Gramophone (magazine) | The Well-Tempered Ear

Here are the 2023 Gramophone awards

October 7, 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger

Gramophone Magazine, based in London, is one the most respected publications in the world of classical music — even if it often shows a bias towards British labels, composers and performers.

Each year the magazine gives out awards chosen from the many new classical recordings that its critics review.

The awards ceremony is broadcast and fesatuyres live performances. Highlights will be included in a YouTGube video at the bottom and will be available on tomorrow, Oct. 8.

The categories are: Chamber, Choral, Concerto, Contemporary, Early Music, Instrumental, Opera, Orchestral, Piano, Song, Voice and Ensemble.

Also recognized are: Lifetime Achievement; Label of the Year; Recording of the Year; Young Artist of the Year; Artist of the Year; and Orchestra of the Year.

Here is a link to the Violin Channel and the short-listed nominees:

https://www.theviolinchannel.com/gramophone-classical-music-awards-2023-announces-shortlist/

And here is the list of the winning recordings. If you click on the category you will see the short citation and a photo of the album cover. Each winner citation also contains a link to the full Gramophone review with details and comparison This link also features a shortlist and a list of past award-winners back to 2006.

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/awards/gramophone-classical-music-awards-2023

That’s a lot of recommendations for new classical recordings to buy or stream.

Happy listening.

What do you think of the winning recordings?

Do you have any suggestions or Readers’ Choices?

The Ear wants to hear.

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The New York Times music critics pick 10 online concerts and operas to watch through the month of November

October 30, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

Classical music critics for The New York Times have again listed their picks of virtual and online concerts that will be streamed during the month of November, starting this Sunday, Nov. 1, and running right through Nov. 30. In September, they did the same for the month of October.

The list of 10 highlights includes chamber music, orchestral music and operas as well as lots of new music, world premieres of commissions and even the Cliburn International Piano Competition, now known simply as The Cliburn.

Most of the events are posted and available for quite a while.

Note that all times are Eastern and that on this Sunday, Nov. 1, daylight saving ends.

As the critics point out, the list may be especially helpful and enjoyable now that the weather is turning colder, people are isolating at home during the nationwide spikes in coronavirus cases, and concert halls remain closed to the public.

Well-known institutions such as The Metropolitan Opera (below) and the Los Angeles Opera are featured. (You can sample an earlier Met production of Philip Glass’ “Satyagraha” – about the early life of Gandhi — in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

So are symphony orchestras from Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco and Cincinnati.

And pianist Igor Levit (below top), who this past year released the highly praised, award-winning complete cycle of 32 piano sonatas by Beethoven and who was named Artist of the Year by Gramophone magazine, is also featured, as is the outstanding Chicago-based violinist Jennifer Koh (below bottom, in a photo by the Los Angeles Times).

Here is a link to the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/arts/music/classical-music-stream.html

What do you think of the choices?

Do you have other concerts or classical music events to add to the list?

The Ear wants to hear.

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge sings a varied program with organ accompaniment this Wednesday night in Overture Hall

September 9, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

The new season of the popular Overture Concert Organ series, sponsored by the Madison Symphony Orchestra and curated by MSO organist Greg Zelek, begins this Wednesday night, Sept. 11, at 7:30 p.m. in Overture Hall.

All single tickets are $20. (A subscription to all four organ concerts is $63.)

The opening program features the world-famous Choir of Trinity College Cambridge (below), on tour from its home in the United Kingdom.

Adds Zelek:

“Our season opens with the amazing Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, named by Gramophone Magazine as one of the best choirs in the world.

“Conducted by the choir’s music director Stephen Layton (below top) and accompanied on the mighty Klais concert organ (below bottom), this 25-voice choir will present a program of music spanning many centuries that will display its beauty of tone and depth of feeling. These rich voices will make this varied program soar through Overture Hall and leave everyone in the audience breathless.”

Here are some sample reviews:

Virtuoso is the right word. I, for one, can’t immediately think of any more appropriate way of describing singing of such staggering accomplishment. – BBC Music Magazine

Sitting front and center at a recent Trinity Choir of Cambridge concert at Grace Cathedral was, sonically speaking, a heavenly experience. -The New York Times

Here is Wednesday night’s eclectic program:

William Byrd | Sing joyfully
William Byrd | O Lord, make thy servant, Elizabeth
Thomas Tallis | Salvator mundi
Henry Purcell | Thou knowest, Lord
Arvo Part | Bogoroditse Djévo
John Tavener | Mother of God, here I stand
Vasily Kalinnikov | Bogoroditse Djevo
Robert Parsons | Ave Maria
Eriks Esenvalds | The Heavens’ Flock (You can hear a different Esenvalds work, “Only in Sleep,” sung by the Trinity College Choir, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Morten Lauridsen | O magnum mysterium
Jaakko Mantyjarvi | Stuttgarter Psalmen
Herbert Howells | Take him, earth, for cherishing
Herbert Howells | Trinity St. Paul’s

For more information about the Overture Organ Series, detailed background about the Trinity College Choir and how to purchase tickets, call (608) 258-4141 or go to: https://madisonsymphony.org/concerts-events/overture-concert-organ-performances/ or https://madisonsymphony.org/event/organ-trinity-choir/

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: Moscow and Paris meet through cello and piano music at the Wisconsin Union Theater this Saturday night at 7:30

December 4, 2018
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By Jacob Stockinger

What was the musical relationship between Paris and Moscow, especially after the Russian Revolution?

You can find out, and hear examples, this Saturday night, Dec. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in Shannon Hall (below) at the Wisconsin Union Theater.

Pianist Lise de la Salle and cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca (below right and left, respectively) will explore the musical relationship between Moscow and Paris through works by Gabriel Fauré (you can hear them play his Elegy in the YouTube video at the bottom), Camille Saint-Saëns, Jules Massenet, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It is the subject of their latest recording from Sony Classical.

For the full program plus biographies and videos of the performers and information about obtaining tickets ($25-$42 for the general adult public, $20 for young people, $10 for UW students), go to: https://union.wisc.edu/events-and-activities/event-calendar/event/lise-de-la-salle-and-christian-pierre-la-marca/

Lise de la Salle made her debut at age 13 in a performance at the Louvre. According to Le Monde, she “possesses a youthful single-minded spirit and the courage of conviction seldom expected of such a young artist.”

Now 29, de la Salle has established a reputation as one of today’s most exciting young artists and as a musician of uncommon sensibility and maturity. Her playing inspired a Washington Post critic to write, “For much of the concert, the audience had to remember to breathe … the exhilaration didn’t let up for a second until her hands came off the keyboard.”

She specializes in Russian composers and has played with symphony orchestras in London, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Baltimore, Detroit and Quebec. Says Bryce Morrison of Gramophone magazine,“Lise de la Salle is a talent in a million.”

In just a few years, through his international concert appearances, the young cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca already ranks among the masters of the cello. He has performed in concert halls such as the Louvre, the Philharmonie of Berlin, the 92nd Street Y in New York City, and Izumi Hall in Osaka, among others.

La Marca has appeared as a soloist with many leading orchestras and is also highly sought after in chamber music. He plays a unique golden period Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume cello (1856) and the Vocation Foundation has provided him a rare Jacob Eury cello bow (1825). An exclusive Sony Classical artist, La Marca has already released three albums unanimously praised by international press and international critics.

Before the performance, enjoy a lecture by Kyle Johnson (below) at 6 p.m. Check Today in the Union for room location. Johnson is a pianist who recently received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the UW-Madison.

His performing experience ranges from solo and festival appearances throughout the U.S. and U.K., co-founding the Madison-based contemporary ensemble Sound Out Loud, and as a performance fellow in the Longitude Contemporary Ensemble in Boston, Mass.

His research interests strongly correlate with his interest in 20th-century piano repertoire, of which he produces a podcast series around (Art Music Perspectives). For more information, visit www.kyledjohnson.com.

This performance is presented by the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Performing Arts Committee. This project was supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts. WORT-FM 89.9 is the media sponsor.

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: Does movie music qualify as classical music? Edgewood Chamber Orchestra concert this afternoon has been CANCELLED

February 25, 2017
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ALERT: The concert by Edgewood Chamber Orchestra scheduled for 2:30 p.m. today — Sunday, Feb. 26 — has been CANCELLED. The cancellation was caused by a heating issue in the performance venue. The Chamber Orchestra’s season will continue with its next performance on Sunday, April 23, 2017.

By Jacob Stockinger

The Oscars (below) will be given out this Sunday night at 7:30 p.m. CST on ABC-TV.

Around the nation and the world, more and more symphony orchestras and chamber music groups are turning to performing movie music to attract new audiences — and to explore new repertoire.

And that includes the Madison Symphony Orchestra.

Two seasons ago, acclaimed British violinist Daniel Hope soloed with the MSO to explore movie scores by exiled European composers including Franz Waxman, Miklos Rozsa and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

This past fall, the MSO put the Chaconne from the film “The Red Violin,” composer by John Corigliano, on the opening program of this season. And this summer, the MSO will perform music by John Williams used in the Harry Potter films.

This morning from 10 a.m. until noon, Wisconsin Public Radio will use the listener’s choice program “Classics By Request” to air its annual Salute to the Oscars that includes past film scores and those up for Academy Awards this year.

So this seems a great time to raise the question: “Do film scores qualify as classical music”?

The question was recently debated for Gramophone magazine by the critic Jed Distler and two distinguished contemporary composers who have written for the concert hall and for Hollywood: Philip Glass (below top) and John Corigliano (below bottom).

It is a fascinating discussion that may surprise you. One great crossover example that The Ear loves is the String Quartet No. 3 by Philip Glass, which is based on the same composer’s full score for the film”Mishima.” (You can hear the last movement in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

Here is a link to that discussion:

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/feature/debate-when-is-film-music-classical

Don’t forget to leave your favorite movie score and what you think about movie music and classical music in the COMMENTS section.

The Ear wants to hear.

Classical music: Here is The New York Times holiday gift guide of classical music for 2016

November 27, 2016
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By Jacob Stockinger

The holiday shopping has started with a Black Friday that set records for on-line sales — more than $3 billion or an increase of 11 percent over last year, according to news reports.

And this coming Cyber Monday is supposed to be even bigger, setting more records.

Over the next several weeks, The Ear will feature several holiday gifts guides, including the upcoming Grammy Award nominations and lists of the year’s top recordings from Gramophone magazine, National Public Radio (NPR) and other media outlets.

The Ear will also offer some of his own ideas, although he thinks it is pointless to single out the “best,” given so many choices, and will feature instead things that gave him – and might give you or the recipient – special pleasure.

Anyway, here is the 2016 holiday gift guide for classical music from critics for The New York Times.

Once again, the emphasis is on boxed sets, which have become more widespread and even more of a bargain as streaming becomes increasingly popular. One expensive set features Mozart’s complete works and runs almost $500 – or about only $2 a disc.

The list features tried-and-true classics and also more contemporary music and new music. It seems big on opera and orchestral works especially, but offers precious little chamber music or early music.

The list features CDs, DVDs, books and – The Ear’s favorite – a plea for giving tickets to live concerts or else gift certificates for them.

Read it and decide for yourself how useful it is.

Here is a link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/arts/music/gift-ideas-for-classical-music-fans.html?_r=0

If you have gift ideas of your own, or reactions to these suggestions, leave your thoughts in the COMMENT section.

The Ear wants to hear.

Classical music: Renowned Czech “pianist’s pianist” Ivan Moravec is dead at 84.

July 29, 2015
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By Jacob Stockinger

The renowned Czech pianist Ivan Moravec (below) — known as “a pianist’s pianist” — died Monday at the age of 84. He died in Prague of complications from pneumonia.

Moravec was known especially for his interpretations of Chopin, Debussy, Brahms and especially Mozart – his playing of a Mozart piano concerto was heard on the soundtrack of the popular and Academy Award-winning film “Amadeus,” which you can hear in a YouTube video at the bottom. He also played composers from his native land including Antonin Dvorak, Bedrich Smetana and Leos Janacek.

Here are some obituaries:

From Gramophone magazine:

http://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/pianist-ivan-moravec-has-died

From Classical Music magazine:

http://www.classicalmusicmagazine.org/2015/07/ivan-moravec-9-november-1930-8210-27-july-2015/

From Voy Forums with mentions of awards:

http://www.voy.com/221392/165442.html

From critic Norman Lebrecht‘s blog Slipped Disc:

http://slippedisc.com/2015/07/a-great-pianist-has-died/

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