Articles & Interviews

The master list of news, features and interviews

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s Centenary Concert will be streamed online on 5 September

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CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA TO PERFORM CENTENARY CONCERT IN WAREHOUSE

Saturday 5 September, 7pm
Streamed on the CBSO’s YouTube and Facebook channels
#cbso100

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) has today announced that it will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its first ever concert with a landmark performance featuring the full orchestra and filmed at a production warehouse in Birmingham.

The varied programme will be conducted by former Music Director Sir Simon Rattle, who is handed the baton for this special event by the orchestra’s current Music Director, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, while she is on maternity leave. They are joined by cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and sitar player Roopa Panesar, and the performance will be presented by Birmingham-born actor Adrian Lester.

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September to December will see concerts live-streamed from Wigmore Hall and some will have a small audience

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ARTISTIC DIRECTOR JOHN GILHOOLY CONFIRMS 100 CONCERTS FOR NEWLY REVISED WIGMORE PROGRAMME FROM 13 SEPTEMBER – 21 DECEMBER

  • Over 200 artists confirmed, of which over two-thirds are UK born or UK based, underlining Wigmore Hall’s efforts to get artists earning again.
  • Reaffirming Wigmore Hall’s ongoing commitment to diversity of repertoire and artists, performances include Apartment House, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Tai Murray (violin), Elizabeth Llewellyn (soprano), Fatma Said (soprano), Roderick Williams (baritone), Arditti Quartet, Elena Urioste (violin), Kit Armstrong (piano), Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord), Claron McFadden (soprano) and Matthew Wadsworth (lute) and a digital fundraising concert for Chineke!.
  • Special focuses on Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in song and chamber music, Polish-Jewish-Russian composer Mieczysław Weinberg, and the pioneering 20th century minimalist Julius Eastman who expressed his black and gay identity through music.
  • Special documentary on internationally acclaimed double bassist Leon Bosch and his early anti-apartheid activism which saw him jailed as a teenager in South Africa, and Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger on Anti-Semitism. To celebrate the release of their respective new books, Graham Johnson will give a talk on Poulenc, and Natasha Loges and Katy Hamilton will present a discussion on Brahms.
  • Concerts will go ahead with or without an audience. All concerts will be live streamed in high definition on Wigmore Hall’s website and will be free to view worldwide.
  • 28 lunchtime concerts to be broadcast in association with BBC Radio 3 as well as a New Generation Artists weekend.

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Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvydom

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There can be no doubt – No ifs or buts: Mike Leigh ranks Gilbert World’s leading misery-guts. It may come as a surprise that the parents of Sir William Schwenck Gilbert outshone him in eccentricity: a valuable tool which is a leitmotif in Mike Leigh’s impressively researched and thoroughly entertaining 1999 biopic. Other authors too … Read more

INTERVIEW WITH THE CONDUCTOR VASILY PETRENKO – ‘CULTURE IS WHAT KEEPS US UNITED AND INTEGRATED’

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Young-Jin Hur in conversation with Vasily Petrenko

Vasily Petrenko, © Svetlana Tarlova

The world is complex in its embrace of seeming opposites. There is joy in sad music; individual preferences coexist with societal norms; natural tendencies may complement acquired processes. The world is complex, but it is simple in its consistent presence of contradictions. This complexity also holds true for life’s challenges. The truism that bearing difficulties strengthens the self is elevated to metaphysical heights in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. In the realm of music, Igor Stravinsky viewed that ‘the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.’ A time of difficulty and limitation, thus, seems also a story of hope.

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Opera Philadelphia’s 2020-21 season

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Opera Philadelphia reinvents the 2020-2021 season

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing opera companies away from gathering large audiences in theaters, Opera Philadelphia is taking the next step into the art form’s future with the launch of the Opera Philadelphia Channel. This global broadcast platform will bring a revised 2020-2021 season into opera lovers’ homes via their television screens and streaming devices.

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Pittsburgh Opera’s 2020-21 season

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Pittsburgh Opera announces its 2020-21 season

Live opera performances will take place in Pittsburgh this coming season. However, in response to on-going COVID-19 uncertainty and concerns, Pittsburgh Opera is modifying the 2020-21 season, the company’s 82nd. Rather than six operas at four different venues, the season will now consist of four operas performed at the George R. White Opera Studio at Pittsburgh Opera’s headquarters in the city’s Strip District.

Each of the four operas are currently scheduled for six performances:

Così fan tutte – 17, 20, 23, 25, 27, 29 October 2020
Soldier Songs – 5, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17 December 2020
Semele – 20, 23, 26, 28 February & 2, 4 March 2021
Charlie Parker’s Yardbird – 10, 13, 16, 18, 20, 22 April 2021

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Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy’s Pop-up Festival 2020 will be held throughout August

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World-class music returns to the heights of the Swiss Alps and beyond Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy’s Pop-up Festival 2020: A winning mix of classical music stars and gems from Beethoven’s beloved repertoire • Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy’s Pop-up Festival 2020 will be broadcast live from various venues in Switzerland’s idyllic Saanenland throughout August … Read more