Rare Vivaldi Concerti with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Guest Violinist Federico Guglielmo by Andrew Miller



Vivaldi-concerto-rv-571
From the manuscript score of the RV 571 Vivaldi Concerto. In the Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden.

City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney: 22 February 2012

The program will be performed in Melbourne on 26 February, and again in Sydney from 29 February until 3 March. 29 February's concert to be broadcast live on ABC Classic FM (8 PM)

Vivaldi - Ciaccona form Concerto for Strings in C major RV 114
Vivaldi - Concerto for several instruments in G minor RV 576
Vivaldi - Concerto for several instruments in F major RV 572 Il Proteo o sia il mondo al rovescio
Vivaldi - Concerto for several instruments in D major RV 562a
Vivaldi - Concerto for several instruments in F major RV 574 and RV 571
Vivaldi - Concerto for several instruments in D major RV 564
Vivaldi - Concerto for several instruments in G minor RV 577

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Paul Dyer - artistic director and harpsichord

Federico Guglielmo - guest director and baroque violin

For a long time I was put off Vivaldi by the incessant repetitions of the Four Seasons on the local classical radio station. This was of course unfair, but it can be tricky to find performances of many of his other several hundred pieces (not least in Venice itself), and in fact the frequently encountered way of playing Vivaldi, with a certain edge, a forthright, frenetic sort of energy, which may display the technical virtuosity to maximum effect, is unfair too. Australian Brandenburg Orchestra artistic director and harpsichordist Paul Dyer and guest violinist and director Federico Guglielmo have constructed a program which is remarkably varied — indeed to present a program devoted to a single composer (or an exhibition devoted to a single artist) only really works with and artistic personality capable of a varied outlook lest we become oppressed by the artist's obsessions. Some of these concerti have not been published and clearly the two musicians have put much deep thought and research into their performance. Here is a Vivaldi with subtlety of expression, which also puts to good use all of this orchestra's skill across the instruments without showing off. All the concerti are "for several instruments" with some instruments re-apearing as soloists with a consistent personality and characteristically written parts, but with something quite different to say in each concerto. The program is carefully arranged in a kind of cycle, giving the sense of music taking us on a journey.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!

The Sydney Omega Ensemble and Gerard Willems Play Wind and Piano Works by Jolivet, Beethoven and New Australian Music by Luke Styles, by Andrew Miller

Jolivet1

André Jolivet at the Dresden home of a flutist friend after a concert. Photo from www.jolivet.asso.fr

Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House: 19 February, 2012
This program repeats at the Springwood Civic Centre for the Blue Mountains Concert Society on 26 February

Luke Styles - Shimmers
André Jolivet - Sérénade for Wind Quintet
Beethoven - Piano Sonata no. 14 in C♯ Minor, opus 27 no. 2
Beethoven - Quintet for Piano and Wind, opus 16

Sydney Omega Ensemble
David Rowden - clarinet
Emma Sholl - flute
Shefali Pryor - oboe
Matthew Ockenden - bassoon
Euan Harvey - horn

Gerard Willems - piano

The Sydney Omega Ensemble, as fairly young musicians, though with three members of the SSO's wind section, in no way without experience, with help from the non-profit Ars Musica Australis, enjoys commissioning and playing new pieces from young Australian composers. They do so in many of their concerts, taking the tactic of mixing them in a program with traditional composers, rather than the all-together contemporary music festival approach. Even if the new pieces are only short, it obviously adds variety for the audience and players and fills in some of the difficult gap between conservatory student concerts and festivals and the commissions of more established composers by Musica Viva (for new chamber music) and the SSO, Australian Chamber Orchestra and Australian Ballet, etc. for new orchestral works, the orchestral works usually coming from the same handful of Australian composers. So it is a valuable little institution David Rowden, the Ensemble's artistic director, founder and clarinetist, and company have run over the past few years.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


The Sydney Omega Ensemble and Gerard Willems Play Wind and Piano Works by Jolivet, Beethoven and New Australian Music by Luke Styles by Andrew Miller

Jolivet1


André Jolivet at the Dresden home of a flutist friend after a concert. Photo from www.jolivet.asso.fr

Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House: 19 February, 2012
This program repeats at the Springwood Civic Centre for the Blue Mountains Concert Society on 26 February

Luke Styles - Shimmers
André Jolivet - Sérénade for Wind Quintet
Beethoven - Piano Sonata no. 14 in C♯ Minor, opus 27 no. 2
Beethoven - Quintet for Piano and Wind, opus 16

Sydney Omega Ensemble
David Rowden - clarinet
Emma Sholl - flute
Shefali Pryor - oboe
Matthew Ockenden - bassoon
Euan Harvey - horn

Gerard Willems - piano

The Sydney Omega Ensemble, as fairly young musicians, though with three members of the SSO's wind section, in no way without experience, with help from the non-profit Ars Musica Australis, enjoys commissioning and playing new pieces from young Australian composers. They do so in many of their concerts, taking the tactic of mixing them in a program with traditional composers, rather than the all-together contemporary music festival approach. Even if the new pieces are only short, it obviously adds variety for the audience and players and fills in some of the difficult gap between conservatory student concerts and festivals and the commissions of more established composers by Musica Viva (for new chamber music) and the SSO, Australian Chamber Orchestra and Australian Ballet, etc. for new orchestral works, the orchestral works usually coming from the same handful of Australian composers. So it is a valuable little institution David Rowden, the Ensemble's artistic director, founder and clarinetist, and company have run over the past few years.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!

Tenores de Aterúe (“Singers from Elsewhere” in Sardinian) in Cantu a Tenore songs, and a smattering of songs from Corsica and the Italian lauda tradition at St John’s Church, Williamstown. Friday, Feb 24 at 8 pm

Tenores de Aterúe

Songs from Sardinia, Corsica, and Italy

Tenores-paisley

Tenores de Aterúe ("Singers from Elsewhere" in Sardinian)

Friday, Feb 24 at 8 pm

St John’s Church, 35 Park Street, Williamstown

You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll glance up nervously as the rafters creak! 

Come join Tenores de Aterúe ("Singers from Elsewhere" in Sardinian) for some beautiful Cantu a Tenore songs, and a smattering of songs from Corsica and the Italian lauda tradition. Cantu a Tenore is an a cappella quartet tradition from the Island of Sardinia that was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Our quartet has been singing Sardinian songs together for about four years, and we'd love to share this unique, powerful, and subtle polyphonic tradition with you! We'd also be very grateful for your support in funding our first study trip to Sardinia!

Check us out, and come on down!

suggested donation $10-$15

Read the notice on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!



Begin forwarded message:

From: Lena Stein <lenainavon@comcast.net>

Subject: Re: Lena-photos from the exhibition.

Date: February 23, 2012 8:10:43 AM EST

To: Michael Miller <editor@berkshirereview.net>


Can I email this to you?
On Feb 22, 2012, at 10:40 PM, Michael Miller wrote:

Actually it would be good to have your label copy as well to caption the photos. Send that to me when you can. Thanks!

M

Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts
291 Cole Avenue
Williamstown, Massachusetts
01267

Twitter: @berkshirereview

tel. 413.458.2244















On Feb 22, 2012, at 9:54 PM, Lena Stein wrote:

I am sending you few photos from the exhibition.

Begin forwarded message:

From: Lena Stein <lenainavon@gmail.com>
Date: February 20, 2012 6:03:37 PM EST
To: Marek Stein <marek11@hotmail.com>
Subject: Fwd: Lena-photos from the exhibition.



Begin forwarded message:

From: Lena Stein <lenainavon@comcast.net>
Date: February 20, 2012 5:42:30 PM EST
To: Lena Stein <lenainavon@gmail.com>
Subject: Lena-photos from the exhibition.

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A Singer’s Notes, by Keith Kibler 45: Holy Song…and a Miscellany


Antegnati-organ-mantova

The Antegnati Organ in the Basilica of Saint Barbara, Mantua

Holy Song

One day Beethoven got up and went to the house of Dorothea Ertmann, a woman he clearly loved. Her child had died. She had lost her ability to speak. The composer sat at the fortepiano and played for her a concert of late Beethoven that no one else will ever hear. She began to speak. Beethoven thought of music as a changer of things—a power—at its most powerful, a healer. The tale insists that Beethoven spoke no word to Dorothea. Anecdote? There is good evidence. And think of that other more important evidence—the motto he wrote at the top of the Missa Solemnis: "from the heart, may it go to the heart." Think of the fundamental importance that actual physical sound had for Beethoven, how he relates in the Heiligenstadt Testament that losing his ability to hear made him suicidal. (Think of this also the next time you hear an expert say that he can hear the Beethoven 9th better reading the score than he can in the concert hall.) What healed Dorothea was a performance. The whole occasion was about sound. She made none, Beethoven made the sacred sounds; she spoke.

Read the full article on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Sydney Symphony and Stephen Kovacevich Play Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto and Strauss’ Alpensinfonie by Andrew Miller

Rgarmi1
Richard Strauss having a siesta. Photo from richardstrauss.at.

Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House: 18 February 2012
Friday 17 February's perfomrance to be broadcast on ABC Classic FM on 7 March.

Beethoven - Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Opus 58
Richard Strauss - Eine Alpensinfonie, Opus 64

Stephen Kovacevich - piano
Vladimir Ashkenazy - conductor
Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra continue with the second in their triptych of Beethoven-Richard Strauss concerts which opens their 2012 season. Maestro Ashkenazy, their artistic director for the past few years who usually conducts himself several concerts at the beginning and end of the season (the Eternal Summer!), and the SSO seem to have established a warm and close rapport and respect, to judge from the jocular, playful exchanges and inaudible banter he shares with the orchestra members after the music, shaking hands with all the front-row strings after every concert, as well as from the fine and detailed interpretations they create together. Stephen Kovacevich brought a remarkable like-mindedness to this partnership. He also brought a complimentary attitude so that the concerto was a conversation beyond words between individual beings. The sound of his piano and what Kovacevich expressed therein had a remarkably immediate, very close presence, where often there is a wider gap between a guest soloist-virtuoso and the audience. Similarly the orchestra had a generous and open pellucid quality — not ever quite the homogeneously mixed and integrated sound of cogs in the the romantic-orchestral apparatus, nor exactly a contrasty orchestra of soloists, but something in-between those extremes and something else entirely which preserved the instruments' characteristic timbres, at least section-wise, in an even-handed balance, a sound which can speak coherently in many different ways all at once. Kovacevich got through his childhood concert début some 60 years ago and so has nothing to prove, and his performance with Ashkenazy, himself a pianist, and now a conductor, of great experience, had deep maturity, but also at the same time a playful child-like quality, a surface insouciance rather more interested in the details and problems in the music which matter.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the arts!

God Rocks the House in San Francisco and Palo Alto: Verdi’s Requiem with the SF Symphony and Saint-Saëns Samson et Dalila with the West Bay Opera, by David Dun Bauer


Samsonetdalila-p6833

The Power of God on a Shoestring Budget: West Bay Opera's Samson et Dalila

San Francisco sustained two palpable if not destructive earthquakes (3.9 and 4.0) on Thursday October 20th, and the memory lingered with me for a performance of the Verdi Requiem on Friday the 21st with the San Francisco Symphony and  for a matinee performance of Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila with the West Bay Opera on Sunday the 23rd in Palo Alto.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!


The Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Riccardo Muti Visit San Francisco: Honegger: Pacific 231, Bates: Alternative Energy, Franck: Symphony in D-minor , by Steven Kruger

by  • FEB 21, 2012 • PRINT-FRIENDLY

Mason_bates_by_lydia_danmiller

DJ / Composer Mason Bates. Photo Lydia Danmiller.

Davies Hall, San Francisco
Tuesday, February 20, 2012

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Muti, conductor

Honegger: Pacific 231 (1923)
Bates: Alternative Energy (2012)
Franck: Symphony in D-minor (1888)

Choose wisely what and how you imitate.... This may be the composer's lesson to take away from last Tuesday's much anticipated San Francisco visit by the Chicago Symphony, led by Riccardo Muti. Though Muti's program concluded traditionally, with the Franck Symphony in D-minor, the first half of his concert was devoted to two pieces which undertake, with differing levels of success, the engineering of musical expression through depiction.

Michael Miller
Editor/Publisher
The Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts
291 Cole Avenue
Williamstown, Massachusetts
01267

Twitter: @berkshirereview

tel. 413.458.2244














Marcel Storr, bâtisseur visionnaire, English Version by Alan Miller

47_marcel_storr_cr_dit_kempf

One draws cities for practical and for visionary reasons. Whatever they may draw as preparation, usually builders are preoccupied with cities that can be built and lived in. As in New York, where there is not much difference between the drawings of Hugh Ferriss and the Chrysler or Empire State buildings, in Paris the difference between the visionary city and the one which exists is less clear than in other places. Haussmann’s projects were, for better and worse, the personal dreams of an imagination pierced by perfect boulevards. The Haussmannian approach was a response to practical needs which nonetheless expressed a very particular aesthetic, more even than the projects  completed by Robert Moses in New York. The transformations which took place in Paris under the Second Empire, or even some of the grands travaux of the 1980s, were not far from the drawings of a visionary such as Marcel Storr. Consider the Bibliothèque François Mitterand, a strange building all the stranger for pretending to be rationalist. Once built these projects show us the joys and perils of visionary urbanism.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international; journal of the arts!

Marcel Storr, bâtisseur visionnaire, version française by Alan Miller

47_marcel_storr_cr_dit_kempf

On dessin la ville pour les raisons pratiques ou visionnaires. D’habitude, les “bâtisseurs” sont préoccupés avec les villes qu’on peut bâtir, où on peut vivre. Comme à New York, où il n’y a pas grand différence entre les dessins de Hugh Ferriss et les tours Chrysler ou Empire State, à Paris la différence entre la ville existante et la ville visionnaire est peut-être moins nette qu’ailleurs. Les interventions de Haussmann étaient, pour le mieux et pour le pire, des rêves personnels d’une imagination percé par les boulevards parfaits. La démarche Haussmanienne était une réponse aux des exigences pratiques, mais elle exprimait une esthétique très personnelle, plus même que les projets de Robert Moses à New York. Le Paris transformé du Second Empire, ou même certains des grands projets parisiennes des 1980s ne sont pas trop loin des dessins d’un visionnaire comme Marcel Storr. Considerez La bibliothèque François Mitterand, un édifice d’autant plus bizarre pour sa rationalisme simulée. Une fois bâtis ces projets montrent les joies et les périls de l’urbanisme visionnaire.

Lisez le reste à la Berkshire Review!