Monday, May 30, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Pascal and Ami Rogé premiere Hindson's 'Double Piano Concerto' with Ashkenazy and the Sydney Symphony
How many pianists commission a full-blown concerto to celebrate their wedding anniversary? When Pascal and Ami Rogé decided upon this unusual plan of action, Australian composer Matthew Hindson seemed an obvious choice to them. Ami has prasied the "visual" character of his music and Pascal admires the way it speaks directly to the heart, to listeners. Hindson talks about the piece in this extended ABC interview.The Concerto for Two Pianos is premiered by the Rogés with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy, in Sydney Opera House on 12 and 13 May (the latter performance will be broadcast live on ABC Classic FM). It comes to Europe in November this year.
'Hindson has amazing range. He could probably wring a concerto from the sound of a doorbell. His source material ranges from classical to Metallica to soothing melodic riffs…'
San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Boosey & Hawkes Online Scores - Available Now!
Boosey & Hawkes, the leading independent publisher of contemporary classical music, is pleased to announce the launch of Boosey & Hawkes Online Scores, which offers free online viewing of orchestral, opera, and large ensemble scores from the B&H catalogue.
Please visit: www.boosey.com/onlinescores
The launch of the new boosey.com perusal service features over 400 scores of works by some of the most celebrated modern masters including Bartók, Bernstein, Britten, Copland, and Stravinsky, as well as leading contemporary figures such as John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Harrison Birtwistle, Elliott Carter, Unsuk Chin, Osvaldo Golijov, Magnus Lindberg, Steve Reich and Paquito D’Rivera. You can also explore, for the first time, works by the emerging generation of composers including Michel van der Aa, Oscar Bettison, Enrico Chapela, Anna Clyne and Sean Shepherd. Additional scores will be added regularly, and the newest music from Boosey & Hawkes’s roster will be uploaded as it becomes available.
Each of these works will be instantly accessible to any user that registers to the Boosey & Hawkes website. Users will be able to flip through scores of their favorite works via universally accessible web-based software. Searches through the vast catalogue can be narrowed by composer or genre, and users can even bookmark score sections within.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Cross-cultural opera takes 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Music
Madame White Snake
An opera in 4 acts, based on an ancient Chinese myth. Scored for soprano, mezzo-soprano or male-soprano, tenor, bass soloists, SATB chorus, childrens chorus & orchestra with Chinese flute & erhu. English libretto by Cerise Lim Jacobs
Composer Zhou Long was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his first opera, Madame White Snake.The opera, published by Oxford University Press, is based on an ancient Chinese transformation myth, similar to a fairy tale, which tells the tale of a mythical snake that transforms into a woman.
Zhou drew on influences from his native China, and the US, where he is now a resident, to produce the work, which the Pulitzer jury described as: "a deeply expressive opera that draws on a Chinese folk tale to blend the musical traditions of the East and the West."
The opera is a four-act work, which tells the story of a powerful white snake demon that surrenders her immortality in order to take on human form and experience love. It was commissioned by Opera Boston and premiered in February 2010 at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, Boston, USA, and an expanded version was premiered on 27 October 2010 at the Century Theatre in Beijing, China, at the Beijing International Festival.
Zhou said of the opera: “I feel this is my dream as a composer. This opera, I feel, is the summation of all my works in the past – chamber music, vocal pieces, orchestral, and choral.”
‘Zhou Long displays a stunning (quasi-tactile) orchestral imagination that dramatically demonstrates his skill of embedding elements of the two cultures in a consistent, seamless, and original musical language.’
American Academy of Arts and Letters
‘Zhou Long is one of a group of Chinese composers, brought up during the Cultural Revolution and now living in the West, who are creating striking works that fuse memories and music from the East with Western-style compositions. Drawing on Chinese folk songs, literature, poetry and history, they are the first generation of Chinese composers to be widely performed around the world.’
Newsweek International
Please contact us at ausclasscial@halleonard.com.au should you be interested in performing this work or require any further information.
An opera in 4 acts, based on an ancient Chinese myth. Scored for soprano, mezzo-soprano or male-soprano, tenor, bass soloists, SATB chorus, childrens chorus & orchestra with Chinese flute & erhu. English libretto by Cerise Lim Jacobs
Composer Zhou Long was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Music for his first opera, Madame White Snake.The opera, published by Oxford University Press, is based on an ancient Chinese transformation myth, similar to a fairy tale, which tells the tale of a mythical snake that transforms into a woman.
Zhou drew on influences from his native China, and the US, where he is now a resident, to produce the work, which the Pulitzer jury described as: "a deeply expressive opera that draws on a Chinese folk tale to blend the musical traditions of the East and the West."
The opera is a four-act work, which tells the story of a powerful white snake demon that surrenders her immortality in order to take on human form and experience love. It was commissioned by Opera Boston and premiered in February 2010 at the Cutler Majestic Theatre, Boston, USA, and an expanded version was premiered on 27 October 2010 at the Century Theatre in Beijing, China, at the Beijing International Festival.
Zhou said of the opera: “I feel this is my dream as a composer. This opera, I feel, is the summation of all my works in the past – chamber music, vocal pieces, orchestral, and choral.”
‘Zhou Long displays a stunning (quasi-tactile) orchestral imagination that dramatically demonstrates his skill of embedding elements of the two cultures in a consistent, seamless, and original musical language.’
American Academy of Arts and Letters
‘Zhou Long is one of a group of Chinese composers, brought up during the Cultural Revolution and now living in the West, who are creating striking works that fuse memories and music from the East with Western-style compositions. Drawing on Chinese folk songs, literature, poetry and history, they are the first generation of Chinese composers to be widely performed around the world.’
Newsweek International
Please contact us at ausclasscial@halleonard.com.au should you be interested in performing this work or require any further information.
Gerald Barry’s Opera - The Intelligence Park
A production of Gerald Barry’s opera, The Intelligence Park, widely regarded as one of the most innovative and compelling operas of recent times, will be presented in a concert performance at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 18 May 2011. Described by The Irish Times in 1990 as “the most original piece of music to come out of Ireland this century”, the opera is set in Dublin in 1753 and embraces love, power, prison and an eclipse of the sun. Presented in collaboration with Crash Ensemble, the production forms part of an exciting season of performances being staged at IMMA in May to mark the 20th anniversary of the Museum’s foundation in 1991.
The Intelligence Park, to a libretto by Vincent Deane, tells of a composer, Robert Paradies, who has lost the power to write but rediscovers it through his obsession with an Italian singer, the castrato Serafino. However, a triangular love affair involving Paradies, Serafino and Jerusha – the daughter of a wealthy merchant whom Paradies has been advised to marry but who is also the object of Serafino’s affections – complicates matters, bringing with it anger, betrayal and a conflict between private love and public duty.
When first produced in London for the Institute of Contemporary Arts/Almeida Festival in 1990, it met with an extraordinary critical response. For the Evening Standard it was “a clenched fist of an opera.” The Independent said that “the joy of the opera…is that it is driven by music of an energy and pace unheard of in most contemporary work. Barry...one of the true originals.” The Times said: "Never mind what the piece is about: it just quite shockingly is. It exists”.
A BBC recording of the opera is available on the NMC label.
Gerald Barry has written four other operas: “The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit” for Channel 4 Television, “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” for RTE/ENO/Basel Opera, “La Plus Forte” (The Stronger) for Radio France, and most recently, “The Importance of Being Earnest” for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Barbican, London. “The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit” has been performed in London, Aldeburgh, Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Amsterdam. “La Plus Forte” has reached Paris, Amsterdam, Toronto, Miami, London and Dublin and has been described by The Arts Desk as the beginning of 21st century opera. The Los Angeles Times said that “The Importance of Being Earnest” was “sensational”, and “maybe the most inventive Oscar Wilde opera since Richard Strauss’ Salome more than a century ago.”
Crash Ensemble was founded in 1997 by composer and Artistic Director Donnacha Dennehy and has since attracted enthusiastic audiences for its adventurous repertoire. The ensemble has commissioned or premiered works by composers including Gavin Bryars, Arnold Dreyblatt, Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Terry Riley, and has also worked with Louis Andriessen and Steve Reich, among others. As well as performing regularly throughout Ireland, Crash Ensemble tours internationally. Crash features on recordings by labels such as NMC, Cantaloupe and most recently Nonesuch, with the release of Grá agus Bás by Donnacha Dennehy later this month. The ensemble is conducted by Richard Baker.
The singers are Sarah Gabriel, soprano, Loré Lixenberg, alto, Roderick Williams, baritone, Andrew Watts, countertenor, John McMunn, tenor and Stephen Richardson, bass. The performance begins at 8.00pm.
Tickets €20.00, concessions €15.00. Booking on http://www.imma.ie/
‘Barry seems particularly interested in the hysteria that creeps into systems under stress. He wants them not to blow up, but to lurch on, sucking anxiety out of the air and feeding it back to us. The peculiar tone of his work comes from the balance he strikes between dogmatic control and anarchy.’
Toronto Globe and Mail
‘Each piece by Barry is like a signature in music. It’s utterly personal and instantly recognisable.’
The Musical Times
‘ . . . sounds like a barn dance devised by a chaos theorist’
Tempo (on Wiener Blut)
The Intelligence Park, to a libretto by Vincent Deane, tells of a composer, Robert Paradies, who has lost the power to write but rediscovers it through his obsession with an Italian singer, the castrato Serafino. However, a triangular love affair involving Paradies, Serafino and Jerusha – the daughter of a wealthy merchant whom Paradies has been advised to marry but who is also the object of Serafino’s affections – complicates matters, bringing with it anger, betrayal and a conflict between private love and public duty.
When first produced in London for the Institute of Contemporary Arts/Almeida Festival in 1990, it met with an extraordinary critical response. For the Evening Standard it was “a clenched fist of an opera.” The Independent said that “the joy of the opera…is that it is driven by music of an energy and pace unheard of in most contemporary work. Barry...one of the true originals.” The Times said: "Never mind what the piece is about: it just quite shockingly is. It exists”.
A BBC recording of the opera is available on the NMC label.
Gerald Barry has written four other operas: “The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit” for Channel 4 Television, “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” for RTE/ENO/Basel Opera, “La Plus Forte” (The Stronger) for Radio France, and most recently, “The Importance of Being Earnest” for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Barbican, London. “The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit” has been performed in London, Aldeburgh, Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, New York and Amsterdam. “La Plus Forte” has reached Paris, Amsterdam, Toronto, Miami, London and Dublin and has been described by The Arts Desk as the beginning of 21st century opera. The Los Angeles Times said that “The Importance of Being Earnest” was “sensational”, and “maybe the most inventive Oscar Wilde opera since Richard Strauss’ Salome more than a century ago.”
Crash Ensemble was founded in 1997 by composer and Artistic Director Donnacha Dennehy and has since attracted enthusiastic audiences for its adventurous repertoire. The ensemble has commissioned or premiered works by composers including Gavin Bryars, Arnold Dreyblatt, Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Terry Riley, and has also worked with Louis Andriessen and Steve Reich, among others. As well as performing regularly throughout Ireland, Crash Ensemble tours internationally. Crash features on recordings by labels such as NMC, Cantaloupe and most recently Nonesuch, with the release of Grá agus Bás by Donnacha Dennehy later this month. The ensemble is conducted by Richard Baker.
The singers are Sarah Gabriel, soprano, Loré Lixenberg, alto, Roderick Williams, baritone, Andrew Watts, countertenor, John McMunn, tenor and Stephen Richardson, bass. The performance begins at 8.00pm.
Tickets €20.00, concessions €15.00. Booking on http://www.imma.ie/
‘Barry seems particularly interested in the hysteria that creeps into systems under stress. He wants them not to blow up, but to lurch on, sucking anxiety out of the air and feeding it back to us. The peculiar tone of his work comes from the balance he strikes between dogmatic control and anarchy.’
Toronto Globe and Mail
‘Each piece by Barry is like a signature in music. It’s utterly personal and instantly recognisable.’
The Musical Times
‘ . . . sounds like a barn dance devised by a chaos theorist’
Tempo (on Wiener Blut)
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