Esa-Pekka Salonen’s return to Walt Disney Concert Hall highlighted his gifts as composer and conductor alike and underscored how an orchestra can sound genuinely 21st century.
Prom 32 this week featured Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra in Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, Mahler 1, and Dutilleux’s The Shadows of Time (one of his last works). The concert is still accessible to hear online for a few more days here.
Meanwhile, Daniel Stephen Johnson reports on the Seattle Symphony’s latest addition to its acclaimed Dutilleux series under conductor Ludovic Morlot:
While the orchestral playing is as ravishing as listeners have come to expect from Morlot and Seattle, the soloists brought in from outside the band are among the very hottest players on their respective instruments. The playing of violinist Augustin Hadelich, fresh from his Grammy win for last year’s entry in this Dutilleux cycle, is as intensely expressive in Sur le même accord as it is precise, while harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani executes Les citations with his characteristic wit and panache, and the cimbalom playing of percussionist Chester Englander lends an unexpected delight to Mystère de l’instant.
And my own recent profile of Hadelich for Strings Magazine is available here. September’s Gramophone will have my story on the Seattle Symphony and Dutilleux.
“Devastated by the passing of Einojuhani Rautavaara [1928-2016], great original voice in Finnish music. Also my first composition teacher and friend,” Esa-Pekka Salonen posted on Facebook at the news of the Finnish master’s death.
A prolific composer, he wrote eight symphonies, nine operas, 12 instrumental (and one choral) concertos, plus a wide variety of orchestral, chamber, instrumental, choral and vocal works. He was also a highly perceptive writer on music and a teacher: many Finnish composers who have enjoyed international success were his pupils, including Paavo Heininen and Kalevi Aho.
Here’s a recent program essay I wrote on Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Nyx. The composer himself is conducting the San Francisco Symphony this week in a program that includes TheFirebird and Ravel’s MotherGoose.
To music lovers, the mention of Finland seems to conjure the ghost of Sibelius. For the gifted Finnish composers of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s generation in particular, Sibelius is a commanding presence. And yet such “anxiety of influence” can indeed generate creative innovation. Over the past several decades there has emerged an extraordinary generation of creative thinkers staking out new territory, and the once-marginalized Finland has turned into a progenitor of some of today’s most interesting composers.
Erdrich's novel — about a Chippewa tribal elder working as a night watchman while battling government efforts to the tribe's treaties and land ownership rights — was based on her own grandfather.
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with cookbook writer Nigella Lawson about her latest book Cook, Eat, Repeat and how to stop viewing cooking as tedious and, instead, find peace in the kitchen.
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In 1904, Cassandra Lane's great grandfather Burt Bridges was lynched. In telling his story, Lane offers her own memoir — and lessons on family and American history for her future child and readers.
The former president's book features his portraits of 43 immigrants — athletes, public servants, business leaders, educators — in an effort to join those saying, "The system's broken. Let's fix it."
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Coleman, who died in 2015, had a knack for writing catchy melodies in a distinctive voice. Saxophonist Miguel Zenón loves Coleman's music and put together a quartet to play some.
Hough was 15 when her family left the Children of God cult. Afterward, she struggled to face the trauma of her past. Her new collection of personal essays is Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing.