Tom Service on Schönberg’s anti-revolutionary qualities: “The
most radical thing about Schoenberg's Second String Quartet is precisely that
there isn't a big musical signpost declaring: 'No key signature ahead –
beware!'”
Read the full article on the Guardian.
Listen to an excerpt of the String Quartet No.2
Something strange
starts to happen when you listen to American composer Morton Feldman's long, long – and I mean long – late
chamber pieces. I'm talking about the 80-minute Piano and String Quartet, the four and a
half hours of For Philip Guston (which you can hear live at the
Huddersfield Contemporary Music festival on 21 November 2012) or the biggest of
them all, the five-hour Second String Quartet.
This is how Tom Service starts his latest blog entry, in which he writes about Morton Feldman, providing a nice introduction to the composer, his music and his contemporaries. The full article is available on The Guardian.
Tom Service
posted another interesting and informative guide on his blog, this time it’s
about Steve Reich and his music. We highly recommend it, you can read the full
article on The Guardian.
In the latest instalment of his Guide to Contemporary Classical Music in the Guardian, Tom Service presents the music of Richard Rodney Bennett.
The image shows the piano reduction of Bennett’s opera Mines of Sulphur.
See also the previous articles on Harrison Birtwistle and Arvo Pärt.
The London Sinfonietta presents a portrait of Harrison Birtwistle at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London tonight. David Atherton conducts.
On the programme are Cortege, Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum, 5 Distances for 5 Instruments and the the UK première of In Broken Images.
In the first half of the concert, Tom Service talks to Harrison Birtwistle about his music.
Watch Birtwistle in conversation with the Southbank Centre’s Gillian Moore.
Watch on YouTube.
“A sensual musical bath of sonorous reverberation and exotic resonance, music that shimmers and glints with a seductive play of instrumental timbres”
Tom Service on Pierre Boulez’ Sur Incises in today’s Guardian
In the same article, Gillian Moore, the Southbank Centre’s head of contemporary culture, asks if Boulez’ Pli selon Pli is “greatest orchestral work of the past 50 years”.
The Southbank Centre’s Exquisite Labyrinth: The Music of Pierre Boulez, takes place from Friday 30 Sept to Sunday 2 Oct.
Here’s Tom Service on the recent performance of Georg Friedrich Haas’ in vain at the Lucerne Festival.
“... an hour-long ensemble work that made a shattering nocturnal impression … a monumental work”
Wikio.co.uk has published its July overview of the top 20 music blogs.
Congratulations to Norman Lebrecht (Slipped Disc at No. 12), Tom Service (Tom Service on Classical Music at No. 16) and Gavin Plumley (Entartete Musik at No. 20) for banging the drum for classical and contemporary music.