This was Sir Simon Rattle’s farewell concert with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which he led for 18 years. Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, of course. I wish I’d been there.

Ja us en parlava fa uns dies i ahir diumenge vaig poder veure el documental ‘Trip to Asia’, en una Sala 2 de l’Aribau Club 2 gairebé plena d’un públic majoritàriament jove, que va acabar aplaudint.

A Thomas Grube ja el coneixíem d’aquella altra meravella que és ‘Això és ritme!‘, un projecte pedagògic que implicava nois i noies adolescents en el muntatge d’una producció del ballet ‘La consagració de la primavera’ de Stravinski, amb la participació de la Filharmònica de Berlín i el seu director, Sir Simon Rattle.

A ‘Trip to Asia‘ (‘Viatge a l’Àsia’), Grube ens acosta la filharmònica berlinesa de prop, de molt a prop. No és només un retrat dels 126 músics que formen l’orquestra sinó sobretot de com són les persones i de l’equilibri que ha d’haver-hi a nivell individual i col·lectiu perquè la cosa funcioni.

De fet, són moltes històries que s’uneixen en una de sola, amb el rerefons de la gira que l’orquestra fa per diverses ciutats de l’est asiàtic (Beijing, Xangai, Seül, Taipei, Hong-Kong i Tòkio): les diferents personalitats que formen l’orquestra, el funcionament com a col·lectiu, les sensacions dels qui estan a prova i també dels qui es jubilaran aviat, el paper del director, etc.

Una pel·lícula que em sembla absolutament recomanable no només per als músics sinó també, com ja passava amb ‘Això és ritme!’, per tot aquell que vulgui tenir elements de reflexió sobre la psicologia de les persones.

En Pep Mira m’envia puntual, com sempre, la relació de concerts de ‘Clàssica’ per al mes que comencem diumenge. L’emissió és, ho recordo, diumenges minuts abans de les 9 del matí al 33 digital (TDT) i la repetició és la setmana següent, la matinada de dissabte a diumenge, cap a quarts de 2, tant pel 33 digital com pel 33 analògic.

Diumenge 1
Concert a Pyongyang 2a part
Des del GRAN TEATRE PYONGYANG. COREA DEL NORD

Orquestra Filharmònica de Nova York
Director: Lorin Maazel

George Gershwin (1898 – 1937)
Un americà a París

Georges Bizet (1838 – 1875)
Farandola de la Suite núm. 2 de ‘L’Arlesiana‘

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Diumenge 8
Concert d’europa des de Berlín 2007  (2ª part)
Des de la KABELWERK OBERSPREE de BERLÍN

Orq. Filharmònica de Berlín
Dir: Simon Rattle

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Simfonia núm. 4, en mi menor, op. 98

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Diumenge 15
L’esperit polonès 1a part
Des de PHILHARMONIC HALL BYDGOSZCZ. POLÒNIA

Orquestra de Cambra Polonesa
Director: Jacek Kaspszyk
Violí: Nigel Kennedy

Mieczyslaw Karlowicz  (1876 -1909)
Concert per violí i orquestra en La major, op. 8

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750):
Preludi de la Partita núm. 3

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Diumenge 22
XXè  Festival de Guitarra de Barcelona (2a part)
Des de la SALA PAU CASALS de l’AUDITORI. BARCELONA

Orq. de Guitarres de Barcelona
Orq. Catalana de Guitarres
Sergi Vicente, director
Leo Brouwer, director

Leo Brouwer (1939)
Paisaje cubano con lluvia – Canción de cuna – Tocatta

Gaspar Sanz (1647 – ~1716)
Dues danzas cervantinas

Sergi Vicente (1965)
Vals Flamenco

Ignacio Cervantes  (1847 – 1905)
Danzas cubanas

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Diumenge 29
L’ORQUESTRA DE CADAQUÉS A GIRONA
Des de l’Auditori del PALAU DE CONGRESSOS  de GIRONA

Orquestra de Cadaqués
Gianandrea Noseda, director

Isaac Albéniz (1860 – 1909)
(Orquestració: Albert Guinovart)
Càdiz - Asturias - Córdoba - Castilla

Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)
Simfonia núm. 4, en do menor, D. 417 “Tràgica”

Charlie Parker & Igor Stravinsky

Walk into any record store and one would have been over here and the other over there. But that made no difference to the kinship they felt.

*****

Jazz musicians sat up in their seats when Stravinsky’s music started playing; he was speaking something close to their language. When Charlie Parker came to Paris in 1949, he marked the occasion by incorporating the first notes of the Rite into his solo on ‘Salt Peanuts’. Two years later, playing Birdland in New York, the bebop master spotted Stravinsky at one of the tables and immediately incorporated a motif from Firebird into ‘Koko’, causing the composer to spill his scotch in ecstasy.—Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (2007)

*****

Charlier Parker & Dizzy Gillespie, “Hot House,” live (TV broadcast), 1952

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), The Firebird (excerpt; 1910), Berlin Philharmonic (Simon Rattle conducting), live, 2005

*****

Want to try a little experiment?

Play the Parker clip for about, say, 10-20 seconds. Then go to the Stravinsky clip and do the same. Then back. And forth. And back. And forth.

In lieu of proper political blogging, since I have university exams crowding out my life till tomorrow afternoon, here is an article I found in what should be called the ‘Weird and Wonderful‘ section of the BBC website: it concerns a recently-invented instrument, the Eigenharp, which looks like a cross between a space-age guitar-synthesiser and a bassoon. Basically it can turn any relatively competent musician into a one-man orchestra. Kitschy? Perhaps, but I think not after seeing how sophisticatedly it works. Will it replace conventional instruments? At £4000 a pop I suspect not, particularly as it is still only a cool-looking digital instrument with only imitation timbres. Will someone write a concerto for Eigenharp, recorded by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle, which will be played at a Proms concert between Martinu’s 3rd symphony and Nancarrow’s Contraption #1 for computer-driven player-piano? Almost certainly.

In any case, here’s a video demonstrating the uses of the Eigenharp:

Well, something a little different today…. You’ll notice I’ve given a link to the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall in my essentials section. If you love music, you will go and visit.

The concert hall allows you to watch Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Phil either live in concert or in archived recordings. The DCH also has extensive interviews with conductors and performers for most all of the performances.

You don’t even have to be Steve Schwarzman to afford a subscription: I subscribed last year for the full season and it was easily the best EUR149 I have ever spent. They also allow you to purchase a single concert – or even a single piece – for just EUR3.

For the record, the quality of the DCH is brilliant – hook your laptop up to your TV with an HDMI or DVI cable and make sure your home theater is on full blast; the experience is breathtaking.

Simon Rattle explains the move in a clip I’ve posted below. He actually makes some interesting comments on the technology and the philosophical underpinning of why they’re going digital. In short, he feels that art is going to be another service piped on demand into our homes – just like water, gas, electricity etc. Reflecting on it, I think he’s right: Apple TV has already convinced me to kill movie channels and physical DVD rentals at introspectica HQ.  Still, nothing will beat actually rolling up to a concert hall and being fully absorbed in the process.

You can view some highlights from last season at the BPO’s YouTube page.

… muss nicht unbedingt immer Ohrenbluten oder reflexartige Fluchtbewegungen beim “normalen” Hörer verursachen. Nein, es geht auch anders! Ich bin nicht unbedingt ein Fan von “Minimalismus” Musik, aber dieses Stück ist einfach herrlich mitreissend, insbesondere in dieser Interpretation der Berliner Philharmoniker unter Sir Simon Rattle.

Short Ride in a Fast Machine

Der Komponist:

John Coolidge Adams (* 15. Februar 1947 in Worcester, Massachusetts) ist ein US-amerikanischer Komponist. Er wird zusammen mit Steve Reich, Philip Glass und Terry Riley zu den bekanntesten Vertretern der Minimal Music gezählt, eines musikalischen Stils, der auf sich wiederholenden harmonischen und/oder rhythmischen Mustern aufbaut.

(Wikipedia)

En ce début d’été, la chaleur prend les corps sans ménagement, les fige, les trempe, les plaque au sol. Comment supporter une soirée de gala, encravaté, souriant, débordant de bonheur estival sans mourir sous le harnais de la représentation ? C’est que la musique du festival d’Aix transforme nos molécules.

« Le crépuscule des dieux » nous fait oublier qui nous sommes. Wagner préfigure le cinémascope. L’action court à la vitesse d’un cheval au galop. La baguette de Sir Simon Rattle est sans failles. Stéphane Braunschweig offre un écrin grandiose à ce drame mythologique. Les voix de Ben Heppner et Katarina Dalayman sont somptueuses. Puissantes, souples, terriblement humaines. Nul besoin d’aimer l’opéra. On est pris par le flot de ces cinq heures qui nous laissent sur le sable, ivres de spectacle et morts du plaisir d’être à peine conscients de ce que l’on vient de vivre.

Aix et son grand théâtre ne sont pas à deux pas. Alors rendez-vous ce lundi 6 juillet à 17 h 30 sur Radio classique pour la retransmission du spectacle dans son intégralité et pour ceux que l’image tenterait, l’acte III sera visible jeudi 09 Juillet à 21h50 sur France 3.

Aix était aussi à mourir de rire tant le grotesque se mêlait au désastre de cet Idoménée, mis en abîme par Olivier Py, pourtant si novateur, créatif, aventureux. Et le ministre en charge de la culture d’assister au naufrage. Allait-il retirer à l’architecte de cette embarcation pourrie les clés de l’Odéon pour les troquer contre celles de quelque cabaret ?

Fallait-il faire de cet opéra de jeunesse une ode à Cocteau sur le parvis glacial de la Défense ? Hommes aux complets noirs, barres métalliques, néons aveuglants, voix sans âme, désaccordées, minuscules. Py s’est voulu plus fort que Mozart jusque dans ce final affligeant où s’y déhanche un travesti et qui jaillit comme une boursouflure.

Le rire d’Amadeus s’élevait dans les hauteurs du théâtre de l’Archevêché quand le rideau s’est baissé sur le sourire gêné du metteur en scène hué par le public. L’auteur s’est vengé avec délectation du démembrement de son œuvre. C’était à mourir.

En la conferencia de prensa celebrada para presentar la temporada 1009-2010 de la Filarmónica de Berlín se ha confirmado que Sir Simon Rattle seguirá dirigiendo la Filarmónica hasta el 2018.

Nos informa Pedro Luís Martín Olivares que aunque el contrato no se firmará hasta septiembre de 2009, tanto la gerencia de la orquesta como los músicos y el propio Rattle han confirmado ya su aprobación al acuerdo que prolongará durante nueve años más una colaboración que es muy apreciada por el público berlinés.

En años anteriores hubo algunos rumores sobre tensiones entre Rattle y algunos músicos de la orquesta, pero el portavoz de la orquesta ha confirmado que la renovación es una decisión colectiva, aceptada con igual entusiasmo por todos los implicados.

Durante la temporada 2009-2010 Rattle dirigirá a la Filamónica de Berlín en 60 conciertos, de los cuales 33 tendrán lugar en Berlín.

El pianista Lang Lang será el pianista en residencia durante esta temporada 2009-2010.

Orquesta Filarmónica de Berlín / Fuente: www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/

El gobierno regional de Berlín anunció que el productor de televisión Martin Hoffmann fue designado como nuevo director general de la Filarmónica de la ciudad. La prensa ha tomado con cierto escepticismo el nuevo nombramiento pues Hoffmann carece de experiencia en el campo musical.

La decisión, tomada por el personal de la orquesta y un comité designado para tal fin, fue confirmada por el patronato de la institución. Hoffmann, de 49 años, gusta de navegar en su velero, tocar el violín y escuchar rock en su tiempo libre. El productor de televisión tomará el lugar de Pamela Rosenberg que dejará el puesto en el mes de agosto.

André Schmitz, ministro de cultura del gobierno regional, espera que con la llegada de Martin Hoffmann, la orquesta se coloque entre las más importantes por lo que se refiere al desarrollo de nuevos formatos, audiencias y patrocinadores. Mientras tanto, Sir Simon Rattle, director artístico de la institución y quien renovó su contrato recientemente, dijo que los músicos se encontraban agradecidos con el nuevo miembro del equipo de trabajo por su mente emprendedora y amor por la música de toda la vida, que lo convertían en la persona correcta para apoyar a la Filarmónica de Berlín en sus futuros viajes artísticos.

RIO DE JANEIRO SHOW
Dianne Reeves se apresenta no Vivo Rio

DESTAQUES SORTIMENTOS.COM
MAIS ACONTECE RIO DE JANEIRO

Mucho se había hablado sobre los supuestos problemas que Sir Simon Rattle había tenido en fechas recientes con algunos de los músicos de la Orquesta Filarmónica de Berlín. Incluso se llegó a especular que ésta sería la última temporada del inglés al frente de la más prestigiosa orquesta alemana.

Sin embargo, si son seguidores de Rattle no tienen porque preocuparse: un vocero de la institución acaba de anunciar que el músico británico permanecerá al frente de la agrupación por lo menos hasta el año 2018.

La noticia se confirmó durante la conferencia de prensa en la que se anunciaron los planes para la temporada 2009-2010. La determinación fue tomada de forma concensuada entre los músicos, las autoridades y el propio director. Hay que recordar que la Filarmónica de Berlín es una de las pocas orquestas en el mundo en la que los atrilistas toman decisiones de manera democrática, incluyendo la permanencia o no de los directores. Rattle estará al frente de 60 conciertos en la próxima temporada, 33 de ellos en Berlín. De igual forma, se informó que Lang Lang será nombrado pianista residente por un año.

He aquí una muestra de porqué le extendieron el contrato 8 años (Y no me refiero a la interpretación sino a la entrada pues el británico se ha vuelto uno de los directores consentidos de los berlineses). En este video registrado en el año 2003, el público llenó la sede de la Filarmónica para escuchar la Sinfonía No. 5 de Mahler:

más

Excerpt from documentary ‘Mata Tigre” 2006

Placido Domingo cried when he saw the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra perform. The world-renowned opera singer confessed that the concert evoked the strongest emotions he had ever felt.

Sir Simon Rattle, director of the Berlin Philharmonic, swore that the country’s youth orchestras were doing the most important work in classical music anywhere in the world.

And former Berlin Philharmonic director Claudio Abbado only needed to see one performance by the orchestra to invite the Venezuelans to play in Germany.

Venezuelan Youth Orchestra at BBC Proms 2007

The talented musicians of the National System of Venezuelan Youth and Children’s Orchestras are a source of national pride, like football stars in other Latin American countries. They have also inspired 23 countries across the hemisphere to launch similar music education programmes.

Troubled youths

Called El Sistema by its members, the programme is celebrating 30 years of making classical musicians out of half-a-million young Venezuelans, and it has transformed the lives of many underprivileged and at-risk youths in the process, giving young people the chance to learn an instrument, getting them away from drugs, guns and crime in the barrios.

“I wish players in the US were here to hear the conviction with which you play,” Gwyn Richards, dean of Indiana University’s School of Music, told a Caracas youth orchestra after it played Dmitri Shostakovich’s Festive Overture in honour of his visit.

“No-one is just walking through it, watching the clock,” he said later. “When they play, they really mean it.”

The young musicians’ excitement stems from the programme’s social mission, which its founder Jose Antonio Abreu describes as helping “the fight of a poor and abandoned child against everything that opposes his full realisation as a human being”.

One of Mr Abreu’s musicians is Lennar Acosta, 23, who six years ago was already making his ninth visit to a Caracas correctional facility after a history of heavy drug use and armed robbery.

While the facility denied Mr Acosta’s request to return to school, the youth orchestra took him on as a student and soon gave him a scholarship.

He now earns his living at a music institute, has played a dozen times in the nation’s famed Teresa Carreno music hall, and is studying to perform Mozart’s clarinet concerto.

“One of the biggest emotions I’ve felt was when they gave me a clarinet,” Mr Acosta said, sitting with his instrument in hand in a Caracas music conservatory.

“El Sistema ended up straightening me out. It is my family, like my home.”

Key performance

When 11 young musicians put on the Youth Orchestra’s first concert in 1975, there were only two symphony orchestras in the entire country.

The programme has helped boost that number to around 200, with at least one professional orchestra in every state.

El Sistema has also transcended politics and regime changes, receiving increased funding from every new government. Its 2005 budget is $23m.

The growing quantity and quality of Venezuelan musicians is due in part to the programme’s teaching methods, which involve inviting children as young as two to play in front of audiences as soon as they begin learning their instruments.

Susan Siman, one of El Sistema’s founders, says that playing her first concert at the age of eight motivated her to keep improving as a violinist.

“I was terrified. The music score went blank,” Ms Siman said of her performance of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, with her parents in the audience.

“But at the end, [the concert] was what motivated me and I wanted to do it better.”

This approach to music education is beginning to leave its mark on orchestras worldwide.

The Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra’s Gustavo Dudamel, 24, who is a disciple of Sir Simon Rattle, won the Bamberg Symphony’s Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition last year.

He also received rave reviews from local press after conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in September.

The programme’s Edicson Ruiz has also earned a seat as double bassist with the Berlin Philharmonic at just 20 years of age.

Class barriers

In a two-week period in November, visitors to the Caracas Youth Symphony included Gwyn Richards, contemporary Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and Italian violinist Uto Ughi.

Mr Richards said he was impressed with the programme’s goal to create a larger space for classical music in popular culture.

El Sistema has brought the sounds of Beethoven to the masses, by giving children instruments, scholarships and free transportation, in barrios such as the Caracas neighbourhood of Sarria.

About 90% of students there are from the country’s lowest economic class.

“In Venezuela, we broke the myth that you have to be from the upper class to play violin,” says the Sarria school’s director, Carlos Sedan.

Young musicians in Sarria are not allowed to take their instruments home because of the risk of being mugged, and some come to class with headaches because their families cannot afford food.

Yet when they perform, they become the pride of their neighbourhoods and inspire their parents to learn about the great classical composers.

“I saw the whole evolution. [In the beginning] you saw a certain sadness in their faces,” said Antonio Mayorca, who taught music in a low-income Caracas neighbourhood and is also first violinist in the Simon Bolivar orchestra.

“But when they started to play music, it was different. The light that they transmitted taught me a lot.”

Source: BBC

See also

• El Sistema’s oficial website (FESNOJIV)
• Featured in segment on Gustavo Dudamel on CBS News 60 Minutes (video and transcript)
• Orchestra Manoeuvres – The Guardian
  
• Caracas About Them – The Observer
• Mata Tigre Website
• Land of Hope and Glory – The Guardian
• For Venezuela’s poor, music opens doors – The Boston Globe
• Scaling the Heights – The New Statesman
• Venezuela a powerhouse for producing musicians – Houston Chronicle
• The Culture Show – Gustavo Dudamel -Feature on young Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who caused a sensation at last year’s Proms with the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.

Sir Simon Rattle es uno de los directores de orquesta que tiene más atención mediática en este momento, no solo por que es el director de la prestigiosa Orquesta Filarmónica de Berlín, sino también por que durante toda su carrera ha luchado para que la música no desaparezca de los planes de educación de las escuelas primarias y secundarias. Esta pelea la comenzó desde su juventud, cuando a la tierna edad de 25 años fue elegido como director principal de la Orquesta Sinfónica de Birmingham, la cual convirtió, en casi veinte años de trabajo incansable, no sólo en una gran orquesta, también en una institución dinámica y con lazos muy activos en su comunidad: los programas de educación musical de la Orquesta de Birmingham se han convertido en modelos para muchas ciudades británicas.

Este es un artículo de 1998, publicado en el sitio

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=302285

y del que recojo lo que considero lo más importante:

Exactly a year ago Sir Simon Rattle sat in Chris Smith’s office and gave the incoming Secretary of State for Culture a friendly warning. “I told him he was going to be hearing a lot from me and he might find some of it uncomfortable,” the conductor recalls. It was, perhaps, new Labour’s first intimation that it would not be getting an easy ride from the arts world.

Simon Rattle surprised Chris Smith on that May morning with his agenda. “He thought I would want to discuss orchestras and concert halls and theatres. I told him my main concern was music in schools,” he says.

Since then Sir Simon has become a man on a mission, stung into action, first by alarming reports of the decline of instrument tuition and then galvanised into fury by the downgrading of music in the primary curriculum. He sees this as a threat to the musical fabric of the nation and speaks of “the betrayal of an entire generation” and “the death of the imagination”.

(…)

Rattle ensayando con la Filarmónica de Berlín

“Whatever the politicians say, Chief Inspector of Schools Chris Woodhead is telling schools they will not be assessed or inspected on the national curriculum programmes of study in music, so of course it will get cut,” says Sir Simon. “Most teachers are overworked and underpaid and have been told they are crap for years, so it is hardly surprising if they welcome any reduction in their workload.

“Yet what right have we got to consider ourselves civilised if music isn’t a central part of what we are taught?” That Sir Simon still has time to campaign so passionately on behalf of the grass roots speaks volumes for a man who has not only run the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for the past 18 years but is also in huge demand as a guest con-ductor with the world’s great musical ensembles, from the Vienna Philharmonic to the Boston Symphony. But music education has always been at the core of his work, and under his leadership the CBSO has developed a schools programme that is the envy of every other local authority.

(…)

Sir Simon Rattle

Since he started his campaign earlier this year, his weekly postbag has rivalled War and Peace in length and intensity. “I get so many letters from people who have felt abandoned, it makes me want to weep. Frankly, we still haven’t made enough noise.”

His greatest fear is that music in British schools will go the same way as in the United States, where his two sons, Sasha, 14, and Eliot, 8, live in San Francisco with his first wife, soprano Elise Ross. He describes with excitement the joy of watching them learn to read music or “crack the code” as he puts it, but says music is totally “unimportant and marginalised” in American schools.

(…)

Sir Rattle en plena clase...

Sir Simon recently told the arts editor of The Times that Britain was facing the possible “death of music”. Ask him if he was overstating the case and he replies that if anything he understated the danger: “What we are facing is the death of the imagination.”

(…)

“Music can have an extraordinary effect on every area of learning. It shifts the emphasis from observing to doing. Children have to work together to create a performance, so that every type of social, organisational and co-operative skill is used and everyone can contribute,” he says. “Music is not merely good for the soul, it can promote literacy and numeracy across the board. Everybody needs music in their life as a way of decoding a hostile universe. Education has become too narrow, and specialisation too early has been very damaging.”

(…)

Sir Rattle dirigiendo a la Orquesta Juvenil Simón Bolívar, de Venezuela.