All Features articles – Page 20
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Premium ❘ FeatureStanding Strong: Shostakovich’s violin works
Fifty years ago David Oistrakh premiered Shostakovich’s Violin Sonata, written for the violinist’s 60th birthday. Only two further works by Shostakovich for solo violinist survive: the concertos, both for Oistrakh. Andrew Morris examines all three pieces, uncovering their interpretative challenges in conversation with Gidon Kremer, Julia Fischer and Vadim Gluzman
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Premium ❘ FeatureStradivari’s moulds: Variations on a theme
Twelve violin moulds from Antonio Stradivari’s workshop still survive, but how do they correspond to the master’s oeuvre? In the first of two articles,Philip Ihle and Andrea Zanrè present the results of an exhaustive survey to match forms to finished instruments
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Premium ❘ FeatureStradivari’s corners: Music of the spheres
The publication of high-accuracy violin photography has opened up new possibilities for researching Cremonese masterpieces up close and en masse. Philip Ihle examines Antonio Stradivari’s purfling corners across 136 examples and reveals their relationship with the luthier’s forms
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Premium ❘ FeatureShanghai Quartet: Musical Emissaries
The Shanghai Quartet celebrates its 35th anniversary during the 2018–19 season by performing eight complete Beethoven cycles around the world. The players speak to Charlotte Smith about forming at a time when Western chamber music was barely understood in their native China, and about promoting the art form to Chinese ...
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Premium ❘ Feature‘You have to give yourself over to this painful journey’
Complex, knotty, cryptic – the treacherous elements of Biber’s Rosary Sonatas are a rite of passage for Baroque violinists and their instruments alike. Rachel Podger, who joins a long list of early music specialists to record the work, talks to Philip Clark about how she and her violin survived the ...
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Premium ❘ FeatureExpanding the limits
Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili has recently taken on new challenges, among them artistic directorship of the Audi Summer Concerts festival and performing on the soundtrack to The White Crow. But, she tells Toby Deller, she finds equal joy in creating wonderful interpretations from long-term partnerships
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Premium ❘ FeatureSeeing red
Madder root has been used since ancient times to provide a deep red pigment – but the process of making it remains mysterious. For the past three years Hugh Withycombe and Guy Harrison have tested different methods to get the recipe just right – and can now reveal their findings
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Premium ❘ FeatureGrowing pains
Violinist and Ohio State University professor of music education Bob Gillespie has taught countless teenage string players. Here he explores adolescent character traits, and shares with teachers his valuable guide to dealing with adolescent moods and logic
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Premium ❘ FeatureOn the borders of greatness
Giuseppe Sgarbi’s instruments have a unique vibrancy and individuality, while still respecting the traditional Cremonese forms. Lorenzo Frignani examines his career, as well as that of his son Antonio, to suggest why his work deserves more recognition than it has in the past
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Premium ❘ FeatureThe Score: Friend or Foe?
The multiple editions of a piece can confuse a musician. Should we always work from an urtext edition in an attempt to access the composer’s most authentic voice? Or can edited versions with interpretative markings be helpful? Cellist Pedro de Alcantara guides us through this minefield
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Premium ❘ FeatureLights, Camera, Action
As the founder of Music in Vision, Kathleen Ross has built a business from supplying professional musicians for on-camera roles. Introducing instrumentalists to the world of film and TV can be challenging, but, she writes, ensuring that musicians in background parts are convincingly portrayed is well worth the effort
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Premium ❘ FeatureA Treasury of Sound
The Royal Danish Orchestra has been adding to its collection of fine stringed instruments for centuries – but there is revolution as well as evolution behind its distinctive string sound, which is unmistakable whatever the repertoire and whoever the conductor, finds Andrew Mellor
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Premium ❘ FeatureInto the Light
Why it took nearly a century for an important, beautiful concert piece for cello and piano from a 20th-century female composer to be published is incomprehensible. We can certainly blame contemporaneous sexist attitudes towards women, but was there also something more personal here?
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Premium ❘ FeatureLike Fathers, Like Sons
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Émile Auguste Ouchard, as well as the 40th of his son Bernard – both regarded as among the 20th century’s finest bow makers. Thomas Martin, Andrew McGill, Martin Lawrence and George Martin examine the legacy of the Ouchard dynasty, particularly ...
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Premium ❘ FeatureA Conductor’s Tale
Music director Manfred Honeck has brought a distinctly European flavour to the Pittsburgh Symphony. Gavin Dixon spoke to him at his summer festival in Wolfegg, Germany, as he prepared to embark on a tour of Europe with his Pittsburgh forces – and discovered how his time as a violist in ...
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Premium ❘ FeatureTurning Over a New Leaf
Since her professional debut almost 30 years ago, Sarah Chang has maintained a glittering solo performing and recording career. But, as she tells Charlotte Smith, her more recent desire to take on ‘passion projects’ has led to fulfilling chamber and contemporary collaborations
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Premium ❘ FeatureBright Young Things
The New York String Orchestra Seminar, one of America’s first orchestral training programmes for young musicians, celebrated its 50th anniversary in December 2018. Bruce Hodges attended rehearsals and concerts of the landmark season, and looks ahead to the ensemble’s December 2019 edition
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Premium ❘ FeatureFirst Class: European bow makers in America
Despite achieving a high level of quality, the American bow makers of the early 20th century have languished in obscurity – until now. Raphael Gold explores the lives of Frank Kovanda, Ernst Lohberg and Anders Halvarson, who all learnt their craft in the Chicago workshop of William Lewis & Son ...
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Premium ❘ FeatureDefining a Nation
For many classical enthusiasts Brazilian music can be summed up in the folk-inspired compositions of Villa-Lobos. Naxos’s multivolume series The Music of Brazil is set to broaden awareness, beginning with several 19th- and 20th-century composers whose string and orchestral works at once mirrored and defied their country’s colonial history, writes ...
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Premium ❘ FeatureViews on the Bridge
In the second of two articles on set-up, Joseph Curtin investigates the acoustical role of the violin bridge and the interconnected relationships between mass, frequency and resonance
