Sir Neville Marriner 1924 - 2016

Conductor Sir Neville Marriner dies aged 92.
Founder of Academy of St Martin in the Fields was still conducting into his 90s and his Amadeus soundtrack sold 6.5m copies.

Sir Neville Marriner began his career playing in a string quartet and trio, then in the London Symphony Orchestra.
Sir Neville Marriner, one of the world’s greatest conductors, has died.
The founder of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, who conducted many of the world’s leading orchestras, died in his sleep on Sunday, aged 92, the academy said.
Marriner was still conducting into his 90s, conducting a concert to celebrate entering his 10th decade two years ago, which included a rendition of Happy Birthday. His 90th birthday was also marked by Classic FM dedicating an entire day of programming to his performances.
Neville Marriner: 'My wife has told me to keep June free'.
His soundtrack to the 1984 Oscar-winning film Amadeus is one of the most popular classical music recordings of all time. It topped the US album chart and has sold over 6.5m copies. The publicity blurb for the film said: “Only two people were qualified to conduct the score.” Below those words were two pictures: one of Mozart in powdered wig, the other of Marriner in white dickie bow. “One was unavailable,” added the blurb.
Academy chairman, Paul Aylieff, said: “We are greatly saddened by today’s news. Sir Neville’s artistic and recording legacy, not only with the academy but with orchestras and audiences worldwide is immense. He will be greatly missed by all who knew and worked with him, and the academy will ensure it continues to be an excellent and fitting testament to Sir Neville.”
Born in Lincoln, Marriner began as a violinist. He studied at the Royal College of Music with WH Reed, biographer and friend of Elgar, and the Paris Conservatoire. He began his career playing in a string quartet and trio, then in the London Symphony Orchestra. He formed the Academy with the aim of forming a top-class chamber ensemble from London’s finest players. Ironically, it was conceived as a conductor-free refuge for string-players but Marriner became, as he put it, “a turncoat” – a conductor who on stage, as often as not, held a violin in one hand and a baton in the other.
Marriner began his conducting career in 1969, after studying in the US, where he founded the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, while at the same time developing and extending the size and repertoire of the academy.
In 1979 he became music director and principal conductor of both the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Südwest Deutsche Radio Orchestra in Stuttgart, positions he held until the late 1980s.
He subsequently continued to work with orchestras around the globe. Marriner was music director of the academy from its formation in 1958 to 2011 when he became life president.
From its humble beginnings in Marriner’s front room as a group of friends getting together to rehearse, the academy, which gave its first performance in its namesake church in 1959, now enjoys one of the largest discographies – over 500 albums – of any chamber orchestra worldwide, and its partnership with its founder is the most recorded of any orchestra and conductor.

1 Sem 2016 - Part One

Lang Lang
In Paris - 2 Cd's



By James Manheim
For all the crossover theatrics he has offered as he approaches the end of the second decade of his career, the Chinese phenomenon Lang Lang would not have continued to flourish without solid and even innovative performances of core classical repertory. Following up on his highly successful Chopin Album, Lang Lang scores again with this recording, put together over several nights at the Bastille Opera in Paris. The first part consists of the four Chopin Scherzos, and these play unmistakably to Lang Lang's athletic strengths. Consider the octave triplet passages that make up the main thematic material of the Scherzo No. 3 in C sharp minor, Op. 39. In Lang Lang's hands, these are not just muscular, but a breathtaking single gesture. There aren't many pianists who could carry that off, and better still, Lang Lang molds the gesture into different shapes as the piece proceeds. He has the musicality to carry off risky contrasts between loud and quiet, and in the bravura passages of these most virtuosic Chopin pieces he is simply gripping. Tchaikovsky's The Seasons, Op. 37, are less commonly played than the Chopin, and there are recordings less brittle and more oriented toward the work's French roots than Lang Lang's. But here again there is a remarkable combination of power and suppleness, and it would be hard to conceive of anyone being bored by his performances. Sony's engineering tends to favor the high end, which is already implicit in Lang Lang's playing and did not need any help, but this does not distort his work in this case. Highly recommended for those who loved the Chopin Album, and evidence of continuing worthwhile work from one of the world's most popular classical artists.
Tracks Listings:
Disc: 1
1. Scherzo No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 20
2. Scherzo No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 31
3. Scherzo No.3 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 39
4. Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, Op. 54
Disc: 2
1. The Seasons, Op. 37a; I. January: At the Fireside
2. The Seasons, Op. 37a; II. February: Carnival
3. The Seasons, Op. 37a; III. March: Song of the Lark
4. The Seasons, Op. 37a; IV. April: Snowdrop
5. The Seasons, Op. 37a; V. May: Starlit Nights
6. The Seasons, Op. 37a; VI. June: Barcarolle
7. The Seasons, Op. 37a; VII. July: Song of the Reaper
8. The Seasons, Op. 37a; VIII. August: Harvest
9. The Seasons, Op. 37a; IX. September: The Hunt
10. The Seasons, Op. 37a; X. October: Autumn Song
11. The Seasons, Op. 37a; XI. November: Troika
12. The Seasons, Op. 37a; XII. December: Christmas


Sol Gabetta & Bertrand Chamayou
The Chopin Album



By ClassicFM
Here is an unusual selection of pieces by Chopin, more often known solely for his piano works, as well as compositions by his close friend, the composer and cellist Auguste-Joseph Franchomme.
Argentinian cellist Sol Gabetta and the superb young pianist, Bertrand Chamayou, came up with the concept of this album together and are now touring the repertoire in Europe.
The centrepiece of the album is Chopin's 30-minute long Sonata for cello and piano in G minor – one of the rare pieces Chopin wrote for a solo instrument other than his beloved piano. It makes for striking listening. Also here is the Grand Duo concertant in E major, written jointly by Chopin and Franchomme in 1832. Gabetta and Chamayou have additionally selected one of Franchomme's Nocturnes for Cello and Piano especially for this album.
The repertoire here is little-known and somewhat unfamiliar but Gabetta performs with her trademark grace and intimacy to bring a special, heartfelt romanticism to these works, which are well worth discovering.
Tracks:
Sonata for Cello and Piano
Introduction and Polonaise brillant
Grand Duo Concertante on Themes from Meyerbeer's '
(27) Etudes, C sharp minor, Op. 25/7
Nocturnes, No. 4 in F, Op. 15/1
Nocturne

Pierre Boulez 1925 - 2016

By Mark Brown/The Guardian-Arts

The composer, conductor, writer and performer, who directed the New York Philharmonic, had been ill for some time.

Pierre Boulez was described as an ‘exemplary man of the future’ by his friend and fellow conductor Daniel Barenboim. 

Pierre Boulez, one of the most influential and significant composers and conductors of the 20th century, has died aged 90.

Boulez died on Tuesday at his adopted home in Baden Baden, Germany. A family statement read: “For all those who knew him and who could appreciate his creative energy, artistic standards, availability and generosity, his presence will remain vivid and intense.”

Boulez had been ill for some time and had been unable to take part in the many celebrations held across the world for his most recent birthday.

As well as composing, Boulez was a prolific writer and pianist and an inspiration for generations of young musicians.

Paying tribute, fellow conductor and musician Daniel Barenboim said: 

"Today, the music world has lost one of its most significant composers and conductors. Personally, I have a lost a great colleague, a deeply admired creative mind and a close friend."

"Pierre Boulez and I first met in Berlin in 1964 and there have been few fellow musicians with whom I have developed such a close and important relationship in the 52 years that followed – even though we always stuck to the formal ‘vous’ when speaking to each other, a rarity in our rather informal world, but from my side, certainly, an expression of my deepest respect and admiration."

“‘Creation exists only in the unforeseen made necessary’, Pierre Boulez once wrote. With this belief as his paradigm, Pierre Boulez has radically changed music itself as well as its reception in society. He always knew exactly when he had to be radical because it was a necessary requirement for music and society to develop. He was never dogmatic, however, but always retained his ability to develop himself further. His development was based on a deep knowledge of and respect for the past. A true man of the future must know the past, and for me, Pierre Boulez will always remain an exemplary man of the future.

“Pierre Boulez has achieved an ideal paradox: he felt with his head and thought with his heart. We are privileged to experience this through his music. For this, and so much more, I will always be grateful.”

The French president, François Hollande, said: “Pierre Boulez made French music shine throughout the world. As a composer and conductor, he always wanted to reflect on the ages.”

As a conductor, never with a baton, Boulez appeared with some of the world’s greatest orchestras, including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra. He led the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1971 to 1975 and was simultaneously music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1971 to 1977, succeeding Leonard Bernstein.

Also in the 1970s, the then French president Georges Pompidou invited him to found a new contemporary music centre called the Institute for the Research and Coordination of Acoustics and Music, known as Ircam.

Boulez was a maverick and provocateur, once declaring that that any composer who did not acknowledge the necessity of Schoenberg’s 12-tone system was “useless”. Another of his quotes was: “Operatic tourists make me want to vomit.”

He also dismissed Dmitri Shostakovich as a composer who “plays with cliches most of the time”, and said classical music’s history “seems more than ever to me a great burden. In my opinion we must get rid of it once and for all”.

Boulez was a long way from being stuffy and in 1973 took the chairs away from orchestra members of the New York Philharmonic, replacing them with rugs and cushions so they were more in line with the city’s coffeehouse culture and hippie scene.

George Benjamin on Pierre Boulez: 'He was simply a poet'

In the 1980s, he worked with Frank Zappa, resulting in the album Boulez Conducts Zappa.

One of a generation of pioneering post-second world war composers, Boulez helped steer contemporary music in radical new directions. He pioneered serialism in music, embarked on open-ended and improvisatory music, and experimented with what he called “controlled chance”, in which performers were offered choices about what to perform in music Boulez had written.

Boulez was born in 1925 in the town of Montbrison, near Lyon, and grew up in Nazi-occupied France. He was 20 when the second world war ended, which could offer one explanation for his energy and zeal to make a difference – or as he once said to his teacher Messiaen – “to put music right? It’s in such a terrible state”.

His friend and fellow composer George Benjamin praised Boulez in an article for the Guardian last year. “Through the power of his personality, the scale of his reputation and his considerable personal charm, Boulez has made big things happen, way beyond the confines of manuscript paper,” he wrote.

Boulez even ended up lending his name to Private Eye’s Music and Musicians column, rounding up gossip from the classical world – the column was always bylined “Lunchtime O’Boulez”, to differentiate it from the other regular byline, “Lunchtime O’Booze”.