Category Archives: Uncategorized

Listen at home – City of London Sinfonia: Comfortable Classical continues…

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The City of London Sinfonia are continuing their half-hour sessions of Comfortable Classical at Home for all ages to enjoy while we are all stuck in isolation. The sessions offer a half-hour of musical freedom, as musicians from the orchestra educate and offer different ways of looking at the music they make. The environment is a relaxed one, with everyone welcome to get involved.

Past episodes include cellists Joely Koos and Becky Knight, clarinetist Katherine Spencer, orchestra leader Alexandra Wood, violinist Matthew Maguire and principal oboe Daniel Bates. Tomorrow – Thursday 23 April – Koos will return for a second session.

You can watch on the orchestra’s Facebook page from 11.30am – on every Tuesday and Thursday. You can also catch up on past episodes from the orchestra’s blog here.

Watch: Chausson’s Poème

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With isolation in mind, here is a bit of musical indulgence for a Monday evening – for no reason other than it’s a lovely piece of music that Arcana was reminded of today!

Ernest Chausson‘s Poème was written in 1896, in response to the great Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who was keen for him to write a violin concerto. Although Chausson was capable of writing in longer forms – he wrote a fine Symphony and several substantial chamber works – he found this a daunting request.

Instead he produced this single movement work, fifteen minutes for violin and orchestra which beautifully reflect his Italian surroundings, for the composer was on holiday in Florence.

In this performance Vadim Repin is the soloist, with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta.

 

LSO: Always Playing – Katia & Marielle Labèque, Szymanowski and clarinet masterworks tonight @ 7pm

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There is an enticing potpourri of 20th and 21st century music from the London Symphony Orchestra on tonight’s installment of the LSO’s online series ‘Always Playing’.

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the orchestra in the Hungarian Peasant Songs from Bartók before they are joined by tenor Edgaras Montvidas for Szymanowski‘s seldom heard but exotic ballet Harnasie. Then clarinetist Chris Richards steps up as the soloist for works composed by Stravinsky and Bernstein for the great Woody Herman</strong).

However the main work of the evening's concert is a big, half-hour concerto for two pianos, percussion and orchestra from Osvaldo Golijov. Nazareno, completed in 2009, is based on themes from La Pasión según San Marcos, and is fronted by the Labèque sisters, with percussionists Gonzalo Grau and Raphaël Séguinier.

The performance, from Thursday 13 December 2018, can be seen on the orchestra’s YouTube channel from 7pm tonight here:

Switched on – Squarepusher: Detroit People Mover

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In these incredibly strange times, the arts are proving an area of real solace and inspiration for those stuck in isolation or worse.

The official video for Squarepusher‘s Detroit People Mover, directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman, is a driver-less journey through the previously teeming Michigan metropolis. It captures the weird sense of half-life felt in most of the world’s cities currently:

As the commentary to this video notes, it contrasts dramatically with Tom Jenkinson’s previous video as Squarepusher. Terminal Slam is a flurry of activity and technology-inspired trickery, the sort of which seems almost impossible to imagine in the current climate. Jenkinson’s music is appropriately hyperactive as Daito Manabe‘s cityscapes rush by. Watch and compare!

Squarepusher’s album Be Up A Hello is out now on Warp Records. You can listen here:

RSNO Friday Night Club – Richard Strauss & Berg

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Tonight, Friday 17 April, the RSNO Friday Night Club returns with an intriguing pair of characters. The first is Richard Strauss‘s Don Juan, one of his most celebrated symphonic poems, in which the 24-year old composer paints a portrait of the serial philanderer. Its high spirits mask a darker underbelly. Thomas Søndergård conducts.

Mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill then joins the orchestra in a performance of Berg‘s Seven Early Songs. These very late Romantic nuggets, completed 20 years after Don Juan, show Berg straining at the limits of tonality and finding great intensity as he sets the work of seven different poets.

You can watch the on the orchestra’s website here, or join on Facebook here