Latest news with #symphony
News.com.au
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Metal lords Parkway Drive perform with an orchestra at Sydney Opera House
Global metal lords Parkway Drive return home to perform once-in-a-lifetime concert with a symphony orchestra and choir at Sydney Opera House on June 9, 2025.
CBC
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Vancouver show hopes to bridge the worlds of symphony and video games
An upcoming Vancouver concert will feature a symphony orchestra performing music from some of the world's most popular video games — and the orchestra's conductor wants to make new fans of symphonic music in the process. Game On! will see the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra take on music from megahit games like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, Civilization, Assassin's Creed and more at the Orpheum Theatre on June 11. Conductor Andy Brick says that back when he first started working with symphony orchestras to perform music from video games in 2003, the idea was a novelty. Brick says he was the first to conduct such a concert in the West, with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, Germany — and admits many of his musicians, at first, expressed skepticism over being asked to play music from video games. "The minute we started — you know, the hall is sold out, was packed — the audience went crazy. It was almost like being at a rock concert," he told CBC News. "I think that's one of the really special things about video games, is that the audience connection to the music is quite different than what I think orchestras typically experience with their audiences." Brick says he hopes his Vancouver show can serve as a bridge to the world of symphonic music, especially for younger people. The composer also hopes to convince regular symphony listeners of the value of video game music, which one academic says has deep emotional resonance for gamers. "You're connecting to the music on the musical level, but you're also connecting to it on a physical, interactive level," Brick said. "When you get into the concert hall, when you hear this music, you're having a connection not just with the music, but you're having this visceral connection again," he added. "So I think there's a lot of physicality." 'Powerful resonance' Composer, percussionist and music educator Aidan Gold has written about how classical musicians respond to each other and improvise — likening it to a quasi-theatrical experience or even playing a game together. The composer from Seattle said that playing video games is often a long-form experience that's deeply personal, where a player engages with a game that responds to them in turn. "As a result, you can sort of connect very deeply with certain aspects of it, including the music, which ... forms, like, a powerful resonance" he said. "Then, whenever you hear it, especially in a new venue like the concert hall, that can often provoke a very communal reaction because you're connecting with all of these other people who may also have had that experience." Brick says audiences for his video-game-based symphony orchestra performances have tended to skew younger than usual — and as video games mature as a medium, the audience has grown up with them. He says condensing video game music into a symphonic performance can be challenging, given how music within games changes dynamically in response to the player, and composers often have to create a suite of tracks that evokes a particular game. "It's a music which ... speaks more to the atmosphere and the emotional content of the game than it does to a specific storyline," he said. "Because the specific storyline can change." Brick says he wants to convince regular symphony listeners of the value of video game music, especially given that many video game composers are classically trained. It's a feeling Gold shares, saying that having a symphony orchestra perform video game music has the potential to appeal to both new and old fans of symphonic music. "People who don't think so much about video games, or interactive structures, might see these concepts of video game music and be inspired to think more about like, 'OK, how is music like a game? How ... do these communal experiences work?'" Gold said.
New York Times
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Per Norgard, Daring Symphonic Composer, Dies at 92
Per Norgard, a prolific and daring Danish composer whose radiant experiments with sound, form and tonality earned him a reputation as one of the leading latter-day symphonists, died on May 28 in Copenhagen. He was 92. His death, at a retirement home, was announced by his publisher, Edition Wilhelm Hansen. Mr. Norgard (pronounced NOR-gurr) composed eight symphonies, 10 string quartets, six operas, numerous chamber and concertante works and multiple scores for film and television, making him the father of Danish contemporary music. Following his death, he was described as 'an artist of colossal imagination and influence' by the critic Andrew Mellor in the British music publication Gramophone. Mr. Norgard's musical evolution encompassed the mid-20th century's leading styles, including Neo-Classicism, expressionism and his own brand of serialism, and incorporated a wide range of influences, including Javanese gamelan music, Indian philosophy, astrology and the works of the schizophrenic Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli. But he considered himself a distinctively Nordic composer, influenced by the 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 the Norwegian Edvard Grieg — have echoes in Mr. Norgard's fragmented sound world. The delirious percussive expressions of Mr. Norgard's 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.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
South China Morning Post
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
‘Music everyone can relate to,' Mahler's symphonies celebrated in Amsterdam festival
When Klaus Mäkelä climbed the Concertgebouw podium in Amsterdam and turned to the audience at the orchestra's third Gustav Mahler Festival in 105 years, the conductor could see the writing on the wall. Facing him was 'MAHLER' etched in gold on a cartouche and shining in a spotlight, centred in a permanent position of honour among the 17 composers enshrined across the balcony front. And sitting in the first row directly behind the sign was Marina Mahler, the composer's 81-year-old granddaughter. 'It was just as it should be. I was terribly moved and excited at the same time,' she said after the final note of Mahler's Symphony No 1. 'It affected me in the deepest possible way.' All 10 of Mahler's numbered symphonies are being presented in order along with his other major works from May 8-18, ending on the 114th anniversary of his death at age 50. Ivan Fischer conducts the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Choir in Mahler's Symphony No 2 in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Photo: AP 'This is in a way the first orchestra that really trusted in Mahler,' Mäkela said.
The Independent
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Composer Gustav Mahler, whose music is enjoying new popularity, is celebrated at Amsterdam festival
When Klaus Mäkelä climbed the Concertgebouw podium and turned to the audience at the orchestra's third Gustav Mahler Festival in 105 years, the conductor could see the writing on the wall. Facing him was 'MAHLER' etched in gold on a cartouche and shining in a spotlight, centered in a permanent position of honor among the 17 composers enshrined across the balcony front. And sitting in the first row directly behind the sign Friday night was Marina Mahler, the composer's 81-year-old granddaughter. 'It was just as it should be. I was terribly moved and excited at the same time,' she said after the final note of Symphony No. 1. 'It affected me in the deepest possible way.' All 10 of Mahler's numbered symphonies are being presented in order along with his other major works from May 8-18, ending on the 114th anniversary of his death at age 50. 'This is in a way the first orchestra that really trusted in Mahler,' Mäkela said. Joining the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra are the Budapest Festival Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic, with conducting split among Mäkelä (Symphonies 1 and 8), Iván Fischer (2 and 5), Fabio Luisi (3 and 4), Jaap van Zweden (6 and 7), Kirill Petrenko (9) and Sakari Oramo (10). Programs are simulcast to a 1,500-seat amphitheater in Amsterdam 's Vondelpark. 'We have a U.S. orchestra for the first time in this festival,' said Simon Reinink, who headed the planning as general director of The Concertgebouw (the building, as opposed to the orchestra). 'We also thought why shouldn't we invite an Asian orchestra?' Early champion was in Amsterdam Mahler's first champion was Willem Mengelberg, who conducted the entirety of the first Mahler Festival in 1920 to celebrate his 25th anniversary as the Concertgebouw's chief conductor. A second festival was held in 1995 to mark the 75th anniversary of the first festival and a 100th anniversary celebration was planned for 2020 and canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. 'Mahler is really in the DNA of the orchestra,' said Dominik Winterling, managing director of Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. "You feel it because we have a certain tradition, which is also passed on from generation to generation." Bruno Walter and Leonard Bernstein were Mahler's other primary proponents in the 20th century. 'My father, who was a musician, always told me: `Mahler was a great conductor and a good composer with some problems. Usually the form is not perfect and it's formless,'' Iván Fischer said of Sándor Fischer, also a conductor. When Bernstein led the Vienna Philharmonic in all of Mahler's symphonies over a decade starting in the mid-1960s, there was resistance. 'In intervals, in corridors, everywhere musicians talk to each other, there was this: `Yes, it's good music but a little kitsch. Well, why does he need these bombastic effects?'" Iván Fischer recalled. 'Really the cult of Mahler, where everybody started to love it, came after this cycle of Bernstein in Vienna but it was a spirit of the time. I think what created the breakthrough was that you didn't feel that music had to comport to certain norms and so it was a little liberation of the '60s, the time of free love, Beatles." Mahler has gained acceptance. The Fifth Symphony's adagietto was conducted by Bernstein at President John F. Kennedy's funeral and is featured in Luchino Visconti's 1971 film 'Death in Venice' and 2022's 'Tár.' No. 2 sets a mood in a current Tony Award nominee, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray.' Klaus Mäkelä gets prominent role Though just 29, Mäkelä was a natural fit to lead off with the first symphony because he becomes both Concertgebouw chief conductor and CSO music director for the 2027-28 season. His exuberantly stepped down two dozen steps toward the podium to open his program with Anders Hillborg's 'Hell Mountain,' a world premiere commissioned for the festival that quotes two of Mahler's works. Van Zweden, who has a home a short walk from the Concertgebouw, was to open the canceled 2020 festival with the New York Philharmonic, when he was its music director. Van Zweden first heard Mahler When he was 6 or 7, van Zweden heard a fourth symphony led by Bernard Haitink, the Concertgebouw's chief conductor from 1961-88. A violinist in his youth, van Zweden became the orchestra's youngest concertmaster at age 19. 'The scores of Mahler, what he gave us is a GPS system about the road of his life,' he said. 'He is such a human and we are such a witness of all the emotional roller-coasters and beauty and sadness and everything in his life during that performance. That is a different experience than a Tchaikovsky symphony.' Luisi first heard Mahler when he attended a Fifth Symphony as a 15-year-old in Genoa, Italy. 'It was overwhelming. I didn't know that this music could be so passionate and intense all the time — such a long symphony with a lot of different characters, different feelings, different moods,' he recalled. 'I remember getting out of that concert shaking in pleasure and surprise.' Mäkelä used a new edition of the score for No. 1 compiled by Michael Waterman, the fifth member of his family to play in the Concertgebouw in a lineage dating to 1950. With the help of his mom Cleora and friend Silvio Scambone, Waterman compiled markings going back to 1967. He now is working on editions of Nos. 5 and 9 based on notations dating to Mengelberg, who headed the orchestra from 1895-1945 before he was banned for his collaboration with Nazis. On Saturday, Fisher took a five-minute break between the first and second movements of No. 2, specified by Mahler but not often followed. In a hall famous for its precise acoustics, he drew breathtaking playing from horns that scampered on and off stage like NFL special teams. 'So you hear these trumpets from heaven, everywhere, different directions,' he said. Mäkelä is convinced Mahler has become more accessible in current times. 'It speaks to the audience now because it's music that everyone can relate to,' he said. 'Because it's so personal, it somehow gives you a possibility to self-reflect.'
