Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
A concert featuring the works of revolutionary Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg in his exiled home Los Angeles showcased his challenging and revolutionary oeuvre, channeled through classical forms such as fugues, sonatas, and waltzes.
Celestial, dark atmospheric, a legendary Odyssey down a road to nowhere, in search of Minerva, the Roman Goddess of Wisdom and Poetry, Stephen Scott’s bowed grand piano soars into the imagination, and transforms in the spirit of Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’.
Stephen Vessels continues his series on rare examples of underappreciated classical music composers from around the world. Felix Draeseke of Germany, once dubbed a “giant” by Franz Liszt, fell into obscurity until only recently.
Stephen Vessels continues his series on rare examples of underappreciated classical music composers from around the world. This stop, Azerbaijan’s Vasif Adigezalov, best known for incorporating traditional modal mugham music into his works.
With reluctance, George Gershwin, commissioned by the self-styled King of Jazz in 1920s New York, composed his “musical kaleidoscope of America,” Rhapsody in Blue. Stephen Vessels curates the discussion.
Rising from the East Anglian shadows of Benjamin Britten, William Alwyn’s prolific compositions and pioneering film scores from the 1940s-50s set him apart in 20th Century classical music. Stephen Vessels curates the discussion.
Do today’s elite lack the patience and culture for classical music? Or is it a matter of cultural dominance of the popular, the fame producing, and capital revenue streams which have sacrificed painstaking complex creation? John Halle opines.