Interchanging Idioms

This Eastertide program begins with Wagner's Prelude and "Good Friday Spell" from Parsifal, about the famous knight in search of the Holy Grail. These spiritual works are a perfect way to celebrate the season. The program's centerpiece is Mendelssohn's sparkling A Midsummer Night's Dream , complete with actors reading from Shakespeare's comedy. Andrew Grams, conductor (more) Colorado Children's Chorale / Deborah DeSantis, director (more) Katherine Whyte, soprano (more) Michelle Areyzaga , soprano (more) Leigh Miller, actor Shelly Gaza, actor WAGNER / Prelude to Parsifal WAGNER / "Good Friday Spell" from Parsifal MENDELSSOHN / A Midsummer Night's Dream

Program also includes Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony Mezzo-soprano Theodora Hanslowe and tenor Simon O’Neill make their Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) debuts, under the direction of BSO Music Director Marin Alsop, in a performance of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (“Song of the Earth”) on Friday, May 6 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 8 at 3 p.m. at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, and Saturday, May 7 at 8 p.m. at the Music Center at Strathmore. Also on the program is Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, “Italian.” Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, “Italian” was inspired by the young composer’s trip to Italy. Commissioned by London Philharmonic society, now known as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the work premiered in 1833 in London under Mendelssohn’s baton. While many music critics classify it as one of his most perfectly conceived symphonic works, the composer was not happy with the work and continued to revise it until his death. The work was finally published posthumously. In th...

At the age of 31, Pablo Heras-Casado already has a remarkably versatile international career. In the past few months the Spanish conductor has led concerts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers in London in music exploring Mendelssohn's royal connections; two world premieres with Klangforum Vienna in Granada and Seville; film scores with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; concerts in Aldeburgh and London's Tate Modern gallery with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain; and a recording of Nino Rota's Trombone Concerto with SWR Symphony Orchestra Freiburg. Later this month Heras-Casado travels to Tokyo for Stockhausen's Gruppen with the NHK Symphony Orchestra. Orchestral, choral, new and early music and opera are intertwined in Heras-Casado's musical interests. "I look for the new," says the Granada native, "whether the ink is still wet on the page or a first performance of ancient music. It's about the discovery....

After summer festival performances in the US with the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst, the New York Philharmonic under Alan Gilbert and the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Leonard Slatin, Nikolaj Znaider performs in a pair of concerts at the Salzburg Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel. Znaider will perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto on August 27 and August 29. These will be his first performances with the Vienna Philharmonic since his recording sessions under Valery Gergiev for the recently released Brahms and Korngold concertos, a disc that earned this rave from the Dallas Morning News : “The Copenhagen native with matinee-idol looks serves up deeply committed and lustrously intoned performances of both the Brahms and the…Korngold.” The Daily Telegraph wrote of the Brahms recording: “Znaider’s own playing transmits thoughtfulness, expressive power, concentration and command of the nuances of phrasing, combined with an overarchi...

Fiddler on the Shore premieres with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on August 22 Hope and Maxwell Davies Give UK Premiere on September 8 with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at BBC Proms Violinist Daniel Hope, a long-time champion of new music, is the soloist for the world premiere of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s second violin concerto, Fiddler on the Shore , on August 22 with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. The work, commissioned by the orchestra and written specially for Hope, will be conducted by the composer. This performance will be part of the orchestra’s Mendelssohn bicentennial celebrations in Leipzig. After the world premiere, Daniel Hope and Peter Maxwell Davies will bring the piece back home to Great Britain, where they will present the UK premiere at the BBC Proms on September 8 – Sir Peter’s 75th birthday, this time with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Both Hope and Maxwell Davies are favorite British musicians. Peter Maxwell Davies, one of the UK’s most celebrate...

Release on Telarc out August 25th Launch Concert at (Le)Poisson Rouge in New York September 8th “Here was freshness, confidence, radiant technique and perfect optimism wrapped in sparkling beauty.” -- Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the Aspen Music Festival and School New York, NY – At age sixteen, violinist Caroline Goulding combines fearless technique and innate artistry with an unadulterated joy for music-making that is unmatched by most violinists of any age. In her young career, she has already graced the stage with prestigious orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony. She has won the coveted first prize of the Aspen Music Festival’s Concerto Competition (at age thirteen) and has appeared on NBC’s Today Show , the MARTHA show hosted by Martha Stewart and been featured on National Public Radio’s From The Top as well as From the Top: Live at Carnegie on PBS Television. Caroline Goulding joins forces with pianist and From the Top impresario...

The Nash Ensemble will take concertgoers on a unique journey through the music of France and Spain during its 2009/2010 season. The Nash programmes reflect the connections between the musical traditions of two countries in eleven concerts presented throughout the season. The series takes its name from Duparc’s song L’invitation au voyage – and offers a journey to a land of “order and beauty, luxury, calm and delight”. French composers such as Chabrier, Debussy and Ravel wrote some of the finest “Spanish” music; the Spaniards - Granados, Falla and Turina all spent formative years in Paris. Works by these major figures are augmented by masterpieces ranging from Berlioz and Saint-Saëns to Fauré and Poulenc. The award-winning Nash Ensemble is joined by Dame Felicity Lott in performances of Duparc L’Invitation au voyage & Phidylé and Berlioz Les Nuits d’été on 24 October 2009, and by Sally Mathews in Canteloube Chants d’Auvergne on 14 November, in which the programme will i...

With Craig Wedren Performing Jefferson Friedman’s On in Love Tuesday, August 4 at 7pm (previously 7:30pm) Joe’s Pub 425 Lafayette Ave., NYC Tickets: $15 at www.joespub.org or 212.967.7555 Noguchi Museum’s Music in the Garden Featuring the world premiere of Caleb Burhans’ new string quartet Sunday, August 9 at 3pm The Noguchi Museum 9-01 33rd Rd., L.I.C., NY Info: www.noguchi.org or 718.204.7088FREE w/ $10 Museum admission “Jefferson Friedman is one of the increasingly plentiful young composers who have found ways to meld their classical music training with rock sensibilities, and his version of this blend is both sophisticated and appealing.” ­­– The New York Times New York, NY–ACME (American Contemporary Music Ensemble), led by cellist and artistic director Clarice Jensen, will perform two concerts in August at Joe’s Pub (August 4, 425 Lafayette Ave., NYC) and at the Noguchi Museum (August 9, 9-01 33rd Rd., Long Island City, NY). The New York Times describes A...

Since winning First Prize at the 2001 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition and receiving the Gilmore Young Artist Award in 2002, Russian pianist Kirill Gerstein has been travelling to the major international music centers with a suitcase full of concertos and rave reviews for his blazing technique and probing interpretations. Last month Gerstein made his Los Angeles Philharmonic debut with conductor Hans Graf in Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2. Then he was off to Germany to play Liszt's first concerto with Leonard Slatkin and the Royal Philharmonic and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, followed by a pair of chamber music concerts in Vienna and Salzburg. Earlier this month, Gerstein performed Ravel's Concerto in G major with Pinchas Zukerman and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, and he gave a BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert at London's Wigmore Hall with cellist Stephen Isserlis. He ends the month in Tel Aviv playi...

Beethoven in Cleveland (July 18), Brahms in Vail with New York Philharmonic (July 24), and Tchaikovsky in Salzburg With Vienna Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel (Aug 27 & 29) In Dresden, Znaider Will Play and Record Elgar’s Violin Concerto – Now in its Centennial Season – Before Taking it on Tour Nikolaj Znaider – recently selected as the “Top Choice” in the July issue of Classic FM magazine’s “Top Ten Violinists” feature – starts his summer in Dresden playing Sir Edward Elgar’s magnificent violin concerto in both concerts and recording sessions with the Dresden Staatskapelle under Sir Colin Davis. Znaider is devoting a lot of time next season to honoring the centennial of the Elgar work, which was composed for and dedicated to the great Fritz Kreisler. Amazingly, Znaider will perform the concerto on the same instrument Kreisler played for the world premiere – a 1734 Guarneri “del Gesù” on loan from the VELUX Foundations and the Knud Hojgaard Foundation, and one of several in...

Internationally renowned conductor Günther Herbig will lead the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Baltimore Choral Arts Society in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, “Choral,” July 23 at the Music Center at Strathmore at 8:00 p.m. and July 24 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall at 7:30 p.m. These concerts will feature soprano Heidi Stober , mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor , tenor Gordon Gietz and baritone Stephen Powell . This program will conclude the BSO’s 2009 Summer Nights season at the Meyerhoff and Strathmore. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is among the most recognizable works in the classical canon. Since the composer was already completely deaf, the theatre’s music director, Michael Umlauf, conducted alongside Beethoven on the podium for its premiere in 1824. Because the musicians followed Umlauf’s count, Beethoven was still fervently conducting when the orchestra finished the piece, leading one of the musicians to turn him around to see the audience’s standing ovation. The Ninth ...

Specially-priced nine-CD set and downloads available June 16 from EMI Classics His new specially-priced nine-CD boxed set offers the complete recordings of legendary Spanish cellist Pablo Casals on EMI Classics. Casals was a world-renowned cellist and celebrated conductor (and a popular composer as well), whose recording of Bach’s Cello Suites stands among the finest ever put to disc. Along with the Bach Suites, the new set contains sonatas by Beethoven and Brahms, the Dvorák and Elgar concertos, trios by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Haydn, and Beethoven, Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, other works by Boccherini and Tartini, and recordings of Casals’s own compositions. A luminary in the musical world, as well as a passionate opponent to Franco’s Fascist regime in Spain , Casals was a remarkable man. This set pays tribute to his powerful and varied legacy.

and what have they been up to recently… The list of performers attending the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival is pretty long - musicians at the top of their field. As a result, these musicians are also extremely busy. Here are what just a few of them have doing. Yuja Wang “dazzle[d] Symphony Hall” in San Francisco recently according to Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronical . Wang's fearless romp through the Prokofiev Second - the most dazzling and downright finger-busting of the composer's five piano concertos - would have been a headline event in its own right. The stunning thing about this 22-year-old virtuoso is not merely the ferocious precision she brings to even the most technically daunting material, but the ease with which she makes it sing, soar and pirouette. Nikolaj Znaider took on Schoenberg, Korngold, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff & Brahms to end his Barbican residency with the London Symphony Orchestra. Paul Driver of the TimesOnline had this...

Sunday 31 May | 7.30pm | Royal Festival Hall 'It is to be hoped that Jurowski will continue such innovative and fascinating programming,' ended one review of the concert on 22 April, which featured music by three living composers, Kancheli, Yusupov and Silvestrov. This Sunday 31 May you can continue your exploration of contemporary classical music with Vladimir Jurowski and the London Symphony Orchestra. Torsten Rasch's song cycle Mein Herz brennt has its source in the romantic era, but from a twenty-first century perspective. Instead of nineteenth-century heart-rent words by Rimbaud or Rückert, the passionate lyrics of love and loss are taken from poetry by Till Lindemann, lead singer of rock band Rammstein, who has already used them in tracks by his band. Sung, whispered, shouted, accompanied by a stunning spectrum of orchestral sound, Rasch's songs are a mesmerising development of Mahler's late romantic music. René Pape sings the solo bass role in this UK ...

To mark the bicentenary of Mendelssohn's birth, Anne-Sophie Mutter is honouring the composer with a very personal tribute combining symphonic music and chamber works on CD and DVD: The Violin Sonata in F major of 1838, the Piano Trio in D minor op. 49 that was completed in 1839 and the Violin Concerto in E minor of 1845, a work which even today has lost none of its fascination. Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg on 3 February 1809, the son of a wellto-do Jewish banker, but grew up in Berlin. A brilliant pianist, he was also a conductor and an impassioned chamber musician. Not infrequently he himself gave the first performances of his own works, and this was also the case with his Piano Trio op. 49. Anne-Sophie Mutter admires Mendelssohn for a number of reasons: "He was a man of many parts, but also one with many obligations and duties who showed great commitment to all that he did. His importance to the history of music is clear not least from the fact that he played a signific...

Yannick Nézet-Séguin joins the London Philharmonic Orchestra next Wednesday to conduct symphonies by two nineteenth century composers loved for their lively, tuneful music. Mendelssohn's Symphony 4 (Italian) opens the programme, reflecting the composer's impressions of his journeys in Italy as well as Mendelssohn's own prodigious energy and vitality. The concert ends with Dvořák's Symphony 7. The emotional depths that Dvořák explored in this piece generate rich and satisfying music, in which tension, melancholy and doubt are eventually relieved by brave themes in the finale. We look forward to a passionate and committed performance from Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the orchestra, whose concerts of Mussorgsky, Bruckner and Brahms earlier this season were outstanding. Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto 2 is the centrepiece of the programme, with soloist Aldo Ciccolini. Tickets £9-£55 London Philharmonic Orchestra Ticket Office 020 7840 4242 Mon-Fri 10am - 5pm. No book...

at Verizon Wireless amphitheatre at Encore Park Music Director Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus to Perform excerpts from Barber of Seville , and Carmina Burana Music Director Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus will open the second classical season at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park, the Orchestra’s new 12,000-seat state-of-the-art facility located in Alpharetta, GA (north of Atlanta), on Saturday, June 20, 2009, at 8:00 p.m. The concert will be led by Mr. Spano and feature Soprano Georgia Jarman , the ASO debuts of Tenor Nicholas Phan and Baritone Matthew Worth , and the Gwinnett Young Singers in excerpts from Rossini’s Barber of Seville , and Orff’s complete Carmina burana . Mr. Spano, who is currently rehearsing for Seattle Opera’s Ring Cycle in Seattle, is making the trip back to Atlanta especially to open the season. “The Orchestra’s inaugural season at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park last summ...

The New York Philharmonic played Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man" for Lincoln Center's 50th anniversary on Monday, recreating the piece that Leonard Bernstein conducted at the arts complex's 1959 groundbreaking. The anniversary celebration began in the gleaming new 1,100-seat Alice Tully Hall, which reopened in February after a $159 million, 22-month renovation that has been praised for its superb acoustics and design. Trumpet players from the Juilliard School of Music performed in front of the hall as hundreds as guests streamed inside. The brass section of the Philharmonic, the nation's oldest orchestra, performed Copland's work under the baton of its new music director, Alan Gilbert. The program also included Gilbert conducting the Juilliard Orchestra playing the overture from Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro." Violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman performed the final movement from Mendelssohn's "Octet in E-flat, Op. 20...

Pray silence for the Great Bard...though this concert will be anything but quiet - with battles, weddings, jovial japes and dazzling dances aplenty. There's warmongering from Walton, magic from Mendelssohn, pomp from Prokofiev, and bravado from Bernstein as we take you on an orchestral adventure through scenes from the great stage masterpieces of William Shakespeare. Travel 'on location' with us to Agincourt, Athens, Verona, and New York with music written for films, musicals, ballets and the plays themselves. Foyer events throughout the morning You can try your hand at playing an orchestral instrument in one of our Have-a-Go sessions, get your face painted or learn circus skills - all in the foyers before and after the performance. FUNharmonics concerts are generously supported by The Jeniffer & Jonathan Harris Charitable Trust. Walton (arr.Mathieson) Henry V (excerpts) Mendelssohn A Midsummer Night's Dream (excerpts) Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet: Monta...

Mozart: Violin Concertos 1 & 3; Sinfonia Concertante Renaud Capuçon, violin Antoine Tamestit, viola Scottish Chamber Orchestra / Louis Langrée CD and downloads available May 5 from Virgin Classics “Working with Louis Langrée is a particular privilege. His Mozart has honesty, purity, and joie de vivre ... grace, in fact.” – Renaud Capuçon For his second solo concertos CD for Virgin Classics, violinist Renaud Capuçon performs three works by Mozart: the Violin Concertos Nos. 1 (K. 207) and 3 (K. 216) and, with young French violist Antoine Tamestit, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola, and orchestra (K. 364). All three works feature the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by fellow Frenchman and Mozart expert Louis Langrée, best known as music director for New York ’s popular “Mostly Mozart” festival, which takes place at Lincoln Center each summer. In addition to his enthusiasm for working with Langrée, Capuçon expresses his admiration for the players of the Scotti...