Saturday, February 3, 2024
Toni Braxton - Un-break My Heart (1999) Live | 4K
Sukiyaki (Kyu Sakamoto) - "We'll meet again" Orchestra Project
Vienna Hall, Fuchu Forest Art Theater, Tokyo in September 2020
We filmed this video against the background of empty auditorium, to document the "current state" of young musicians and in hope to see many of you in the concert hall again.
We recorded performances by one or two players, and this video is made by layering them.
Filming was done keeping social distancing and proper safety procedures in mind.
Friday, February 2, 2024
Begin the beguine - Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell
A dinner concert for a cause
The Children's First One Thousand Days Coalition (CFDC), in partnership with The Manila Hotel, will present a dinner concert to raise funds for the nutrition efforts of non-government organizations helping government address malnutrition of Filipino infants during the crucial period from conception to their second birthday.
The pre-Valentine concert called "The Greatest Love of All" will be held on February 9, 6 pm, at the Tent City of The Manila Hotel.
Main performers include former press secretary Mike Toledo, former executive secretary Salvador Medialdea, and The Manila Hotel president and former Senator Joey Lina.
Other performers include Beverly Salviejo, Nina Campos, Jenny Sugay, Rachelle Rule, Rachel Verns, Pam Esquivel, Bobby Alvarez, Egay Rubiano, Jeffrey Panado, Egay Banaag, and the Adeodatus Children's Choir (Baseco) with Manila Philharmonic Orchestra. Rodel Colmenar leads the music direction, with George Sison-Tagle and Paul Dizon supervising the overall direction of the concert.
CFDC member organizations include Rotary International, Lions Club International, Kiwanis International, Junior Chamber International, The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the Philippines, The Fraternal Order of Eagles - Philippine Eagles, Knights of Columbus, Knights of Rizal, Save the Children Philippines, World Vision Philippines, Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and Professionals, Philippine League of Government and Private Midwives, Crusade Against Violence, and others.
In tandem with government, the CFDC was formed to confront a serious problem troubling the Philippines: malnutrition during a child's First One Thousand Days of Life – a very critical period when the impact of poor nutrition can be profound, long-lasting, even irreversible.
The Greatest Love of All is not merely an entertainment spectacle but a collaborative initiative to generate funds for the nutrition program of NGOs in the villages.
For details, contact John Gacutan at 09620668526 or +632 85270011 extension 1006.
Here Be A Dragon
by Maureen Buja, Interlude
Daniel Brenna (Siegfried) from Finnish National Opera © Ralph Larmann
Siegfried arrives at Fafner’s cave where Woton the Wanderer, who wants to see the battle, and Alberich, who originally stole the gold that made the ring from Rhinemaidens but lost it all to Wotan, are also waiting.
With his horn call, Siegfried has awoken Fafner, who soon emerges.
He’s defeated by Siegfried and in his last moments, warns Siegfried about the fatal qualities of the ring.
As Siegfried withdraws his sword, he’s splashed with Fafner’s hot blood and burns himself. He sucks his burn and, in taking in Fafner’s blood, can understand the bird he couldn’t understand earlier. He’d seen Fafner’s ring without interest before but now, on the advice of the bird, keeps the ring.
Mime appears with his congratulatory drink, which Siegfried, now with the dragon’s blood advantage, realizes his danger and kills Mime.
© South China Morning Post
And so the dragon is defeated, his enemies are disposed of, and the naïve Siegfried learns about a new trial he can try: the bird has told him about a woman sleeping on a rock surrounded by magic fire! Off to discover if he can complete his hero’s education by learning fear from this woman, Siegfried sets off again on his next adventure.
And so we look at Chinese New Year 2024: the Year of the Wood Dragon. The dragon symbolizes power, nobleness, honour, luck, and success. Wood brings vitality and creativity. This is the year for people who want to change the world. The year for perfectionists who are goal-oriented. It’s been 60 years since our last Wood Dragon year, so look around carefully for the last set of goal-oriented perfectionists born as Wood Dragons. They include Boris Johnson and Keanu Reeves, actress Sandra Bullock and vice-president Kamala Harris, musicians Robert Trujillo of Metallica and Eddie Vedder of Peal Jam – it should make for an interesting year!
The Ultimate Vivaldi Quiz
The Ultimate Vivaldi Quiz
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi: an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music. You may know his most famous work, but how much do you know about his life, family and death?
Thursday, February 1, 2024
Vaughan Williams: 15 facts about the great composer
Best known for The Lark Ascending, Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote nine symphonies, operas, film scores and was an avid collector of English folk songs.
1. The young Ralph Vaughan Williams
Born in the village of Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, Ralph Vaughan Williams was related to Charles Darwin (Ralph's great-uncle) and the ceramics giant Josiah Wedgwood (his great-great-grandfather). Young Ralph studied piano and violin and collected traditional folk songs from an early age. These tunes went on to inspire many of his subsequent works.
2. At the Royal College of Music
Vaughan Williams studied at the Royal College of Music in London, pictured, alongside Gustav Holst and Leopold Stokowski. He also spent a short time continuing his studies in Berlin with Max Bruch.
3. A Pilgrim's Progress
The composer's father Arthur was ordained vicar of All Saints church in Down Ampney, pictured. Despite being agnostic, Vaughan Williams edited The English Hymnal in 1904, composed some stunning Christian choral music, and wrote an opera of The Pilgrim’s Progress.
4. Vaughan Williams - A committed socialist
The composer never took his privileged background for granted and worked all his life for democratic and egalitarian ideals. He viewed music as being part of everyone’s everyday life, rather than being the preserve of an elite.
5. Influenced by Ravel
In 1907-1908, Vaughan Wiliams studied orchestration in Paris with Ravel. It inspired one of his most fruitful periods of composition. 1910 saw the premieres of his A Sea Symphony and the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.
6. Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
The theme from Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, pictured, was discovered by Vaughan Williams when he was commissioned to put together the 1906 edition of the English Hymnal. His orchestration of it resulted in an unmistakably British sound and has remained one of his most popular pieces.
7. The Lark Ascending
Vaughan Williams’ most popular piece, The Lark Ascending, was written in 1914 but the outbreak of World War I meant he had to put its premiere on hold. It was given in 1921 by the violinist Marie Hall – the woman for whom Vaughan Williams had written it.
8. Vaughan Williams at war
Aged 41 when World War I began, Vaughan Williams served in France and Salonika. Prolonged exposure to gunfire began a process of hearing loss that eventually caused severe deafness in his old age.
9. English Folk Songs Suite
Vaughan Williams was rather sentimental about military bands which he recognized as being crucially important to the UK’s cultural and community life. So in 1923 he composed English Folk Songs Suite for them.
10. A renaissance in old age
The composer conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the premiere of his Symphony No.5, dedicated to Sibelius, on 24 June 1943. It offered calming relief from the rigors of London life during the Second World War. As he was already 70, many considered the symphony to be his swan song but Vaughan Williams entered another period of experimental compositions.
11. Fantasia on Greensleeves
The four-minute long Fantasia on Greensleeves appeared originally in Vaughan Williams's 1928 opera Sir John in Love. The piece also incorporates a folk song called ‘Lovely Joan’ which Vaughan Williams came across in Sussex.
12. Serenade to Music
Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra was composed in 1938. The text is adapted from a discussion about music and the music of the spheres in Act V of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, pictured.
13. Ursula and Ralph Vaughan Williams
Vaughan Williams was married first to Adeline Fisher. After her death in 1951, he married poet Ursula Wood, pictured, who worked on the libretti for his choral work The Sons of Light as well as the opera The Pilgrim's Process and a Christmas cantata, Hodie.
14. Final days
Vaughan Williams was still composing great music into his 80s. At the age of 85, he was set to supervise the first recording of his Ninth Symphony with Sir Adrian Boult conducting. But his death on 26 August 1958, the night before the recording sessions were to begin, prompted the conductor to announce to the musicians that their performance would be a memorial to the composer.
15. Ralph Vaughan Williams' popularity increases
Since Classic FM began broadcasting in 1992, the popularity of Vaughan Williams has grown steadily each year with The Lark Ascending often topping the annual Hall of Fame poll from 2007 onwards.
John Wilson conducts "The King and I" Overture
The superb John Wilson Orchestra, under its highly versatile founder-conductor, is seen here in their 'Rodgers & Hammerstein' Prom concert from 2010. This Overture was just one of the many fabulous musical items that delighted the 5000-strong audience on that splendidly memorable evening in London's Royal Albert Hall.
Richard Rodgers - his music and his life
Richard Rodgers' contributions to the musical theatre of his day were extraordinary, and his influence on the musical theatre of today and tomorrow is legendary. His career spanned more than six decades, and his hits ranged from the silver screens of Hollywood to the bright lights of Broadway, London and beyond. He was the recipient of countless awards, including Pulitzers, Tonys, Oscars, Grammys and Emmys. He wrote more than 900 published songs, and forty Broadway musicals.
Richard Charles Rodgers was born in New York City on June 28, 1902. His earliest professional credits, beginning in 1920, included a series of musicals for Broadway, London and Hollywood written exclusively with lyricist Lorenz Hart. In the first decade of their collaboration, Rodgers & Hart averaged two new shows every season, beginning with Poor Little Ritz Girl, and also including The Garrick Gaities (of 1925 and 1926), Dearest Enemy, Peggy-Ann, A Connecticut Yankee and Chee-Chee. After spending the years 1931 to 1935 in Hollywood (where they wrote the scores for several feature films including Love Me Tonight starring Maurice Chevalier, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum starring Al Jolson and The Phantom President starring George M. Cohan), they returned to New York to compose the score for Billy Rose's circus extravaganza, JUMBO.
A golden period followed -- golden for Rodgers & Hart, and golden for the American musical: On Your Toes (1936), Babes In Arms (1937), I'd Rather Be Right (1937), I Married An Angel (1938), The Boys From Syracuse (1938), Too Many Girls (1939), Higher And Higher (1940), Pal Joey (1940), and By Jupiter (1942). The Rodgers & Hart partnership came to an end with the death of Lorenz Hart in 1943, at the age of 48.
Earlier that year Rodgers had joined forces with lyricist and author Oscar Hammerstein II, whose work in the field of operetta throughout the '20s and '30s had been as innovative as Rodgers' own accomplishments in the field of musical comedy. OKLAHOMA! (1943), the first Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, was also the first of a new genre, the musical play, representing a unique fusion of Rodgers' musical comedy and Hammerstein's operetta. A milestone in the development of the American musical, it also marked the beginning of the most successful partnership in Broadway musical history, and was followed by Carousel (1945), Allegro (1947), South Pacific (1949), The King And I (1951), Me And Juliet (1953), Pipe Dream (1955), Flower Drum Song (1958) and The Sound of Music (1959). The team wrote one movie musical, State Fair (1945), and one for television, Cinderella. (1957). Collectively, the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals earned 35 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, two Grammy Awards and 2 Emmy Awards. In 1998 Rodgers & Hammerstein were cited by Time Magazine and CBS News as among the 20 most influential artists of the 20th century and in 1999 they were jointly commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp.
Despite Hammerstein's death in 1960, Rodgers continued to write for the Broadway stage. His first solo entry, NO STRINGS in 1962, earned him two Tony Awards for music and lyrics, and was followed by Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim), Two by Two (1970, lyrics by Martin Charnin), REX (1976, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick) and I Remember Mama (1979, lyrics by Martin Charnin and Raymond Jessel).
No Strings was not the only project for which Rodgers worked solo: as composer/lyricist he wrote the score for a 1967 television adaptation of Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion for NBC; contributed songs to a 1962 remake of State Fair; and to the 1965 movie version of The Sound of Music. He composed one ballet score (Ghost Town, premiered in 1939), and two television documentary scores -- Victory at Sea in 1952 and The Valient Years in 1960 (the former earning him an Emmy, a Gold Record and a commendation from the U.S. Navy.)
Richard Rodgers died at home in New York City on December 30, 1979 at the age of 77. On March 27, 1990, he was honored posthumously with Broadway's highest accolade when the 46th Street Theatre, owned and operated by the Nederlander Organization, was renamed The Richard Rodgers Theatre, home to The Richard Rodgers Gallery, a permanent exhibit in the lobby areas presented by ASCAP which honors the composer's life and works.
Blue Moon - composed by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart (1934)
Blue Moon - composed by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart (1934). Performed by Evening Navigator. Video by Evening Navigator.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Anne-Sophie Mutter, Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma – Beethoven: Triple Concert
Three classical music giants, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yo-Yo Ma and Daniel Barenboim celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth by recording the Triple Concerto. Pairing the Concerto with the Seventh Symphony, the album also marks the 20th birthday of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.
The Triple Concerto has a special place in Beethoven’s oeuvre, revealing his revolutionary spirit and ingrained humour both in its sophisticated architecture and in its musical idiom. Ever inventive, creative and original, here Beethoven stages a lavish musical feast over-flowing with melody, a feast. Yo-Yo Ma puts it in these words: “For me, in the Triple Concerto, it’s the constant invention that always takes me by surprise. You know what I love about the piece? It’s so celebratory, so positive.” Performed by three of today’s most renowned classical artists and Beethoven interpreters – Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yo-Yo Ma and Daniel Barenboim and accompanied by the acclaimed West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. Watch them perform Beethoven's Triple Concerto in C Major, Op. 56, No.2 Largo – Attacca, Live at Philharmonie, Berlin (2019).
Anne-Sophie Mutter, Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma – Beethoven: Triple Concerto C Major, Op. 56, No. 2
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Overture to "Iphigenie in Aulis" by Christoph Willibald Gluck
Overture to "Iphigenie in Aulis" by Christoph Willibald Gluck, performed by the DeKalb Symphony Orchestra June 20, 2017.
Beethoven - Romance for Violin and Orchestra No. 2 in F major, Op. 50
From the Church of St. Nicolai, Leipzig, Germany
20 Years Peaceful Revolution - Leipzig commemorates the 9th of October 1989
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Soloist: Renaud Capuçon
Conductor: Kurt Masur
Ludwig van Beethoven - Violin Romance No. 2 in F Major, Op. 50
Watch the full concert here: 
• Kurt Masur and the Gewandhausorcheste...
On 9 October 1989, 70,000 people staged a non-violent demonstration calling for more freedom and democracy in the GDR. Thanks to the claim “Peaceful Revolution”, initiated by Kurt Masur as one of six prominent citizens of Leipzig, everything proceeded peacefully. That evening, the Gewandhausorchester played under his baton Brahms’ Second Symphony at the St. Nicolas Church. The following regular "Monday Demonstrations", which came to be described as the “Peaceful Revolution”, became a major milestone on the way to open the Berlin Wall one month later on November the 9th in 1989 and paving the foundations for the reunification of the two German states.
Exactly 20 years later, the Gewandhausorchester and Kurt Masur commemorate the beginning of the German reunification by presenting the same symphony at the same location.
• Kurt Masur and the Gewandhausorcheste...
On 9 October 1989, 70,000 people staged a non-violent demonstration calling for more freedom and democracy in the GDR. Thanks to the claim “Peaceful Revolution”, initiated by Kurt Masur as one of six prominent citizens of Leipzig, everything proceeded peacefully. That evening, the Gewandhausorchester played under his baton Brahms’ Second Symphony at the St. Nicolas Church. The following regular "Monday Demonstrations", which came to be described as the “Peaceful Revolution”, became a major milestone on the way to open the Berlin Wall one month later on November the 9th in 1989 and paving the foundations for the reunification of the two German states.
Exactly 20 years later, the Gewandhausorchester and Kurt Masur commemorate the beginning of the German reunification by presenting the same symphony at the same location.
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