English
Samuel Hasselhorn, First Prize at Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition 2018
Samuel Hasselhorn has just been awarded First Prize at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition, Voice, 2018. The 27-year-old German baritone graduated from the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hanover (Opera singing) and from CNSMD in Paris (Voice), and is currently working in New York under the supervision of Patricia McCaffrey. He had already won many awards at various prestigious international competitions. He specializes in both German and French song ...
Florence Bolton, dreamy baroque
Since its foundation in 2004, the baroque ensemble La Rêveuse has recorded a wide repertoire of both instrumental and vocal music, not only from France, but also from England and Germany. After publishing 12 recordings including one DVD, these musicians have now dedicated their new album to Marin Marais’s latest works. On this occasion we interviewed the co-founder and co-director Florence Bolton. “ When we play instrumental music, we try to ...
In Helsinki, Mälkki’s cool-headed intensity in Mahler’s No. 9
Susanna Mälkki's take on Mahler's final completed masterpiece focused on tight control coupled with clear, unsentimental intensity. Nearing the end of her second year as music director of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Susanna Mälkki has explored a broad range of repertoire, from warhorses to challenging contemporary fare. Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 is one of the great monuments of the symphonic literature, and the work’s forbidding technical and emotional challenges are the ...
Christian Lindberg in Allan Pettersson’s Symphonies No. 5 and 7
Like other releases in this series, Lindberg exposes every detail and every colour in Pettersson’s Symphony No. 7 while maintaining total control over the work’s overall structure. Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra (SON) are nearing the finish line of arguably (forgive my biased opinion) one of the most important recording projects of the 20th/21st centuries: the complete symphonies of the Swedish composer Allan Pettersson. The Swedish record label BIS initiated this ...ICMA announce Recording of the Year
From the list of their 15 winning audio and video productions, the Jury of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) has chosen the overall winner of the Recording of the Year Award. It goes to the CD Visions, winner in the Vocal Recital category, with music by Bizet, Bruneau, David, Février, Franck, Godard, Halévy, Massenet, Niedermeyer, and Saint-Saëns, sung by Véronique Gens. The French soprano is accompanied by the Münchner Rundfunkorchester ...ICMA announce major awards for 2019
During the Award Ceremony of the ICMA 2018 prices in Katowice, Poland, ICMA President Rémy Franck yesterday announced two major awards for 2019 : Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire, 73, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, and Spanish pianist Javier Perianes has been elected Artist of the Year. All the other awards for 2019 will be proclaimed in January next year. The Jury will publish the list with the Nominations on November ...
Beethoven Year for the pianist Pavel Kolesnikov
Since becoming Prize Laureate of the Honens Prize for Piano in 2012, Kolesnikov has performed around the world. He is undertaking UK and European tours with the Czech National Symphony and Flanders Symphony Orchestras. "In my work I particularly relish an opportunity to strip the layers of conviction." ResMusica : You just started a UK Tour. Your repertory contains mainly Beethoven's Concertos 4 and 5. Could you tell us what touches you in ...
Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra will host the ICMA Gala in 2021
Last Wednesday, in the Town Hall of Vaduz, in presence of mayor Ewald Ospelt, Dr. Ernst Walch, president of the Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra and ICMA president Rémy Franck signed the contract for the organization of the ICMA Award Ceremony and Gala Concert which will take place in April, 2021 in Vaduz. The president of the Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra, Dr. Ernst Walch, says: « The Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra is proud to be able ...
Denise Fedeli : « The Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana is ready for new challenges »
In the category DVD Performance, this year’s prize of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) has been awarded to Rileggendo Brahms with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana conducted by Markus Poschner. This OSI production with the complete Brahms Symphonies has been supported by Helsinn, the orchestra’s international partner, and was published on two DVDs by Sony Classical in December 2016. The live recordings were made during the first season at ...
ICMA create new ‘Composer Award’
To underline the importance of musical creation in today’s musical life, the International Classical Music Awards ICMA have created a Composer Award. During their General Assembly at the Philharmonie in Luxembourg, the members of the Jury decided to add a new award to the existing 22 categories. The Composer Award is to honor the work of a living composer. Jury President Rémy Franck said: « For this new award we will monitor ...
The Winners of the International Classical Music Awards – ICMA 2018
For the International Classical Music Awards 2018, the ICMA Jury has once more selected musicians and organizations that have distinguished themselves through outstanding achievements. The independent and international jury has also chosen their favourites from 357 nominated audio and video releases. Jury President Rémy Franck said: "Running for eight years, ICMA has become a huge annual celebration and a widely respected benchmark for musical excellence. One of the reasons of this ...
An Exciting Biography of Toscanini, by Harvey Sachs
Toscanini : Musician of Conscience is a fascinating tome of 923 pages (in English) devoted to Toscanini. Fascinating, because it’s often brilliant and unquestionably deserves a place among the greatest biographies in the language. Fascinating, not because it (sometimes) sets the record straight regarding certain episodes in Arturo Toscanini’s life (not really necessary), but quite simply because Harvey Sachs, author of a Toscanini, published in 1978 and translated into French in ...
ICMA 2018 – The finalists
In several rounds, the Jury of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) has chosen the releases competing in the finals for the awards 2018. « Our list with a total of 357 nominations comprised many very good as well as outstanding recordings. Yet, the rules are way of cruel, since every member has to eliminate step by step all the releases but one », Jury President Rémy Franck said. « Obviously many excellent productions ...
Passionate and virtuosic : Tianwa Yang in Britten’s Violin Concerto
Yang brought a devilish and almost unhinged quality to the dancing second movement of Britten's Violin Concerto, which further highlighted her amazing virtuosity. The current Helsinki season has been almost an embarrassment of riches for lovers of Britten's Violin Concerto. Several weeks ago, Helsinki audiences were treated to Vilde Frang's arguably definitive and breathtaking account of this masterpiece with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Expectations were naturally high to hear Tianwa Yang's ...
ICMA Nomination List 2018 Is Available
ICMA Jury nominates 357 releases for the 2018 awards. The ICMA nomination list for 2018 is available. To get the list, just click on our Nominations link which will lead you to lists sorted by labels or categories. For the 2018 awards the Jury of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) has nominated 357 audio and video productions (321 in 2017, 364 in 2016) from 120 labels (119 in 2017, 115 ...
The sea in many forms: the Finnish premiere of Matthew Whittall’s piano concerto
Matthew Whittall's new piano concerto, Nameless Seas, was effective in evoking not only literal but also metaphorical feelings of the sea. Respighi is best known for his ecstatically colorful symphonic portraits of Rome, which are textbook demonstrations of orchestral brilliance. Respighi's orchestration of Bach's D major Prelude and Fugue is further evidence of the Italian composer's orchestral wizardry. Particularly striking in the opening Prelude was Respighi's ability to closely mimic the colors of an organ within an orchestral soundworld; this was ...
Irene Dalis in recital, for collectors and everyone else
This priceless CD illustrates, as if that were still necessary, and strongly underscore the consummate vocal and dramatic mastery of this great American mezzo of the 50’s and 60’s. It offers us, unfortunately, only a few limited examples and vocal fragments of a young and still developing Irene Dalis. Enhanced by long excerpts from Carmen (eight of them), sung in German, which come to us straight from Oldenburg (but can we be ...
Par excellence : Vilde Frang in Britten’s Violin Concerto
Vilde Frang may have some tough competition, but she could just be the interpreter par excellence of Britten's Violin Concerto. In the past decade or so, frequent performances and new recordings of Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto seem to be solidifying its stature as one of the truly great 20th-century violin concertos, worthy of the same attention as Sibelius and Shostakovich. Vilde Frang's breathtaking and urgent performance this evening undoubtedly earned this work many new admirers. Berlioz' Le Carnaval Romain opened the concert, ...
Ulf Wallin tackles Pettersson’s massive Violin Concerto No. 2
Christian Lindberg made a thoroughly convincing argument of the inherent drama of Pettersson's music while emphasizing the fact that there is ultimately a song informing the music. Even in his native Sweden, performances of Allan Pettersson’s orchestral music are few and far between; most performances feature the composer’s generally accessible Symphony No. 7. This evening’s performance of the Violin Concerto No. 2 was the third Pettersson orchestral work (Symphony No. 5 ...
Top class : Renée Fleming and Sakari Oramo at the Helsinki Festival
This evening's performance of Nielsen's Symphony No. 2 provided further evidence that the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra belongs in the top echelon of the world's great orchestras. Sakari Oramo is currently Chief Conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (RSPO) and is well-known to Finnish audiences from his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. This evening's performance gave Oramo an opportunity to showcase the RSPO to his hometown audience; the ...
Finnish premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto
At least on this first hearing, Salonen's new Cello Concerto seemed confident and uncertain at the same time. This evening's concert marked the opening of Esa-Pekka Salonen's second season as Artist-in-Association with the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. It seemed only appropriate that the program literally played to all of Salonen's strengths: Ravel, Stravinsky, and of course, himself. The program began with a Ravel staple, Le Tombeau de Couperin. Immediately apparent from the opening moments was the effortless, ...
The fascinating Michał Gondko, an accomplished lutenist
Having spent the last 18 years on the activities of the La Morra ensemble, the Polish lutenist Michał Gondko is becoming a sought-after soloist. Particularly seduced by the polyphonic art music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, he is one of the most fascinating performers of this repertoire of his generation. ResMusica met him to talk about his career, his inspirations, his projects, his dreams and even his lutes. "Sometime in ...
Men and Women : Allan Pettersson’s Symphony No. 6 in ballet form
Men and Women by Antoine Jully, chief choreographer of the Oldenburg ballet, on Allan Pettersson's Symphony n°6 expresses a wide range of emotions between the genders. Jully's reflection of the composer's expressive world is impressive. On the very surface, there does not seem to be much subtlety in Allan Pettersson or his music. Despite the music's highly expressive and emotional landscape and the composer's own colorful statements about himself and his world, for some listeners ...
Kreutzer Sonata or Bridgewater Sonata ?
The Bridgewater Sonata by Emmanuel Dongala presents a fictionalized version of the apprenticeship of the Polish virtuoso violinist George Bridgetower, to whom his friend Beethoven initially dedicated his Violin Sonata #9, only to finally dedicate the piece to Rudolph Kreutzer. Paris, page 9 A beautiful morning in 89…that is, 1789… Coming straight from Austria, "Prince of Abyssinia, Famous Negro of the Caribbean", or more precisely, of Barbados, the same person whom Tomassini ...
Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 at Prague Spring
The Prague Philharmonic and Kühn choirs just might have stolen the show with their power, clear diction, and their ability to conjure up countless shades of color. There are certainly many approaches to putting together a program of orchestral music. Are the works selected based on a common theme or source of inspiration? From a common historical era? Or do the works greatly contrast from each other, giving the audience the ...
Sakari Oramo in Elgar’s Symphony No. 2
Sakari Oramo did not hesitate in bringing Elgar's unabashedly passionate and emotional elements to the fore. During his tenure as principal conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (RSPO), Sakari Oramo has devoted considerable attention to the music of Anders Hillborg and Edward Elgar. In this evening’s performance, Oramo took the podium in front of his former band to showcase these composers. Hillborg’s Beast Sampler refers to the composer’s description of the ...
Broadly : Kent Nagano in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8
Nagano's performance of Bruckner's Symphony No. 8, while abundant in individual highlights, was not quite a fully convincing interpretation of this massive work. Anton Bruckner is arguably the perfect example of a composer whose music does not simply "play itself." Bruckner's symphonies are unhurried, majestic, imposing, and, of course, fervently religious. Only an interpreter who has considered these aspects carefully can successfully transform these lengthy works from seemingly protracted to transcendent. Against this backdrop, ...
Exploring the depths : Osmo Vänskä in Sibelius’ Symphony No. 4
Osmo Vänskä is unrivaled in his ability (and willingness) to explore the deepest depths of Sibelius' Symphony No. 4. Osmo Vänskä earned himself and his former band (the Lahti Symphony Orchestra) international recognition with his series of Sibelius and Kalevi Aho recordings. Authoritative performances of these two composers was expected from this evening's performance, and Vänskä and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra did not disappoint. The program opened with one of the Estonian composer Arvo ...
