55 Results for : classicist
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The Classicist Writings of Thomas Walsingham
The Classicist Writings of Thomas Walsingham - `Worldly Cares' at St Albans Abbey in the Fourteenth Century: ab 24.49 €- Shop: ebook.de
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Love & War: Barbara Nissman
Prokofiev started writing all three of his 'War' Sonatas (Nos. 6, 7, 8) in 1939 after he had returned to the Soviet Union - the year 1939 was responsible for their nickname. These three masterpieces don't necessarily depict war but they certainly suggest conflict and this can be heard in Prokofiev's mammoth Sixth Sonata. It's a symphony written for the piano, and Prokofiev takes us on an arduous journey that runs the gamut of emotions. I call this Sonata- Prokofiev's answer to Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier.' It shows Prokofiev the classicist, coexisting with Prokofiev, the 'modernist. He gives us four movements in perfect classical form with the fourth movement finale linked to the opening theme and the conflict finally resolved on the last page of the coda. The second -movement is pure 'slapstick' (Charlie Chaplin style) done with a straight face. The nostalgic third-movement Waltz is what I call Prokofiev's reply to George Gershwin's 'The man I love' (they met many years before in Paris.) The finale is a pianistic tour-de force and explains why Prokofiev is called 'the Russian Liszt.' This is one of the great works of the entire piano literature. Chopin's Andante Spianiato and Grande Polonaise is the 'love' component in this Love & War saga. Beautiful lyrical pianism followed by a triumphant, majestic Polonaise processional. (Chopin also wrote this piece for piano and orchestra but the solo pianist can easily fill in all the orchestral parts.) Liszt provides us with love, joy and passion with his three Concert Studies- virtuoso pianism but with emotional content as well. Then the American composer, Benjamin Lees takes us on a Odyssey of his own that starts with a sense of foreboding- he explores various places but returns to just where he began the journey, and nothing has changed. Conflict returns fortissimo with Bartók's Allegro Barbaro- a direct reaction to a remark by a French critic who accused him of being 'just another one of those young, Hungarian barbarians.' How this piece, written in 1911, has influenced so many other composers of the twentieth century!! The recital ends with the popular Liebestraum of Liszt- we are back to love again but it is love mixed with regret. Quite a journey! "Prokofiev's longest piano sonata receives an immensely fulfilling performance from the lively Nissman who always was, and still is, one of the world's top Prokofiev pianists. The standout for me is her brilliantly thought-out interpretation of the Prokofiev Sonata which shows such passion and humaneness in her playing." "Magisterial performances of a fine selection of this great pianist's recital favourites. Collectively, Nissman's discography will be collectors' items for many a long year, with her links to the romantic pianism of the past, but recorded to best standards of the 2000's.' 'A tremendous achievement, one which should be far better known and celebrated wherever the 19th-20th piano repertoire is enjoyed."- Shop: odax
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Chopin
During my time as a student with Byron Janis in New York, we studied many of Chopin's works together, encompassing all genres, both large and small. Byron Janis was a genius of expression and characterisation in all the music of Chopin. He gave the small works the respect that tends to be reserved only for the large works by many and he influenced me greatly in my interpretation. In gratitude for music and much else, I dedicate this recording to Byron Janis. Small forms... I was delighted to be asked to record a Chopin Recital devoted to his smaller works. The emerging musical Romantics undoubtedly owed some of their ideals to their literary aunts and uncles. One legacy of this was the status of the fragment as a work of art, stemming from Novalis and Jean Paul and finding musical form through Schumann and some of the Preludes by Chopin. However, the musical revolution was not unopposed. Even in our postmodernist age, there is an uneasiness, among members of the artistic profession especially, about the eminence of these Waltzes, Nocturnes, Mazurkas and other small works. How typically ironic was Chopin's pen when in a letter from Vienna he wrote, 'Here, waltzes are called works!' An article from 1835 in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik by August Kahlert, typical of the day, represents a three-pronged attack on small forms in general, calling dance music the lowest form, implying that dramatic music is incompatible with small genres and explaining the custom of adding literary titles to musical works as being a mask to cover up empty works that have no meaning of their own. Even Schumann himself, who later attempted opera and symphony, said that Chopin's exclusive concentration on piano composition prevented him from achieving even greater heights. It is the aesthetic of the fragment - so many half-glimpsed and half-wrought visions, 'individual eagle pinions' as Schumann styled Chopin's Preludes - that is valuable to an appreciation of all Chopin's small forms. Although not strictly fragments, the Waltzes, Mazurkas and Nocturnes all share a dispersive quality with the true fragments among the Preludes. Each short work is a microcosm of expression, voice, form and technique. The epic, dramatic and lyric voices of a Chopin ballade or sonata can all find their individual articulation in the passage of a single Mazurka or Nocturne, just as the Waltz is a component of most of the large-scale works. The song... The nocturnes have a superficial affinity with the growing tradition of small-scale works popular with publishers and amateurs from the start of the nineteenth century. This association is responsible for the notion of Chopin the salon composer. However, Chopin's first published nocturne, Opus 9, No. 1, stands manifesto-like at the gateway forbidding such an interpretation with it's remote and dark opening tones. The full drama is unleashed in the middle section of the last nocturne of that same set of three. Publishers of the day followed the custom of attaching poetic titles to works to promote sales. The London edition of the Opus 9 Nocturnes went under the title Murmurs of the Seine and few works by Chopin escaped such treatment. Inevitably these titles, combined with the narrative hallmarks and intensity of many of his lyrical compositions, brought about another powerful conception of Chopin as a Romantic composer. His music became a 'fragment of autobiography', in Dahlhaus' words, and Chopin's liaison with Georges Sand, the trip to Majorca, his suffering and consumptive end took on new significance for the reception of his music. Chopin himself was too classicist to support this. He did not approve of descriptive titles and in his extant correspondence hardly more than once gives a poetic description of one of his own works. The dance... The Waltzes and Mazurkas mostly abandon the solid practicality of danceable music and instead elevate the spirit of dance, aspiring to the Baroque tradition of Bach. Chopin's Mazurkas tend to draw from more than one type of Polish regional dance, including the oberek and the kujawiak in addition to the characteristic holubiecs and other accents of the mazur. This elaborate mixing of genre, often perceptibly within one work, is an indication of the richness of the musical thought. Chopin's Mazurkas are also misinterpretations - in Harold Bloom's sense - of their folk models. One example is the treatment of the drones of Polish folk dance, such as the dudy or gajdy (bagpipes) or basetla or basy (unstopped string bass), which form a stable basis in the folk models. In Chopin, they sometimes function perversely to destabilise the tonic key, such as in the middle section of Opus 7, No.l. The Mazurkas partly fuel the myth of Chopin as the exiled Polish nationalist composer. As a result of the Polish folk origin and unusual modal elements of these dances, groups of listeners perceive his entire oeuvre, by association, as politically and culturally programmatic. Rubato... Eigeldinger identifies three distinct forms of rubato in Chopin - and the evidence suggests that Chopin used them all when he himself played his works. The most characteristic kind of rubato is that derived from the Italian Baroque bel canto tradition, and continued by Mozart, where the left hand maintains the pulse and the cantilena has an independent rhythmic freedom. The second kind is the more generally practised agogic fluctuation of tempo in response to phrasing, texture and dynamics. The third kind is a rhythmic signature specific to the Mazurkas, whose tradition must now sadly be regarded as lost to us. Chopin abandoned the use of the term rubato in his compositions at an early stage, no doubt because of the scope for misunderstanding and the recognition that the nature of rubato could only be communicated by demonstration. CD notes © 2001 Tamami Honma About TAMAMI HONMA, piano Tamami Honma began her career at the age of five as a prize-winner in a national competition in Tokyo, going on to make her US concerto debut at the age of seven with Mozart's Concerto in A Major, K414. After this auspicious start, she won grand and first prizes in several international competitions and has made many solo and orchestral appearances across most of the continental USA, in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Japan, Israel, Lithuania and Russia. In Moscow's Great Hall, she performed Rachmaninov's Concerto No. 7 with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra. Tamami Honma studied piano over a four-year period with legendary pianist of the Romantic generation Byron Janis - himself a student of Horowitz and the Lhevinnes - in New York and thereafter with Christopher Elton at the Royal Academy of Music, London. She now lectures on and co-ordinates the Piano Literature Course at the Royal Academy of Music, a course which she founded in 1998. An article by Tamami Honma on Beethoven performance was recently published in Arietta, Volume II (Autumn 2000 edition) and she was appointed as editor of the Liszt Society Journal in 2001. Commercial CD recordings of Tamami Honma's playing demonstrate an eclectic approach and a refreshingly diverse focus, including a disc of Mozart sonatas with violinist Howard Davis (leader of the Alberni Quartet), also for DK Music Ltd, and discs of contemporary British chamber works by McCabe, Rawsthorne and Nigel Clarke on Metier. Both Metier recordings received five stars in BBC Music Magazine and the Clarke CD also received high acclaim in Gramophone magazine. Tamami Honma's concert appearances around the world have included radio and television broadcasts with distinguished chamber partners. She has recently been featured on Lithuanian radio and television with the Vilnius String Quartet as part of the Gaida 2000 Festival in Vilnius, and on Polish Radio during the Autumn Festival 1999 in Warsaw with the acclaimed Kreutzer Quartet. Tamami Honma has also played with violinist Peter Sheppard-Skaerved, leader of the Kreutzer Quartet, cellist- Shop: odax
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Strange Conversation
Mandy Barnetts Entwurf des postmodernen American Songbooks, produziert von Marco Giovino (Amelia White) and Doug Lancio (Patty Griffin, John Hiatt, Gretchen Peters). Feat. John Hiatt! A singer since the age of five, Mandy Barnett is a world-class vocalist whose style is deeply rooted in the classic country and pop crooning of the all-time great singers. Mandy Barnett laughs when she's asked, "What took you so long?" in regards to Strange Conversation, her progressive take on post-modern American songbook. Sure, she's a classicist who's channeled Patsy Cline in a theatrical musical, recorded classic country songs with legendary producer Owen Bradley, and transfixed known musicos Seymour Stein, Arif Mardin and Ahmet Ertegun with her timeless stylings. But the girl who signed her first major label deal at 12 decided she needed a change. Produced by Marco Giovino and Doug Lancio for Thirty Tigers and Barnett's own label Dame Productions, Strange Conversation places the ebony-haired vocalist between obscure vintage pop and modern progressive songwriting. Think Lee Hazlewood and the Tams meet Tom Waits and Greg Garing with a little Mable John thrown in. In a world where people know she's a world-class vocalist, Strange Conversation opened new avenues for her gifts--whether it was Neil Sedaka's "My World Keeps Slipping Away," which was pitched directly to her by the songwriting legend himself, or the McCrary Sistersembellished take on Andre Williams' "Put A Chain On It," which takes a soul gospel turn on the blues that's part barrelhouse, part grindhouse, and part church house. Equally intriguing is the carny Western take on Sonny &, Cher's "A Cowboy's Work is Never Done," with the gravel-voiced John Hiatt. The quaver in Barnett's voice moves from wideopen to resigned, Hiatt is tall in the saddle, equally wry and knowing. Barnett has been called "a torch singer in the grandest sense of the word" by the Chicago Tribune, while People magazine has praised Barnett's "natural musicality," and the New York Times her "vocal finesse."- Shop: odax
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Approaching Apocalypse: Revelation: The Final Book
Approaching Apocalypse took over ten years to make. It began with photographer and digital illustrator, David Miles, recreating the visions included in the Book of Revelation. Working closely with a classicist and theologian, Sheila ,Harris, David combined conventional photography with digital imaging techniques to create a set of images corresponding as closely as possible with the original Greek text. A new translation of the edited text was then made by the scholar in Hebrew and Greek, and prolific writer on religious history, Dr ,Margaret ,Barker. Her aim was to make a translation of Revelation which would be accessible to a 21st Century audience whilst retaining something of the poetry and lyricism of earlier translations. A collaboration was forged between David Miles, radio drama and documentary producer, Rosie Boulton and composer, Simon Hall. Production began when Rosie brought Joss ,Ackland into the studio to read the part of the Apostle John. He was followed by Julian ,Rhind-Tutt, reading Christ, and finally Burt ,Caesar and Mojisola ,Adebayo, as the voices of the angels. Composer Simon Hall created a soundscape which fused the actors' voices with dramatic setting, sonic art, choral voices and instrumental music.- Shop: odax
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