| “ | MusicWeb The exuberance of imagination (and fiendishly difficult writing) noted on the disc, Life Story, is continued on the present offering. The five pieces make for a well-contrasted programme presented by some of the finest artists active in the UK at the moment. Appropriately, Living Toys is written for and performed by the London Sinfonietta, a group that positively thrives on challenge. The seven-movement string quartet, "Arcadiana" (Op. 12), stands as the most complete achievement on this disk, and it's a work of striking ingenuity and confidence. Adès takes the listener to a charged, somewhat dark place with his music, characteristic registral extremes vying with sonorities almost beyond the reach of the forces employed. It is predominantly dark and makes a haunting, doubting conclusion to a thought-provoking disc. Adès’ music repays repeated listening, and performances like this give one the perfect opportunity to give this music the consideration it is due. —Colin Clarke | ” |
| “ | Classical CD Review Bad boy, bad boy. Whatcha gonna do? During the Twenties, George Antheil flared across the musical sky of Paris with a series of brilliant, highly experimental works like the Ballet mécanique and the "Airplane" Sonata. Music critics and philosophers published important articles about him. Ezra Pound tapped him as his "musical advisor," and took part (on the drum) in a performance of Antheil's Violin Sonata No. 2. Aaron Copland wrote, memorably, that Antheil "had Paris by the ear." Not too shabby for a boy from New Jersey. By the end of the decade, however, Antheil's star had dimmed. He had a restless mind and had begun what would be a lifelong journey to find another style. He felt the influences of Stravinsky and, later, Shostakovich. But Paris wanted more shock, and in the United States, to which he had returned, his radical works were held against him. He became known as the "airplane-propeller man," as if Ballet mécanique were the only thing he had written. The Piano Concerto No. 2 of 1926 is Antheil's first big work after the radical period. Here, one feels the powerful and obvious influence of Stravinsky's 1923 Concerto for Piano and Winds. It has the gravitas of the Stravinsky, without the thickness, and it's chock-full of great ideas, provocative takes on Bach's keyboard music that, Stravinsky aside, are at least ten years ahead of their time. In the Serenade No. 2, the thematic economy we saw in the piano concerto comes across as even tighter. | ” |
| “ | MusicWeb Originally issued in May 1997 and one of the clear successes of EMI's Debut series, this disc was a major contributory factor to Adès' success. It is still difficult to believe that Adès was born as recently as 1971, such is the sureness of the compositional hand at work in these pieces. Since then awards and commissions have followed each other in bullet-like succession (he was the youngest ever recipient of the Grawemeyer Prize for his orchestral work Asyla, Op. 17, for example). He has acted as the Hallé's Composer-in-Residence (which in fact resulted in Asyla, as well as The Origin of the Harp) and he has produced an opera, Powder her Face, of international significance. In addition, he has let his talents as pianist and conductor develop (his solo piano disc on CDC5 57051-2 is an impressive achievement). Being in possession of such enviable pianistic gifts makes Adès the ideal interpreter of his own piano music. He makes the complexities of Traced Overhead (1996) seem easy (other pianists performances reveal this clearly not to be the case). Darknesse Visible, a 'recomposing' of Dowland's In darknesse let me dwell, likewise exhibits an astonishing variety of textures. In short, there is plenty to provoke thought here, and much to make one wonder in which this direction this composer will travel in the future. —Colin Clarke | ” |
| “ | "The 60 fingers and multiple keyboards of Piano Circus have come a long way since they formed in 1989 ...the six players alternate between two grand pianos, four sampling keyboards and a spinet, transform the piano sounds in various ways, play a variety of conventional and unconventional percussion and incorporate a variety of mechanical and natural sounds. Totally compelling" —The Guardian, October 2001 "Extraordinary to behold ....six pairs of eyes, watching, listening, timing each move to the split second. Breathtaking." —The Times, March 2002 | ” |
| “ | Part of the cultural fallout in Western Europe just after the First World War was the conviction that Romanticism had to be expunged from contemporary artistic life. Assorted ideologies, theories and techniques, often colliding with one another, were offered as tools for this purpose, and Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), then the boy wonder of German music, investigated a considerable number of them in his wildly eclectic compositions. What with atonal dabbling, nose-thumbing at bourgeois values via jazzy sitcom operas and so on, it was no wonder, when the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the archmoralist Adolf Hitler declared Hindemith a cultural Bolshevist. —Wallace Rave | ” |
| “ | Harmonia Mundi's series Les Nouveaux Interprètes aims to bring us "the cream of the new generation of musicians," and no listener to this CD will deny the appropriateness of the young French cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand in that company. Her recital is devoted to solo cello music of the 20th century, and two interpretations stand out as having the composer's blessing: those of the inventive Trois strophes sur le nom de Sacher (1976-1982) by Henri Dutilleux, and the more conventional but still finely written Suite No. 4 (1994-1996) by Nicolas Bacri, which is dedicated to Bertrand and was premiered by her. Here and in the other works—the engaging and characterful Serenade (1949) by Hans Werner Henze, the impressive Sonata (1955) by the American individualist George Crumb, and the powerful, folk-influenced early Sonata (1948-53) by Ligeti—Bertrand reveals her mastery of tonal variety and creative engagement with her material. Booklet documentation on these rather esoteric pieces is weak, but all the works are worth getting to know, especially in performances such as these. —Amazon.com Editorial Review | ” |
| “ | "Can Writers Change the World?" A German expressionist poet by the name of Gottfried Benn wrote in opposition to the political program of his day: History has no overarching sense, no upward movement, no dawning of humanity; it survives the Niagara Falls, only to drown in the bathtub; necessity calls and randomness answers. Benn then gave form to these views in his poem Das Unaufhörliche, which is supposed to express the self-transformation of the creative act. | ” |
| “ | Classics Today George Crumb’s Songs, Drones, and Refrains of Death (1968) is one of a series of works exploring texts by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. Like so much of Crumb's mature music, it uses avant-garde performance techniques and unusual instruments (a mixture of percussion and electronics) to create a primal, elemental atmosphere. In this respect, the music stands in the tradition of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring or Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin, both works where an exceptionally refined and sophisticated technique is used unflinchingly to depict visions of mystery, evoke primitive rituals, and explore the ancient myths of our collective unconscious. —David Hurwitz | ” |
| Copyright AvaxHome.RU | Privacy Policy | DMCA Information |
|
UPWARDS |