Latest news with #FifthSymphony
Boston Globe
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Per Norgard, daring symphonic composer, dies at 92
Mr. Norgard's musical evolution encompassed the mid-20th century's leading styles, including neoclassicism, expressionism ,and his own brand of serialism, and it incorporated a wide range of influences, including Javanese gamelan music, Indian philosophy, astrology, and the works of schizophrenic Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli. Advertisement But he considered himself a distinctively Nordic composer, influenced by Finnish symphonist Jean Sibelius, and that was how newcomers to his music often approached him. The infinite, brooding landscapes of Sibelius -- along with the intensifying repetitions in the work of Mr. Norgard's Danish compatriot Carl Nielsen and the obsessive, short-phrase focus of Norwegian Edvard Grieg -- have echoes in Mr. Norgard's fragmented sound world. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The delirious percussive expressions of his composition 'Terrains Vagues' (2000), the plinking raindrops of the two-piano, four-metronome 'Unendlicher Empfang' (1997), and the vast, discontinuous fresco of the Eighth Symphony (2011) all evoke the black-and-white northern vistas of Sibelius, with their intense play of light and shadow. As a young student at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen in the early 1950s, he was immersed in the music of Sibelius, writing to the older composer and receiving encouragement in return. 'When I discovered there was a kind of unity in his music, I was obsessed with the idea of meeting him,' he said in an interview. 'And to let him know that I didn't consider him out of date.' Advertisement The two never did manage to meet. But Sibelius, who died in 1957, was a lifelong inspiration and mentor from afar. 'From the moment I discovered the music of Sibelius, I felt in much more of a relationship with his music' than with that of fellow Danish composers, Mr. Norgard said in a 2012 interview. 'There are the long horizons. And a feeling, maybe, of a kind of nostalgia,' he added. Mr. Norgard developed a unique compositional technique he called the 'infinity series,' a slightly repeated, but constantly shifting, sequence of notes, which the British critic Richard Whitehouse described as 'a way of creating layers of melodies that move simultaneously at different speeds across the texture.' That technique recalls what Mr. Norgard called the 'symmetric turning around' of Sibelius. Mr. Norgard himself aspired to a music in which 'everything came out of a single note,' he said, 'like the big bang.' Both composers are credited with renewing, and prolonging the life of, the imperiled symphony. Whitehouse called Mr. Norgard's Fifth Symphony (1990) 'arguably the most significant reappraisal of symphonic form in the past half-century.' Sibelius' own Fifth Symphony, composed in 1919, had been characterized the same way in its day; Mr. Norgard was inspired by what he called its 'growth, where different motifs are more and more connected, to a great vision of unity.' Advertisement Mr. Norgard had a brief brush with popular consciousness with his hauntingly simple music for the film 'Babette's Feast' (1987), an adaptation of the 1958 story by Karen Blixen, writing under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Despite his stature in Europe -- there were frequent recordings, some with major orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic -- Mr. Norgard found a muted reception in the United States. In 2014, he was awarded the Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music by the New York Philharmonic, although the orchestra had 'never played a note of his music,' New York Times critic Alan Kozinn observed at the time. A 2016 concert series, 'Norgard in New York,' went some ways toward remedying the neglect. David Allen wrote in The New York Times that 'at its strongest, Mr. Norgard's music has an unbridled organic power, bursting with overlapping lines inspired by mathematical patterns like the golden ratio or natural forces like the rush of an ocean or the dwindling bounce of a ball.' Mr. Norgard, for his part, described his award from the New York orchestra, two years earlier, as 'quite mysterious.' Per Norgard was born July 13, 1932, in Gentofte, Denmark, north of Copenhagen, the younger son of Erhardt Norgard, a tailor who owned a wedding-dress shop, and Emmely Johanne Nicoline (Christensen) Norgard. He was composing piano sonatas by the age of 10. At 17, he began studying with the leading Danish composer Vagn Holmboe, and in 1952, he entered the Royal Danish Academy of Music, where he continued his composition studies. From 1956 to 1957, he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, who taught many of the 20th century's leading composers, a period that led him to write at least one Neo-Classical work in the Stravinsky mold. Advertisement Under the tutelage of Boulanger, he rebelled somewhat against her hyper-French, Neo-Classical universe, advocating, in an article, engagement with 'the universe of the Nordic mind.' Teaching at Danish conservatories in Odense, Copenhagen, and Aarhus followed, along with music criticism for the daily Politiken newspaper. By the early 1960s, Mr. Norgard had developed the 'infinity series' concept, which began with experiments with simple piano pieces. A steady stream of large-scale choral, symphonic, and chamber works resulted, culminating in his last major composition, the Eighth Symphony, which Mellor likened to the works of Mahler, the 'idea that the symphony strives absolutely to contain the world -- that the composer is offering us a glimpse of the universe.' Mr. Norgard's wife, Helle Rahbek, died in 2022. He leaves a daughter, Ditte, and a son, Jeppe, from an earlier marriage, to Anelise Brix Thomsen, that ended in divorce. In an interview with the New York Philharmonic in 2014, after being awarded the Kravis prize, Mr. Norgard described his compositional technique, and discussed the 'infinity series.' It was 'a kind of homage to the mystery of life,' he said, 'which has always been a guiding line for my music.' This article originally appeared in
Perth Now
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Beethoven's ‘intimidating' face revealed for the first time in 200 years
Ludwig van Beethoven's face has been revealed in stunning detail almost 200 years after his death. The legendary German composer, famed for masterpieces like the 'Fifth Symphony' and 'Moonlight Sonata', has had his face brought back to life in jaw-dropping detail and the results are striking. Thanks to cutting-edge 3D and a historic skull scan, Beethoven's moody mug has been recreated and it's as fiery as his reputation suggests. Cicero Moraes, the Brazilian graphics expert behind the project, said: "I found the face somewhat intimidating." He used rare photographs of Beethoven's skull taken in 1863 and measurement data from 1888, both provided by the Beethoven House in Bonn, Germany. Despite his musical genius, Beethoven wasn't exactly known for his charm. British composer Mark Wigglesworth once summed him up as: "Irritable, untidy, clumsy, rude, and misanthropic." Moraes said: "The facial approximation was guided solely by the skull. First I created 2D outlines – frontal and lateral – from the skull photographs. Then I modelled the skull in 3D using a virtual donor's tomography, adjusted to match the photos' proportions. I then added soft tissue thickness markers based on data from living Europeans, projected the nose, and traced the facial profile. I interpolated all these projections to form the basic face." He later added clothes and hair based on a famous 1820 portrait, before using AI to polish the final image. The result was "highly compatible" with a life mask made of Beethoven's face during his lifetime. Moraes explained: "I analysed his revolutionary creativity, resilience in composing despite deafness, intense focus, problem-solving ability, and tireless productivity, despite a challenging personality. Reading about his life in detail was moving, as I noticed behavioural similarities in myself. I was fortunate to have psychological support that helped me manage my own irritability. Beethoven, however, faced a chaotic world with his own resources, finding refuge in his work, which seemed to bring him existential fulfilment."
Epoch Times
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
Great Music May Surpass Our Understanding
Many things we thought we knew have been found to be false. Things like 'the world is flat,' or 'the sun revolves around the world,' make us a bit more cautious when arriving at a conclusion or passing judgment. Regarding aesthetic matters, one sees that works of art are great mysteries whose qualities and laws are far beyond our knowing. Whether they are good or bad is a more confounding issue still. Beethoven's great mystery, the Ninth Symphony, has been perceived in many ways, as many, in fact, as there have been listeners. It seems sublime to some, monstrous to others. The music historian and novelist Romain Rolland said it was 'an unsurpassed triumph of the human spirit.' Yet, Ludwig Spohr, the German composer and Beethoven's contemporary, called it grotesque, tasteless and trivial. Beethoven in 1804, the year he began work on the Fifth Symphony; detail of a portrait by W.J. Mähler. Public Domain Robert Schumann thought that Richard Wagner 'to put it concisely, is not a good musician,' and that his music was 'often quite amateurish, meaningless and repugnant.' The childlike composer Anton Bruckner, however, upon meeting Wagner, fell on his knees and kissed his hand. The elder composer had to rein in Bruckner during a performance of 'Parsifal,' asking that he not clap so loudly. Bruckner in his turn was called 'a fool and a half' by the rich and powerful Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, but Jean Sibelius, a deeper mind and more generous heart, called him 'the greatest living composer.' A photograph of Johannes Brahms in 1866 by Lucien Mazenod. Public Domain Johannes Brahms was adored by Clara Schumann, who wrote that he was: ' one of those who comes as if straight from God,' while Benjamin Britten had other ideas: 'I play through all Brahms every so often to see if he's as bad as I thought—and usually find him worse.' Tchaikovsky wrote in a letter to a friend that he would like to say 'Mr. Brahms! I think you are a talentless, pretentious, and completely uninspired person.' But the Russian composer himself suffered the assorted slings and arrows of people supposedly 'in the know": His great B flat minor concerto was not well received at its premiere. Nikolai Soloviev, composer, critic and professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, remarked 'Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto, like the first pancake, is a flop.' Related Stories 3/13/2025 4/11/2025 The mighty Tsar Alexander III also had negative views. In his diary, Tchaikovsky wrote 'The Tsar was haughty to me 'Very nice,'!!!!! [sic] he said to me after the rehearsal [of 'Sleeping Beauty']. God bless him.' Igor Stravinsky, however, revered the composer to his last days, and dedicated 'Le Baiser de la fée' to his memory.' Let Each Judge These witnesses for the prosecution and for the defense lead to only one possible verdict: All criticism is precarious, personalized, and subject to change. There is and can be no explanation of why one piece of music pleases one man and displeases another; it is, and will remain, a mystery. A phrase from a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier says, 'We older children grope our way, from dark behind to dark before.' But in our groping, we now and then come upon something more or less solid, something that we might use as a touchstone for what lies beyond pleasing or not pleasing: What is good or bad, truthful or counterfeit. The homestead of John Greenleaf Whittier; this poet create a hospitable home in which to write and think. We have time itself, for example, the judge that decides what will be remembered, and what forgotten; we have what Virginia Woolf described as 'the feeling of being added to.' Most solid of all might be philosopher Immanuel Kant's idea in 'Critique of Judgment,' that 'if the fine arts are not imbued with moral ideals that are common to the whole of mankind, then they can serve only as frivolous entertainments to which people resort to deaden their discontent with themselves.' Let each of us question and judge. Einstein tells us we should never lose a 'holy curiosity.' What arts and culture topics would you like us to cover? Please email ideas or feedback to
NZ Herald
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Auckland Philharmonia shine with unforgettable Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev performances
Back in 2011, the Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski stressed to me that Prokofiev's Third Concerto was not all steel-like energy, but full of joy and humour, being written in a more or less happy period of the composer's life. On this night, Alexander Gavrylyuk might well have been in total accord with him, delivering a performance of single-minded immersion, hovering over the keys, engendering expectation and exuding exhilaration, all with palpable delight. Sung's insistence on impeccable orchestral clarity was the perfect inspiration for the soloist's rushing toccatas and marching chords; and, in amongst the glitter, could one almost sense a playful wink in his cheeky grace notes? And what a thrill it was when an innocent clarinet theme returned, in full and stirring orchestral garb. In the second movement, Gavrylyuk proved himself a skilled alchemist when he took on the orchestra's perky march theme, most memorably recasting it as a moody melancholic nocturne. Sung's remarkably cohesive finale brought all the musicians together to enjoy the diverse panorama of Prokofiev's music, followed by Gavrylyuk's encore, a passionate account of the very first etude by a teenage Scriabin. It is always daunting for a critic to assess yet another performance of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. Yet on the night, Sung drew a rare vibrancy from familiar pages, laying out a compulsive journey from the Russian's doom-laden introduction to the triumphant glow of its final apotheosis.
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Conductor Who Has the Ear of Red Sox and Classical Fans Alike
It's hard to fathom what the Boston Pops gets itself into with its annual Holiday Pops marathon, which takes up most of December at Symphony Hall. Last year, this orchestra played essentially the same program, with a few tweaks for family shows, 42 times in a bit less than three weeks. Santa Claus attended every concert. Boston audiences have come to expect that certain items will appear on the bill: Leroy Anderson's 'Sleigh Ride,' for example, and a dramatic reading of Clement Clarke Moore's 'A Visit From St. Nicholas.' The best of them, at least for wit, is David Chase's monstrously inventive arrangement of 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' which quotes Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, 'Oklahoma!' and 'Bohemian Rhapsody.' Sung with gusto, usually by the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, it surprises every time you hear it. Then again, the whole Holiday Pops enterprise is something of a surprise. In the performances last December, the musicians of the Pops — essentially the Boston Symphony Orchestra without most of its principals — never seemed to look bored, and some had enough ho, ho, ho in them to wear a seasonal hat or even dance onstage. Musical standards remained admirably high. At the center of it all is Keith Lockhart, who is marking 30 years with the Pops this season. Hosting and conducting almost all of the dates in December, he often led three a day, sometimes following a pair of gigs at Symphony Hall with an evening concert at the helm of the freelance Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, in places as far afield as New Hampshire or Connecticut. You would never know from seeing him kick a cancan in 'The 12 Days of Christmas' that he has conducted 'Sleigh Ride' more than 850 times, or that he is 65. Surviving this startling display of podium endurance with regular naps, he shows little sign of flagging. The Pops offers a December and a spring season, this year beginning on May 8, plus a smattering of Tanglewood concerts and its annual July 4 celebration, played by the Esplanade Orchestra before hordes thronging Boston's Hatch Shell. During Lockhart's tenure, Holiday Pops has become the centerpiece of the calendar. Created in 1973, the revels grew gradually under his predecessors, Arthur Fiedler and John Williams, but have since come to rival Boston Ballet's 'Nutcracker' for sprawl: They sell about 90,000 seats, equivalent to roughly 70 percent of the tickets that the Boston Symphony sells in its entire regular concert season. Factor in food and drink receipts, and this is the kind of thing that it's easy to think cynically about. But that is not what is going on, or at least not only what is going on. Lockhart gives an eloquent speech, or three, on the meaning of the holiday season in a fractured world. He makes sure there is always new music, most recently 'Carol of the Brown King,' a David Coleman setting of Nativity poems by Langston Hughes. Nobody makes him include 'L'Adorazione dei Magi,' a decidedly obscure work by Respighi, but it's his favorite piece of holiday music, so he does it every few years anyway. Even Chad Smith, the avowed progressive who serves as president and chief executive of the Boston Symphony, admires 'the beautiful, quiet subversiveness of the way that Keith programs it.' For many in Boston, attending Holiday Pops is a tradition; Lockhart sees it serving the same role that church once did. 'I try to make the concert not just play 'All I Want For Christmas,' but have some spiritual significance to it, something that ties it together,' he said. 'In other words,' he added, 'not just crassly commercial.' At one concert near the end of the run last year, Lockhart conducted the crowd in a Joe Reisman medley, 'A Merry Little Sing-Along.' Phone flashlights soon appeared, hundreds of them, swaying in the dark. By some weird magic, it wasn't cringe-worthy but enchanting. THE BOSTON POPS has spent 140 years figuring out how to offer popular entertainment that is artistically meaningful, with an orchestra of quality at its heart. Other dedicated Pops orchestras are still around, not least the Cincinnati Pops, and every major orchestra gives pops concerts in one form or another. The Boston outfit still dominates the field. Lockhart is its inescapable face, and recently extended his contract through 2027. He has drawn more than his fair share of flack over the years: He came to the job young, quickly became a local celebrity, and is presiding at a time when it has proved impossible for the Pops to maintain the imperious position in American popular culture built by Fiedler from 1930 to his death in 1979, when he was eulogized as 'the maestro of the masses.' But Lockhart remains a crucial, beloved figure for the Boston Symphony, most of whose players he conducts far more often than their music director. And he has the experience and skills of a proper musician: He led the Utah Symphony for 11 years and has been artistic director of the Brevard Music Center Summer Institute and Festival since 2007. 'He comes in knowing what he's going to do, and we just follow him,' said Suzanne Nelsen, a Pops bassoonist. His collaborators are similarly effusive. 'Keith and the musicians, they know where the beat is,' said Branford Marsalis, the jazz saxophonist, 'so it never feels like it falls into affectation or stereotype, which are the worst experiences ever.' Ben Folds, the singer-songwriter, applauded the Pops for keeping the dignified environment of a symphony orchestra intact. 'When you're playing with Keith,' he said, 'he's taking the inside of your music seriously.' Bernadette Peters, Broadway royalty, confided that on her phone, she keeps a secret recording of the Pops performing a lullaby she wrote about a dog. 'He gets all these players to play as a whole, and make music with me,' she said of Lockhart. 'It's basically a miracle.' Lockhart is also one of the few conductors today who is deeply rooted in his community, so much so that even its baseball team speaks highly of him. Alex Cora, the manager of the Boston Red Sox, appeared at the Holiday Pops in 2018, and last year invited Lockhart to talk to his players at spring training. 'It was good for our guys, especially seeing it from a different perspective,' Cora said. 'Probably for them, it was like: 'Oh, he's a conductor, what is it, what's the big thing? He's just, you know, moving his hands and whatever.' No, no, no, no, he's doing a lot from that platform. It was good to have him around.' WHEN LOCKHART TOOK OVER the Pops, it was still recognizably the institution that Fiedler had made famous. Henry Higginson, who founded the Boston Symphony in 1881, created a series of spring Promenade Concerts four years later, offering overtures, waltzes, marches and so on. It was a populist enterprise from the start; the scholar Ayden Adler has noted that the public called the concerts 'Pops' long before the Symphony adopted the brand. Symphony Hall, finished in 1900, was designed to serve both, with rows of seats that could be replaced with tables. Over time, the blurry line between 'classical' and 'popular' concerts became clearer, leaving the Pops free to chase commercial success, though not at the expense of musical values; only at the end of Fiedler's concerts did he let loose with Broadway medleys or Beatles tunes. From 1980 to 1993, Williams, his successor, took the Pops in new directions, above all in film music, but left the format much as he found it. 'My 45-year association with this brilliant ensemble continues to be one of the great joys of my musical life,' he said in an email. Lockhart has kept the Pops standing even as many of the pillars on which it was built have crumbled. If anything beyond dropping Old Glory in 'The Stars and Stripes Forever' made the Pops 'America's Orchestra,' as Lockhart called it early on, it was television. But PBS ended 35 years of 'Evening at Pops' broadcasts in 2005, and the July 4 concert more recently met a similar fate. Fiedler was one of the great studio artists of his era, selling 50 million records, and Williams shipped plenty of his own; Lockhart has made some, but he has not escaped the collapse of the classical recording industry. Subtler forces are at work, too. Classical music has moved further from the mainstream, so finding an audience that knows the lighter repertoire that the Pops made its own has become impossible on the scale it once did. Entertainment has been repackaged: Fiedler's Pops barely announced its programs in advance, but Lockhart's is driven by guest artists, thematic concerts and film screenings. Even the way that the Pops sells tickets has changed tellingly. 'One of the secrets of the Pops' success was building ticket sales on a wholesale, not retail, model,' the former Symphony general manager Thomas W. Morris recently wrote. For decades after the 1930s, the Pops sold tickets primarily to groups rather than individuals, to the alumni associations and Rotary clubs that helped knit the ensemble into the fabric of community life. Going to the Pops was an inherently social affair; now, though, we bowl alone. Group sales peaked at 90 percent and remained near 80 percent in the 1980s. They accounted for 16 percent of Holiday Pops tickets last year. 'It's not just cultural consumption, it's sociological,' Lockhart said of the transformation of the Pops. 'It's the way people interact with each other.' CAN THE POPS retain its place in American musical culture? The question is most urgent outside the festive season, when there is less of a hook for audiences to grab hold of. Holiday Pops sold at 87 percent of capacity last year, but Spring Pops languished at 69 percent. Projections look more promising for the coming season, which includes a night with Cynthia Erivo; a cosmic program starring the astronaut Suni Williams and George Takei of 'Star Trek' fame; and 'Jaws' and 'Frozen' with live soundtracks. 'Sometimes Pops feels a little bit like a genre without an identity,' Smith said. 'The identity of Pops has to be contemporary. It has to be urgent. It has to be trying to be on the bleeding edge, but recognizing that it is a populist art form.' Charting a future for the Pops is crucial for the Symphony broadly; it brings in roughly half the revenue that the organization earns from its orchestral concerts. Pops concerts are starting to spread across the calendar, and Smith said that it is finding more ways to serve the city, pointing to a Day of the Dead concert last November and an annual Pride celebration. Whatever the Pops plays, and whomever it plays with, Lockhart wants to make sure that it adheres to at least one of its founding theories. 'We've always insisted that the orchestra, at some level, remain the star of its show,' he said. 'We want to make sure the audience realizes we're there.'
