Features
Adam Gatehouse
Dame Fanny Waterman was a true force of nature, in the best sense of the word. Her diminutive height belied a giant intellectual force and a steely determination to achieve the seemingly unachievable through every means she could muster.She certainly had a powerful armoury at her disposal: charm (which she possessed in spades – who has not been totally seduced by that wonderful twinkly smile, or that throaty chuckle?); an energy that continued unabated right until the end and that many of us half her age envied; an uncanny nose for musical talent, particularly among the very young; an Read more ...
Johannes Vogel
Think of the finale at a big fireworks show: the anticipation; the build up. There is nothing bigger than the Ninth Symphony. It is the climax of this year’s Beethoven celebrations. A year ago, no-one would have expected 2020 to be turned upside down in the way that it has, with so few concerts being held in Europe. Optimism is growing and what better way to bring joy into people’s lives than with a colossal event celebrating one of the greatest composers of all time?As conductor of the 123-strong Sychron Stage Orchestra for the performance, I wanted to be able to lead a concert so magical Read more ...
Susan Bullock and William Dazeley
Two of the singers in an ambitious project to film Britten’s opera based on a Henry James story – part timeless tale of repressive tradition which chimed with the composer's pacifist beliefs, part ghost story – which was originally “made for television” and premiered on the BBC, give their impressions close to the time of filming.William DazeleyIt began with an email under the heading “another crap job!” It involved traipsing around town, trawling through charity shop clothes rails in search of a slightly shabby, well-loved jacket. Then came two highly unusual costume fittings, one in a car Read more ...
Owen Richards
Frank Marshall might not be the biggest household name, but his footprint on Hollywood is unrivalled. He has produced hits ranging from Indiana Jones and Back to the Future to Jason Bourne and Jurassic World. He also takes occasional forays into directing, such as the madcap Arachnophobia and cannibalistic rugby tale Alive. Who better then to chart the career of The Bee Gees, a band far more influential than ever given credit for?How Can You Mend a Broken Heart is a top-tier music documentary, filled with world tours, lost demos and family drama. Marshall expertly balances the band's history Read more ...
Maxine Kwok
2020: a year that at some point felt like the end of live performance for the world of the performing arts, certainly for the foreseeable future. Artists spent months without any form of collaboration, leading to a serious lack of motivation due to the decimation of performance opportunities. Coupled with the stressful change in their financial circumstances a huge percentage of people with professions in the performing arts found themselves completely rudderless.I myself wandered aimlessly around the Barbican Estate, gazing longingly at the Barbican Centre and feeling empty without the daily Read more ...
Avi Avital
The mandolin is an instrument everybody has heard of without necessarily knowing much about it. Its history has been written by lovers of the instrument, often amateur players who are drawn to its approachable and appealing character, integrating it into their own lives, and in turn popularising it throughout the world.More than virtually any other instrument, the mandolin stands for different things depending on time and place. In the 18th century it was the preserve of the wealthy in salons across Europe; by the late 19th century and early 20th it had become popular among the middle classes Read more ...
Chen Reiss
I am not the first to say this, and I won’t be the last, but what a strange year 2020 has become! I am learning afresh what it is to be both a singer and a parent and, although we have all been kept closed in our little home “bubbles,” we are learning what our world and culture looks like to those outside the “music bubble” – about how society values the arts and how different countries have been approaching the problems we are all currently facing.The other day I came across a survey where people in Singapore had been asked to list the top five essential and non-essential jobs during a Read more ...
Paul Bullock
Producing music programmes for TV with live performance during the past few months has not been without its challenges, but somehow doing so right now feels more important than ever – both for the pleasure it brings audiences and as support for the performing arts. As we entered the first national lockdown, we’d just completed filming the Category Finals of BBC Young Musician – the classical edition. Immediately we had to reconfigure our edit schedule to deliver the series remotely. Everyone agreed it was important to broadcast the programmes as planned in the spring. And that’s Read more ...
theartsdesk
How should one paint the baby Jesus? This deceptively innocent question runs the length of Jean Frémon's Nativity, a fictional work that takes as its subject the first painter to represent the saviour of humankind without his swaddling clothes. The book is a miniature portrait in itself, running for fewer than 50 pages and punctuated by a series of evocative drawings by the artist Louise Bourgeois. With the bells of Christmas ringing faintly in the distance, Nativity offers a stylish, expressive new study into artistic representations of Christianity's founding story.Incarnated divinity Read more ...
Alec Frank-Gemmill
The UK’s music industry is in dire straits and my heart goes out to friends and colleagues in financial need. For a proper discussion of the current situation, I refer you to Sophia Rahman’s excellent article for theartsdesk. What I have written here is comparatively superficial. But I hope that it might provide some light relief.During my time as a professional musician it has been a privilege being invited to various orchestras and festivals abroad. Indeed, as somebody who is half-German and half-English, and having also studied in Switzerland, lived in Austria and now in Sweden, travel has Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
The identity of Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved” is one of the biggest cans of worms in musical history. I hadn’t the slightest intention of writing a novel about it. At first I thought I’d create a narrated concert for the anniversary year... but that was then. Here we are and Immortal is now out.It all began when I was asked to speak about “Beethoven and Women” in a string quartet festival a number of years ago. I started reading and couldn’t stop. The love story I found hidden amid the many thousands of pages was bigger, more complex and more devastating than I’d anticipated, Read more ...
Peter Phillips
I have never been a fan of recording “Complete Works”. These projects almost inevitably include music that one would not normally spend time and money on, just to claim that one has done it all. For this reason the Gimell catalogue, from the earliest days, will be found to have marked out the Renaissance territory, one disc per composer, each disc a distillation of the best of the writer in question. By going about it this way I was able to show how broad the polyphonic achievement was, and supply us with masterpieces for concert use for the next 40 years and counting.It was through this Read more ...