24Classics @ Paradiso

Hi everyone! 

Long time no see. Normal blogging will recommence shortly, but for now there's something else I want to talk about. 

This wednesday, September 24th Amsterdam's Paradiso will play host to a 24classics event: The Paradiso Orchestra & 24classics: Top 24 aller tijden. 

The Paradiso Orchestra will be joined by musicians such as Erik Bosgraaf, Lisa Jacobs, Ivo Janssen, Judith van Wanroij and Tim Knol. They're gonna be playing music from a Top 24 Music of All Time which people have voted for on the 24classics website/facebook page, so both classical and non-classical music.  

Floris Kortie, of 24classics funeral fame, will be hosting the evening. I'll also be around, giving a short philosophical commentary on Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. Anyway, it's going to be a superfun night with lots of amazing music, if you're in/around Amsterdam tomorrow evening, you should really come!

Robert Maycock Memorial Writer's Prize

And again it has been way too long since I've updated this blog. Life has been very stressful, but I have some wonderful news. Earlier this month I heard that I'm one of the two winners of the Robert Maycock Memorial Writer's Prize. It still feels a little bit surreal because it's a great honour and I never expected the jury to like my review that much! 

Here's the feature, published in this month's Classical Music Magazine: 

Sergei Prokofiev - Scythian Suite

The nice thing about being in charge of a 24Classics playlist is that it gives me a reason to both seek out new music and to go through my own collection to find suitable pieces. When your music collection has grown to a certain size sometimes you forget to listen to certain albums for months (… if not years) and the re-discovery tends to be a really happy moment. My most recent one has been Prokofiev's Scythian Suite which I absolutely love. It's fun and loud and full of brassy goodness.

Today I found out that there is a video of my favourite orchestra (the Rotterdam Philharmonic, of course) playing it (conducted by Valery Gergiev), so obviously I have to share it:

It is not the best recording because it's from a VHS tape and therefore a bit grainy, if that annoys you you can go here to see Claudio Abbado and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra play it (also a good version, but not as violent as Gergiev's). 

The Scythian Suite was written by Prokofiev in 1915 (Prokofiev was 24 when he composed it), though in its original form it was a ballet called Ala and Lolli, and it was commissioned and rejected by Diagheliv and the Ballet Russes (why it was rejected is a mystery to me, it's such a good piece). Prokofiev reworked the music into a suite, which consists of four movements and lasts around 20 minutes. It's very fast and energetic for most of these 20 minutes, and calls for a large orchestra which might explain why it's not performed as often as it should be. The piece was eventually premiered in 1916 (the first premiere was cancelled because of a lack of musicians) and apparently was quite a riot. As we can read in my favourite book on music;

"Crashing Siberias, volcano hell, Krakatoa, sea-bottom crawlers. Incomprehensible? So is Prokofiev. A splendid tribute was paid to his Scythian Suite in Petrograd by Glazunov. The poor tortured classicist walked out of the hall during the performance of the work. No one walked out of the Aelian Hall but several respectable pianists ran out."  (Musical America, November 20 1918)

I hope you enjoy it more than Glazunov did.

Other YPGTCM posts on Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo & Juliet, Piano Concerto No.2, Piano Sonata No.6.  

R.I.P. Claudio Abbado

The great Claudio Abbado has passed away. I have never seen him play live, but love many of his recordings. R.I.P. Maestro.

Read the obituaries at BBC Music Magazine and The Guardian.

Favourite concerts of 2013

Well, 2013 was another impressive year for me concert-wise. It had some of the best concerts I've ever been to, and thankfully a lot of Shostakovich as well as new musical discoveries (most importantly Lutoslawski and Martinu). As I was writing this list I noticed that there's a lot of mention of Esa-Pekka Salonen, but that's just further proof that he conducts awesome programs amazingly well (no news there). Here's my five favourite concerts of the year: 

1. May 16: Shostakovich - Orango and Symphony No.4, Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Ryan McKinny, Allan Clayton, Richard Angas, Elisabeth Meister, Peter Hoare, Philharmonia Voices at the Royal Festival Hall

I had been looking forward to this concert ever since it was announced, and on the day itself I was giddy with excitement. The newly discovered Orango received its European premiere in a fantastic performance by the orchestra and soloists, lead by Esa-Pekka Salonen, who is always extraordinary. I wish someone would have filmed the performance because it was also visually captivating, and Ryan McKinny in particular was spectacular. The Philharmonia's performance of the Fourth Symphony was one of the best - if not the best - I've heard, and I really hope they will perform more Shostakovich symphonies with Salonen in upcoming years. 

My bachtrack review (five stars)

2. October 30: Schnittke - Symphony No.1, Lutoslawski - Cello Concerto, and Ligeti - Lontano, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Michail Jurowski, Johannes Moser at the Royal Festival Hall

Okay so by the time this concert came around I had gotten slightly tired of Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto. An amazing piece though it is, 3 performances in one year may be a bit too much. Thankfully I thought wrong because this performance turned out to be BY FAR the best. It was so much better than the other (also good) performances, in terms of musical interpretation by the conductor (Michail Jurowski is pretty badass isn't he?), playing by the orchestra but especially in terms of the soloist. Moser was phenomenal, absolutely amazing. And this performance wasn't even the highlight of the evening! Schnittke's Symphony No.1 is one of the most fantastic pieces of music ever written and the London Philharmonic gave such an incredible performance that even thinking about it makes me smile from ear to ear. It was a life-affirming performance that was suitably ridiculous, challenging, intense and all-encompassing. Definitely a concert I will never, ever forget. 

3. October 26: Shostakovich - Symphony No.13, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Mikhail Petrenko, Gentlemen of the London Philharmonic Choir at the Royal Festival Hall

I really miss seeing Yannick at the Rotterdam Philharmonic, so of course I had to go see him conduct the London Philharmonic in Shostakovich's impressive Symphony No.13. The performance did not disappoint, Petrenko was really impressive, and the male chorus was completely on point but the orchestra in particular gave a passionate and intelligent performance of this emotional and bleak symphony. It's one of my favourite works Shostakovich has ever written and so I tend to be a little bit worried when I see it live, because what if I don't like the interpretation of the performance?! But this one was about as good as it gets, and proves that Yannick really is a great Shostakovich conductor. 

My bachtrack review (five stars) 

4. May 30: Varèse - Amériques and Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring, Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Royal Festival Hall

THIS CONCERT WAS JUST SO WONDERFULLY LOUD. Seriously. Amériques is just so much fun and it's so impressive to hear it live, and coupling with the always enjoyable Rite of Spring was a great move. The performance of the Rite of Spring was simply amazing, it was animalistic and organic and so rhythmically powerful and  played with unstoppable energy and drive. 

My bachtrack review (four stars)

5. January 30: Lutoslawski - Musique Funèbre & Piano Concerto and Ravel - Daphnis et Chloé (complete ballet), Philharmonia Orchestra, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Krystian Zimerman, Philharmonia Voices at the Royal Festival Hall

This was my introduction to the music of Lutoslawski, which I am immensely grateful for. Musique Funèbre was mesmerizing and the Piano Concerto was stunning to hear for the first time. The performance of one of my favourite pieces ever, Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé was also faultless and made for an impressive ending to a great concert.

My bachtrack review (four stars) 

Other highlights: Leila Josefowicz and the London Philharmonic playing Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No.1, the Philharmonia and Ashkenazy's astounding performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No.15, Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra played by the Philharmonia and Salonen, Haitink and the London Symphony Orchestra's thought-provoking performance of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, Britten Sinfonia and Pekka Kuusisto's performance of Tüür's  Lighthouse, and last but certainly not least, the "Music from Dark Times" program by the London Philharmonic and Jurowski. 

Francis Poulenc - Stabat Mater

Even though my favourite choral works tend to be requiems, the many Stabat Maters in the history of classical music make for quite an impressive list. Palestrina, Pergolesi, Rossini, Pärt, Dvorak, Verdi, Szymanowski and many others composed a version of this hymn. But it is Francis Poulenc's Stabat Mater that I've been listening to endlessly for the past few days, it is an astonishing piece of music. 

Francis Poulenc - Stabat Mater (playlist of the complete piece)

Performed by Orchestre de la Cité, Choeur Régional Vittoria d'Ile-de-France, soprano Danielle Borst, cond. Michel Piquemal

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) was a French composer. He was a member of the famous Les Six, a group of 6 composers working in Paris (other members were Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, Louis Dury and Germaine Tailleferre) and composed many works, including four ballets, three operas (incl the AMAZING Dialogues des Carmélites), five concertos and a whole lots of chamber and piano music. One of the most interesting things about his musical output is that a lot of his pieces are humorous and energetic, he also wrote a lot of moving liturgical (choral) music. This Stabat Mater is one of them, others are the Litanies à la Vièrge Noire, the Gloria and Quatre petites prières de Saint François d'Assise and the Mass.

Poulenc composed the Stabat Mater in 1950, after the death of his good friend Christian Bérard. He briefly considered writing a requiem, but after a visit to Rocamadour, he considered the setting of the Stabat Mater more appropriate. The text of the Stabat Mater is a medieval hymn, and tells of the suffering of Mary as she sees Jesus dying on the cross. Poulenc's piece is divided into 12 different sections, each of them noticeably different in tempo, rhythm and orchestration. The solo soprano only appears in three of the movements, 'Vidit suum', 'Fac ut portem' and 'Quando corpus', the rest of the movements are performed by the chorus and orchestra. As usual, my favourite movements are some of the louder ones, in particular movement 5 'Quis est homo' and 11 'Inflammatus et accensus' but you should really listen to the whole piece (it's only about 30 mins long).

Confessions of a reviewer #3: Being a 'fan'

There are times when I worry that my love for certain orchestras, musicians, conductors and composers makes my reviews predictable and somewhat unreliable. Or perhaps I should rephrase, sometimes I worry that other people may think that they are. I have no prentension of being some kind of 'objective' listener (which is an impossibility anyway) and I  wholeheartedly admit to being a  fan of quite a few musicians. But does this mean that I review with bad faith? That I already know how I'm going to feel about a concert before having heard anything? And that I am so biased towards certain performers that I can no longer tell whether the performance is good or not?

I started thinking about this after meeting one of my musical idols, Yannick Nézet-Séguin after his performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No.13 in London. I would go see pretty much anything he conducts (though I might need some convincing if it includes Mozart...) and have yet to disappointed by any concert he has conducted. Then I worried that perhaps this means that I am not critical enough, which wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact that I write reviews...

However, there is a reason why I love these musicians. There'll have been a time when I saw them play for the first time, and it is usually this first performance that makes such a massive impression on me that  I get the urge to see the musician more often. For example, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Stravinsky's Firebird with the Philharmonia back when I was doing my BA (so probably in 2004 or 2005) and it was the most amazing thing I'd ever witnessed, the energy was tangible in the concert hall and I was buzzing for days afterwards. This made such an impression on me that I went to see more concerts conducted by him, and it turned out that this feeling the first concert gave me was repeated in every single of those performances (and sometimes even much more intensely). There's something  about Salonen's approach, musicality and choice of repertoire that attracted me in this first performance, and it is not surprising that these elements are a part of every single one of his concerts that I have been to. 

Similarly, I have never seen Pekka Kuusisto have an off day (plus he's always hilarious which helps), Nikolai Lugansky nails every piano concerto I've heard him play, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin can turn the most boring orchestral music into a raucous affair. Not to mention the fact that most of the musicians I like best tend to play repertoire that I love, I'm sure that if Salonen focused on early music I would have no interest in him. If the first time I would've seen Lugansky would've been a Haydn piano concerto I also doubt I'd care all that much about it. The music itself is so important, and musicians of course have preferences, and they have their areas of expertise, and it seems only logical that the musicians, and in particular the conductors, I love focus on repertoire that I also love. 

Perhaps the most important point is, however, that when I go to a concert conducted by Salonen or Yannick, my expectations are ridiculously high. They have conducted the best concerts I've ever seen, and so whenever I see them conduct I expect to be that amazed. Sometimes the music doesn't lend itself to quite the same level of enthusiasm but I expect the music-making to be extraordinary. With musicians that I don't know and have never seen before, I think my expectations are reasonable (of course in concert halls you don't expect anyone to suck) but never all that high. But if I take, for example, Yannick conducting Shostakovich's Symphony No.13  I expected it to be one of the best concerts of the year. What with Yannick's talent in choral conducting and the 13th being one of my favourite pieces ever, I expected nothing other than sheer brilliance. Thankfully that's what I got, and that is precisely why I admire him so much.

So how is all this reflected in my reviews? Of course one of the upsides of reviewing for bachtrack is that I get to decide which concerts I go to, and so the lack of negative reviews is mainly because I go see musicians and music I like or think I will like, and the level of classical music in London and in The Netherlands is just very, very high so terrible concerts in big concert halls are few and far between. I think my reviews are as honest, critical and genuine as they can be, and I just hope that that's good enough. 

Alfred Schnittke - Symphony No.1

Sometimes you come across pieces of music that you just love instantly, for whatever reason. Schnittke's Symphony No.1 is one of those pieces for me because it's just so much fun and so chockful of different genres and references that you cannot help but be amazed and shocked every couple of minutes. It's an absolutely mad piece but for some reason it works really well. Here's Alex Ross's spot-on description (taken from this article about Schnittke on The Rest is Noise, which is definitely worth a read)

Bedlam erupts in the very first bars of this symphony, and never really subsides.  Jazz combos do not merely add flavor to the texture, as they do in many urbane twentieth-century scores, but actually take charge of the piece for considerable stretches.  From time to time the full orchestra attempts to bring the madness to a halt, with a loud minor chord heavy on the interval of the third.  This warning goes unheeded.  The second movement opens with a lampoon of mindless Baroque music that falls quickly into disrepair.  At the outset of the fourth, a trumpet plays the lilting second theme from the funeral-march movement of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, significant in the annals of musical satire for its refurbishment as kitsch in Erik Satie's Embryons desséchés.  The Chopin tune is the fanfare for an unrestrained five minutes of mayhem, in which Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto (among other works) fights like a wounded animal against a fusillade of sound that recalls and exceeds the most anarchic moments in the music of Charles Ives.  

Thankfully someone has uploaded one of Rozhdestvensky's recordings of this symphony onto youtube;

Alfred Schnittke - Symphony No.1 (all 4 movements: I Senza tempo moderato, II Allegretto, III Lento, IV Lento. Allegro)

Played by the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra, cond. Gennadi Rozhdestvensky.

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) was a Russian composer. He was born in the Soviet Union but educated in Vienna, and was never particularly popular with the Russian rulers (but then again, not many composers were). In 1990 he moved to Hamburg where he died 8 years later, and he did get a state funeral in Moscow. Even though his early works were very influenced by Shostakovich, his later works are incredibly diverse and 'polystylistic'. This polystylistic nature of his music means that not only is it difficult to define/pigeon-hole, it's also very exciting and constantly surprising music. He was ill a lot but still composed many works, including 9 symphonies, 9 Concerto Grossi, 15 Concertos, and a whole lot of chamber music. From what I've heard of his music (which I am admittedly still quite new to) his Symphony No.1 is my favourite but I also adore his Requiem and his Concerto for Viola and Orchestra. 

On Wednesday (the 30th of October) I will be seeing this piece in concert, played by the London Philharmonic and I am so excited, I imagine it will be amazing to hear this live. Though I am slightly worried that I might giggle too much...

Update

And again, it has been much too long since my last update. I spent most of my summer back in The Netherlands relaxing and not going online too much (and also concert-free, unfortunately) but I am back in England now and really have no excuse not to start writing again. I have also neglected my 24classics playlist this past month, but new tracks will appear later today or tomorrow. Just go here to listen. 

The next couple of months are looking rather exciting concert-wise. October in particular has some absolute gems, I am seriously considering going to 5 concerts which might not seem much for some, but I usually limit myself to 3-4 for monetary reasons. Difficult to resist though, Yannick Nézet-Séguin is returning to the London Philharmonic with two concerts; one consisting of works by Poulenc (including his Stabat Mater, which I love) & Prokofiev's Symphony No.7 and the other is, for me, the most exciting concert this fall: Shostakovich's 13th Symphony. Yannick is becoming a fantastic conductor of the Russian repertoire and he's of course always been a great choir-conductor so I cannot wait to see what he does with the 13th, one of the bleakest and most impressive Shostakovich works. There's another London Philharmonic concert, on the 30th of October, that I got tickets for: Schnittke's Symphony No.1. It is perhaps my favourite hilariously absurd symphony (it deserves a blogpost of its own, which will come soon) and I cannot wait to see it live. It's programmed with Lutoslawksi's Cello Concerto which, despite my love for the composer, I feel like I've seen enough this year but I'll gladly sit through it to hear Schnittke (and Ligeti's Lontano). 

In somewhat more disappointing news: I will not be able to see the MET Live broadcast of The Nose because during the live screening I'll be at the aforementioned 13th Symphony, and during the encore screening I have to teach! I really hope they release it on DVD this time around, or that some London-based opera company decides to put it on (that would obviously be even better). 

Expect a proper music-filled blogpost sometime later this week!

Thomas Adès - Totentanz

So the BBC Proms with Adès turned out to be rather fabulous, Totentanz is an incredible new piece.  This is some of what I had to say on it:

The music was typical Adès in some ways, with the strings remaining in the higher register for a large part of the work, exciting rhythms throughout, and some incredible percussion moments. I would say that it is one of the best pieces he has written, with incredible depth, clarity, and some musical moments I will never forget. Adès had already proved to be a great writer for voice, not least in his two operas, and Totentanz only adds more proof of this. At times the singers could not combat the sound coming from the orchestra, but overall they more than held their own. One of the most memorable parts of the music was when from the character of the mayor onwards, Keenlyside and Stotijn sung “together” – singing different melodies and text, yet at the same time – guided by the orchestra, who eventually took over and offered a loud, stunning musical climax.

The ending of Totentanz was surprising for Death’s words to the child: “Nimm zarter Säugling an den frühen Sensenschalg. Und schlaf hernach getrost bis zu dem Jüngsten Tag!” (“You tender babe, behold the scythe’s untimely blow. Till the last day, sleep now: sleep on, consoled”). This was the first and only tender moment given to this character. Keenlyside and Stotijn entered into a duet that was almost like a lullaby, comparing rather sweetly to the rest of Totentanz. Of course, the darkness soon returned, and the last word – “Tanze”, sung repeatedly by both Keenlyside and Stotijn – was poignant and impressive.

It's definitely worth a listen. The Lutoslawski was also played expertly by everyone, and the Britten was overall not quite as exciting as I sometimes find it but this performance of the second movement, Dies Irae, was definitely all kinds of amazing. You can read my full review here on Bachtrack, but what you really ought to do is listen to the concert on the BBC website here or tune into BBC Four on the 28th of July.

Confessions of a reviewer #2

This Wednesday, July 17th, I will be going to my very first BBC Proms concert. I've listened to many on the radio, saw a few on TV and youtube but finally it is time for me to see the Royal Albert Hall on the inside. It's an insanely good program as well; Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem, Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto and a world premiere of a new Adès piece titled Totentanz, and dedicated to the memory of Lutoslawski. Adès himself conducts, The orchestra is the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Paul Watkins plays the solo in the Lutoslawski and two amazing vocalists will join Adès on stage for Totentanz: Christianne Stotijn (I like that I get to see a Dutch person on stage at my first Prom concert, seems fitting) and Simon Keenlyside (I've written reviews of concerts with the first two pieces before, Lutoslawski's Cello Concerto here on Bachtrack just a few months ago, and Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem last summer (I also wrote a blogpost about the piece)). 

I've had a bit of a break from concerts for the last month or so, partly for financial reasons but also because sometimes I need some time away from the concert halls to appreciate it again. There's something strange about going to concerts becoming routine, about being so spoilt by good music that things that would usually excite me no longer do. There's been a number of concerts this past year that have been so good that everything else just paled in comparison. The Shostakovich Orango concert by the Philharmonia was one that I had been looking forward to since September last year and it was every bit as amazing as I'd expected it to be (or even more so). But then it becomes difficult for any other piece of music to impress. Thankfully the next concert I saw was the Philharmonia's performance of Le Sacre du Printemps  and Amériques which was just so animalistic and probably one of the most energetic concerts I've ever seen. Again a concert so good that the come down is hard and you wish you could just relive it.

Sometimes these kind of concerts only make me want to see and hear more music, but sometimes they are mentally and physically exhausting because they are so intensely beautiful and encompassing that my mind, ears, and heart needs a bit of time to recuperate. Most concert programs since those concerts have seemed unappealing to me. At the same time I am well aware of the fact that if I would go I would probably enjoy it quite a bit. But would I love it, would it be worth going? 

In all honestly (and this won't surprise anyone), I often find myself at concerts thinking that I'd rather be hearing a Shostakovich symphony (unless it's a Shostakovich concert I'm going to, of course). I see a lot of music I enjoy but don't love with all my heart. At the same time there's a lot of music I do love that much that I've never been able to see live (my recent obsession with Martinu's symphonies is a particularly unsatisfying one - the only performance in Europe I can find the coming season is the Symphony No.3 in Vienna!). You just settle for what there is and usually that's more than good enough, as seeing a piece you like live is  usually just as satisfying as hearing a piece you love on record. And of course, I am extremely lucky to be close to London where there are a lot of different orchestras and different venues doing many different things. But what do you do when that doesn't seem good enough? 

Of course this post might read like a little spoilt brat complaining about getting the opportunity to see world-class orchestras play amazing music. And maybe that's precisely what it is. I'm not so sure though. I love music more than anything in my life, and the fact that I can go to as many concerts as I do (thanks to Bachtrack) has made my life seriously a million times better. But for me that's all the more reason to take a break from the concert hall when you feel that nothing will ever compare to that one concert, or that none of the concert programs have enough exciting things going on.

Because thanks to my short break I am now back to my usual hyper-excited mode for Wednesday's concert. Of course it's an extraordinary program that would probably excite most people, but I am honestly relieved that I am looking forward to it this much. Turns out that the Philharmonia's concerts haven't made me quite as blasé as I'd feared.   

Mieczyslaw Weinberg - Sinfonietta No.1

I've been having some trouble with finding inspiration for blogposts because lately I have really only been listening to the same three composers over and over again (with some short excursions into others); Weinberg, Martinu and Shostakovich. And of course I'd like this blog to be diverse but hopefully this will be okay as well (and you can just go to 24classics for some diversity and excitement). So here's another post about the under-appreciated Mieczyslaw Weinberg! For those of you paying close attention I've actually posted this piece before, in the post on Spring Music. But I love it so much that I think it deserves some more attention, on its own.

Miecyslaw Weinberg - Sinfonietta No.1 (I Allegro risoluto and II Lento)
Played by the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra Katowice, cond. Gabriel Chmura


Sinfonietta No.1 (III Allegretto and IV Vivace).

The Sinfonietta No.1 was written in 1948, and Weinberg had already moved to Moscow at that time. It's heavily influenced by Jewish folk music, which you can hear very clearly throughout the work (look out for the clarinet solo in movement 2!). It's a wonderful piece to listen to and not particularly complicated or opaque but I feel like it has such a mesmerizing beauty to it. Some of Weinberg's symphonies are as dark and emotional as Shostakovich's, and this Sinfonietta is obviously quite a bit more uplifting. It's energetic and catchy and just really, really good. 

Other YPGTCM posts on Miecsyzlaw Weinberg: Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes

24classics

Last week saw the launch of a fabulous new website: 24Classics. It plays host to 24 playlists with different kinds of classical music, and these playlists are curated by people from the Dutch classical music scene. I'm in charge of the Heavy Symphonic aka the loud stuff, but there are a whole bunch of great lists. I particularly love the Adventure playlist, curated by Micha Hamel, Modernism, curated by Rob Overman and Sunday Morning by Petra Geresse.  

"Heavy Symphonic" isn't a self-evident genre, and I'm not able to provide a nice one-sentence definition. It isn't merely about the volume, although my list will comprise of a lot of loud music. Sometimes I consider a piece 'heavy' because of a certain darkness, a certain emotional depth, as in the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.4 that you find in this first list. I've tried to not make the music too overwhelming, and to alternate really loud things with some that are not quite so ear-splitting. For example, the piece from Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, 'Gegrusst, O Konig, an Gurres see Strand' is probably the loudest and most chaotic of the bunch (though also one of my favourites). As such, an upbeat and relatively uncomplicated movement from Prokofiev's Symphony No.5 precedes it, and the aforementioned Tchaikovksy 4 comes after Schoenberg. For me this brings out the strength in all three tracks, as they contrast really beautifully. At the same time the contrasts aren't so massive that you think you've suddenly ended up in a different playlist, it really is a balancing act. 

On 24classics there's a heavy symphonic and a Light Symphonic (curated by conductor Jan Willem de Vriend) playlist, but nothing in between and I think some of the things I put on my list, and also probably some that will appear on the Light playlist, are just simply "symphonic" works. Brahms symphonies for example, I wouldn't consider light OR heavy. And one of the great things, for me, about 24classics is that the compiling of playlist really is up to our own discretion and our own assessment of works. So maybe a movement from a Brahms symphony will show up in my playlist sometime, and even in this first one there are a few tracks that might not be traditionally considered "heavy". 

Because of licensing restrictions (that will hopefully not be around forever, I'm also trying to swap some tracks for different versions from smaller labels that aren't being difficult) you can't simply skip from one track to another so I hope you can find the time to listen to the whole playlist. There are still some issues that come with any new site, so if anything goes wrong or if you have any advice or feedback, please go to the info page, there's contact information on there (or leave me a message here, if it's about the playlist). 

I don't think it's particulary worthwhile to write something about every track on my list, also partly because I can only say "well I like it so that's why it's on my playlist" so many times. If you have any specific questions, or any feedback, please comment. Here is the full list, with a few elaborations: 

Orango at the Southbank Centre.

The Philharmonia and Esa-Pekka Salonen's performance of Shostakovich's Orango (and the Symphony No.4 of course!) is less than a week away (May 16). I've been looking forward to this concert since I bought the ticket in September and I cannot adequately express how excited I am for it. I wrote about the recording and also the history of Orango in this post, but here's a little something extra. The Philharmonia Orchestra made a promotional video for the concert, with lots of information and interviews and music, and it is fantastic and makes me even more giddy with excitement. 

Shostakovich's Opera: Orango from Philharmonia Orchestra on Vimeo.

If you live in the London area (or anywhere in England, it's worth a trip, really) I urge you to go to this. There are still tickets available, including student tickets (50% off) and it will be an unforgettable evening. Get those tickets here.

Bohuslav Martinů - Symphony No.3

There are so many composers still on my to-listen list, but thanks to The Rest is Noise Festival I can strike one of them off: Bohuslav Martinů. Last week I saw the London Philharmonic Orchestra play his Double Concerto, which was amazing (you can read my review here, they also played Berg, Bartók and Webern). It was an incredibly moving and exciting piece, and so of course I had to seek out more of his music. My favourite so far? The Symphony No.3:


Bohuslav Martinů - Symphony No.3: I Allegro Poco Moderato
Played by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, cond. Vaclav Neumann

Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) was a Czech composer. He studied at the Prague Conservatory for a while but was dismissed because he preferred to study and explore on his own. Eventually he studied composition under Josef Suk for a few years, after which he left and moved to Paris. He was really interested in different styles of music and of course Paris at that time was an absolutely fantastic place artistically speaking. His composing style continued to develop, but it wasn't until after his move to the US in 1941 that he wrote his six symphonies. He composed many pieces (almost 400!) throughout his life, apart from the symphonies there are many ballets, 8 pieces for piano and orchestra, a whole bunch of other concertos, and a lot of chamber music, including 12 string quartets.

Symphony No.3 contains three movements and was composed in 1944. The piece wasn't commissioned but it was dedicated to and premiered by the Boston Symphonic Orchestra and Serge Koussevitzky (premiere was in 1945). It's an energetic and loud piece, but honestly it's also quite unlike anything else I've heard before (even though it fits squarely into the genre of loud 20th Century symphonic music that I love so much). The piano has a prominent place in the symphony, perhaps similar to Stravinsky's Sympony in Three Movements. At the same time it has some stunning writing for woodwinds, and some wonderful percussion. Basically, it's really fantastic and you should listen to it. If you like the first movement, here are the others: II Largo and III Allegro - Andante.

Spring music

Officially it's spring, but with the weather still feeling like winter it's difficult to tell. So I've been listening to music that does remind me of spring because we need to get our sunshine from somewhere. Here are a few of my favourites (some of these are overtly related to spring, some much less so, but I hope you enjoy all of them nonetheless): 

Claude Debussy - "Rondes des Printemps" from Images


Igor Stravinsky - "Spring Rounds" from The Rite of Spring


Dmitri Shostakovich - "Folk Feast" from The Gadfly


Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - Easter Festival Overture


Mieczyslaw Weinberg - I Allegro risoluto and II Lento from Sinfonietta No.1


John Adams - The Chairman Dances

Witold Lutoslawski - Concerto for Orchestra

One of the things I absolutely love most about classical music is that I keep discovering new composers and new pieces. There is such an endless amount of fantastic music out there, and still being quite young and relatively ignorant, there's still so much I have yet to discover. Every year I have some more composers to add to my composers-I-love list, and this year has already proven to be quite successful in that regard: I discovered Witold Lutoslawski.

These past months the Philharmonia Orchestra had a festival going on called Woven Words. It is in celebration of Witold Lutoslawski, who was born 100 years ago this year. I was lucky enough to see the first concert at the Royal Festival Hall, which included Lutoslawski's Piano Concerto (played by dedicatee Krystian Zimmerman) and Musique Funèbre (and also a fabulous performance of Ravel's complete Daphnis et Chloé!). Both pieces were beautiful, and the Piano Concerto in particular blew my mind. Needless to say I immediately searched out more of Lutoslawski's music and I've loved everything I've listened to. This inspired me to go to yet another of the Woven Words concerts, this time with a raucous performance of Debussy's La Mer and two Lutoslawski pieces: the Cello Concerto and Concerto for Orchestra. It's this latter piece that I'm going to talk about in this blog post.


Witold Lutoslawski - Concerto for Orchestra : I Intrada (allegro)
Played by the Polish National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Lutoslawski himself.

Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994) was a Polish composer. Many people consider him to be one of the most important composers of the 20th Century, though he is not as well-known as he deserves. He wrote, among others, four symphonies (the second is my favourite), a bunch of shorter orchestral works (Like the Musique Funèbre, Livre pour orchestre, Mi-parti and Jeux Vénitiens), and some great vocals works (like Paroles Tissées and Les Espaces du Sommeil). He is perhaps best well-known for his use of the alaetory technique, in which the musicians and conductor can decide when each instrument moves from one section to the next - there is a precise structure but also some freedom in interpretation. He had an immense talent for orchestral colour and texture, perhaps reminiscent of Ravel and Debussy (which is why the Woven Words concerts were so beautifully programmed), but more modern and chaotic (even though his music makes complete sense to me).

The Concerto for Orchestra was finished in 1954, and originally inspired by Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. It consists of three movements, I Intrada, II Capriccio, Notturna e Arioso and III Passacaglia, Toccata e Corale. It contains a lot of folk(-inspired) melodies, taken from Lutoslawski's native Poland. I absolutely love the piece because it's exhilarating and unpredictable yet it never becomes confusing. It has some wonderful loud moments, which of course I always love but Lutoslawksi's music is so full of constrasts, and this makes every loud moment and every quiet moment effective and at times very, very moving. But above all Lutoslawski's music is just really exciting, always.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg - Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes

Quite sometime ago I saw a concert in Utrecht that had Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Violin Concerto on the program. I hadn't heard Weinberg's music before and even though it wasn't the most genius thing I'd ever heard, I really enjoyed the Violin Concerto and it piqued my interest to find some more of Weinberg's music. I have since fallen in love with quite a lot of his pieces, especially his orchestral work and feel like it's time to share one!

This is the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes. It starts off really calmly, with cellos and basses, though pretty soon the rest of the orchestra joins in and the main melody first appears just after 2 minutes. But for me the real joy is after about 6 minutes! There are Weinberg works that I find more beautiful or more moving and I'm sure I'll post those sometime, but I've been addicted to this Rhapsody for a few days now because it brings a smile to my face. Have a listen:


Mieczyslaw Weinberg - Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes
Played by the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, cond. Gabriel Chmura.

Mieczyslav (Moisey) Weinberg (1919-2006) was a Jewish Polish/Russian composer. He was born in Warsaw, where he later studied at the conservatory. The history of his family is tragic, his parents and sister died in the Trawniki concentration camp, but when WWII broke out Weinberg fled to the Soviet Union, settling in Minsk. In 1943 Dmitri Shostakovich convinced him to move to Moscow, and the two became good friends. Weinberg was never a part of the musical elite in Russia, some considered him a bad version of Shostakovich, but at the same time many other composers (and some critics) did love Weinberg's music. Nowadays he is still much less well-known than his contemporaries, though last year the Vredenburg in Utrecht had a small festival dedicated to his music (and of course I am very much regretting not seeing more of those concerts!). Weinberg wrote 22(!) symphonies, 17 string quartets, 7 operas and whole bunch of other music including a requiem. I still have to a lot to explore when it comes to his music, but I'm very excited to do so.

The Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes was written in 1949. Unfortunately I can't find all that much information on it. It's about 12 to 15 minutes long and its title already gives away where much of its inspiration was taken from. One of the reasons why I like it so much is that although it contains some upbeat catchy melodies it's not a consistently joyful piece. Take the opening for example, which one could perhaps compare to something like Shostakovich's Eight Symphony (and no one could ever call that a happy piece!). It is slow and brooding, almost foreboding. It doesn't betray anything of the energetic and joyous middle part, yet everything flows and everything works well together. I hope at the very least that it makes you remember Weinberg's name and perhaps search out some more of his music.

Favourite concerts of 2012

2012 was another fab year for live classical music. I reviewed 29 concerts for Bachtrack and many of them were really good. There were, as always, a few concerts that really stood out for me. Interestingly enough, they all seem to have been from April-July but I swear the rest of the year was good as well! Now that I live in England I am very curious to see what 2013's list will be like, especially with The Rest is Noise festival going on I'm anticipating perhaps my most exciting musical year yet. But now for 2012:

1. May 31: Maurice Ravel - L'Enfant et Les Sortilèges and Ma Mère L'Oye, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Magdalena Kožená, Nathalie Stutzmann, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Vlaams Radiokoor et al at De Doelen, Rotterdam.
I am of course a big fan of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. They're an absolutely fantastic orchestra with great programming every year, and this Ravel concert was probably my favourite concert in all of 2012. Apart from L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (which, together with Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre must be one of the funniest operas ever) they played Ma Mere l'Oye and these two pieces Ravel wrote for children are just stunning and hilarious and beautiful and moving. All the soloists were phenomenal and the puppet theatre done by O.T. Theater only made everything more awesome.
My bachtrack review: http://www.bachtrack.com/review-de-doelen-rotterdam-phil-seguin-ravel-enfant-sortileges (five stars).

2. June 7: Dmitri Shostakovich - Cello Concerto No.1 and more, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Pablo Heras-Casado, Alisa Weilerstein at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ in Amsterdam.
Of course Shostakovich concerts are generally my favourites because I love his music above all. But Alisa Weilerstein's rendition of his Cello Concerto No.1 was honestly something else. I'd seen it live twice before and was impressed every single time, but not to the extent that Weilerstein impressed me. For the entirety of her playing I found it hard to breathe because I simply felt too much, it was such an emotional performance, and combined with all her technical mastery that made it a performance I will probably remember for a long, long time. The other pieces of the evening were pretty great as well, I loved Schnittke's Moz-art a là Haydn which was my first live-experience of a Schnittke piece!
My bachtrack review: http://www.bachtrack.com/review-mahler-chamber-orchestra-heras-casado-holland-festival (four stars).

3. April 27: James MacMillan - Violin Concerto, Bartók - Romanian Folk Dances and Shostakovich - Symphony No.9, Radio Kamer Filharmonie, James MacMillan, Vadim Repin
I think I loved James MacMillan's violin concerto even more than I thought I would. I was familiar with some of his choral works, which I really enjoy, and I figured that having Vadim Repin (one of my favourite violinists in the world) play the violin concerto would at least make it interesting. But it turned out to be amazing and just right up my street and it took me a little while to appreciate just how much I loved it. It was loud and energetic and playful and funny and moving and memorable. It was recorded for Dutch TV and even though I haven't found an entire recording on youtube yet, there is this movement which you should just watch. Sadly enough, The Radio Kamer Filharmonie has disbanded this year because the Dutch government makes stupid decisions and it is a massive loss to the Dutch classical music world.
My bachtrack review: http://www.bachtrack.com/review-macmillan-repin-radio-kamer-filharmonie-shostakovich (four stars)

4. June & July: All the Pekka Kuusisto
Basically, this year was a good year for Netherlands-based Pekka Kuusisto fans. He was the artist in residence at the Robeco Zomerconcerten which means I got to see him play three times and each time was marvelous. The concert of Finnish tango music (with pianist Iiro Rantala) was so much fun and actually a lot more interesting musically that I'd anticipated (I love being wrong). His rendition of the Sibelius Violin Concerto is second to none, and truly revealed the beauty and strength of that concerto (some renditions I find can make it a little bit dull, but at least with Kuusisto you will never ever be bored). The Paganini concert, with guitarist Ismo Eskelinen was probably my favourite of the three, because it kind of combined all of Kuusisto's strengths. Not only is he a gifted performer and great story-teller, but he is an incredibly technically accomplished violinist with such mastery and musicality that you cannot help but be in awe.
My bachtrack reviews: http://www.bachtrack.com/review-robeco-2012-kuusisto-rantala-finnish-tango (Finnish tango, four stars)
http://www.bachtrack.com/review-robeco-2012-kuusisto-eskelinen (Paganini, four stars)
http://www.bachtrack.com/review-robeco-zomerconcerten-rpo-sinaisky-kuusisto (Sibelius, three stars)

5. July 27: Britten - Sinfonia da Requiem and Shostakovich - Symphony No.5, Aldeburgh World Orchestra, Mark Elder at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam
Okay so 2012 wasn't as impressive a Shostakovich-year as 2011 was for me, but there were still some great concerts. The Aldeburgh World Orchestra gave an amazing performance of the Symphony No.5 (I still fondly remember the timpanist's last notes, he was great), and combined with Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem (one of my favourite Britten pieces) this was just generally one of my favourite concerts. They also played the Adagio from Mahler's 10th which was good, but not quite as memorable as Britten and Shostakovich. Every time I see Mark Elder conduct a Shostakovich symphony I am sutprised by how good it is, you'd think that by now I'd remember that he's great at it! Also, the fact that the Aldeburgh World Orchestra are not even a professional orchestra and had been playing together for just 3 (!!!) weeks before this concert makes it all the more impressive.
My bachtrack review: http://www.bachtrack.com/review-robeco-2012-aldeburgh-world-orchestra-elder-britten-mahler-shostakovich (four stars)

Other highlights: Renaud Capuçon playing Ravel's Tzigane and Saint-Saëns's Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso at Vredenburg Utrecht, Alexander Melnikov playing all of Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ Amsterdam, the Philip Glass Violin Concerto 'American Four Seasons' by Robert McDuffie and Amsterdam Sinfonietta in Middelburg, Prokofiev's Symphony No.5 by Valery Gergiev and the Rotterdam Philharmonic at De Doelen Rotterdam, Grieg's Peer Gynt at the Barbican London, Ravel's Shéhérazade and Daphnis et Chloé by Yannick and the R'dam Phil at De Doelen, Mahler's Symphony No.7 by the Gustav Mahler Jugendorkester at Concertgebouw Amsterdam. And probably more!

Favourite albums of 2012

Now that it is January 2013 a post about my favourite music of 2012 is probably appropriate. In a couple days I'll write about my favourite concerts, but for now I want to highlight two CDs that were released in 2012 that were definitely the highlight of my musical year. Both involved Esa-Pekka Salonen; one CD is his "Out of Nowhere" with the Violin Concerto and Nyx, and the other is his premiere recording of Shostakovich's Orango as well as Symphony No.4.

I wrote about Salonen's Violin Concerto here, and I hope you've all listened to and loved the piece. The CD recording is actually spot on as well, never too clean and it's just very dynamic. Leila Josefowicz is a star in her own right and of course her playing is stunning. In that earlier post I lamented about Nyx not being on youtube, but now it is! It's fast growing to be my favourite Salonen piece, so listen and enjoy:



The Shostakovich CD by Salonen is something else altogether. Orango is an unfinished opera by Shostakovich of which 30 minutes survives(he and the librettists decided it wasn't a good idea to continue with in their current political climate). Some of the music will be very familiar to Shostakovich-lovers, however, as he re-used quite a bit of it for his ballet The Bolt (and rightly so, it's fantastic music). However, there's still lots that was never played or released before and it's such an honour to be around for its rediscovery.

In 2004 Olga Digonskaya, a Russian musicologist, found the piano score of Orango in a museum in Moscow. Because of her research we now know that it was commisioned by the Bolshoi Theatre in 1932, and that Alexei Tolstoy and Alexander Starchakov were to write the libretto. Tolstoy and Shostakovich together decided to make it "an uproariously irreverent squib, a satirical farce taking potshots at all kinds of aspects of contemporary culture" (CD liner notes by Gerard McBurney). The story tells of some sort of weird experiment of breeding a cross between men and apes to produce a hybrid (named Orango). This hybrid then becomes a successful soldier, a wheeler-dealer and a press-baron (quite a career!). Only the prologue survives both in word and music, as all involved decided to abandon the project. It's raucous piece, with probably the loudest percussion I've ever heard (and that includes Varèse), it's full of irony and humour but there's darkness in the music as well. All in all, it's an absolutely amazing work and it's sad that there are only 30 minutes left, though that's certainly better than nothing. There's nothing on youtube with the music, but here's Esa-Pekka talking about Orango:



Salonen and the LA Philharmonic's recording of Shostakovich Symphony No.4 has very much reaffirmed my belief that Salonen understands Shostakovich. Or perhaps I should say, he understands Shostakovich in the same way I understand him. The performance is absolutely and entirely spot on. There's not one thing I can say that I'd like to see differently (and this is usually the case with Shostakovich recordings, especially the Fourth of which I have too many so there's usually something I disagree with). Even though I will probably forever be loyal to Rostropovich and especially Kondrashin's recordings, Salonen comes really really close to my favourites. The recording is crystal clear but still has enough depth (which you definitely need in the Fourth). So if you're in the mood to buy some music; get these albums!