Interchanging Idioms

Thursday 3 February, London Symphony Orchestra St Luke’s, 8pm The relationship between sound and space is explored on 3 February when LSO St Luke’s hosts a pioneering new UBS Soundscapes: Eclectica commission in which world-class aerialist Gisele Edwards collaborates with violinist Alexander Balanescu and accordionist Evelina Petrova. The three artists will work together with director Emma Bernard to fuse music and acrobatic movement providing an impressive display for both the eyes and the ears. In addition to this exciting new work, the evening will include performances of existing repertoire by Alexander and Evelina including material from their acclaimed Upside Down album, which effortlessly blends Russian folk with jazz improvisation and classical music with an overall Eastern European flavour. Gisele Edwards has collaborated with a range of theatre and circus companies and artists including Simon McBurney/Théâtre de Complicité and Akram Khan/Nitin Sawhney. In an extraord...

Vienna Philharmonic & Franz Welser-Möst New Year's Concert 2011 recorded live by PBS on New Year's Day is now available at iTunes. Franz Welser-Möst conducts the Vienna Philharmonic with a program of Strauss favorites including "On the Beautiful Blue Danube" waltz and the "Radetsky March" along with six concert premieres. Downloads available via iTunes .

“Ray Chen can do pretty much anything he wants on the violin" - The Washington Post Sony Classical announces the release of Virtuoso the debut album on the label from the acclaimed young violinist Ray Chen. Winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition (2009) and the Yehudi Menuhin Competition (2008), Chen has received rave reviews from critics, and high praise from distinguished musicians around the globe for the fresh insight he brings to his performances and a musical authority far beyond his age. Maxim Vengerov, impressed by Chen’s charisma, stunning technique and natural ability to communicate, has described him as “ a very pure musician with great qualities such as beautiful, youthful tone, vitality and lightness ”. Chen’s upcoming engagements include performances with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester at Berlin’s Philharmonie, and with the Munich Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala, Spanish National Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony, as well as recit...

DENVER – January 7, 2011 – The Colorado Symphony is honored to present the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Awards and Tribute Concert on Thursday, January 13 at Boettcher Concert Hall. This inspiring community event features the Colorado Symphony, led by guest conductor Chelsea Tipton II, and special guests the Smoky Hill School Symphonic Choir in an engaging concert that both honors the recipients of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Awards and celebrates the life and legacy of Dr. King through music. The concert is free and the public is warmly invited to attend. Featured at the 2011 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Awards and Tribute Concert are works by American composer Brian Keane, who has scored some of the most memorable documentaries of our era. Keane's more than 350 film credits include Ric Burns' "The Donner Party," "Coney Island," "Ansel Adams" and the Emmy- winning series "New York." Boettc...

On January 19 at 7pm, Classical 105.9 WQXR will host a special preview of the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of John Adams’s iconic Nixon in China , live from The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space. The event will feature a discussion with Adams and director Peter Sellars about the celebrated opera, as well as performances of key arias by artists featured in the Met production. WQXR – New York City’s sole dedicated classical station – will broadcast the preview live from The Greene Space, New York Public Radio’s state-of-the-art broadcast studio and performance venue. WQXR host Terrance McKnight will moderate the conversation, which will offer insights into the ways Nixon in China explores human truths beyond the headlines and history books. “All of my operas have dealt on deep psychological levels with our American mythology,” says the Pulitzer Prize-winning Adams, whose Technicolor minimalist score is receiving its Met premiere with the February 2-19 production. The discuss...

Diva, Divo – on January 25 Hot on the heels of winning Gramophone magazine’s 2010 Artist of the Year award, the vibrant mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato will release her third Virgin/EMI solo album – Diva, Divo – on January 25. This playfully-conceived recital sees the American singer take full advantage of the vocal and gender range of the mezzo repertoire, voicing not only the eager young men of her many “trouser” roles but also passionate heroines. With the dramatic flair and vocal acuity of an operatic natural, she sings an array of roles including Massenet’s Chérubin and Ariane, Mozart’s Susanna, Berlioz’s Marguerite, Bellini’s Romeo, and Strauss’s Composer. Along with DiDonato’s dizzying characterizations, the album explores the same stories in operatic treatments by different composers, so we hear the Figaro story as conceived by both Mozart and Massenet, Faust by Berlioz and Gounod, and Cinderella by Massenet and Rossini.

with Songs by Schubert, Schumann, and Wolf René Pape, who triumphed earlier this season as Boris Godunov at the Metropolitan Opera, will present the most intimate side of his art when he makes his West Coast recital debut on January 15 at the Los Angeles Opera. The program will feature some of the greatest, deepest songs by Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf, with Brian Zeger accompanying on piano. Reviewing a similar program, which the German bass presented for his long-awaited Carnegie Hall recital debut in spring 2009, New York Times critic Allan Kozinn marveled at the “depth and power of Mr. Pape’s sound, as well as the subtlety of his interpretive style.” Kozinn added that Pape makes even the most famous Schubert songs, like “Ständchen,” sound fresh, thanks to “the balance of drama and gentleness” in his singing. Along with Schumann’s plaintive cycle Dichterliebe , Pape will also sing Wolf’s less familiar Michelangelo songs, which at Carnegie moved Kozinn with their “pur...