Articles

Meditation on Madness (Preview Prom 6)
Thus Christopher Rouse describes Seeing, a piano concerto for Emanuel Ax. Next Wednesday, 25 July, this 30-minute piece receives its European premiere at the Proms. The original performers from May...
“I speak directly to myself”
As one gets closer to Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s Wiltshire home, suburban scenes mutate to rolling green hills. Add a sunny day and blue skies to epitomise springtime England. The music...
Harry’s Progress
1. Setting the Scene Sir Harrison Birtwistle is, unequivocally, the doyen of British composers; not as prolific as Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle’s 1950s composer-colleague at the Royal Northern College...
Rhapsodic Centenary
Coming into the world at the turn of the previous century, in 1901, Gerald Finzi belongs to a generation of English composers that might be said, until relatively recently at...
Profile: Adrian Jack – Composer
Few composers are able to ply their trade solely as composers. One only has to think of Borodin the chemist or Charles Ives the insurance man. Even the Mozarts and...
Leonard Slatkin introduces the 2001 Proms season
This year marks a very special time for me. I will lead six Prom concerts including the first and last nights. For all of these occasions we have planned some...
A.T Schaefer: Die Jahre der Oper / Die Oper des Jahres
Among German opera houses, Stuttgart Opera has a long and distinguished history. Several of Mozart’s later operas were given in the 1790s, Weber’s Abu Hassan in 1811 and Beethoven’s Fidelio...
Take Four…
The Belcea Quartet, formed in 1994 and named after its first violinist Corina Belcea, is rapidly gaining an enviable reputation as one of the leading quartets of its generation –...
Deirdre Gribbin – in conversation…
Determination and vision might encapsulate Deirdre Gribbin. The only photograph I’d seen prior to us speaking suggests her focussed on some far-away place, a future commission perhaps or mentally resolving...
Alfred Brendel – Then and Now
Brendel’s discography, such a thoughtfully compiled one, has expanded recently with live Schubert sonatas and studio-recorded Mozart concertos; there’s also a 6-CD retrospective of some of his earliest recordings, which...
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