News of the Classical World February 13-17
Posted February 17th, 2012 by webmaster
A collection of classical news stories for the week of February 13th, 2012
February 13th, 2012
Classical Award winners at the Grammys
A number of classical performers took home Grammys last night including conductor Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
For the entire list of winers visit grammy.com.
February 14th, 2012
David Finckel Bidding Farewell To The Emersons
The Emerson String Quartet announced this morning that cellist David Finckel will be leaving the group. He had been a member for over 30 years.
Finckel — who joined the quartet in 1979, three years after it was founded — was in some ways the most visibly prominent member of the quartet through his heavy schedule of extra-curricular activities. he and his wife, pianist Wu Han, are co-directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, a superb chamber music festival in Silicon Valley called Music@Menlo and the creative directors of their own recording label, ArtistLed, along with their own appearances as a duo and in other projects.
In a statement, Finckel says he was spurred to leave the quartet to make more time for his other artistic and educational outlets. (Always technologically oriented, he's recently created a 100-part series of online "Cello Talk" tutorials for student players.)
(NPR)
[Read the entire story on npr.org]
February 15th, 2012
Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angelas Philharmonic vist Caracas
Gustavo Dudamel visited his home country of Venezuela at the helm of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
Gustavo Dudamel, the most celebrated product of this country’s extraordinary network of orchestras and teaching centers, has returned to his homeland for the first time with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which he took over as music director in 2009.
Mr. Dudamel is leading a cycle of Mahler symphonies at the helm of the Philharmonic and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, the crown jewel of the nation’s musical education program, called El Sistema.
(The New York Times)
[Read the entire story on nytimes.com]
February 16th, 2012
Fighting Poverty, Armed With Violins
Located within the Sarría barrio is a centre of El Sistema, a program that aims to lift Venezuelans out of poverty through the power of classical music.
El Sistema’s aim is to address a depressingly universal problem: how to remove children from poverty’s snares, like drugs, crime, gangs and desperation. The method, imagined by El Sistema’s founder, the economist and trained musician José Antonio Abreu, was classical music. Orchestras and music training centers around the country were established to occupy young people with music study and to instill values that can come from playing in ensembles: a sense of community, commitment and self-worth.
With nearly one-third of Venezuela’s population of 29 million under 14, the need is large.
(The New York Times)
[Read the entire story on nytimes.com]
February 17th, 2012
Harvard Professor Completes Mozart’s Incomplete Works
Harvard Professor Robert Levin recently completed a trio of uncompleted Mozart compositions. They will see their premiere later this month in Boston. All Things Considered host Sacha Pfeiffer asked Levin a number of questions about the works.
Sacha Pfeiffer: When I hear about unfinished works by Mozart, I can’t help but wonder whether Mozart really never got around to finishing them or whether maybe he intentionally left them unfinished because he wasn’t happy with them and in his mind it was a discard. So when you’re finishing something, how can you be sure Mozart really wanted it finished?
Levin:One can never be 100 percent sure. But the argument is that Mozart didn’t finish them because they weren’t good enough. Well, we can also look at the pieces and decide whether we think they weren’t good enough, and when you look at them you realize that they were more than good enough and some of them have more interesting ideas than some of the finished pieces.
(WBUR)
[Read the entire story on wbur.org]
