From 30 April to 9 May, Sydney hosted the ISCM World New Music Days Festival — the first time in the 88-year history of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) that the prestigious event will be held in the Southern Hemisphere.
In putting together the program for this festival, more than 700 works from 52 countries were assessed, and over 80 works were selected. These reflect a broad spectrum of innovative musical practice, covering everything from works for traditional chamber groups and choirs to cutting-edge multimedia and sound installations. Music has been sourced from Australasia and Asia, Western and Eastern Europe, North, South and Central America, and South Africa. ISCM World New Music Days 2010 will be the largest festival of contemporary music ever held in Australia.
Notable in the 2010 ISCM World New Music Days is the inclusion of a special category of radiophonic works – 13 works that have been specifically written for radio broadcast. Composers in this category are from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Canada, Hong Kong, Turkey and Portugal. ABC Classic FM will be presenting these and other works recorded during the festival throughout Australia. The works will also be streamed on the internet.
Since the ISCM’s founding in 1922, many works premiered during the festivals have become standard repertoire – for example Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto and Ravel’s Piano Concerto for Left Hand. Australian works have regularly featured in the festival since 1938 in London, when Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ Choral Suite was performed on a program which included Britten’s Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge, and BartĂłk’s Sonata for Two Pianos, Percussion and Celesta.
63 contestants were taking part in the 16th edition of the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Brussels this year, an event dedicated to pianists. The contest, set up by the Belgian Queen Elisabeth in 1937, is one of the largest and most prestigious musical competitions in the world. The Second World War interrupted the traditional contest for more than 10 years. However, in 1951 competition was brought back to life. The Competition aims to discover new talent among young musicians and open them a way to the world of big musical achievements. Since Leon Fleisher in 1952, the competition has seen moments of glory, with first prize-winners like Vladimir Ashkenazy, Andrei Nikolsky, Frank Braley, Severin von Eckardstein, and Anna Vinnitskaya. Now the competition consists of a four-year cycle, each year it specializes either on violin, piano, solo singing or composing, one by one. Some 63 musicians, 28 women and 35 men, were taking part in this year’s competition. A total of 19 countries were represented at the contest by the most promising young pianists. The most numerous team at the contest was South Korea, with 15 pianists showing their talents in the Belgian capital. The semi-final saw 24 pianists, and the final, 12 (with notably five qualified South Koreans).
Joseph HAYDN: Sonate in E-flat major Hob. XVI:49
Minje JEON: TARGET (1st prize, QEC in Composition 2009)
Sergey PROKOFIEV: Concerto no. 2 in g minor op. 16
Pianist Arcadi Volodos, called “one of the greatest pianists of our time” by the “Berliner Morgenpost,” has been celebrated as a wizard at the keyboard since his 1997 debut recording. His new CD, “Live in Vienna,” on SONY BMG EUROPE, features his virtuosity as a pianist and his skilled story narration and sense of timing. On March 1st 2009 Volodos played at the Musikverein in Vienna, and subsequently toured the Vienna concert program in several German cities such as Essen, DĂĽsseldorf, Berlin, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Baden-Baden, Schwetzigen, and has received sensational reviews.
Arcadi Volodos, fluent in both Russian and French, was awarded the German “ECHO Klassik” as best instrumentalist in 2003. He was born in 1972 in Leningrad and initially studied voice. The “SĂĽddeutsche Zeitung” wrote that Volodos converts a score into discourse: “In Volodos’s hands, the music turns into natural speech.”
“The Russian whirlwind Volodos, who appears to have 50 fingers, appears slightly becalmed in this live Vienna recital, recorded… in March last year. The expected thunder and lightning finally strike in Liszt’s Dante Sonata — a tingling performance.”
The Times, 27th February 2010
“The performance is an awesome display of keyboard command…The recorded sound does gorgeous justice both to the playing itself, and to the surrounding Vienna Musikvereinsaal acoustic.”
BBC Music Magazine, May 2010
“…the sense that technically Volodos is in complete command, and that the piano is not in pain – even at the most extreme moments – is extraordinarily compelling. And through all the handfuls of notes he never loses sight of the work’s form…Volodos is absolutely up there with the best of them”
Gramophone Magazine, June 2010
The Chopin Project announced the initial release of 20 exclusive new recordings, including many Chopin rarities via The Chopin Project iPhone App from the Apple iTunes Store. The Chopin Project App offers a growing discography of new studio recordings from the Chopin Project Listening Library.
“Fans of Chopin will be thrilled with the quality of these performances and the recordings,” says Chopin Project® Founder, Frederick Slutsky. “And the app ushers the genius of Chopin into the Digital Age.”
With over 50 recordings already in the vaults, and 30 more in current production, the Chopin Project’s exclusive library of original new studio tracks will include everything from his lesser known and rarely performed repertory (including the Songs) to classic favorites. Read more on chopinproject.com
Joining the Dots offers pianists lots of material to help build confidence and skill in sight-reading. The series brings together a range of activities to help students improve their sense of keyboard geography, helping them to read new music more quickly and easily. The five books cover the requirements for ABRSM’s sight-reading tests at each of Grades 1 to 5, and include:
- many short, characterful pieces to sight-read, in a range of approachable musical styles
- warm-up and technical exercises, to establish basic hand shapes and finger patterns within each key
- simple improvisation exercises in which students can explore musical ideas and familiarise themselves further with the ‘feel’ of each key
- longer solo pieces and a duet, for additional sight-reading practice or to learn quickly and play through for fun
ABRSM (the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) is an educational body and charity that provides examinations in music. The organisation is based in London but runs exams in centres all over the world. In addition, ABRSM provides a publishing house for music that produces syllabuses, sheet music and exam papers and runs professional development courses and seminars for teachers. Over 620,000 candidates take ABRSM examinations each year in over ninety countries. ABRSM offers graded music exams as well as more advanced diploma qualifications.
Kemble pianos on the lookout for best amateur pianist
A Chopin competition for amateur pianists has been launched on YouTube. Kemble Pianos launched the online contest at the start of April, inviting budding pianists to submit videos of themselves playing their favourite Chopin piece.
Similar to last year’s YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which saw musicians from around the world submit audition videos to the website in order to form an orchestra, the Kemble competition takes place entirely online.
After the closing date of 1 August 2010, there’ll be a public vote to come up with a shortlist of entrants, from which the judging panel, including pianists Kevin Kenner and Christopher Elton, will select the winners. The winner will receive a special edition Kemble Chopin upright piano worth over ÂŁ8,000, and a private piano lesson with internationally acclaimed Chopin specialist Kevin Kenner.
‘It’s a great showcase for passionate amateur pianists to display their skills and promote piano playing to everybody,’ says Leanne Hassan from Kemble Pianos.
“Because of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano a man sat waiting Monday afternoon in the Newark airport instead of on a plane to Berlin.
Thank you unpronounceable volcano.
Sitting there, the man got a phone call. Yuja Wang had a sore arm, it seemed, and a doctor had ordered her to rest. The man didn’t wonder why they were telling him this. He got on a plane for Orange County.
The pianist had Chopin’s Etudes, all 27 of them, ready to go. He’s been playing them a lot in recent seasons, and recorded them more than 20 years ago. They’re something of a specialty. So he pulled them out of his luggage and played them here.”
Read full concert review >>
…or listen to “the man”, Louis Lortie, performing
Chopin’s Etude op 10 no 1:
Although Cristina Ortiz has been resident in the UK for many years, it is the passion, spontaneity and allure so characteristic of her Brazilian cultural heritage, which are central to her music-making. During more than 25 years as an international concert and recording artist she has developed a unique bond with audiences all over the world, with the result that she has become one of the most popular and repeatedly sought-after soloists.
In concerts and recordings her commitment to Brazilian music is well-evidenced – from the five Villa Lobos piano concertos which she has recorded for Decca to the very successful American premiere in 1996 of Guarnieri’s “Choro” at Carnegie Hall under Dennis Russell Davies.
Chopin’s four ballades are widely regarded as being among the most significant extended works for solo piano of the nineteenth century. In an illuminating discussion, Jim Samson combines history and analysis to provide a comprehensive picture of these popular piano works, investigating the social and musical background to Chopin’s music, evaluating the many printed editions of the ballades before considering their critical reception and the differing interpretations of well-known nineteenth- and twentieth-century pianists.
Passively listening to Mozart — or indeed any other music you enjoy — does not make you smarter.
But more studies should be done to find out whether music lessons could raise your child’s IQ in the long term, concludes a report analysing all the scientific literature on music and intelligence, which was published last week by the German research ministry.
The interest in this scientific area was first sparked by the controversial 1993 Nature report in which psychologist Frances Rauscher and her colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, claimed that people perform better on spatial tasks — such as recognizing patterns, or folding paper — after listening to Mozart for 10 minutes.
The ‘Mozart effect’ remained a marketing tool for the music industry, and some private schools, long after a torrent of additional studies started to cast doubt on the finding. In the wild commercial flurry, which often involved over-interpretation of available data, the issues of listening to music and actively practicing music were frequently mixed up.
“We went through all of the literature to find out which questions were still open,” says lead author Ralph Schumacher, a piano-playing philosopher at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
The report pronounced Rauscher’s ‘Mozart effect’ dead.
The winner DENIS KOZHUKHIN began his studies at the Balakirev Music School, before going on to further studies at the Escuela Superior de MĂşsica Reina SofĂa in Madrid with Dmitri Bashkirov and Claudio Martinez-Mehner. Holder of a scholarship from the Banca Svizzera Italiana since 2004, he is currently studying at the International Piano Academy, Lake Como, with Fou Ts’ong in particular and with Menahem Pressler for classes in chamber music. He has performed on many occasions in Russia, Germany (Klavier- Festival Ruhr), Italy, France (Auditorium du Louvre, Salle Cortot, Théâtre du Châtelet), Switzerland (Verbier Festival), and Spain. A laureate in numerous competitions in Russia and Spain, he won Third Prize at the Leeds International Competition in 2006 and the First VendĂ´me Prize in Lisbon in 2009.
Pianist Arcadi Volodos, called “one of the greatest pianists of our time” by the “Berliner Morgenpost,” has been celebrated as a wizard at the keyboard since his 1997 debut recording. His new CD, “Live in Vienna,” on SONY BMG EUROPE, features his virtuosity as a pianist and his skilled story narration and sense of timing. On March 1st 2009 Volodos played at the Musikverein in Vienna, and subsequently toured the Vienna concert program in several German cities such as Essen, DĂĽsseldorf, Berlin, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Baden-Baden, Schwetzigen, and has received sensational reviews.
The Chopin Project announced the initial release of 20 exclusive new recordings, including many Chopin rarities via The Chopin Project iPhone App from the Apple iTunes Store. The Chopin Project App offers a growing discography of new studio recordings from the Chopin Project Listening Library.
ABRSM Presents a New Book Series for Students:
Chopin’s four ballades are widely regarded as being among the most significant extended works for solo piano of the nineteenth century. In an illuminating discussion, Jim Samson combines history and analysis to provide a comprehensive picture of these popular piano works, investigating the social and musical background to Chopin’s music, evaluating the many printed editions of the ballades before considering their critical reception and the differing interpretations of well-known nineteenth- and twentieth-century pianists.
