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What is Urtext? Questions to Jonathan Del Mar Why do we need an urtext edition? Del Mar: Well, you do want to play the notes the composer wrote, don’t you, and not some random wrong notes that just slipped in by mistake ? So is that all an Urtext Edition is, simply “the notes the […]
Music Criticism 1900-1950 Organized by: Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca and the Societat Catalana de Musicologia, Barcelona The second day of discussions concerning Music Criticism from 1900 to 1950 featured still more stimulating papers on a wide range of topics. These included Music Criticism under Italian Fascism, and a particularly intriguing trio of presentations on […]
Barcelona: October 18, 2016 Conference Organized By: Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca and the Societat Catalana de Musicologia, Barcelona Greetings from Barcelona! This is CT.com Executive Editor David Hurwitz reporting as a participant in the above conference, part of a series devoted to the history of music criticism in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is, […]
There was a time when recording a Beethoven cycle was an enterprise undertaken with the benefit of a lifetime’s familiarity with the music, redolent with the (theoretical) wisdom of—if not old—at least a very mature age. Many of the greatest 20th-century conductors never completed their recorded traversals of all nine symphonies, at least not in […]
I have to confess that we weren’t planning on doing a “best of the year” feature. Let’s face it: there are many superb recordings issued every year and no one can listen to enough of them to claim that their sample is truly “the best”; but then again, there’s no harm in picking a “Top […]
Over the past 20-plus years I have accumulated hundreds of Christmas CDs–featuring choirs, orchestras, brass ensembles, guitar, harp, string quartet, piano, organ, etc., etc.–and I appreciate most of them for various reasons; but no matter how many newcomers join the collection, there are a few “oldies” that have more than stood the test of time. […]
Since publishing last year’s “Six Christmas CDs That Always Make the List”, a few more titles either newly released or left out of the original group made their case for inclusion so strongly that I had to add a “Part 2”. So, here are another six Christmas CDs that together with the first set add […]
For months now I have been reading stories of the impasse between management and musicians in Minnesota. The lock-out of the Minnesota Orchestra has many complicating factors: the lavish expenditure to renovate the orchestra’s hall, the departure of Music Director Osmo Vänskä, the bad blood between the parties, and the attempts at settlement both public […]
You read about it regularly in composers’ biographies. Schubert, Donizetti, Schumann, Smetana, Wolf, Joplin, Delius—all were likely victims of syphilis. Other STDs were just as common in ages past. Rossini, for example, suffered from gonorrhea throughout his later life, and was so full of enthusiasm for his urinary catheters that he kept them on display […]
Editor’s Note: As 2012 marks the centenary of Ferrier’s birth, a reposting of this article seems warranted. 2003 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Kathleen Ferrier, an English icon whose continued popularity among a fanatical legion of admirers based in the United Kingdom continues to puzzle and amuse many music and voice (the […]
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