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☆ The Team Effort Behind One of Classical Music’s Greatest Hits
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-29 | by ( Hugh Morris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 1916, the composer Gustav Holst took a young conductor, Adrian Boult, on a long walk through Kew Gardens and Richmond Park in London. A few years earlier, Boult had written to Holst asking whether he had composed any music for small orchestra that he could perform. Few were better equipped than they were to introduce Boult to the score; as rehearsal pianists, amanuenses, copyists and performers, the two would be intimately involved in the creation of “The Planets,” one of the most popular orchestral pieces of the 20th century. Documents from Lasker’s archive at the Royal College of Music in London show that this way of introducing “The Planets” to other artists wasn’t so unusual in its genesis. In an introduction to the piece given by Lasker on BBC radio in 1951, she said, “We had the great joy of introducing the work to all the great conductors in this country, and, after the war, to many of the great continental conductors.”

Persons: Gustav Holst, Adrian Boult, Boult, Holst, ” Holst, Vally Lasker, Nora Day, amanuenses, Lasker, “, ” Organizations: Kew, Richmond Park, Royal College of Music, BBC Locations: Kew Gardens, Richmond, London

☆ Two Pianists Make a Life Out of an Intimate Art Form
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-10 | by ( Hugh Morris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It looked like some kind of grand music exam. The pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy sat down at their instruments onstage at Wigmore Hall and began to play for an audience of two. It was June 2020, and Kolesnikov and Tsoy were, like virtually every other musician at that time, playing a livestreamed concert. (He could be heard frantically recapping the piece as he walked down the street. The pandemic forced Kolesnikov, 34, and Tsoy, 35, to recalibrate.

Persons: Pavel Kolesnikov, Samson Tsoy, Kolesnikov, —, “, ” Organizations: Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall Locations: London, Copenhagen, —, recalibrate

☆ In ‘Last Days,’ Strange Sounds of Simultaneous Joy and Sadness
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-05 | by ( Hugh Morris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Like, ‘Oh, are you being serious or are you not?’ No; I am deadly serious when I’m doing these things. I’m just chasing this strange feeling.”Leith’s way of talking about music is a lot like his actual music: blurry and discursive, but also precisely evocative. That strange feeling he’s chasing, for example, is one he compared to being at a wake, where “outward joy and outward sadness” are possible at the same time. Take his opera “Last Days,” which receives its U.S. premiere on Feb. 6 in Los Angeles as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella series. It is adapted from Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film of the same name, which fictionalizes the final days of Kurt Cobain.

Persons: Oliver Leith ., Leith, ” Leith, “, I’m, Gus Van Sant’s, Kurt Cobain Organizations: Los Angeles Locations: Los Angeles

☆ Wolverines receive protections as threatened species
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Rachel Ramirez | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

CNN —The North American wolverine has officially been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and will receive long-anticipated federal protections, US officials announced Wednesday, as the climate crisis melts away their snowy mountain habitats. “Based on the best available science, this listing determination will help to stem the long-term impact and enhance the viability of wolverines in the contiguous United States.”Adding wolverines to the list triggers legal protections for the threatened species under various environmental laws, preventing the population from further declining. The last time the species had been sighted in the region was between 2008 and 2018, according to scientists, though they have already been listed as threatened species under California’s Endangered Species Act. Conservationists and scientists have been calling for federal protections for years now, with some environmental groups like the Center for Biological Diversity even taking legal action. Despite the new science and growing calls for federal protections, initial proposals to protect the species were rejected in 2020 under former President Donald Trump.

Persons: wolverine, ”, Hugh Morrison, Donald Trump, Biden, “ I’m, ” Andrea Zaccardi, they’re Organizations: CNN, wolverines, Wildlife Service Pacific Regional, ”, Yosemite National, Forest, Federal, Center for Biological, and Wildlife Service, Center for Biological Diversity, Fish and Wildlife Service Locations: United States, North America, Rocky, Alaska, Canada, Sierra Nevada, Yosemite, Inyo

☆ For Joan Armatrading, Classical Music Is Just Another Genre
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-12 | by ( Hugh Morris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

ARMATRADING WAS BORN on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts in 1950, and moved to Birmingham, England, at age 7. I didn’t really ask anybody’s opinion, which is how I am still.”Some of Armatrading’s earliest experiences with classical music came through movies. “If you have 18 strings or something, and they’re doing that thing, you’re gonna cry,” she said. Armatrading is adamant that, in her Symphony, she just wanted to sound “like Joan,” but she’s also happy for listeners to bring their own associations. This symphony is by no means the first case of a pop artist to engage in classical composition.

Persons: ARMATRADING, “, ”, It’s, Rachmaninoff, Purcell, Tchaikovsky, Armatrading, Joan, she’s, Vaughan Williams, Paul McCartney’s, ” — Organizations: Decca Locations: St, Kitts, Birmingham, England

☆ The Conductor John Wilson Doesn’t Like Musical Distinctions
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-03 | by ( Hugh Morris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

There’s an affability between Wilson and the players, many of whom he’s had relationships with for two decades. (“I feel very much as if I’m one of them,” he said in an interview later.) “We want to be in that very demanding, high-achieving environment, where most of us, 90 percent of the time, feel like we’re impostors. Wilson aims “for a different kind of homogeneity,” Mills said. “There’s plenty of sizzling vibrato,” said Charlie Lovell-Jones, another leader of the orchestra, making “a sound you can chew.”

Persons: There’s, Wilson, he’s, ”, tersely, ” Wilson, William Walton’s, “ John, John Mills, “, ” Mills, Mills, Charlie Lovell, Jones Organizations: Sinfonia, London

☆ William Byrd: An Essential English Composer for Four Centuries
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-04 | by ( Hugh Morris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

It was not a conventional chapel, Johnstone noted, but a semiautonomous corporation of musicians in service of the monarch. The Chapel Royal also brought Byrd into contact with its then-organist, Thomas Tallis, who became his teacher and mentor and later a collaborator. After studying with Tallis, in 1563, Byrd left to take up the post of organist and master of the choristers at Lincoln Cathedral. But the cathedral’s governing chapter disapproved of Byrd’s organ playing and suspended his salary was suspended in 1569. And support for Byrd’s burgeoning career came from both England’s extant Catholic establishment and the queen herself.

Persons: Johnstone, Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Tallis, Lincoln “, ” Johnstone, ” Phillips, “, wasn’t, Queen Elizabeth I, John Dowland, John Bull, Richard Dering, Byrd didn’t, ”, Elizabeth Organizations: Royal, Lincoln Cathedral, Catholic, Chapel Royal Locations: Lincoln

☆ An Opera Partnership’s Next Step: A Fable About Happiness
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-03 | by ( Hugh Morris | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In one scene of George Benjamin’s new opera “Picture a Day Like This,” which premieres on Wednesday at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France, a composer and her assistant cut off an interviewer midsentence. The composer asks whether there’s space in her schedule to speak; “five minutes,” the assistant replies. If the premiere of “Picture a Day Like This,” written with the playwright Martin Crimp, is highly anticipated, that is because anticipation has long accompanied new works by Benjamin, 63. Earlier stage works with Crimp, “Written on Skin” (2012) and “Lessons in Love and Violence” (2018), have quickly entered the repertory of major European opera houses. But it is their first opera, the one-act “Into the Little Hill,” from 2006, that most resembles “Picture a Day Like This,” in its size, duration and subject matter.

Persons: George Benjamin’s, midsentence, Benjamin, Martin Crimp, Crimp Organizations: West London Locations: Aix, Provence, France, ”

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