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Paco Yáñez escribió:Desconocía ese lanzamiento de Parra... Gracias por el chivatazo; muy interesantes sus discos de Kairos...

Paco, aquí te dejo este interesante vídeo que conseguí en YouTube en el cual el compositor habla en particular sobre su Caressant l'Horizon.

Con permiso, os traigo aquí el enlace de una entrevista con Cristobal Halffter que he publicado en mi blog. Creo que dice algunas cosas interesantes, más allá de que se esté o no de acuerdo con él....

http://www.chorrodeluz.net/2012/07/cristobal-halffter-no-existe-musica-sin.html

Gracias por el enlace, Ismael! Siempre es interesante leer a Halffter; yo intenté entrevistarlo en una ocasión, pero mo hubo suerte... Lo de Stockhausen es curioso; ¿llegaste a conocerlo?, ¿cómo lo recuerdas?

Paco Yáñez escribió:Gracias por el enlace, Ismael! Siempre es interesante leer a Halffter; yo intenté entrevistarlo en una ocasión, pero mo hubo suerte... Lo de Stockhausen es curioso; ¿llegaste a conocerlo?, ¿cómo lo recuerdas?

Sí, ¡muy intersante entrevista, Oclock! Gracias...

A ver si puedo hacer coincidir un viaje a Hamburgo con el estreno de Schachnovelle en Kiel...por tonto, no lo hice cuando estrenaron Lázaro

Saludos,

Tom Service de The Guardian de Londres está publicando una divulgativa serie semanal de artículos sobre grandes compositoers contemporáneos. El link con el índice es el siguiente: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/series/a-guide-to-contemporary-classical-music . Esta semana, Pierre Boulez ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/tomserviceblog/2012/jul/16/pierre-boulez-contemporary-music-guide ).

El resumen de la serie es:

A guide to Pierre Boulez's music
16 Jul 2012:
If you want one piece to convince you that the highest achievements of contemporary music are the opposite of desiccated, solipsistic experimentalism, listen to Boulez's Notations, writes Tom Service

A guide to Kaija Saariaho's music
9 Jul 2012:
Tom Service: Each week during the Proms season our contemporary music guide will feature a composer whose music is being played at London's Royal Albert Hall. We begin with Kaija Saariaho, whose Laterna Magica receives its British premiere on 17 July

A guide to Richard Rodney Bennett's music
2 Jul 2012:
This week, Tom Service looks at a man who composes and performs across a range of musical genres and yet has found an unmistakable and personal voice

A guide to Bernd Alois Zimmermann's music
26 Jun 2012:
His work required orchestra and conductor to perform star-jumps while shouting out the darkest parts of the Bible and Dostoevsky, and it converted Tom Service to contemporary classical music

A guide to Arvo Pärt's music
18 Jun 2012:
This week, Tom Service looks at a deeply spiritual composer who found his own musical language with a love of every note at its heart

A guide to Helmut Lachenmann's music
12 Jun 2012:
Tom Service: Ever wondered what a beetle on its back sounds like? Even if you hadn't, open your ears to the virtuosity of Lachenmann's music

A guide to Oliver Knussen's music
4 Jun 2012:
Oliver Knussen's music packs as much incident and expression into mere minutes than some composers manage in a lifetime

A guide to Judith Weir's music
28 May 2012:
Lightness, wisdom and imagination. Welcome to the rich musical world of Judith Weir, writes Tom Service in No 5 of our contemporary composers guide

A guide to John Zorn's music
21 May 2012:
Anything and everything goes in Zorn's constantly evolving musical world: his pieces are a vision of what happens when postmodern practices become something much more meaningful

A guide to Harrison Birtwistle's music
14 May 2012:
In the third of our new series, Tom Service writes about Harrison Birtwistle, whose elemental and powerful music feels both ancient and modern

A guide to Pauline Oliveros 's music
7 May 2012:
In the second of our new series, Tom Service writes about Pauline Oliveros, whose sonic explorations take on life, the universe and everything

A guide to Elliott Carter's music
30 Apr 2012:
In the first of our new series about contemporary music, Tom Service looks at Elliott Carter

The five myths about contemporary classical music
26 Apr 2012:
Contemporary classical music is devoid of melody and appeal, all noise and no fun. At least, that's the cliche. But this is music that is very much at the heart of our modern world

Welcome to our new contemporary music guide
23 Apr 2012:
Tom Service introduces his new series on contemporary classical music, and explains how we need your help

Saludos,

Mensaje eliminado (por estar duplicado)

Ritter escribió:En el hilo de "Artículos dedicados....", Psanquin preguntó si se sabía de conciertos de Pierre Boulez desde las cancelaciones de esta primavera. Ahí contesté que, hasta donde yo sabía, no había oído de ningún concierto, pero mencionaba que los eventos de Lucerna, y dos interesantes conciertos en la Salle Pleyel, siguen anunciados. Pues aquí otro (monumental) concierto anunciado para los Proms de este verano:

jueves 26 julio
10.15pm – c. 11.30pm
Royal Albert Hall

Beethoven
Piano Quintet in E flat major (25 mins)
Pierre Boulez
Le marteau sans maître (35 mins)
Hilary Summers mezzo-soprano
West–Eastern Divan Orchestra (members)
Pierre Boulez conductor

!Malas noticias¡ Boulez canceló el concieto de los Proms que estaba anunciado para noche, en su lugar tomó la batuta François-Xavier Roth ... no he encontrado reseña alguna por el momento...

Sigue la mala racha

Mala pinta tiene lo de Boulez: quizás le haya llegado la jubilación forzosa...

Y lo de verle dirigir el 4 de noviembre en Oporto "Repons" cada vez me parece más improbable.

Crónica de los ensayos para Mittwoch aus Licht de Stockhausen, publicada en The Guardian, ante el inminente estreno mundial el próximo día 22:

The last unperformed Stockhausen opera lifts off

The strings play in helicopters, the trumpeter's on a trapeze, and a camel dances around while defecating planets. Alexis Petridis on Birmingham Opera Company's bid to stage a mind-boggling Stockhausen opera

Alexis Petridis guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 August 2012 19.00 BST

It's a Thursday afternoon and, outside the Argyle Works in Digbeth, it is raining very, very hard. Inside, the rain hammers against the former chemical plant's corrugated roof, the sound as inescapable as the strange, slightly acrid smell that still lingers, years after its former occupiers packed up and left.

But there are more pressing matters than the weather, not least getting a variety of musicians harnessed to chairs and hoisted up into the air using a system of pulleys, the better for them to rehearse Orchester-Finalisten, the second scene in Stockhausen's mid-90s opera Mittwoch aus Licht (Wednesday from Light). In just under a couple of weeks' time, Birmingham Opera Company will stage a world premiere of this six-hour opera; it is the only Stockhausen work never to have been performed in its entirety.

"It's a kind of dream, a rather charming one," explains Graham Vick, artistic director of the BOC. "They are all ego-driven, ambitious orchestral musicians, who want to join an orchestra in the sky. Each has a virtuoso solo, based on the characteristics of the instrument and the physical characteristics of the players. So the cellist has it written into the score that they have to toss their head in this real, intense sort of Jacqueline du Pré way, and the bass player has to have a fit and lie on his back with his double bass on top of him. They look down over various bits of the landscape and the events that happen. They look down on a cathedral, on a kindergarten, on some little goats playing, on Marrakech, on the plains of Africa – and the things they look down on get bigger and bigger in scale and space, so you're kind of getting higher and wider."

Those unfamiliar with the latterday operatic work of Karlheinz Stockhausen should note that this is one of the more easily explained scenes in Mittwoch aus Licht. Nevertheless, it is still a deeply odd experience watching a cellist being dangled from the ceiling of a vast, crumbling concrete hall, instrument and all. For me, as a rock critic, this is lent a faint tang of familiarity by the fact that getting him airborne requires a couple of roadies. Opera roadies, it turns out, look exactly the same as their rock counterparts the world over: burly men in big shorts with tattoos and heavy-metal T-shirts. And when the music gets underway, the soloists augmented by an octophonic recording of electronics and sound effects controlled by the late composer's muse and collaborator Kathinka Pasveer, these roadies wear the same inscrutable expressions as the roadies I once saw working with the Backstreet Boys: never letting it show they'd rather be listening to Opeth or Impaled Nazarene.

The musicians, too, seem to be bearing it all with good grace. I say as much to Vick, who is watching proceedings, as he expects at least some of the audience to, recumbent on the floor. He nods, then reconsiders. "I don't think Bruce on the trumpet's very happy about it," he says. He has a point: swaying gently a few feet from the ground, Bruce on the trumpet is wearing the kind of rictus grin that conveys abject terror.

But if he is terrified, he seems to be alone. Everybody else behaves as if flying musicians around a former chemical works is the acme of normality, which I suppose for them it now is. The rehearsal period – 12 hours a day, seven days a week – seems to have immunised them to the sheer strangeness of the work. Walking through another part of the Argyle Works, I spot a man making repairs to a giant camel costume. I mention this to Jean Nicholson, the company's general manager. "Ah yes," she nods, "Lucicamel. It's elected President of the Universe in scene four, and it shits planets and does a dance."

Vick and the Birmingham Opera Company have form when it comes to experimentation, staging Beethoven's Fidelio in a rave tent pitched next to Aston Villa's ground in 2002 (the audience were required to wear black bags over their heads during part of the second act); Monteverdi in the Bull Ring shopping centre in 2005; and La Traviata at the 12,000-capacity National Indoor Arena in 2007, with a cast featuring 300 local volunteers.

But this is an experiment on a different scale altogether. Stockhausen's score is both incredibly detailed and contradictory, Vick says. "There are lots of physical instructions, but you can't do half the stuff that's asked for when the musicians are flying. I think he wanted it to be staged, but I don't think he ever bothered rethinking all the practicalities." Arguably, scene three will be more difficult than scene two: the Helikopter-Streich-quartet, which requires a string quartet to perform mid-air in four helicopters, playing a synchronised, polyphonic composition in which the sounds of the instruments meld with the sounds of the rotor blades, while the audience inside the Argyle Works watch live on video screens.

Vick is quick to point out that scene four – the Michaelon – is no picnic, either. The only difficulties with the helicopter quartet, he says, are "logistical and financial"; the problems with the Michaelon are all artistic. The music here is so demanding that it has never been recorded. The Birmingham Opera Company has had to fly in "absolute Stockhausen specialists, people who worked with him before he died" to perform it, Vick says; if that seems extravagant, it is cheaper than paying other musicians to learn it, because learning it would take so long. And even with these specialists, he has had a gruelling morning trying to make sense of the music.

"A lot of the work is happening now, because it's only becoming concrete to me now. It was a mess yesterday – I couldn't hear it at all. You try slowing it down and separating it out and then suddenly you hear, and you think: that's what the idea is. I trust my own instinct, is what I do. I know when I recognise that it is what it should be, but I don't always know how to get there." He smiles. "Which is nice. It's very exciting."

It has to be said that Vick doesn't have the air of a man days away from the world premiere of a piece that many people think is unstageable. If he has concerns, these seem to have been smothered by sheer enthusiasm for what he calls "an irresistible opportunity to do something incredibly difficult", which is infectious and inspiring.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Radio 1 DJ Nihal Arthanayake has been cast in the role that Stockhausen intended for himself: interviewing the participants – players and pilots alike – after the Helikopter-Streichquartet, and hosting an audience question-and-answer session. "There's no context as to why they would have approached me," Arthanayake says. "I mean, I've seen an opera before, but I'll tell you how shandy an opera that was: it had Dawn French in it. To be honest, I didn't stop to ask them why, just in case they thought, 'Oh, we've got the wrong fella.' I thought, 'Oh God, it's gonna be one of those things where you're DJing dubstep and a big woman comes out and starts singing over the top of it' – but then Graham started talking about string quartets and helicopters. I don't think I've ever been in a meeting for an hour and half and been so dazzled and confused and inspired. Any new experience for me, I'm in. But it's only just hit me how big a deal it is. It's globally significant." He laughs. "And I'm doing it the same week I'm guest-presenting The Wright Stuff on Channel 5."

He might be even more bemused if he heard what Vick had to say about him. "Nihal is my ideal audience in many ways for this event. Someone who's got nothing to do with this musical culture, but with an open attitude, an open mind, who's going to come and engage non-cynically." There are people flying in for the premiere on Stockhausen's birthday, and 81 people are coming to see all four performances, he says: the Stockhausen equivalent of the kind of fan who takes all their holiday allowance at once in order to follow a band on tour. "They're the hardliners – they'll know far more about it than I will." But he is even more interested in what local people will make of it: "I want a lot of people in Birmingham to find it exciting."

On the face of it, Mittwoch aus Licht seems a big ask of an audience not attuned to Stockhausen. Not really attuned to Stockhausen myself, I watch a rehearsal of Orchester-Finalisten from a suitably prone position, and am surprised by how engaging it is. For all the complexity of the music – and there are moments when, if it were any more challenging, it would be poking you in the chest and offering you outside for a fight – it carries you along with it, even if you have no idea what's going on; this is a rather pleasurable sensation. There is also something utterly charming about the way the musicians perform, something overwhelming about the sheer scale of the spectacle, and something beguiling about the sense of being enveloped by sound in such a vast space.

"There are no rights and wrongs and absolutes," says Vick. "You take away the experience you have and you value it, or not, as much as you do. It's up to you whether it was good or not, it's not up to the person next to you. It's up to you whether you make a phone call or not. We don't make any announcements about switching phones off. We don't forbid the taking of photographs. You know, if our performance isn't good enough to survive a few camera clicks, then it can't be that good a show. And besides, what are they doing with the photographs afterwards? They're putting them on Facebook or Twitter, they're showing them to their friends. And a whole load of people are talking about a Stockhausen opera. Well," he smiles, "that can't be a bad thing." And he heads off, to help push the trombonist across the hall.

• Mittwoch aus Licht, part of the London 2012 Festival, is at Argyle Works, Birmingham, 22-25 August. Details: birminghamopera.org.uk. Performances are now sold out, but the Helikopter-Streichquartet will be live streamed on 22 August on guardian.co.uk/culture, in partnership with The Space

Aquí el enlace: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/08/stockhausen-mittwoch-aus-licht-birmingham#start-of-comments

Saludos,

Recién llegado de Birmingham, dejo aquí mi particular crónica del estreno de "MITTWOCH aus LICHT". He disfrutado como un cosaco pese a todos los 'peses'. En 2013, "SAMSTAG" en Munich. No quiero pecar de exagerado, pero vamos a ritmo de un capítulo de la heptalogía por año (en 2011 fue "SONNTAG" en Colonia)... ojalá continúe la racha y ojalá Mortier se estirarse con alguna entreguita.

http://www.chorrodeluz.net/2012/08/karlheinz-stockhausen-mittwoch-aus.html

Vaya, Ismael, felicidades por esa crónica-ensayo tan completa e informada sobre el estreno; leerla es casi como haber estado allí (ah, y gracias por la cita).

Un placer leerte y ver que mantienes semejante altura e integridad, así como el látigo presto contra la vulgaridad tan execrable que nos rodea, que con sus corifeas berrea para intentar desacreditar la música con un valor realmente trascendente...

Le has pasado a Kathinka Pasveer esta reseña? Si no, se la enviaré gustoso; no creo que haya nada en castellano más sustancioso.

Una pena, la ausencia del Arditti, algo incomprensible...

Qué envidia..., abrazos!

Paco Yáñez escribió: Le has pasado a Kathinka Pasveer esta reseña? Si no, se la enviaré gustoso; no creo que haya nada en castellano más sustancioso.

No se la he pasado, Paco. Procede como gustes. Lo del Arditti fue una lástima, pero los Elyssian cumplieron y siempre es bueno ver cómo estas músicas pasan a nuevas generaciones de intérpretes que la abordan con idéntica pasión y entusiasmo.

Sin embargo, hoy es un día triste para la música, para la cultura en general. Nos ha dejado Emmanuel Nunes, un compositor cuya obra tengo en alta estima, un auténtico progresista del siglo XX.

http://www.publico.pt/Cultura/morreu-o-compositor-emmanuel-nunes-1561380

Morreu o compositor Emmanuel Nunes
O compositor Emmanuel Nunes morreu hoje, dois dias depois de ter completado 72 anos de idade.

No lo sabía... Pasé unas cuantas tardes charlando con él en Porto, siempre me pareció un compositor y un hombre de na dignidad fuera de serie... Qué pena, maldito 2012...

Os dejo una entrevista que le hoce hace cinco años... Llevaba tiempo pensando en hacetle otra; ya no podrá ser... El año pasado Ricordi publicó una interesante revista con él como monográfico...

http://www.mundoclasico.com/ed/documentos/doc-ver.aspx?id=2ce2a020-04c8-4b79-b2c9-f4dfc4e45c04

Qué pena...

Según me comentan desde Portugal, ha sido una fibrosis pulmonar fulminante...

Paco Yáñez escribió:Según me comentan desde Portugal, ha sido una fibrosis pulmonar fulminante...

:-( Llevo toda la tarde oyendo su música y maldiciendo la relativamente exigua discografía de Nunes. Y ojalá alguien se decida más pronto que tarde a programar su monumental "Quodlibet".

Os dejo mi obituario:

http://www.mundoclasico.com/ed/documentos/doc-ver.aspx?id=4c8ea947-cac4-47fa-94a9-1defd25bbefe

Por cierto, Ismael, le pasé a Pasveer tu artículo. Aunque no está muy puesta en castellano, se quedó impresionada con detallada y amplia que era... Felicidades!

Si bien Pierre Boulez está en Lucerna, y por lo que tengo entendido ha participado en los talleres de la Lucerne Festival Academy, canceló la dirección del concierto del viernes pasado (Sound and Fury de Manoury, el sobrebio Speakings de Harvey y Erwartung con Deborah Polaski) ... lo sustituyó el para mi desconocido Clement Power ...

Estoy escuchando el Macbeth de Sciarrino publicado por col legno... Impactante!

Paco Yáñez escribió:Estoy escuchando el Macbeth de Sciarrino publicado por col legno... Impactante!

A falta de escucharlo una tercera vez, ¿No te da cierta sensación de agotamiento de la fórmula? Quiero decir después de escuchar "Lucie mie traditrici", "Lohengrin", "Infinito nero"... Me gustó su "Macbeth" pero no me pareció encontrar nada sorprendente en él.

A mí eso me sucedió a medida que avanzaba la ópera... En sus primeros (digamos) 15 minutos lo que me sugería era el universo de Nono, del que me parecía muy directa seguidora esta propuesta. Después es como que volviese a esos lugares comunes sciarrinianos, sí.

Por lo que me ha contado el ingeniero de sonido que realizó la toma (del estudio español Phonoclassical), el juego de espacio en la sala difiere de los planteamientos de óperas previas como Luci mie traditrici; ahora el espacio, los ecos, son más música misma, como en propuestas de Verdú... En todo caso, Sciarrino está tan asentado en un lenguaje que todo es inmediatamente identificable como su voz, a veces casi como autorreferencialidad... Es un lujo alcanzar ese nivel, aunque puede llegar a ser una 'jaula de oro'...

Por lo demás, interpretación y grabación parecen magníficas...

Ismael, echa un ojo a las noticias en portada de la web de Stockhausen:

http://www.stockhausen.org/

Bravo por la proyección de vuestrro trabajo