Discover what makes Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony Number Five a musical masterpiece, and uncover the story behind its inception.
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Eight ferocious notes open one of the most explosive pieces of music ever composed. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony Number Five premiered in 1808, and quickly won acclaim. Its central motif and raw emotionality have continued to resound through the ages. So what exactly makes Beethoven’s Fifth so captivating? Hanako Sawada uncovers the story behind this musical masterpiece.
Lesson by Hanako Sawada, directed by Yael Reisfeld.
Thursday, May 4, 2023
Best of Philippine folk dance to be shown at 'Indak Pilipinas'
The bi-annual dance event put the spotlight on the best folkloric groups and their best dance pieces
May 4, 2023 08:59 PM
Get ready to groove with "Indak Pilipinas: Mga Tradisyon at Interpretasyon," the biggest folkloric dance showcase that gathers the best Filipino folk dance groups. The show will happen on May 19, Friday and 20, Saturday, 2023, 7p.m., with 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday, at Metropolitan Theater Manila.
The bi-annual dance event put the spotlight on the best folkloric groups and their best dance pieces choreographed and staged by Philippine National Artists for Dance and other respected personalities in the dance community to celebrate the spirit of the Filipino culture through dance.
Bringing to life the works of pioneering dance choreographers and staging unpublished dance materials and narratives are established professional dance groups such as Bayanihan, The National Folk Dance Company, the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group, the Philippine Barangay Folk Dance Troupe, the Kaloob, Music and Dance Ministry, and the SINDAW Philippines Performing Arts Guild.
Some of the best regional dance groups join the festival, including Kalilayan Folkloric Group, Sining Palawan Dance Troupe, and Irong-Irong Dance Company.
Featured school/University-based dance groups are: Bulacan State University Lahing Kayumanggi Dance Troupe, Centro Escolar University Folk Dance Troupe, Lyceum of the Philippines University Lahing Batangan Dance Troupe, Philippine High School for the Arts Sanghiyas Pangkat Mananayaw, Philippine Normal University Kislap Sining Dance Troupe, Rizal Technological University Kultura Rizalia Dance Troupe, Technological University of the Philippines Kalinangan Dance Troupe, University of the East Silangan Dance Troupe, University of Santo Tomas Salinggawi Dance Troupe.
In line with the celebration of the National Heritage Month, the fourth edition of Indak Pilipinas perpetuates the promotion and preservation of the country’s diverse dance traditions and heritage, while continuing to define and sustain the national identity and help in the national development through performing arts and dance.
Led by Overall Director Generoso Caringal, with Artistic Consultant Dr. Larry Gabao, Indak Pilipinas is in partnership with the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the Philippine Folk Dance Society or Samahang Tagapagtaguyod ng Katutubong Sayaw ng Pilipinas.
Ticket prices are: P500 for Orchestra Center, P400 for Orchestra Sides, and P300 for Balcony, with discounts for students, senior citizens, PWD and government employees. Fifty percent group discount for a minimum of 100 tickets.
For tickets and other inquiries, call the CCP Box Office: 8832-3704/8832-1125 local 1409, or check out Ticketworld. Visit the CCP website for more information.
Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra recreates first concert for 50th anniversary gala
Established in 1973, the country’s leading orchestra looks back at its humble beginnings.
After its successful metamorphosis on its recently concluded 38th concert season, the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (PPO) turns gold.
Established in 1973, the country’s leading orchestra looks back at its humble beginnings through its PPO 50th Anniversary Gala, slated on May 12, 8 m., at the Metropolitan Theater - the temporary home of the PPO while the CCP Main Building is undergoing rehabilitation.
For this milestone, the CCP resident orchestra recreates in part its very first concert, which happened on May 15, 1973. That debut concert of the orchestra, under the baton of Maestro Luis C. Valencia, its first music director, with Julian Quirit as concertmaster.
In the 1973 concert, the PPO performed Alfredo S. Buenaventura’s Bathaluman and National Artist Lucrecia Kasilag’s Divertissement for Piano and Orchestra. The late National Artist was the president and artistic director of the center back then.
Made possible through the auspices of the former First Lady Imelda R. Marcos, the concert also featured Manuel de Falla’s Noches en los Jardines de España and G. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, with guest performer pianist Benjamin Tupas.
Initially intended to accompany performing artists at the CCP Theater when the orchestra was founded in 1973, the PPO had been reorganized in 1979, with Prof. Oscar C. Yatco at the helm. Three years later, the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra was born with a new vision—to be ranked among the best in the world. From then on, the PPO has grown to become the country’s leading orchestra.
Under the baton of Maestro Rodel Colmenar, the PPO will once again relive the first concert, performing Buenventura and Kasilag masterpieces, with young pianist Aidan Ezra Baracol as guest performer. Known as the founder and music director of the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO), Rodel Colmenar has further proven his great skills and passion for music on international platforms and has collaborated with several outstanding local and foreign classical artists. As a conductor, he is significantly involved in the Kurt Masur Conducting Workshop in Detmold, Germany, and in the masterclasses of French conductor Jean Sebastian Bereau and Italian conductor Pierro Gamba.
Young virtuoso Baracol is currently a Grade 12 scholar at the Philippine High School for the Arts. He has won 16 local and international piano competitions over the last three years, notably the Junior Piano category of the National Music Competitions for Young Artists (NAMCYA). He is currently a scholar of the CCP.
Critically-acclaimed Filipino tenor Arthur Espiritu will perform Salut! Demeure e Chaste et Pure! from Faust (Charles Gounod), Che gelida manina from La Boheme (Giacomo Puccini), and Kundiman ng Langit (Augusto Espino).
Renowned for his impressive vocals and great presence on stage, Espiritu has performed in various operas, concerts, and recitals across the United States and other countries, showcasing his versatility and range as a performer. He has performed in the CCP opera production of Lucia di Lammermoor in 2020.
The anniversary concert will culminate with a must-watch performance of renowned pianist Dr. Raul Sunico, playing G. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue under the baton of PPO resident conductor Herminigildo Ranera. A former CCP president, Sunico has brought home several awards in piano competitions held abroad including a silver medal in the 1979 Viotti International Piano Competition in Vercelli, Italy. He has also given solo recitals in Canada, Mexico, France, the United States, and Australia, among other countries. The Outstanding Young Men of the Philippines Awardee for Music in 1986, he has recorded around 50 compact discs, including his piano transcriptions of Filipino folk songs and kundimans, concertos by Grieg, Saint-Saens, Ravel, and Lucino Sacramento; solo classical pieces; popular American songs set to piano; chamber and duo piano music, and original compositions.
A multi-awarded performer, Ranera was a three-time prize winner of the NAMCYA in 1982 and 1983 as a performer in Trombone, Baritone, and Tuba (Chamber Music) categories. He was a prize- winner of the 1983 League of Filipino Composers Competition for Young Composers and collaborated with his mentor, Fr. Manuel P. Maramba, O.S.B. for various CCP productions. Ranera is the founder of the Philippine Band Association (PHILBANDA), a board member of the Asia-Pacific Band Directors Association, and the adviser of the Band Conductors League of the Philippines.
Coinciding with the gala concert, the CCP and PPO partnered with Widescope Entertainment to launch “Serenata,” the seven-track album consisting of well-loved Philippine folk songs and melodies from various regions of the country, on Spotify.
Originally released in 2014, the album includes: Atin Cu Pung Singsing (Kapampangan),Sarung Banggi (Bicolano), Ti Ayat Ti Maysa Nga Ubing (Ilocano), Sampaguita (Original Spanish “La Flor de Manila”), Malinac lay labi (Pangasinense), No Te Vayas De Zamboanga (Chavacano), and Walay Angay (Ilonggo).
National Artist Ryan Cayabyab gave a fresh interpretation to the seven well-loved folk songs, without compromising their traditional musical characteristics and making them multi-layered compositions. The decision to release Serenata in Spotify is in line with the CCP’s continuous efforts to awaken the consciousness of Filipinos to Philippine cultural heritage, and encourage the development and enhance public interest and appreciation of arts in various fields.
Tickets to the PPO 50th Anniversary Concert are available at the CCP Box Office, located at Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez, Vicente Sotto Street, from Tuesday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can also get tickets at the TicketWorld via www.ticketworld.com.ph. Ticket prices are P3,000 for Loge Premium and Orchestra Center Premium, P1,500 for Orchestra Left and Right, and P800 forBalcony Center, Right, and Left.
For other ticket details and inquiries, contact the CCP Marketing Department at salesandpromotions@culturalcenter.gov.ph. Visit the CCP website for more information. Follow the official CCP social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok for the latest updates.
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
Eric Clapton - Layla (Live)
10 British composers who shaped the nation’s classical music legacy
From Tallis to Weir – here are some of Britain’s most compelling musical voices from the past few hundred years.
As a new monarch is soon to be crowned, on Classic FM we’re handpicking the finest classical music written by British composers.
From the 16th through to 21st century, here are some of the , and composers who have shaped Britain’s incredible musical legacy.
Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)
Unquestionably one of the finest English composers in history, Tallis is known for the sublime choral settings he wrote – including the hymn, ‘Thou wast, O God’, which inspired Vaughan Williams’ (see below) Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and the stunning 40-part masterpiece, Spem in Alium – which translates as ‘I Have Hope in No Other’ and is written for eight choirs of five separate voices.
Tallis was a composer throughout the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I and, in spite of upheavals in the church created by these monarchs, remained a steadfast composer of sacred music, able to adapt his style and set texts in both English and Latin. Six
William Byrd (1543-1623)
wrote some of the most sublime music known to the human ear. A Renaissance master, his music defined the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who had a deep love for his music and so turned a blind eye to his devout Roman Catholicism.
From sacred and secular vocal works, to his keyboard and consort music, Byrd’s compositions often reflected the hardship and practising his faith at the time, through anguished harmonies and long, yearning phrases. a hi
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
is considered England’s greatest composer of the era. Inspired by Italian and French Baroque styles, he shaped a uniquely English version and was dubbed the “Orpheus Britannicus” for his skill in combining powerful counterpoint with expressive, flexible and dramatic lyrical settings.
No other English composers managed to approach his stardom, until Elgar came along two centuries later. The heart-rending aria ‘When I am laid in earth’, from his opera Dido and Aeneas, continues to excite musicians and touch audiences today. am
Edward Elgar (1857–1934)
Elgar is perhaps the quintessential English composer, many of his works having entered the classical music canon.
Both his enduring Cello Concerto and Violin Concerto remain staples of their instruments’ core concert repertoire, recorded time and time again by the finest musicians out there. And his famous Enigma Variations, two symphonies, and the Pomp and Circumstance Marches all demonstrate his superlative orchestral and instrumental writing. e
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958)
English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of the most important figures in classical music in the 20th century. Taking inspiration from sources as diverse as Tudor polyphony and English folksong, Vaughan Williams wrote nine symphonies, six operas, a ballet and hymn tunes as well as scores for the stage and screen.
He helped revive British music, and his works like The Lark Ascending and Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis remain incredibly popular, often topping the Classic FM Hall of Fame, which is the world’s largest survey of classical music tastes.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
A contemporary of Vaughan Williams and Holst, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer and conductor famous for rich orchestral works and brilliant instrumental writing. Among his best-known works are the Violin Concerto in G minor, The Song of Hiawatha and his arrangement of African American spiritual ‘Deep River’, which was exquisitely reimagined by the Kanneh-Mason family trio (watch below).
In 2021, Coleridge-Taylor made his debut in the Classic FM Hall of Fame, marking a renewed interest in this long-neglected composer’s music. Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
For English composer, conductor and pianist Britten, the human experience and psyche was an endless source of inspiration. His operas especially, including The Turn of the Screw and Peter Grimes, use powerful music to set stories of the isolated individual increasingly at odds with a hostile society.
And his crowning masterpiece, the War Requiem, is a poignant commemoration by a pacifist composer of the devastating loss of life caused by the Second World War. Dedicated to Britten and his partner Peter Pears’ personal friends who died during the war, the work powerfully sets nine war poems by the English poet Wilfred Owen throughout the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead. It was commissioned for, and premiered at, the 1962 opening of the new Coventry Cathedral.
Benjamin Britten. Picture: Getty Judith Weir (1954–)
Scottish composer Judith Weir made history in 2014 when she became the first ever female Master of the Queen’s Music, a role that is music’s equivalent to the Poet Laureate.
Weir is known for her pioneering operas and stage works – including The Vanishing Bridegroom and Blond Eckbert – which often take inspiration from medieval history and traditional Scottish music. She started out as an oboe player, performing with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and she studied composition with Song of Athene composer, John Tavener, during her schooldays.
Judith Weir, Master of the Queen's Music. Picture: Getty Debbie Wiseman (1963–)
Debbie Wiseman OBE, Classic FM’s Composer in Residence, has enjoyed bountiful success in recent years with her album The Glorious Garden with gardening royalty Alan Titchmarsh, which celebrates the great outdoors, and her 2020 composition, Together, written for those at home or self-isolating during lockdown.
Her music for TV and film is also well loved, her score for the Stephen Fry-starring biopic of Oscar Wilde now as special to viewers as the film that inspired it. In 2021, the acclaimed composer and conductor became the most popular living British composer in the Classic FM Hall of Fame for the first time.
Paul Mealor (1975–)
The year 2011 was a golden time for Welsh composer , whose motet Ubi Caritas et Amor was performed at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Just a few months later, he was commissioned to write the music for ‘Wherever You Are’, whose text was compiled from letters written to British Army soldiers in the Afghanistan War by their partners, for the TV series The Choir: Military Wives.
The song went to Christmas No. 1, and the following year he was voted the “nation’s favourite living composer” in the Classic FM Hall of Fame, charting at No. 5. On top of his unparalleled chart success, Mealor is a prolific classical composer and has written an opera, three symphonies, concertos and chamber music.
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
Monday, May 1, 2023
Ray Conniff - La Mer
Canção de Charles Trenet com arranjos do grande maestro e
arranjador Ray Conniff "wonderful forever".
Ben Hur | Soundtrack Suite (Miklós Rózsa)
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1959). Composed and Conducted by Miklós Rózsa, performed by the MGM Studio Orchestra & Chorus.
Sunday, April 30, 2023
Iosif Ivanovici - Donauwellen Walzer (Waves of the Danube Waltz)
"Waves of the Danube" (Romanian: Valurile Dunării; German: Donauwellen; French: Flots du Danube; Russian: Дунайские Волны) is a waltz composed by Iosif Ivanovici (1845--1902) in 1880, and is one of the most famous Romanian tunes in the world.
In the United States, it is frequently referred to as "The Anniversary Song", a title given by Al Jolson when he and Saul Chaplin released an adaptation of the song in 1946. "Waves of the Danube" was first published in Bucharest, 1880. It was dedicated to Emma Gebauer, the wife of music publisher Constantin Gebauer.
Friday, April 28, 2023
Eric Clapton - Change The World (Live Video) | Warner Vault
Change The World by Eric Clapton from the album Eric Clapton Chronicles: The Best of Eric Clapton © 1999
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Lyrics:
If I could reach the stars
Pull one down for you
Shine it on my heart
So you could see the truth
That this love I have inside
Is everything it seems
But for now I find
It's only in my dreams
[Chorus]
And I can change the world
I will be the sunlight in your universe
You would think my love was really something good
Baby if I could change the world
If I could be king
Even for a day
I'd take you as my queen
I'd have it no other way
And our love would rule
In this kingdom we have made
'Til then I'd be a fool
Wishing for the day
And I can change the world
I would be the sunlight in your universe
You would think my love was really something good
Baby if I could change the world
Baby if I could change the world
I could change the world
I would be the sunlight in your universe
You would think my love was really something good
Baby if I could change the world
Baby if I could change the world
Baby if I could change the world
Stream & download the song here: ***
Composer’s Pianos: Halévy and Bizet
By Maureen Buja
Alex Cobbe’s piano collection at Hatchlands Park has one massive square piano that was immensely practical to its two composer owners.
How do composers compose? We’re familiar with the images from movies, the composer with one hand on the keyboard and the other, pencil poised, over the music paper. In this picture of Cole Porter, we can see the advantage of being left-handed!
Cole Porter, composing at the piano
Nonetheless, composers with means and connections could have their needs accommodated. The French composer Fromental Halévy commissioned the French piano maker Roller to make him a piano that combined the keyboard with a desk. The top of his square piano has three leather-covered sections, as was common for desks at the time, placed at a height convenient for writing. Notice that the keyboard slides back into the instrument when not needed. Notice also the handles on the side of the case to help when moving the heavy instrument / piece of furniture around.
Composing Table Piano, 1855
Halévy (1799- 1862) had a successful late career as an opera composer, but all of his works, including his most famous, La Juive, have fallen out of the repertoire.
Fromental Halévy
Upon Halévy’s death in 1862, his daughter, Geneviève, brought the piano to her husband, the composer Georges Bizet. Bizet had been a student of Halévy’s at the Paris Conservatoire. The piano remained in the Halévy family’s possession until its current owner purchased it.
Geneviève Bizet (Jules-Élie Delaunay)
When Bizet received this piano, he was only 24 and all of his major works, including The Pearl Fishers (1863), La jolie fille de Perth (1866), and, most importantly, Carmen (1873-74) all lay ahead of him to be composed on this instrument.
Georges Bizet
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