Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen has been an enthusiastic fan of Apple products for a while. In 2012 he helped develop the Orchestra app, designed as an exciting resource to demystify classical music for a new, tech-savy generation. Now he is featured in Apple’s new “Your Verse” iPad campaign. This website shows how the iPad has become an important tool for Salonen as a composer and performer. Alex Ross talks about the …
Last Wednesday the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra presented an outstanding concert performance of Howard Hanson’s opera, Merry Mount at Carnegie Hall as part of the Spring For Music festival. In a previous post I provided some background on Hanson and the opera, which had not been heard in New York since its Metropolitan Opera premiere in 1934. If you missed the performance and the live radio broadcast, you can listen to it here. Read reviews of the performance …
This Wednesday, May 7, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Michael Christie will be performing at Carnegie Hall as part of the final Spring For Music festival. Since 2011, Spring For Music has showcased North American orchestras and innovative programming. After this year the festival will end due to lack of funding. The RPO’s decision to present a concert performance of twentieth century American composer Howard Hanson’s opera, Merry Mount, is significant. Hanson (1896-1981) was the long-time director …
The results of a long anticipated study published on April 7 seem to shatter long-held assumptions about the superiority of 300-year-old Stradivari and Guarneri violins to fine modern instruments. The study, led by French scientist Claudia Fritz with the help of American luthier Joseph Curtin, follows up on a controversial blind test conducted in an Indianapolis hotel room in 2010. Ten prominent violinists, including Ilya Kaler and Elmar Oliveira, were unable to distinguish old instruments from new in a …
Charismatic conductor, educator, writer and music enthusiast Benjamin Zander is coming to Richmond. At 7:00 on April 28 he will join the Symphony Musicians of Richmond (the musicians’ association of the Richmond Symphony) for a concert/talk which will benefit the United Way. Learn more details here and listen to this radio interview with Zander. Zander conducts the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and Youth Orchestra. He is also the author of The Art of Possibility. As …
Legendary Ukrainian violinist and teacher Abram Shtern passed away last week at the age of 96. Shtern was concertmaster and professor in Kiev before emigrating to the United States in 1990 and settling in Los Angeles. He represented one of the last direct links to the tradition of Leopold Auer, the teacher of Heifetz, Milstein and others. For much of his career, Shtern stayed out of the spotlight, but he was deeply …
It was a concert musicians and patrons likely won’t forget for a while. Charles Dutoit and the Los Angeles Philharmonic were six minutes into Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloé on the evening of March 28 when a 5.1-magnitude earthquake rumbled under downtown Los Angeles, jolting the ten year old Walt Disney Concert Hall. Dutoit and the orchestra continued to play through the minute-long event. Last Friday, the Los Angeles Philharmonic released this amazing audio along with …