The Sixth is one of the hardest symphonies to tame. Bychkov leans into the contrasts, the Alma theme glowing with inner fire and a slow movement that shimmers like a limpid Austrian lake.
Bomsori Kim is a 36-year-old, South Korean, classical violinist who plays from the soul. In Bomsori's hands, she takes people on a journey to the music of another century.
The piece is steeped in Schopenhauer's meditations on the futility of worldly striving and the necessity of accepting oblivion. It is also infused with Wagner's paganistic worship of desire and his matchless ability to translate longing into perpetually unresolved musical phrases.
Maira Kalman painted a vase exploding with flowers, capturing the anticipatory air the season brings. She cited Gustav Mahler's 'Das Lied von der Erde' ('The Song of the Earth') as her inspiration: 'Dark is life. Spring is here. The birds are singing.' What more do we need to know?
The Finnish conductor and violinist is talking about Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending, a work of such innate Britishness that it regularly tops UK classical music popularity polls. Kuusisto's Lark isn't RVW-lite, however, but a penetrating, convincingly honest account that strips the music back to its essential roots in the English folk tradition.
Getty Images The beauty of NYC is that music lives everywhere: on grand stages, in recital halls, and on neighborhood corners. It makes it easy to nurture a lifelong love of musicone performance at a time! At a Glance: Discover the best music activities for kids in NYC, from Broadway shows, interactive family concerts to explore rock concerts, jazz programs, music classes, and hands-on musical workshops across the Big Apple.
At only 17 years old, the Eugene, Ore., native Maria Telesheva is already an accordion wizard. I have trouble simply pushing the right button in an elevator. So watching Telesheva's fingers fly gracefully over more than 200 buttons on her bayan, as the instrument is called in Russia, is a thrill. She makes the tightly braided voices in J.S. Bach's thicket of counterpoint sing and dance.
The Winter Oympics opening ceremony arrived shrouded in mystery. There wasn't a lot of advance publicity about what might happen, beyond a list of musical performers, heavier on popular classical names including Andrea Bocelli and Lang Lang than pop stars and a quote from the event's creative lead and executive producer, Marco Balich, that it would eschew hi-tech and bling.
Come hear the squeaks, squawks and songs from the SFCO's trumpets, trombones and horns! Very First Concerts are a classical series designed with the youngest listeners in mind. Each interactive, 30 minute concert features a central theme, short selections, and fun hands-on musical activities geared toward families with young children. SFCO concerts are always ADMISSION FREE! RSVP's are NOT required but it helps us to know you're planning to come!
Back in 2008, Transport for London came up with a ruse to dispel antisocial behaviour: it piped classical music into supposedly problematic stations in the crime hotspots of south London. I think that was when I realised just how far the association of classical music with relaxing affect instead of real emotion had gone. Once an entire genre has become associated with relaxification, it's enough for you to hear the sound of an orchestra and think, This isn't for me.
When did you last read a good news story about classical music? Think of the stories that have made the headlines in recent years: funding cuts to national opera companies, closure threats to university music departments, councils axing local provision, classroom music-making in decline. Successes reported only tend to be reprieves or salvages in the face of such crises, fought for by a sector running out of fuel to keep defending itself.
The apartment where the Austrian composer Franz Schubert died, the residence of Blue Danube writer Johann Strauss, as well as the house where Joseph Haydn lived are to be closed temporarily owing to cost-saving measures, the director of Vienna's museums announced on Wednesday. The closures are part of broader austerity measures that will also see the price of public transport in the Austrian capital rise by almost 30% for some tickets. We all have to economise, said Matti Bunzl, the head of public body the Wien Museum that oversees several historical sites in the Austrian capital.
Imagine, if you will, taking a seat at the piano before a full house of 2,000 music lovers ready to hear Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor - and, more importantly, on stage with an orchestra and conductor more than ready to play it. That would be difficult enough, but now imagine that you thought you were supposed to play the Piano Concerto No.23 in A major, another piece of music entirely. This is the stuff of nightmares, and indeed, the very situation in which pianist Maria João Pires found herself in 2013, after she'd been recruited to fill in for another player at an open rehearsal held at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw.
Under the direction of Jory Fankuchen, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra presents its MainStage Concerts series, which will be held in a variety of Bay Area venues. Exploring a varied repertoire, the series has featured an eclectic assortment of works. The second installment in the current series, "The Revolutionary Artist," presents Ludwig van Beethoven's 1812 Symphony No. 7, Niccolò Paganini's Violin Concerto, 1st movement (circa 1815) and Louise Farrenc's Symphony No. 3, 4th movement from 1847.
When Eugene Jones founded the Berkeley Community Chorus & Orchestra in 1966, he may never have imagined the chorus continuing for 60 years. Jones, who died in 2003, was the first African American conductor of a large Bay Area chorus and orchestra drawn from its local community. Devoted to presenting great works from the choral canon, Jones was a charismatic leader and often lent his glorious bass voice to the choir.
The award-wining film-maker and director, who revolutionised classical music programming, died at home with his family by his side. His daughter, Clare Dibble, posted on X on Wednesday: It is with great sadness that I report the passing of my father, Sir Humphrey Burton 25.3.31-17.12.25 at 05:15 this morning at home with family by his side. A huge influence on several generations of arts programme makers, he will be missed beyond word. [SIC]
It's a remarkable occasion whenever a teenager gets the chance to perform a concerto with a symphony orchestra, but the Portland Youth Philharmonic took that to a higher level during the opening concert of its 102 nd season at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (November 8). That's when Lucy Joo, a 15-year-old phenom at the keyboard, delivered a dynamic performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 5, "Emperor" with the PYP.
The concert opens with the rich harmonies of GRAMMY-winning composer Jessie Montgomery's Overture. Composed in 2022, Montgomery's Overture blends elements of jazz, American classical music, and Baroque rhythms, setting the tone for this lively concert. Nicknamed the Elvira Madigan concerto because of its use in the 1967 Swedish film, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 features one of classical music's most famous and serene melodies.
Music trains our theory of mind -our cognitive ability to infer and attribute mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions) to others. In a live performance, we are challenged to figure out the state of mind of the composer, his characters, the performers, and ourselves, the listeners. In this contemporary time of increasing censorship and decreasing funding, of processed news and embedded marketing, conscious listening to classical music is a way to revive our "theory of mind" defense.
FRI/31: KRONOS QUARTET & TIMO ANDRES: SPOOKY Who else but our own Kronos (along with celebrated pianist Andres) could mix the haunting score Philip Glass created for the classic film Dracula, plus music from Bernard Herrmann's iconic score for Psycho, selections from George Crumb's wild Black Angels, and the world premiere of a new Edward Gorey-inspired piano work by Gabriel Kahane, along with other works perfectly suited for a thrilling Halloween. 8pm, Herbst Theater, SF. More info here.
Lovers of classical music and ballet are in luck this weekend. Peter Jaffe conducts Symphony San Jose's annual Symphonic Spooktacular, featuring selections from Stephen Schwartz's Wicked, Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde, Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera, Alan Menken's Little Shop of Horrors and Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd. Dress up in a costume or just enjoy the festive Halloween parade. $35-$115. Oct 25, 7:30pm; Oct 26, 2:30pm. California Theatre, 345 S 1st St, San Jose. symphonysanjose.org
Uncle Klaus is planning to come tomorrow. Hopefully, it will happen. Then the family will be back together again comfortably. Except sadly it's not quite complete. But that too will come about. And then the long-awaited celebration will also come. One must just wait patiently. Sometime that day will come for certain. The lovely fruit season is over now. The last apple dropped from our tree yesterday.
When young musicians from Nigeria and Germany took to the stage at a Beethovenfest concert in Bonn on September 11, it was clear that the audience was witnessing the culmination of an incredible journey. Afrobeat rhythms pulsed alongside clarinets and violins, Nigerian protest songs merged with Beethoven's"Egmont." The concert, with its musical mix of influences, was the culmination of Campus Project 2025 a collaboration between BeethovenfestBonn, the German Youth Orchestra and DW that's been running for over two decades.
