Today's Birthdays in Music: July 24 (di Stefano, Bloch)

1921 - Giuseppe di Stefano, Motta Sant'Anastasia, Italy; opera tenor

Wikipedia
Obituary (The Guardian, March 3, 2008)

Giuseppe di Stefano sings "La fleur que tu m'avais jetée" from Bizet's Carmen (1956)



1880 - Ernest Bloch, Geneva, Switzerland; composer

Wikipedia
Brief biography and pictures

Ernest Bloch's Concerto grosso No. 2, 3rd mvt., Allegro (Zuercher Akademie Kammerensemble, conductor Christopher Morris Whiting)


Violinist Yuri Beliavsky and pianist Daniel Beliavsky perform "Nigun" from Bloch's Baal Shem Suite (University of Wisconsin, 2004)

Today's Birthdays in Music: July 23 (Berwald, Cilèa)

1796 - Franz Berwald, Stockholm, Sweden; composer

Wikipedia

Berwald's Symphony No. 4 in E flat, 3rd mvt. (Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra)



1866 - Francesco Cilèa, Palmi, Italy; composer

Wikipedia
Pictures

Jan Peerce sings "È la solita storia del pastore" (Federico's Lament) from Cilèa's L'Arlesiana (Vienna Festival Orchestra, conducted by Franz Allers, 1965)

The Borrmeo Quartet performs in Vancouver

Although the Bartók String Quartets are securely placed in the standard chamber repertoire, complete performances are something special. In a poignant homage to the Vancouver Recital Society's now defunct Chamber Music Festival, the Boston-based Borromeo Quartet played on July 20, in circumstances as untypical as the project.

The venue was a large home on the edge of Vancouver's sprawling northeast suburbs. Most of the audience traveled an hour from the downtown core, listening to a pre-concert lecture aboard a motor coach. This almost rural setting and the perfect summer day held all hundred participants in a shared intimacy.

The music was impressive. The Quartet played in Tokyo last month and plans to record the works in the near future. First violinist Nicholas Kitchen followed the full score on a laptop but the rest of the ensemble opted for traditional parts. The Borromeo Quartet produced a suave, blended sound, which made the First Quartet sound all the more Romantic. By the time Bartók found his idiom, the players had adjusted to accommodate the raw energy and rhythmic drive of the composer.

Hearing all six quartets in six hours was demanding; such intense music packs an emotional wallop. The integral approach made Bartók's ideas and connections all the more powerful. The charm of the setting played its part as well. In the ‘night music’ movements of unsentimental evocations of nature sounds, it seemed like the Fraser Valley birds and bugs were counting bars and entering on cue.

David Gordon Duke
Vancouver, BC

Today's Birthday in Music: July 22 (Albanese)

1913 - Licia Albanese, Bari, Italy; opera soprano

Wikipedia
Profile (San Francisco Chronicle, 2004)

Licia Albanese sings:

The Letter Scene from Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (1951, Leopold Stokowski conducting)


"Stridono lassù" from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (1951)

Today's Birthdays in Music: July 21 (Kuerti, Stern)

1938 - Anton Kuerti, Vienna, Austria; pianist, teacher, composer

Biography
Interview (La Scena Musicale, April 2008)


1920 - Isaac Stern, Kremenetz, Ukraine; violinist

Wikipedia
Obituary (NY Times, Sept. 2001)

Isaac Stern plays and conducts Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3, 3rd mvt. (1984)

Today's Birthday in Music: July 20 (Paik)

1932 - Nam June Paik, Seoul, South Korea; avant-garde composer and video artist

Biography

Unprotected music: Nam June Paik - "Solo for Violin" (Donaufestival, Krems, 2007)


Nam June Paik at the piano with Charlotte Moorman playing the cello

Today's Birthdays in Music: July 19 (Neel, Braun, Glennie)

1905 - Boyd Neel, Blackheath, England; conductor, administrator, educator


Biography


1965 - Russell Braun, Frankfurt, Germany; opera and concert baritone

Biography

David Pomeroy and Russel Braun sing "Au fond du temple saint" from Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de perles (Ottawa Under the Stars, 2007)



1965 - Evelyn Glennie, Aberdeen, Scotland; percussionist

Wikipedia
Homepage

Segment from Evelyn Glennie documentary

In a critical condition (3)

A friend in Charlotte, North Carolina, reports that their newspaper, the Observer, has shed two critics, music and movies. With the Los Angeles Times heaving bodies overboard and the Wall Street Journal on the verge of a cull, it looks like open season on the endangered critical species across the US print media.

And while I have no idea what Robert Thomson has in mind for Rupert Murdoch's WSJ, his editorship at the Times in London showed no understanding or personal sympathy for arts. If an editor doesn;t care about arts, the cost-cutters see a green light.

A surviving Charlotte staffer, Lawrence Toppman, says his paper will rely on 'wire-service reviews for movies', which is better than nothing - but not much. If a city paper cannot address events within its boundaries from a local angle, why should local people bother to read it?

What earthly point is there is agreeing or disagreeing with the artistic sensibility of an agency desk jockey who lives in another state, and maybe in another country? Newspapers that lose their resident critical faculty are effectively signing their own death certificate.

When the prolific Alan Brien died last month at the age of 83, it was reported that he was the first writer to be hired at the creation of the Sunday Telegraph, the editor taking the judicious view that once he had a theatre critic in place all else would sort itself out. And so it did.

Critics give a newspaper character. Sack 'em and you might as well publish press releases.

source: Artsjournal

In a critical condition (2)

Last night, I went to see Kurt Weill's Street Scene at the Young Vic, its first UK staging in 20 years which drew chief theatre critics from almost every national daily.

This morning, I addressed a dozen students, year 10-11, at corporate HQ on the prospects for arts careers in the media. Which would you think was the more excitable audience?

The students were terrific, sharp as buttons and receptive to early-morning stimulation (they laughed at my jokes). They were also media savvy, fully informed about the impact of internet usage on the print and record industries. They were not going to be fobbed off with bromides. What they wanted to hear was a range of fresh solutions to a familiar crisis. I did my best to give them hope.

The critics were in Thursday-night mood, worn out after too many late nights filing reviews for the last editions. But by the interval, the ones I chatted to were hopping and popping with the impact of the work. And by the end they (and I) were on a Weill high, totally blown away by the sensational mutations of 'Lonely House' leitmotiv with which the composer drives the piece.

Someone said this sort of excitement reminded him why he became a critic in the first place. I was struck more by the vital social function that performing arts critics perform, wading night after night through dullness and mire in the hope that something will light their fire, as Weill did ours last night.

That is why newspapers need critics - to protect readers from the routinely awful and the meretricious rubbish that masquerades as novelty, and to excite them with the blood-rush of the real thing. This is also why people read newspapers - to find a voice they can trust to lead them through the barren wilderness to a kind of promised land. Kurt Weill knew that, even as old man Kaplan ranted about 'the capitalist press'.

Every newspaper that sheds its critics, as so many are doing, loses a powerful reader magnet.

Source: Artsjournal

Today's Birthdays in Music: July 18 (Schafer, Viardot, Masur)

1933 - R. Murray Schafer, Sarnia, Canada; composer

Biography


1821 - Pauline Viardot, Paris, France; concert and opera mezzo-soprano; composer

Wikipedia

Cecilia Bartoli sings Pauline Viardot's "Havanaise"

1927 - Kurt Masur, Brieg, Germany; conductor

Official website

Kurt Masur conducting the NY Philharmonic in Schumann's Rhenish Symphony, 4th mvt. (1995)