentieth century musical world.”
Ives / Denk will contain the following repertoire:
Violin Sonata no.4 ‘Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting’ Violin Sonata no.3 Violin Sonata no.2 Violin Sonata no.1 Piano Sonata no.1 Piano Sonata no.2 ‘Concord, Mass., 1840-1860’
Published post no.2,277 – Wednesday 21 August 2024
published by Ben Hogwood, with text appropriated from the press release
Released on Ninja Tune, Expander cuts a slice of unmistakable Bonobo, deftly weaving organic vocals and instrumentation with peak-time dance-floor sensibilities that set it up to become one of the songs of the summer. Following his recent roadblock set on Glastonbury’s LEVELS stage, numerous clips of the unreleased track begin circulating online, with fans clamouring for an ID.
The track is already a staple at his legendary OUTLIER sets, an event series curated by Bonobo which shows his continued influence as a DJ and also the reverence a new generation of artists hold for his own releases. Joining him on DJ line ups over the last year have included Barry Can’t Swim, DJ Koze, Sofia Kourtesis, salute, Kelly Lee Owens, Mall Grab, DJ Tennis, Dixon, TSHA, SG Lewis, Young Marco, Kerri Chandler, Carlita, Elkka, HAAi, John Talabot, Paula Tape amongst others. The 15,000 capacity event at Drumsheds in London was the fastest selling event of the season. Bonobo also recently played “Expander’ when going b2b with Disclosure at their Friends & Family pop-up in LA.
Expander sees Bonobo continue his stellar run of heavier, club-inspired tracks released in between albums. Following, as it does, his 2022 singles Defender and ATK, the subsequent single Fold — a collaboration with Jacques Green — and 2020’s anthemic NYC disco-inspired Heartbreak 12” with Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs.
published by Ben Hogwood, with text appropriated from the press release
The original score for Ken Burns’s new two-part documentary, LEONARDO da VINCI, with new compositions by Caroline Shaw, is available via Nonesuch Records on 25 October. The album features performances by the composer’s long time collaborators Attacca Quartet, Sō Percussion, and Roomful of Teeth as well as John Patitucci. Shaw wrote and recorded new music for LEONARDO da VINCI, marking the first time a Ken Burns film has featured an entirely original score. The video for Intentions of the Mind, from the album, can be viewed here:
LEONARDO da VINCI is directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, and David McMahon. The film, which explores the life and work of the fifteenth century polymath Leonardo da Vinci, is Burns’s first non-American subject. It also marks a significant change in the team’s filmmaking style, which includes using split screens with images, video, and sound from different periods to further contextualize Leonardo’s art and scientific explorations. LEONARDO da VINCI looks at how the artist influenced and inspired future generations, and it finds in his soaring imagination and profound intellect the foundation for a conversation we are still having today: what is our relationship with nature and what does it mean to be human?
“No single person can speak to our collective effort to understand the world and ourselves,” said Ken Burns. “But Leonardo had a unique genius for inquiry, aided by his extraordinary skills as an artist and scientist, that helps us better understand the natural world that we are part of and to appreciate more fully what it means to be alive and human.”
“To help give depth and dimension to Leonardo’s inner life, and to carry our viewers on his personal journey, we enlisted the composer Caroline Shaw,” McMahon says in the album’s liner note. “Caroline’s existing body of music—joyful, daring, at times transcendent, and wholly unique—seemed to speak directly to Leonardo, a seeking soul who, 500 years after his death, can come across as strikingly modern. A fully original score, we believed, would add crucial connective tissue to areas where the record of Leonardo’s life is thin and it’s possible to briefly lose his trail. The music Caroline created is dynamic, enthralling and filled with wonder.
“This soundtrack is a testament to the inspired efforts of Jennifer Dunnington, who marshaled it into being, the brilliant musicians and vocalists who, with the help of Alex Venguer, Neal Shaw, Colton Dodd and Tim Marchiafava, made it soar, and most of all Caroline Shaw, who might be Leonardo’s soulmate from across time,” he continues. “With her help, the Leonardo who emerges is no wizard shrouded in mystery, but a prideful, obsessive, at times lonely or flustered, occasionally ecstatic, and, in the end, content man who is in ways both modern and thoroughly of his time.”
“As we set out to explore Leonardo’s life, we realized that while he was very much a man of his time, he was also interested in something more universal,” said Sarah Burns. “Leonardo was uniquely focused on finding connections throughout nature, something that strikes us as very modern today, but which of course has a long history.”
You can read more about Caroline Shaw at her website – and also more about Nonesuch here
published by Ben Hogwood, with text appropriated from the press release
Matthew Bourne has been a busy man of late. Hot on the heels of his Nightports collaboration Dulcitone 1804 he has returned to the piano on record for the first time since 2017’s Isotach.
As the press release says, “for such a restless and forward-thinking artist, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Bourne can be a little reluctant to return to the instrument on which he made his name. At least in public. That would be too easy.”
It continues. “These days Bourne tends to find himself seated at his first instrument when working on collaborations or commissions for film and television projects. It’s often in these moments that inspiration strikes and the pieces are committed to tape. With outside deadlines, those sparks can often be left. Forgotten about. Recorded over.
This Is Not For You. was born from an off-hand comment by one of Matthew Bourne’s confidants. His instruction, “Do not delete,” provided Bourne with a commission of sorts, an ideal restriction to work within. Everything on the album was given a chance to shine in the studio, to be worked on amongst the freedom of that no deletion diktat – new inspirations now lie beside deep-mined remembrances. Cello and Dulcitone have been added sparingly for colour, but this is Bourne playing for his own enjoyment. Intimate. Reserved even. The real Matthew Bourne?”
