Latest news with #Gramophone
Korea Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Violinist Park Sue-ye wins prestigious Sibelius competition
South Korean violinist Park Sue-ye has won the 13th International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition, one of the most prestigious competitions for the instrument in the world. Park was announced as the first prize winner of the competition, which took place in Helsinki from May 19 to 29, according to the competition's website Friday. "I am so happy to have won the competition," she was quoted as saying by her agency, Mok Production. "It means a lot to me, and I was delighted to be able to communicate through my music to the very end," she said. Park received a cash prize of 30,000 euros (US$34,000) and was also rewarded with a loan of a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini made in 1777. Minami Yoshida received the second prize, while Claire Wells took third. The 25-year-old became the second South Korean violinist to win the quinquennial contest founded in 1965 for young violinists under age of 30. In 2022, Yang In-mo won the competition. Born in 2000, Park began playing the violin at the age of 4 and made her debut at 16 with a recording of Niccolo Paganini's 24 Caprices. In 2021, her album "Journey Through a Century" was selected as the Editor's Choice and among the Recordings of the Year by Gramophone. In a phone interview with Yonhap News Agency later Friday, Park said winning the competition had not hit her yet. "I think it will take a few more days before I realize I've won this," Park said. "I have seen other South Koreans win prizes from afar, and I am grateful and honored to win this competition as a Korean." Park acknowledged that she grew up feeling the weight of expectations as a young prodigy, but she was surprisingly relaxed ahead of the Sibelius competition. "I told myself I should just go do my thing because I knew how hard I'd prepared for it," Park said. "I wanted to stay focused on my own music." Park said she picked up violin because she fell in love with the sound of the instrument as a child. After getting her start with a toy violin, Park said her career goal now is to have people keep coming back to her. "I'd like to become a violinist that people want to hear over and over again, after the end of my performance," she said. "I want to soothe people in ways that words can't and I hope people will feel happy after listening to my music. I want people to say, 'I loved the way you played,' even if they may not be able to express their feelings in exact words." (Yonhap)
Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Matthew Best obituary: conductor and bass singer
In 1973 a small choral group in Sevenoaks, Kent, were giving their first concert and needed a name. Their programme included several 15th and 16th-century madrigals, many of which referred to Corydon, a shepherd or rustic figure, and thus they became the Corydon Singers. 'Yes, I know it looks like Croydon spelt backwards, but 70 concerts later we are stuck with the name,' Matthew Best, their founder and conductor, told Gramophone magazine in 1990. 'At the time, just after my O-levels, all very precocious, we had no idea we would give more than a one-off performance.' Over the years the Corydon Singers evolved into one of the country's finest choral groups, performing in London concert halls and recording previously uncharted repertoire for the Hyperion label, often ecclesiastical in nature. 'Although we have always had a regular concert series, it has been through recordings that we have made our name,' Best said. Selecting the right voices was in itself an art form. 'Singers are booked individually for each rehearsal and performance, and we don't meet once a week like choral societies,' he explained. 'I used to twist people's arms to join. Now we receive many requests for auditions.' The critics were impressed by the results. 'The Corydon Singers would lift the roof as required one moment and the hair on the back of one's neck a few bars later,' The Guardian noted after one concert. The Corydon Singers were one of many outlets for Best's musical talents. 'I've always had a double career, as an opera singer and as a conductor,' he told the journalist Andrew Green in a recent online interview looking back on their 1994 recording of Vaughan Williams's opera Hugh the Drover that also featured the New London Children's Choir directed by Ronald Corp. Gradually Best narrowed his own singing down to a select band of repertoire. 'I made a conscious decision in 1992 to cut out the rest and concentrate on the Wagnerian roles,' he said. At the 2000 Edinburgh International Festival he gave a towering performance of Wotan in Scottish Opera's Ring Cycle, appearing on stage for almost the entirety of Die Walküre, including the full 90 minutes of Act Two. This brought not only mental demands, but also physical difficulties. 'I drink huge amounts of liquid because it's good for the voice,' he told The Scotsman. 'But I always have to bear in mind that once I step on to the stage I'm there to the bitter end. There's no loo on the set.' Matthew Robert Best was born in Kent in 1957, the son of Peter Best and his wife Mary (née Reid). He recalled hearing Wotan's farewell for the first time. 'I was sitting with my mother at home doing my homework while listening to the wireless. My ears pricked up when it came on and I sat spellbound. It made a big impression,' he said. He started playing clarinet at the age of 12 and moved on to singing, conducting and composing while at Sevenoaks School. 'My best creation was the opera Humbug, which was performed at the school last year,' he told the Sevenoaks Chronicle in 1974 about his adaptation of Dickens's A Christmas Carol. As a choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge, Best's robust singing occasionally got the better of him. On one occasion he was in the choir rehearsing Michael Wise's 17th-century setting of the canticles for choral evensong when Philip Ledger, the director of music, fixed him with stern gaze and growled somewhat presciently: 'Mr Best, you are singing Wise in F, not Wotan.' He was a soloist in the university music society's performance of Handel's Israel in Egypt and in 1978 Opera magazine praised his 'astonishingly ripe and sonorous voice' as Seneca in a student staging of Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea. He went on to train at the National Opera Studio and in February 1979 returned to King's College to conduct the premiere of his own operetta Alice, based on Lewis Carroll's Alice Adventures in Wonderland, directed by Nicholas Hytner. There were further performances in that year's Aldeburgh Festival, including a guest appearance by the tenor Sir Peter Pears. In 1980 he joined the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as principal bass though was rarely cast in anything other than minor roles, and two years later won the £1,000 Decca-Kathleen Ferrier Prize. He made his Proms debut in the first half of the 1986 Last Night as one of the soloists in Puccini's rarely heard Preludio Sinfonico and Messa di Gloria. Meanwhile, in 1983 he married Roz Mayes, a member of the Corydon Singers. She survives him with their children, Alex, who is a sports teacher, and Natasha, a music teacher. By then much of his energy was going into the Singers. 'In 1981 we decided to make a record for the fun of it; a compilation of English music through the ages,' he said. This caught the attention of Ted Perry, the founder of Hyperion, who released the Singers' next album, featuring Bruckner Motets, and followed this with the first recording of Herbert Howells's Requiem, which was made a few days after the composer's death. In 1991 the Corydon Singers were joined by the Corydon Orchestra, which made its debut in a series of Mozart concerts at St John's, Smith Square. They accompanied the Singers in their recordings of Bruckner's Masses, some of which they brought to the Proms in 1994, while their recordings of Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ and Beethoven cantatas were runners-up at the 1996 and 1997 Gramophone Awards respectively. In recent years Best taught at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, though conducting and singing remained his greatest passions. 'I'm consciously trying not to blur the issue, but ultimately I feel that the combination of the two must come together,' he once said. 'Somewhere along the line, I would like to think I could combine the two experiences.' Matthew Best, bass singer and conductor, was born on February 6, 1957. He died from cancer on May 10, 2025, aged 68
The Review Geek
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
The Midnight Walk Guide: ‘Chapter 3' Walkthrough & All Collectibles
The Midnight Walk Guide: Chapter 3 Chapter 3 has the most collectibles in the game, with 21 in total. While many are in plain sight, some are well-hidden, and the game often blocks backtracking, so keep an eye out as you progress! When you begin the chapter, move past the NPC holding an umbrella and follow Potboy to the path on the right. You'll find a hatch here holding Gramophone Disc #7 (All Darkness Vanishes). Continue on the linear path and enter Housey. When you exit, be sure to pick up Shellphone #13 just behind you, in the direction that the giant NPC is travelling. Follow Housey up the main road until it stops. When it does, drop down to the lower level. Just to the right of the large cat (pictured below), check the hatch to grab Story Page #6 (Who Took The Sun Away?). The Ice Mines Back to top ↑ Head up the path to the right of the big cat and you'll find yourself inside the mines. Close your eyes by each of the blue frogs around the circle until you move counter-clockwise to the opening of the cave. Once you get rid of this frog, you'll be able to step through. However, do be sure to open the hatch to the right of the second frog, on the top box on the stack pictured below. Inside you'll find Gramophone Disc #8 (I Trappan). Move through the caves until you reach a room filled with pipes. Ignore the pipes in the main area and take the stairs on the right to find a hidden pipe. This will send Potboy to the higher platforms on the left. Next, take the right pipe to move Potboy to the back chamber (pictured below). Stand on the platform and have Potboy light the furnace to rise to the next room. When the platform rises, proceed through into the next room with the candles. Keep lighting the candles as you move through the darkness. At the third candle, take the path to the right and at the end, you'll find Shellphone #14. Return to the main path and when the track splits again, take the path to the right, where you'll find a hatch holding Clay Figurine #8 (The Moonbird). Follow the train tracks on the main path and when you drop down to the lower level, open the hatch to the right and grab Gramophone Disc #9 (Alla Sover). Keep moving, destroying the frogs as you go, until you reach the outside area. The Frozen Wasteland Back to top ↑ In this area you need to keep close to Potboy and any fires from candles to prevent freezing to death. Light the first candle then move with Potboy through the wasteland. At the third candle you light, you'll find a hatch just to the right on a circular shell that will hold Story Page #7 (Who Took The Sun Away?). Time your movements with Potboy to avoid the frozen winds. When the wind dies down, move quickly, and always have a match ready to reignite Potboy if his fire goes out. Coalhaven Town Back to top ↑ At the end of this section, the winds will subside and you'll reach the town, just after the chapter title pops up. There's a map just on the right as you enter and a well in the middle with an eye, Just to the left of this, you'll find Shellphone #15. Next, launch a lit match into the well to receive a key. Use the key to unlock the house just to the left of the well and next to the matchbox. Inside, use Potboy to activate the switch then head outside and face the gas boiler in the distance. Use your Matchlock to light the boiler and unlock the next path. Enter the door behind the boiler and immediately turn left. The hatch here holds Gramophone Disc #10 (Trostetankar i Juletid). Place Potboy on the switch on the other side of the interior then head outside and light the second boiler with your Matchlock, right next to the large locked door. The Bone Puzzle Area Back to top ↑ On the other side of the doorway, head directly forward and grab Shellphone #16. Once you grab this, take the far left path, under the frozen bride, and look for the second set of stairs on the right to find another hatch, holding Clay Figurine #9 (The Soulfisher). Return to the main path and this time go directly forward, past the bridge with a frozen lake. On the left, you'll find two stairwells. Take the stairwell on the right to find another hatch holding Clay Figurine #10 (A Nameless Creature). Back on the main path, beyond the little well, head up the stairs where you'll find another house. At the top of the small set of stairs outside it, you'll find Gramophone Disc #11 (The Lullaby). With all of this done, head up to the neon wisp, where you'll be given a task of retrieving various bones from around this area. First up, grab the Thief's Right Arm from the floor and add it to the grave. The Thief's Right Leg Back to top ↑ With the chain broken, follow the Wisp to this new area. Close your eyes to remove the red eye from the coffin, and be sure to do the same with the creature that will approach you. Light a match and use sound to find the coffins with eyes. Follow the sounds into the cave, keeping your match lit for visibility. Inside, listen carefully to find the correct coffins. When you retrieve the Thief's Right Leg from one of the coffins, don't equip it right away, as this will put out your match and plunge the cave into darkness. This is a problem because another Nameless creature will show up and you'll need to get rid of its blinking red eye to progress. Without a lit match, it's very difficult to see what direction it's coming! Return the leg to the open grave to open up another path forward. The Thief's Left Arm Back to top ↑ Follow the Wisp across to the newly opened door, and you'll find Story Page #8 (Who Took The Sun Away?) inside a hatch to the left. Keep moving up the hill and you'll eventually come to a house up on the hill with a red door. Before we can open this up, take a right and at the bottom of the stairs, open the door by placing Potboy on the marked location (pictured below) so he lights three of the candles at once. While he does this, use your Matchlock and position yourself by the two other candles to light both at the same time and open the way forward. Grab the mask from the newly-unlocked door and place it on the man's face outside. He will clear a path through to an open area with Crawlers. Crawlers in the Ice Back to top ↑ Use the Matchlock to light the candle just to the right of the matchbox. When the Crepeer moves, use Potboy to light rhe cauldron then quickly stand on the platform to be eleated to the higher level. Activate the switch, to turn on the gas then light it with the Matchlock. Head through the door that's opened and follow the path along and grab the key. When you head back outside again, just up beyond the chase sequence with the Crawlers, you'll find a hatch holding Clay Figurine #11 (The Crawler) inside. Use the key on the house and grab the Thief's Left Arm. Just to the left, inside the house, you'll find Shellphone #17. Return the arm to the grave to unlock another route. The Thief's Skull Back to top ↑ Follow the wisp to this new route, but when you reach the open area with large gravestones in the distance, look to your right and you'll find a hatch holding Clay Figurine #12 (Auntie Murkle). Just past this you'll find a bunch of NPCs and an open area to the left, with a slope leading up near some houses. Just next to this, you'll find Shellphone #18. Return to the main path and head down the stairs, and you'll find an NPC with a skull in her hands. After talking to her, follow the wisp but look to your left just next to the NPC on this pathway and you'll find a hatch holding Story Page #9 (Who Took The Sun Away?). Next, track down the Key Critter. Similar to the coffin minigame, follow the jingling sounds through the forest to find the Critter. Open the hatches on the trees and keep moving to the next area when it scurries away. Just before we reach this section, light a match from the matchbox and look out for the first red eye that will open a path through the woods just behind (pictured below). While finding the Critter, do be aware of enemies that pop up here, which can be defeated by closing your eyes and focusing on their Red Eye to get rid of them. At the end of this section, grab the key and open the door over the bridge. Keep moving through the cave and use Potboy to light the Songcatcher on the floor by pressing Square (X) next to it. Then, use the Wardrobe (by removing the blue eye) to activate a shortcut back to the Skull-holding NPC. Grab the Thief's Skull after returning the Songcatcher and return to the grave once more to complete the skeleton quest. Follow the wisp out the graveyard and with all chains removed from the large furnace in this area, use Potboy to head into the pipe just left of the huge contraption, which should now be unlocked. After entering, press Square (x) three times to light the fire within. Finally, head back to the grave and take the blanket from the ghost by pressing X (A). Take a match and light the unlit match in the ghost's hand and she'll disappear. To exit out this area, head inside the wardrobe in front of the big cat which has appeared at the foot of the furnace path. When you emerge on the other side, you'll unlock the Achievement: The Tale of Coalhaven for finishing Chapter 3. Onwards and upwards!
New York Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Joel Krosnick, Longtime Cellist of Juilliard String Quartet, Dies at 84
Joel Krosnick, the admired longtime cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet, who helped shape its championing of new American music as much as its commitment to the classics, died on April 15 at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He was 84. His death, from pancreatic cancer, was announced by the Juilliard School in New York City, where Mr. Krosnick was head of the cello department and had taught for 50 years. Mr. Krosnick's playing combined the two hallmarks of the Juilliard String Quartet's renowned style: intensity and precision. He was ideally suited to inherit the mantle of his two cellist predecessors in one of the world's longest-lived string quartets — and he was with the quartet, known as the Juilliard, longer than either, from 1974 until his retirement in 2016. From its start, 70 years before Mr. Krosnick's departure, the Juilliard committed to playing new music with the same devotion it brought to the classical repertoire, and to playing the classics as if they were new. Mr. Krosnick went right along, as at home with the searing abstract intensity of the cello cadenza in Elliott Carter's String Quartet No. 2 as with the soulful meditations of Beethoven's Quartet No. 16 in F (Op. 135) or the spiky turbulence of Bartok's quartets. He recorded the complete quartets of all three composers with his fellow players, and they won Grammy Awards in 1977 and 1984 for their recordings of Schoenberg and Beethoven. Typical of the appraisals of Mr. Krosnick's contribution was that of the authoritative British magazine Gramophone, which wrote in 1980 about the slow movement of the Juilliard's recording of Schubert's String Quartet No. 15 in G Major, noting: 'The cellist matches the mood to perfection here, and the tempo is precisely judged.' With his longtime musical partner, the pianist Gilbert Kalish, Mr. Krosnick also had an active solo career, giving recitals in the United States and Europe, and recording works by Prokofiev, Hindemith, Debussy, Janacek and others, generally to critical acclaim. His renditions of contemporary artists were also celebrated. Of the recording he and Mr. Kalish made of Carter's cello sonata, Gramophone wrote in 1973 that the 'performance by both artists is magnificent.' And in 1992, the magazine called Mr. Krosnick's recording of Carter's quartets with his Juilliard colleagues 'monumentally authoritative.' This devotion to the music of his time shaped Mr. Krosnick's recital repertoire. In 1984, he undertook a six-concert series at the Juilliard Theater in New York, entitled 'The Cello: a 20th-Century American Retrospective.' Of the first concert, with Mr. Kalish, which featured works by Ralph Shapey, Henry Cowell and the Juilliard's first violin, Robert Mann, The New York Times critic Donal Henahan wrote: 'Both Mr. Krosnick and Mr. Kalish threw themselves into their work with tremendous energy and dedication. Their response to the program's varied compositional styles was sensitive and their joint virtuosity could hardly have been more thoroughly put to the service of the music.' Mr. Krosnick believed deeply in the composers of his time, his daughter, Gwen, also a cellist, said in an interview: 'Their music mattered to him. He loved those languages, and they changed the way he heard Beethoven.' The critics sometimes went after him for letting his virtuosity get the better of him. In a recital that included two Bach cello suites, Mr. Krosnick 'set blistering tempos that could not be managed without some smudged passagework,' Mr. Henahan wrote in 1975. At the same time, he had to acknowledge Mr. Krosnick's prowess, noting that he 'plays his instrument consummately.' In a short film made after Mr. Krosnick's retirement from the quartet, Mr. Kalish called him a 'complex and very intense person,' adding that both Mr. Krosnick's recordings and his statements about music made it clear that he thought carefully about the precise effect he wanted to produce. 'Once we determine what type of sound or feeling is desired in a certain place, then we have to figure out how to produce it on the instrument,' Mr. Krosnick said in an interview with the website Internet Cello Society in 2005. 'We must endlessly experiment.' In an interview, the violist Samuel Rhodes, a colleague, said Mr. Krosnick had brought to the quartet an 'understanding of what the repertoire means, and emotionally what it means to us,' adding: 'He gave a new direction to the quartet.' Joel Krosnick was born in New Haven, Conn., on April 3, 1941, to Morris Krosnick, a pediatrician and professor at the Yale School of Medicine, as well as an amateur violinist, and Estelle (Crossman) Krosnick, a concert pianist who gave up her career to care for the family. Music permeated the household, and there were frequent chamber-music parties with faculty members from Yale, Mr. Krosnick's daughter, Gwen, said. Joel began playing the cello when he was 8, and a year later was playing a Haydn trio with his parents. At 9, he was studying with the Italian cellist Luigi Silva. He attended James Hillhouse High School, in New Haven, and Columbia University, where he studied English and music, earning a bachelor's degree. After playing recitals in Europe and New York in the late 1960s, Mr. Krosnick began to have doubts about pursuing a career as a soloist, he said in the film. He was leaning toward teaching, and took a position as an artist in residence at the California Institute of the Arts, in Southern California. But he had previously studied with Claus Adam, the Juilliard's cellist at the time, and one day his phone rang: It was Robert Mann, the Juilliard's founding violinist, inviting him to audition for the quartet. 'I wanted the kind of high-powered musical life I knew they had,' Mr. Krosnick told The New York Times in 1981. 'The day I auditioned, my body woke up at 4 in the morning and I started practicing. I probably had never wanted anything so much.' After he had played with the quartet a few times, he recalled, Mr. Mann said, 'Look, we'd better talk.' Mr. Krosnick thought it was all over. Instead, he was asked to join the quartet. In addition to his daughter, Mr. Krosnick is survived by a son, Josh, and his wife, Dinah Straight Krosnick, a retired elementary schoolteacher. An earlier marriage, to Judy August, ended in divorce. When he retired in 2016, Mr. Krosnick was the last member of the Juilliard String Quartet to have played with Mr. Mann, who had left nearly 20 years earlier. Mr. Krosnick was 'completely trained in every aspect of playing,' his colleague Mr. Rhodes said. 'He had a passion for music, and he would show it.'
Times
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Margaret Gale obituary: soprano with Sadler's Wells
During a 12-year career on the professional stage, mostly spent with Sadler's Wells Opera, Margaret Gale acquired a well-deserved reputation for being able to deputise at short notice for her fellow singers. In 1963 she sang one of the two nieces in Britten's Peter Grimes at three hours' notice; five years later she learnt the part of the nymph Naiad in Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos in a single day to replace Rhonda Bruce; and in March 1969 she was whisked in at short notice to replace an ailing Jenifer Eddy in Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus, with Gramophone magazine praising her performance as 'warm and charming without resorting to coyness'. Gale took part in a number of world premieres, including in 1963 The Knife
