Latest news with #SymphonyNo.2
Daily Record
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Scottish Chamber Orchestra bringing Rossini and Schubert to Airdrie Town Hall stage
Conducted by the dynamic Jakob Lehmann, the programme opens with 'Overture to The Barber of Seville' by Gioachino Rossini. Cracking classical music will fill the air with joy at Airdrie Town Hall next month. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) is bringing the note-perfect Rossini and Schubert to the stage on August 27. Conducted by the dynamic Jakob Lehmann, the programme opens with Overture to The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini, a masterpiece of bustling brilliance and comedic flair. The spotlight then turns to SCO's celebrated principal clarinet, Maximiliano Martin as he takes centre stage for Spohr's Clarinet Concerto No. 2 in E-flat, Op. 57 - a lyrical gem of the Romantic era full of passion and virtuosity. The concert concludes with Schubert's Symphony No. 2 in B-flat, a youthful and exuberant work brimming with lyrical beauty and rhythmic vitality - and an uplifting finale to a night of musical elegance. The concert is kindly supported by Eriadne & George Mackintosh, Claire & Anthony Tait, and The Jones Family Charitable Trust. It starts at 7.30pm and tickets are priced £20 for adults, £10 for people with disabilities, with their carer going free, £6 for under 26, unwaged and students, and no charge for under 18s (under 16s must be accompanied by an adult). *Don't miss the latest headlines from around Lanarkshire. Sign up to our newsletters here.
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Joe Hisaishi conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in a No. 17 Phillies jersey. Here's why
PHILADELPHIA -- Is Studio Ghibli's Joe Hisaishi a Max Kepler fan? You might have thought the Japanese composer and conductor was showing solidarity with the recently declared "unhappy" Phillies outfielder when he sprang onto the stage of Marian Anderson Hall for an encore Friday night. He was wearing a Phillies jersey with a "17" and "Hisaishi" on the back. But it turns out the jersey on the 74-year-old Hisaishi was a nod to a different MLB No. 17: Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani. Hisaishi was here conducting three concerts of his own music with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and he was backstage after Wednesday night's concert icing his conducting (right) shoulder when he mentioned to an orchestra manager that he would soon be leading concerts in a baseball stadium: the 42,000-plus-seat Tokyo Dome. So the orchestra decided to outfit him in Phillies gear with the number of his favorite player on back. These concerts marked Hisaishi's Philadelphia debut, and it was a grand slam, if a delayed one. He was originally scheduled to appear for two shows in January, but postponed because of illness. A third concert was added and the run nearly sold out. The program included his Symphony No. 2 and Viola Saga with orchestra principal violist Choong-Jin Chang as soloist. It was a knowing audience. These works were written for the concert hall rather than the composer's better known habitat on soundtracks to Hayao Miyazaki films like My Neighbor Totoro and Castle in the Sky. Still, filmic aspects in both works were abundant enough to suggest a familiar soundscape, and the audience was in Hisaishi's thrall. But the suite from Spirited Away - the 2001 film - was fully transporting. With Hisaishi shuttling back and forth from podium to piano, the performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra was surely among the most polished interpretations this music has ever received. And the most moving. Bruce Springsteen recently said that an album is "a record of who you are and where you were at that moment in your life." It might be impossible to know who Friday night's audience was or where they were in 2001. But for a few at least, the journey back sailed along a path of tears. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Sydney Morning Herald
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Sydney composer Mark Isaacs records second symphony
The piano remains central to Isaacs' craft. Credit: Louie Douvis When still a teenager, he studied composition with Vincent Plush and Kim Williams at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Williams (now chairman of the ABC) later commissioned Isaacs' first symphony. Loading But the piano remains essential to his craft. He writes his symphonies sitting at the keyboard, allowing ideas to come to him through improvisation. When a theme emerges he'll jot it down with pencil and paper, perhaps with a note about instrumentation. 'When I'm sketching I might put in 'woodwind flurries', or I know there will be a cor anglais solo – and I make a note at the piano and work out the details later,' he says. 'It's like drafting something and then going into finer detail.' He used to write his orchestral scores in longhand, working at a sloping architect's table. These days he works with music-notation software when he is filling out the orchestration. Symphony No. 2 is scored for strings and triple woodwind, brass, three percussionists and harp. It also includes a piano – not as a solo instrument, but as part of the orchestral texture – as well as celesta and harpsichord. Isaacs dedicated his first symphony to his father, Saul Isaacs, a research chemist and composer whose song In a Little Moment was recorded by Petula Clark. At the time Isaacs was writing the symphony, Saul had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. His father was able to attend the world premiere of his first symphony – given by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and conductor Benjamin Northey in 2013 – before he died. The piece impressed no less a figure than conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy, who suggested that Isaacs write his next symphony in a more upbeat mood. The second movement of Symphony No. 2 is an expansive adagietto. The third and final movement begins with an unusual expression marking, largo supplicando, suggesting supplication or prayer. Isaacs says he doesn't subscribe to a particular religion, but the musical direction is intended to evoke a 'sense of humility and devotion to what I would call Oneness, with a capital O'. Loading After this moment of reflection, the third movement launches into an exuberant finale, attended by emphatically affirmative chords and sweeping glissandos from the harp. Isaacs received an Australia Council (now Creative Australia) grant to write his second symphony. It was completed in 2017 and Isaacs spent the next seven years trying to find an orchestra to play it. To continue the literary analogy, it was like an author sending his novel to publishers and receiving only polite rejection slips. He is philosophical about this, but was determined that the music should at least be recorded, given the public investment in it. Recording the symphony in Prague cost $57,000, supported by $50,000 from Creative Australia. At the same sessions he recorded his suite of songs called Grace City, with Deborah Dicembre. Isaacs is not finished with the symphony. Indeed, he speaks of a possible cycle of symphonies – each instalment distinct but related to the whole, like a sequence of novels. 'I think the third should introduce a choral element, a choir or vocal soloists – or both,' he says. 'I've only just scratched the surface.' Mark Isaacs' Symphony No. 2 and Grace City are available on major music platforms. The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.
The Age
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
It's the Everest of music and Mark Isaacs has scaled it twice
If a piano sonata can be likened to an essay, and the string quartet to an intimate letter, then the symphony may be more akin to a novel. Sydney composer Mark Isaacs certainly thinks so, comparing the large-scale structure and myriad details of a symphony to the novels of two of his favourite writers, James Joyce and George Eliot. 'I like the long form of the symphony – not so much the length, but that it has chapters,' he says. 'That almost holographic aspect of it is something that deeply appeals to me.' Isaacs is the author of two symphonies for orchestra, plus a smaller-scale chamber symphony. Last month he released a recording of his Symphony No. 2 with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, which he conducted in Prague. The first movement begins with a flourish from the brass, and a sighing theme from the strings, before trumpets and a dramatic rhythm open a section reminiscent of classic Hollywood film scores. Isaacs has written a tonal three-movement symphony when that designation often is avoided by contemporary composers, even those who write for large orchestra. He observes that the symphony as a historic form was rejected in the modernist era in a way that the novel, for example, wasn't. 'The thing about modernism was, 'We're not going to write symphonies any more',' Isaacs says from his home in southern Sydney. 'I find it interesting that it didn't happen in the modernist literary movement – James Joyce wrote novels. But in music, the symphony was not a hip thing to do. I sort of embrace it – I write sonatas, I write symphonies. I like to take a generic form as a mould I can pour something into.' Isaacs, 66, has a profusion of curly grey hair and a full beard to match. For many years he was better known in jazz circles as an improvising pianist, but he says that, since age 12, he has wanted to write symphonies.
San Francisco Chronicle
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The finale after the finale: S.F. Symphony Chorus shines in Verdi's Requiem
Like a baseball game rescheduled after a rainout, there was one more concert on the San Francisco Symphony's season calendar after last week's grand finale with outgoing Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. The orchestra staged its makeup performance of Verdi's Requiem on Friday, June 20, a concert that was canceled during the Symphony Chorus' strike in September last year. James Gaffigan generously stepped in to conduct the work, which Salonen would have led in the fall. The program is slated to be repeated on Sunday, June 22, at Davies Symphony Hall. After its extraordinary contributions to Salonen's farewell performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the Chorus showed it was worth every penny of the anonymous $4 million gift made in the months following the strike. The singers came to the fore not just in the 90-minute Requiem, normally programmed by itself, but in a first part that included three choral pieces by Gordon Getty, himself a generous donor to the Symphony (and a co-founder of San Francisco Classical Voice). Getty's works are genial, melodic and accessible, and Gaffigan, a friend of the composer, led them deftly and with evident care. The Intermezzo from Getty's 2017 opera 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips' begins delicately, with spare lines in the marimba giving way to the harp, then acquiring a more definitive melodic profile in the strings. It's a meditative piece that finds an unexpected climax when the choristers interject a school hymn, almost as if overhead from afar. The Chorus also gave fine performances of 'Saint Christopher' (2024), which features effective writing for voices, and 'The Old Man in the Snow' (2020), a more substantial work in several sections that Getty skillfully sets apart with different instrumentation, including a trombone choir, keyboards and mallet percussion. If the performance of the piece as a whole lacked finesse, their contributions were nonetheless stellar. The singing was artful, from the opening 'Requiem aeternam,' with the sound humming in the air through the nasal consonants, to the explosive 'Dies irae' and the stentorian 'Rex tremendae.' The women made a luminous entrance in the 'Lacrimosa' at the line 'Huic ergo parce, Deus' (Therefore spare him, O Lord), and the whole chorus concluded with the fearful declamation and hortatory final fugue of the 'Libera me.' The singers encompassed the range of Verdi's writing in finely balanced sound that pulled emotion from every chord change. Gaffigan's conducting, however, emphasized drive and the titanic climaxes while shorting the Requiem's poetic side. Certainly, this is a public religious work, conceived as a memorial to Italian art — first to the composer Gioachino Rossini and then, when that initial plan fell through, to author Alessandro Manzoni. But it's not only theatrical. This interpretation was driven by inflexible tempos and a sameness to all of the climaxes and fortissimo outbursts that ultimately became wearing. Though the orchestra played well, earning deserved applause, the performance was missing a sense of transcendence and the overarching struggle of mourning and fear giving way to tranquility and acceptance. The soloists — soprano Rachel Willis-Sørenson, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton, tenor Mario Chang and bass Morris Robinson — were generally excellent. The notable exception was Chang's effortful 'Ingemisco' prayer, sung without any bloom in the tone and generally unresonant and unconvincing. The violins joined Willis-Sørenson in a moving 'Sed signifer sanctus Michael' (Let the standard-bearer holy Michael), the soprano singing sweetly in one of the score's many standout lyrical moments. If there had been more of those, this Requiem would have been even better.
