Whether you live in Texas or Tokyo you can now find the world-famous orchestra and its musical partners – Artistic Director Sir Simon Rattle as well as renowned guest conductors and soloists. The video platform will be accessible to the public at www.berliner-philharmoniker.de.
In the first live broadcast on Jan. 6, the Berliner Philharmoniker under Sir Simon Rattle will present a special concert featuring Johannes Brahms’ First Symphony and other works.
Audiences in the Digital Concert Hall will be able to hear approximately 30 concerts live every season. After the concert, the live recording can be retrieved from a video archive. Documentaries about the orchestra’s work will also be available.
For our Piano Street Blog readers the following concerts with piano soloists might be of particular interest.
January 11 - Murray Perahia in Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto
February 13 - Schumann’s A minor Concerto with Pianist-in-Residence Mitsuko Uchida
May 10 - Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto with Lars Vogt
June 6 - Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand i D major with Pierre-Laurent Aimard
High-definition cameras will record all the concerts of the Berliner Philharmoniker and broadcast them on a new web platform.
Sir Simon Rattle, chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker: “When the idea of the Digital Concert Hall occurred to us, I was immediately certain that this is the way of the future. I believe it is a marvelous thing for both the orchestra and the public. Furthermore, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to welcome far more people to the Philharmonie than before.”
Remote-controlled cameras deliver high-definition recording quality, while State-of-the-Art encoding technology transfers images and sound to the Internet.
One one of the originators of the Digital Concert Hall idea states: “Our primary concern is to achieve presentation and broadcasting quality that meets our artistic demands. We have installed excellent recording and studio technology in the Philharmonie in order to record our concerts as authentically and vividly as possible.”
Music critics said it would help to secure classical music’s place in the multimedia world and has the potential to widen the audience from a few hundred to millions around the world.
It will cost €9.90 to watch a single live concert, or have 48 hours access to one from the archives. However, there will also be a season ticket for €149, offering unlimited access to everything.
Dudley Moore (1935 – 2002), was an English actor, comedian and musician.
Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s and became famous as half of the hugely popular television double-act he formed with Peter Cook.
His musical talent won him a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford and whilst studying music and composition there, he performed with Alan Bennett in the Oxford Revue. Bennett then recommended him to the producer putting together Beyond the Fringe, a comedy revue, where he was to first meet Peter Cook. Beyond the Fringe was at the forefront of the 1960s satire boom and after enormous success in Britain, it transferred to the USA where it was also a major hit. His fame as a comedic actor was later heightened by his success in Hollywood movies such as 10 with Bo Derek and Arthur in the late 1970s and early 1980s, respectively.
Moore was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award but lost to Henry Fonda (for On Golden Pond). He did, however, win a Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy. In 1984, Moore had another hit, starring in the Blake Edwards directed Micki + Maude, co-starring Amy Irving. This won him another Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy.
In addition to acting, Moore continued to work as a composer and pianist, writing scores for a number of films and giving piano concerts, which were highlighted by his popular parodies of classical favourites. In addition, Moore collaborated with the conductor Sir Georg Solti to create a 1991 television series, Orchestra!, which was designed to introduce audiences to the symphony orchestra. He later worked with the American conductor Michael Tilson Thomas on a similar television series from 1993, Concerto!, likewise designed to introduce audiences to classical music concertos.
In 1987, he was interviewed for the New York Times by the music critic Rena Fruchter, herself an accomplished pianist. They became close friends. At that time Moore’s film career was already on the wane. He was having trouble remembering his lines, a problem he had never previously encountered. He opted to concentrate on the piano, and enlisted Fruchter as an artistic partner. They performed as a duo in the U.S. and Australia. However, his disease soon started to make itself apparent there as well, as his fingers would not always do what he wanted them to do.
In June 2001, Moore was appointed a Commander of the Order of The British Empire (CBE). Despite his deteriorating condition, he attended the ceremony, mute and wheelchair-bound, at Buckingham Palace to collect his honour.
This clip is from the 1950’s-60s British comedy group “Beyond the Fringe. Dudley Moore plays a very funny but also musically ambitious parody of a Beethoven piano sonata based on very odd yet well-known thematic material.
In December 2007 American pianist Leon Fleisher reached a high point in a remarkable career when he was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor in Washington, D.C.
A child prodigy, Fleisher began studying the piano at age four, gave his first public recital at eight, and at nine was taken under the wing of the legendary Austrian pianist and teacher Artur Schnabel. Fleisher made his debut at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Monteux in 1944, and he ensured his place among the top pianists of the day when he won Belgium’s Queen Elisabeth International Piano Competition in 1952. Thereafter, he was much in demand by orchestras, concert promoters, and record companies. Especially notable was his series of concerts and recordings featuring the concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra.
In early 1965 Fleisher began suffering from a malfunction of his right hand: the ring and little fingers curled uncontrollably to his palm. The problem was diagnosed in 1991 as focal dystonia, a condition related to repetitive-stress syndrome, which not infrequently affects musicians. Undaunted, Fleisher focused his energies on teaching and conducting. Eventually Fleisher began performing left-hand pieces for piano. (A number of such works—including compositions by Maurice Ravel, Sergey Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, and Paul Hindemith—were written for Paul Wittgenstein, a gifted pianist who lost his right arm in World War I.) In addition, Fleisher commissioned or inspired new works from William Bolcom, Lukas Foss, Gunter Schuller, and several other notable composers. During his years of affliction, Fleisher sought relief in numerous treatments, including brain surgery; in the mid-1990s he discovered that occasional injections of Botox (botulinum toxin used as a muscle relaxant) combined with Rolfing (a type of massage therapy) ameliorated the condition. Fleisher returned to two-hand performance in 1995; his right hand steadily improved, although he did not abandon the left-hand repertoire. In 2004 he played a triumphant return recital at Carnegie Hall, and he made his first solo two-hand recording since the 1960s. A short documentary film by Nathaniel Kahn about Fleisher’s persistence, Two Hands, was nominated for a 2007 Academy Award.
Alexander Melnikov’s extraordinary 2006 Scriabin recording for Harmonia Mundi tickled our curiosity about what was to come.
And our wish came true. Alternating in the roles of soloist and accompanist (with soprano Elena Brilova) , his latest Rachmaninoff recording adds up to one hundred percent presence.
Melnikov delivers some of the most intelligently musical and technically impressive Rachmaninoff interpretations available. Based on his direct sensitivity and deep insight, Melnikov has accomplished a recording with unique sound and colours.
The “Etudes-Tableaux”, Op. 39 and the “Six Songs”, Op. 38 (1916-17) can be described as the composer´s pre-revolutionary creative peak followed by a very long silence. In 1931, it was a desillusioned man in a new era recalled the past and produced the “Variations on a Theme by Corelli” (twenty variations on Arcangelo Corelli’s Sonata for violin, violone, and harpsichord which, itself, is a set of variations on the European musical theme, La Folia).
Alexander Melnikov had close artistic ties with the late Sviatoslav Richter, who regularly invited him to participate in his festivals in Moscow (December Nights) and his chamber music festival in La Grange de Meslay (Tours, France). In recital, Melnikov appears regularly at the world’s leading concert halls and festivals, and has performed with numerous renowned orchestras and conductors. He was featured as a BBC New Generation Artist from 2000 to 2002.
Piano Tracker is a new website that aims to be the ultimate resource for young artists and emerging professionals. Incorporating an online audition manager, the website keeps the user up-to-date and in-the-know about competitions, workshops and master class auditions. A tracking system keeps artists apprised of upcoming applications and auditions. Piano Tracker highlights include e-mail reminders for upcoming auditions and application deadlines; hundreds of competition listings, both national and international in scope; option to track private listings through our site that fall outside of the Piano Tracker scope; notification when prizes or auditions are being offered; convenient calendar and list viewing options and expense tracking.
The Steinway Concept, the Last Son and the Amazing Journey From the Past to the Present and Into the Future
Henry Z. Steinway, former president of Steinway & Sons and great grandson of the firm’s founder, died on September 18, 2008 at the age of 93. He was the last Steinway to run the piano-making company his family started in 1853. In 2003 when Steinway & Sons celebrated its 150th anniversary at Carnegie Hall, he represented the family.
Henry Z. Steinway is survived by his widow, Polly Zinsser, his sister Lydia Steinway Cochrane, and his five children.
Henry E. Steinway (1797 – 1871) was a German piano manufacturer and the founder of Steinway & Sons. He was born Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg in Wolfshagen im Harz, Germany. In 1835 he made his first square piano, which he presented to his bride Juliane at their wedding. In 1836 he build his first grand piano in his kitchen in the town of Seesen. This piano was later named the “kitchen piano”, and is now on display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art with a Steinweg 1836 square piano.
Did you know…
…that the strings of a Steinway exert 46.373 pounds (21.079 kilograms) of tension and that it takes some 200 artisans to build a Steinway?
… that Software developers Garritan announced the release of the Authorized Steinway Virtual Concert Grand Piano, a sample-based software instrument developed in collaboration with Steinway & Sons. The Authorized Steinway Virtual Concert Grand piano accurately captures the distinctive sound of the hallmark Steinway & Sons concert grand piano - with unprecedented authenticity and musicality.
Have you heard…
…about the critic who accused Steinway of behaving like ”the Microsoft of pianos”?
New York & Hamburg
Owing the unstable political climate in Germany, Steinweg decided to leave the country. He emigrated from Braunschweig, Germany, to New York City in 1851 with four of his sons, but before leaving he turned the German Company over to his son, Theodor Steinweg. Once in New York, he anglicized his name to Henry E. Steinway, and he and his sons worked for other piano companies until they could establish their own production under the name of Steinway & Sons in 1853. The business expanded with their inventions. The overstrung scale in a square piano earned the Steinway Piano a first prize at the New York Industrial Fair of 1855. In 1880 a Steinway Village was founded as its own town, in what is now Astoria, Queens New York City, with a new factory with its own foundries, post office, parks and housing for employees. Its early successes have been credited both to the high quality of its instruments and to brilliant marketing, including the showroom and the Steinway Hall. Steinway Street, one of the main streets in the Astoria and Long Island City neighborhoods of Queens, is named after the company. The second factory was established in 1880, in Hamburg, Germany.
In April 2005, the Steinway factory in Hamburg celebrated its 125th anniversary. Steinway employees, Steinway artists, dealers and friends from around the world celebrated at the Laeiszhalle - the Hamburg concert hall . The high point of the anniversary concert was a showcase performance by Steinway artist Lang Lang. As part of the celebration, the 125 th anniversary limited edition Steinway Art-Case piano by renowned designer Count Albrecht Goertz was presented to the public. The 125t th anniversary of the Hamburg Steinway factory was marked by a large festival of music, held on April 17, 2005.
Many of the great pianists of the past (referred to by Steinway as ‘the Immortals’) and many active concert pianists today have expressed a preference for either the New York or the Hamburg piano. Vladimir Horowitz played a New York model D, Arthur Rubinstein preferred the Hamburg model D. Sergei Rachmaninoff had two New York Steinways in his Beverly Hills home, and one New York D in his New York home, and later he chose a Hamburg D for his new villa Senar in Switzerland.
The difference between the New York and Hamburg instruments is less noticeable today, although some objective differences are well known: the American models have a black satin finish and square or Sheraton corners; Hamburg models have a high gloss polyester finish and rounded corners.
550,000 Pianos during the 20 th Century
By 1900, both factories were producing more than 3,500 pianos a year, for concert halls, schools, and private homes all over the world. In 1857 Steinway began to produce a line of highly lucrative art case pianos, designed by well-known artists, which became popular among the rich and famous. Today, these pianos sell for vast sums of money at auction houses. In 1903 the one hundred thousandth Steinway grand piano was given as a gift to the White House. It was replaced in 1938 by the three hundred thousandth, which remains in the White House to this day. Later, Steinway diversified into the manufacture of reproducing pianos. Several systems such as the Welte-Mignon, Duo-Art, and Ampico were incorporated. During the 1920s Steinway had been selling up to 6,000 pianos a year. Piano production fell after 1929, and during the Great Depression they produced just over 1,000 pianos a year. In the years between 1935 and WWII, demand rose again.
By the year 2000, Steinway had made its five hundred and fifty thousandth piano. The company updated and expanded production of its two other brands, Boston and Essex pianos, in addition to the flagship Steinway & Sons. More showrooms, and large and small concert halls were opening across the world, mainly in Japan, Korea and China.
At present, 2,500 Steinway pianos are built in New York every year, and 1,500 Steinway pianos are built in Hamburg. The market is loosely divided into two sales areas, New York Steinway supply North and South America with their pianos; Hamburg Steinway supply their pianos to the rest of the world. At all the main Steinway showrooms, pianos can be ordered from both factories. The New York and Hamburg factories exchange parts and craftsmanship in order to “make no compromise in quality”, in the words of Henry E. Steinway. Steinway parts for both factories come from the same places: Canadian maple is used for the rim; the soundboards are made from Sitka spruce from Alaska. Both factories use similar crown parameters for their diaphragmatic soundboards. Recently Steinway has acquired some of its suppliers in order to maintain quality: the German manufacturer Kluge in Wuppertal, which supplies all the keyboards was bought up in December 1998; in November 1999, it purchased the company which supplies its iron frames, O. S. Kelly Co., Springfield.
New Company Structure
In 1995 Steinway Musical Properties, the parent company of Steinway & Sons, merged with the Selmer Company, and formed Steinway Musical Instruments, which acquired the flute manufacturer Emerson in 1997, piano keyboard maker Kluge in 1998, and the Steinway Hall in 1999. The new combined company was renamed Steinway Musical Instruments, and made further acquisitions in the following years. Since 1996 Steinway Musical Instruments, Inc. has been traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the name LVB (Ludwig van Beethoven).
AkivMusic
On May 19 2008 Steinway Musical Instruments announced the acquisition of ArkivMusic LLC, an online retailer which operates ArkivMusic.com. This website is devoted to sales of classical music on the Internet. Service delivery of physical media (CDs, DVDs, etc.) is fulfilled from 20 distribution centers. Steinway intends to tie in Steinway artists via this Internet channel. ArkivMusic will continue to operate as an independent contributor to the Steinway group, but will consolidate its financial result with other Steinway businesses.
Many are the artists willing to express the specific quality of their Steinway relationship:
“Steinway is the only piano on which the pianist can do everything he wants. And everything he dreams.”
Vladimir Ashkenazy
“The Steinway piano is such an incomparable instrument. Due to its virtues, I am able to express all my musical feelings.”
Daniel Barenboim
“Sometimes a Steinway plays better than the pianist, and it is then a marvelous surprise.”
Martha Argerich
“I want to make music. That means I prefer the Steinway piano.”
Alfred Brendel
The Steinway Artist Program
In contrast to other makers, who presented their pianos to pianists, William Steinway engaged the great Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein to play an American concert tour in 1872, with 215 concerts in 239 days, all on Steinway instruments. It was a triumph for both Rubinstein and Steinway & Sons. Later Ignacy Jan Paderewski played 107 concerts 117 days, travelling through America with his own railroad car and Steinway concert piano. This was the birth of the Concert & Artist program.
The Steinway Artist Program has not been without opponents and controversy.
Steinway artists are expected to perform exclusively on Steinway instruments wherever a Steinway is standing or can be carried to. Angela Hewitt was dropped from Steinway’s roster in 2002 after performing a concert on a Fazioli piano. The Canadian pianist Louis Lortie has complained that Steinway is trying to establish a monopoly on the concert world by becoming “the Microsoft of pianos.”
However, no one can dispute Steinway´s enormous impact on the whole concept of piano sound and state-of-the-art instrument quality standards for past, present and future generations of musicians. Founder Henry Steinway once said, “Build the best piano possible and sell it at the lowest price consistent with quality.”
In 1988 Steinway & Sons made their five hundred thousandth piano, a milestone in the history of musical instrument making. The piano was built by the factory in New York, with some participation from the Hamburg Steinway factory. The five hundred thousandth Steinway piano was designed by artist Wendell Castle and was named “The grand of the artists”.
All the 800-plus Steinway Artists signed the piano with their names, including Vladimir Horowitz and Elton John. It is still on its concert tour around the world.
According to Steinway & Sons, 98% of piano soloists chose to play publicly on a Steinway during the 2005–2006 North American concert season. The majority of the world’s concert halls have a Steinway D-274, some have both New York and Hamburg D’s to satisfy a greater range of performing artists. Today over 1,300 concert artists and ensembles bear the title “Steinway Artist,” which means that they have chosen to perform on Steinway pianos. Each owns a Steinway and none is paid to do so. Well known piano competitions such as the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition are sponsored by Steinway and use their instruments exclusively.
Picking the right Steinway…
Let us now take a step into the everyday world of a concert pianist. In this multimedia presentation (from the New York Times) we learn the different steps and considerations taken when choosing a Steinway grand for a scheduled Brahms piano trio recording…
Multimedia presentation by The New York Times: A Unique Sound
NAXOS Music Library (NML) is a very useful resource for music professionals, students, amateurs and collectors.
The service offers more than 26,000 CDs with over 371,000 tracks of music for online listening.
In addition to this 500 CDs are added every month. It also contains comprehensive liner notes, opera synopses, libretti, composer and artist biographies and other essential information.
The recordings in Naxos Music Library include the complete catalogues of BIS, Chandos, CPO, Hänssler, Hungaroton, Marco Polo, Naxos and selected titles of other leading independent labels, with more labels being added from time to time.
Alfred Brendel: The Complete Vox, Turnabout,
and Vanguard Solo Recordings, 1958-1970
Alfred Brendel, who during his six decades of performances, mastered the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Schubert, has now decided to explore other passions in life such as literature and painting. He will give his last concert on December 18, 2008, in Vienna. Brendel will be 77 in January 2009.
In order to pay tribute to the great Austrian, the Brilliant Classics label has released a 35 CD box with early recordings, covering the period 1958-1970.
Read more at Brilliant Classics.
Alfred Brendel on Music - Collected Essays
Known to many as an excellent writer on music (see example below), Brendel’s sharp eyes behind his glasses has not only traced the absurdities of the world but also uniquely and simultaneously added wit and humour to every insight revealed.
“To sit down and start Haydn’s last C major sonata with a tortured look is even worse than to embark on the so-called Moonlight sonata with a cheerful smile.” (from Alfred Brendel´s essay “Must Classical Music Be Entirely Serious?”)
Alfred Brendel discusses Classical and Romantic masterpieces, as well as various other musical subjects, in this collection of essays dating from the 1960’s to the present. Pianists will find the chapters on Beethoven and Schubert sonatas, in which Brendel touches on style and interpretation,
with excerpts from the scores, especially useful. There is also a truly valuable section about Schumann’s Kinderszenen. Brendel’s essays make most rewarding reading. For a start, he is a good writer. He has a keen appreciation of the virtues of musical anecdote used to make a point. Numerous other essays are accessible to non-musicians as well, and can be enjoyed simply for the author’s wit and insight.
‘Coping with Pianos’ and ‘A Case for Live Recordings,’ for example, would be of interest to any music lover.
Igor Stravinsky characterized Prokofiev as the greatest Russian composer of his day. Prokofiev was also an excellent pianist, and often performed his own works.
Some of his solo piano music performances were recorded for HMV in Paris in 1935, and he was also soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra in the first recording of his third piano concerto, recorded in London on the HMV label in 1932. These recordings are now available on CD on the Pearl and Naxos labels.
In this encore from a recital at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest in 2005, a young Hungarian ”rising star” pianist and Steinway artist Adam Gyorgy displays his sensitive interpretation with a steady yet lively rhythmic sense of repetition, cultivated contrasts and lovely clarity of articulation.
Intermezzo, opus 117 no 1
Alexander Melnikov’s extraordinary 2006 Scriabin recording for Harmonia Mundi tickled our curiosity about what was to come.
Henry Z. Steinway, former president of Steinway & Sons and great grandson of the firm’s founder, died on September 18, 2008 at the age of 93. He was the last Steinway to run the piano-making company his family started in 1853. In 2003 when Steinway & Sons celebrated its 150th anniversary at Carnegie Hall, he represented the family.
Known to many as an excellent writer on music (see example below), Brendel’s sharp eyes behind his glasses has not only traced the absurdities of the world but also uniquely and simultaneously added wit and humour to every insight revealed.