Cutting Through Classical
We are absolutely delighted to announce that our new website SinfiniMusic.com is now up and running. It’s packed with fantastic new content – music, features, guides, podcasts and playlists and much more. We hope you like it as much as we do!
We’ll be retiring this blog very soon but in the meantime please go to SinfiniMusic.com.
Submit your details here for your chance to win a pair of tickets to London Sinfonietta’s Landmarks Series.
Landmarks is a new concert series created and produced by the London Sinfonietta and Netia Jones/Lightmap, which explores how we can connect the key points in the landscape of modern music. Immersive concert experiences will seamlessly weave together live world-class performances by the London Sinfonietta and integrated film created by Netia Jones. This series will leave audiences inspired and informed about music that has had great influence on contemporary art and culture, yet is so little understood by a wider public.
In 1939 in Görlitz , Germany, Olivier Messiaen was marched into a Nazi concentration camp. In his jacket was a pocket score of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite. While incarcerated in Stalag VIIIA prisoner-of-war camp he composed and gave the first performance of one of the most important and affecting chamber music compositions of the last 50 years, the Quartet for the End of Time.
Jarvis Cocker, Oscar-winning composer Dario Marianelli and cellist Philip Sheppard launch and perform at Not So Silent Movies…, an often hilarious, all-star improvisation to the silent comedy classics.
When it comes to creating split-second comic mayhem, cellist-composer Philip Sheppard takes his inspiration from such masters of the silent screen as Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. In the old movie houses a lone pianist improvised along to the on-screen antics; but once a month at King’s Place concert hall, it’s what Sheppard calls ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway? meets chamber music’, as he and a crack line-up of players spontaneously generate a soundtrack for silent comedy classics.
This weekend, we’ve compiled our favourite fireworks classics to help your bonfire night go with a bang.
As it’s Halloween, we thought we’d share the 13 strangest and most unlucky composer deaths.
1. Charles-Valentin Alkan (1813-88) It’s widely believed that the French composer and virtuoso pianist was crushed to death by a falling bookcase which he accidentally overturned when reaching up to the top shelf for a copy of the Talmud (he was deeply religious). However more recent sources report that his concierge found him in the kitchen, breathing his last, pinned beneath an umbrella rack. Read more
Following the release of Max Richter’s ‘Recomposed’ version of Vivaldi’s Baroque classic, The Four Seasons, Liam Cagney explores the seemingly unlikely marriage between classical and techno.
As musical genres go, techno and classical seem like polar opposites. Techno springs from electronic circuits; classical, from wood, brass and catgut. Techno is defined by nightclubs and repetitive beats; classical by concert halls and resounding orchestras. And yet when the two meet, as occasionally they do, they can complement each other well.
This month, British composer Max Richter, who in a previous life was a floating member of legendary electronica group Future Sound of London, launches his ‘Recomposed’ version of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Stores in London such as Selfridges and the Apple Store on Regent Street will have their sound systems taken over by Richter’s remixes of these Baroque violin concerto classics. Here’s his delicate, hypnotic treatment of the first, ‘Spring’.
It’s almost Halloween… so, for this weekend’s playlist, we’ve selected some thrilling trick-or-treat tracks featuring ghosts, witches and a singing statue, as well as peaceful, reflective music for All Saints’ Day.
Josh Radnor’s new comedy-drama traces a blossoming campus romance, and proves that listening to Mozart, Massenet and Vivaldi really does make the world seem a better place. Nick Shave finds plenty to enjoy in this gentle, coming-of-age tale.
One of the most memorable episodes in director Josh Radnor’s feature Liberal Arts takes place when Jesse (played by Radnor), a thirtysomething university admissions director, listens to the classical compilation his romantic admirer, Zibby (Elizabeth Olsen), has sent him. Walking the streets of New York, listening on earphones, he smiles as the people around him seem transformed by the music he hears: Mozart’s ‘Soave sia il vento’ makes every passer-by seem like a ‘viable romantic partner’, Vivaldi turns one into ‘a double agent, knee-deep in some kind of sexy espionage’. Read more
In light of two recent reviews by Paul Morley – the Classic BRITs and the Gramophone Awards, we feel it only necessary to pull together a bundle of album CDs by artists highlighted at the Gramophone Awards.
We have four CD bundles to give away. Each includes these albums -
Benjamin Grosvenor: Chopin, Liszt and Ravel
Joseph Calleja: Be My Love
Claudio Abbado: Mozart Piano Concertos 27 & 20
Murray Perahia: Chopin Etudes
For your chance to win one of these fantastic bundles please answer the question below and submit the form.
Question: What age is Benjamin Grosvenor?
A) 18
B) 19
C) 20
The Night Shift, brought to you by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment since 2006, is a unique classical night, putting the music in an entirely different context – late-night, laid back and contemporary in atmosphere. It is an hour-long classical concert but boasts other performances and live DJs throughout the evening.
The OAE is offering a prize of two pairs of tickets for The Night Shift at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, on Thursday 22 November, 2012. The winners will also receive a box of Lindt chocolate and a free drink.
To enter, all you need to do is answer the question below, fill out and submit the form, and keep your fingers crossed!
Question: What year did The Night Shift first start?
A) 2006
B) 2008
C) 2010