Indie and modern classical music: the quixotic links | Tom Service
From echoes of Stockhausen in the Dirty Projectors to Arvo Pärt's effect on Radiohead, it's more than a bit of fun to think about the links between indie music and modern classical Before I'm away for...
View ArticleProms to hold two Last Nights
Re-creation of 1910 Last Night to be included in Proms festival, which this year features Plácido Domingo Not content with one evening of flag-waving and a hearty chorus of Rule Britannia, the BBC is...
View ArticleThe 2010 BBC Proms unveiled
My highlights from the season to come This morning, as Radio 3 controller Roger Wright talked a group of arts journalists through the 2010 BBC Proms season in the Royal College of Music, the surprise...
View ArticleBBC Proms 2010: what not to miss
From Bach to Birtwistle, Fiona Maddocks selects the best of this year's Proms 10 festival blockbusters Prom 1 Fri 16 July Mahler Symphony No 8, BBC Symphony Orchestra/Belohlávek & choirs. Known as...
View ArticleThe First of My Slice of the Proms
The slice of the Proms which I’m getting this summer seems less of full of twentieth and twenty-first century music than usual. Works of Gunther Schuller, Simon Holt, Harrison Birtwistle, Stockhausen,...
View ArticleBliss in Edinburgh
The BBC Symphony Orchestra provided the pit band for the European premiere of Brett Dean's opera Bliss at the Edinburgh International Festival . Sub-principal viola Phil Hall was doing his bit for...
View ArticleBBCSO/Belohlávek | Classical review
Royal Albert Hall, London A little programme note can be a dangerous thing. Tansy Davies's new work, Wild Card, is a 20-minute orchestral traversal through the tarot deck and the "Fool's journey" it...
View ArticleProms 72/73: BBCSO/Belohlavek; Penguin Cafe/Tickell, Royal Albert Hall (4/5,...
How should we listen to a complicated piece of new music? The premiere of Tansy Davies’s ‘Wild Card’ raised this simple-seeming question – to which the correct answer is not ‘let it wash over you’ – in...
View ArticleAdriana Lecouvreur; Tansy Davies – review
Royal Opera House, London WC2; Portsmouth Cathedral There is a deliciously topical moment in the sensationally lavish new production of Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur , which opened to a...
View ArticleSuggesting a Feminine Side to the NY Phil
Errollyn Wallen Following up on Alex Ross’ post about the New York Philharmonic’s 2011-’12 season, which mentioned the lack of representation of American composers on the Contact! series and women...
View ArticleWhat music would you choose for the royal wedding?
From Handel to Kiri Te Kanawa, royal nuptials have inspired great performances. But what are the musical prospects for WillKat's wedding? And lo, in the distance, the pre-pealing begins with drums in...
View ArticleWhat music would you choose for the royal wedding?
From Handel to Kiri Te Kanawa, royal nuptials have inspired great performances. But what are the musical prospects for WillKat's wedding? And lo, in the distance, the pre-pealing begins with drums in...
View ArticleDavies: Troubairitz; Neon; Salt Box; etc – review
Snow/Harron/Azalea Ensemble/Austin (Nonclassical) The first disc to be devoted to Tansy Davies's music is built around Troubairitz, her 2005 settings of Derek Mahon's translations of poems by women...
View ArticleAlbum: Tansy Davies, Troubairitz (Nonclassical)
The full range of Tansy Davies's varied modernist interests is displayed on Troubairitz, from the title suite itself, a song-cycle based on 19th-century poems by women troubadours, sung here either a...
View ArticleTansy Davies’ Troubairitz
Tansy Davies Toubairitz Anna Snow, voice; Damien Harron, percussion; Azalea Ensemble; Christopher Austin, conductor Nonclassical CD A constant, if sometimes subtly articulated, pulse runs through much...
View ArticleFive-Spot: What caught my eye on December 15, 2011
By Robert D. Thomas Music Critic Pasadena Star-News/San Gabriel Valley Tribune/Whittier Daily News __________ Each Thursday morning, I list five events that pique my interest, including (ideally) at...
View ArticleBarbican 2012-13 orchestral
Karol Szymanowski everywhere this year! Szymanowski was Poland's "first modernist", a cosmopolitan intellectual and contemporary of Bartók, dismissed by the Communist Party for his aesthetic...
View ArticleWhy there are so few female composers | Kerry Andrew
Women who write music are still far outnumbered by their male peers. We need to address this inequality. Here's how I hate the old adage that creative work from women and men comes from a different...
View ArticleSpoleto Festival USA 2012 Opera and Classical Music Programs Feature 8 U.S....
Works by composers Philip Glass (U.S.), Guo Wenjing ( China ), Jonny Greenwood ( UK ), Tansy Davies ( UK ), Toshi Ichiyanagi ( Japan ), Toshio Hosokawa ( Japan ), Somei Satoh ( Japan ), Hooshyar Khayam...
View ArticleContemporary classics: what are the composers' favourite works?
Birtwistle, Knussen or Ligeti – whose works do other composers find inspiring? Mark-Anthony Turnage Ophelia Dances by Oliver Knussen is the perfect miniature from the best ears in the business....
View Article