Latest news with #Gramophone
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
David Watkin obituary
In 2013 David Watkin, who has died aged 60 from complications caused by the autoimmune disease schleroderma, recorded the six Suites for solo cello by JS Bach. The following year his illness compelled him to step back from a distinguished performing career to become head of strings, and later professor of chamber music, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. When the CD set of the Suites was released in 2015, it proved to be an instant success, winning awards from Gramophone – which this year rated it as one of the 50 greatest Bach recordings – and BBC Music Magazine. His rhythmically alive, tonally beautiful and scholarly playing was realised by using a baroque bow by John Waterhouse and two historic cellos, one by Francesco Rugeri from around 1670 for the first five Suites, and a five-stringed instrument by the Amati brothers, Antonio and Girolamo, for the Sixth Suite. As well as teaching, he continued to conduct such ensembles as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Academy of Ancient Music, Swedish Baroque Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Born in Crowthorne, Berkshire, David came from a musical family. His parents, Christine (nee Horney) and Ken Watkin, were violin teachers, and his elder brother, Simon, gravitated to the viola. When the family were living in Beckenham, Kent, he began taking cello lessons with a local teacher, eventually enabling the family to play quartets by Haydn and Mozart. When David was nine, the Watkin family moved again, to Pembrokeshire, where his mentors were Bridget Jenkins and the recitalist Sharon McKinley. He became the star cellist of the West Glamorgan Youth Orchestra, and went on to be a member of the National Youth Orchestra, and its principal cellist for two years. At 15 he won a scholarship to Wells Cathedral school, where he studied the cello with Margaret Moncrieff and Amaryllis Fleming. There he encountered historically informed recordings directed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Frans Brüggen, and a friend's father made him a baroque cello. Vocal lessons from the tenor Kenneth Bowen led to his seriously considering a career as a singer. His gap year was spent as a lay clerk, singing in the choir at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he went on to take a music degree (1984-87). He continued cello studies with William Pleeth and played in the Cambridge Baroque Camerata. As a full-time performer he led the cello sections of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, English Baroque Soloists, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Philharmonia Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Other ensembles he conducted included the Malta Philharmonic and Manchester Consort, and he had a stint as assistant conductor at Glyndebourne. While working with John Eliot Gardiner in the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, he and three colleagues – Peter Hanson, Lucy Howard and Gustav Clarkson – felt they should adapt the orchestra's authentic styles for Romantic music to quartet playing. Thus in 1993 the Eroica Quartet was born. Watkin adopted a transitional approach with this ensemble, playing with an endpin: until the mid-19th century cellists had held the instrument unsupported between their legs. The quartet's recordings of Beethoven, Mendelssohn (the quartets and the original version of the Octet), Schumann, Debussy and Ravel brought fresh perspectives to listeners. Characteristic of their approach for the Mendelssohn quartets was studying the bowings and fingerings adopted by Ferdinand David, the first performer of the composer's Violin Concerto, for his own ensemble, and the selective application of vibrato for expressive effect. Tours took them to France and the US, and they gave Beethoven cycles in the UK and abroad. With various colleagues, Watkin recorded concertos and sonatas by Vivaldi and sonatas by Boccherini. He and the fortepianist Howard Moody recorded three sonatas by Beethoven (1996), and to the book Performing Beethoven (2011) he contributed an essay on those works. In an article in the journal Early Music (1996) Watkin pointed to how Corelli allowed for the possibility of violin sonatas being accompanied by a string bass without a keyboard, by filling out the chords indicated by the numbers of the figured bass, and extended the principle to recitative passages in opera. As a teacher he aimed to lead students to think for themselves. An extract from a masterclass on Bach given at Kings Place, London, in 2017 can be seen on YouTube. In choosing Watkins' Bach recordings for its 50 best, Gramophone commented on the 'warm, expansive, generous and friendly' character of the playing, and many found the same qualities in him as a colleague. In 2002 Watkin married Sara Burton, and they had two sons, Noah and Sandy. They separated, and he is survived by his partner, Lisi Stockton, his sons, his parents and Simon. David Watkin, cellist, conductor, musicologist and teacher, born 8 May 1965; died 13 May 2025
New York Times
03-06-2025
- 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.
Korea Herald
30-05-2025
- 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!
