The minute-long applause after the last bars of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony obviously does Daniel Barenboim good. The audience in the sold-out hall of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden stands and cheers. But it is not the frenetic joy of the gods, drunk with fraternization, as one often experiences after Schiller's gigantic choral finale of the Ninth. Because Barenboim's view of this work, which to this day struggles with its message and yet in truth remains a mystery, is too personal,...
You don't see it at first glance in the program sequence, but this concert by the Munich Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Nodoka Okisawa with violinist Arabella Steinbacher in the Prinzregententheater is a consistently conceived Beethoven evening. The composition played at the beginning "subito con forza" by the composer Unsuk Chin deals with Beethoven; and how much Brahms once toiled away at the sheer depressing model is handed down both to the symphonies and to the violin concerto op....
Of Helmut MauroOne of the advantages of such a comprehensive edition is tracking down rarities, discovering the unpublished, making comparisons. In the recordings of the pianist Walter Gieseking published by Warner Classics you will often find what you are looking for. Not only was he the fastest fingered player, the first to play Rachmaninoff's piano concertos after the composer, but he was also gifted with a lightning-fast comprehension. He could sight read just about anything, read sheet music on the...
Founded at the same time as the Quatuor Ébène, the four men of the Quatuor Modigliani play at an equally high, technically and musically exciting level. The four Frenchmen proved this again in the Prinzregententheater with a well-balanced Beethoven-Schubert programme. The concert began with the last, forward-looking quartet by the 29-year-old Beethoven from his opus 18 and was followed by the D-major quartet by the 14-year-old Schubert with his penultimate quartet and its wonderfully comforting variations on "Death and that...
Can Grigory Sokolov actually smile? You don't know, after all he doesn't do it, no matter how wild the audience in Salzburg's Great Festival Hall is. It is one of the many rituals surrounding the 72-year-old, for which he is loved just as much as for his piano playing. Like the darkness in the hall, the quick walk to the grand piano, the curt head waiter-like nod, yes, this entire evening: Sokolov's annual station at the Salzburg Festival with the...
goose fleshThe natural sciences like to research the background to even the smallest emotion. A study, which five cognitive and genetic researchers from European and British universities have just published, examined the causes of so-called "aesthetic shivers". The main question was whether goosebumps when listening to music is more a cultural imprint or a genetic predisposition.American researchers refer to the phenomenon with the French word "Frisson" because, in addition to the piloerection of the skin, it can also include tingling...
The world-renowned showpiece of the National Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona is a 900-year-old fresco of Jesus that once adorned the apse of the Romanesque church of Sant Climent in Taüll, located in what is still a difficult-to-reach Pyrenean valley. Jesus is shown as an energetic ruler of the world. Despite the stylization, the slender face appears lively, the eyes are wide awake, and the hair and beard are fashionably styled. It is the timeless image of a doer, a...
It is not easy to choose the music that made the difficult year 2021 easier. But if it has to be: .source site
Ludwig van Beethoven remains the sovereign in the quota kingship, even after the commemoration of the 250th birthday. The symphonies, the string quartets all tapped and questioned, now again the 32 entertainingly arousing ones Beethoven's piano sonatas gathered, played by the 1984 born in Moscow Boris Giltburgwho came to Israel with his family as a child. A kind of antipode to the ubiquitous Igor Levit, also of Russian descent, grew up in Hanover. An "opponent" stylistically, in terms of content,...
On April 13, 1992 around 3:30 in the morning, people in the Rhineland were awakened by an earthquake. With a magnitude of 6.0 on the Richter scale, the largest earthquake ever measured north of the Alps, caused considerable damage between Heinsberg and Cologne. The walls of the Bonn Minster, however, the earliest surviving parts of which were almost 1000 years old, seemed miraculously to have survived the tremors almost unaffected.Beethoven learned to play the organ in the MünsterBonn Minster is...
