{"id":1843,"date":"2024-10-02T13:38:13","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T12:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/?p=1843"},"modified":"2024-10-02T14:21:57","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T13:21:57","slug":"issue-30-the-giants-and-the-underdogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/?p=1843","title":{"rendered":"Issue 30: The Giants and the Underdogs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Welcome. This colourful issue not only delves into the work of Beethoven and Bach \u2013 two of the greatest giants in our musical history \u2013 it also explores the joys of conducting the more unusual alternatives!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our first interview is with the vibrant and entertaining conductor (and teacher) John Carewe<\/a>. John\u2019s illustrious career spans many decades \u2013 he\u00a0was a student of Walter Goehr and Max Deutsch (both Schoenberg pupils), Messiaen and Pierre Boulez. In 1958 he founded the New Music Ensemble, which gave many British premieres of music by composers including Birtwistle, Boulez, Bennett and Maxwell Davies. Other roles held include Principal Conductor of the BBC Welsh Orchestra, and Music Director of the Brighton Philharmonic Society. In our conversation John chose to focus on one of his favourite subjects: musical structure, with a particular focus on Beethoven. He has taught conducting at both the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal College of Music in London, and is well known as having been a mentor of Sir Simon Rattle. In fact, Sir Simon has already read John\u2019s transcript and said that it was \u2018a perfect distillation of so much of your teaching. Love it!\u2019 Very many thanks to Thomas Jung for introducing us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following John is one of the world\u2019s leading Baroque specialists: multi-award winning conductor Ton Koopman<\/a>. Ton studied organ and harpsichord at the Sweelinck Conservatorium and musicology at the University of Amsterdam. He founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in 1979 and the Amsterdam Baroque Choir in 1992, and has been conducting Bach\u2019s music for decades. Ton is also Artistic Director of the French music festival \u2018Itin\u00e9raire Baroque\u2019, and owns an\u00a0enormous collection of books, letters and scores, which have recently found a new home at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium (the \u2018Ton Koopman Collection\u2019). Truly a seasoned veteran, Ton possesses an enormous wealth of knowledge about not only Bach\u2019s life, but also the practicalities of performing his music and the clues that have led us towards a greater understanding of how it was first performed. The focus of our discussion was the Matth\u00e4us<\/em>–Passion<\/em>, and whether Bach used a multiple singers or soloists for each vocal part. Today is Ton\u2019s 80th\u00a0birthday, and we at\u00a0Notes<\/em>\u00a0wish him many happy returns!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, I\u2019m delighted that a\u00a0Notes<\/em>\u00a0favourite, conductor John Andrews,<\/a> has returned with an illuminating and heart warming article entitled \u2018Welcome to All The Pleasures: The Joy of Diverse Programming\u2019. John\u2019s experience in conducting and recording hidden musical gems is extensive, and he has won multiple awards for his endeavours, including three BBC Music Magazine Awards for Malcolm Arnold\u2019s The Dancing Master; J.F. Lampe\u2019s The Dragon of Wantley; and British Piano Concertos. His recording of Ethel Smyth\u2019s\u00a0Der Wald<\/em>\u00a0also won Presto Music\u2019s \u2018Rediscovery of the Year\u2019 in 2023. Rather than arguing\u00a0why<\/em>\u00a0it is important, John explains how unearthing lesser-known music is so enriching and deeply rewarding. He not only writes about numerous composers that we can investigate for ourselves, but also approaches the subject from interesting and novel perspectives. In John\u2019s words: \u2018rather than a line drawing of the last four hundred years we can reveal a variegated landscape of countless swirls and colours. We can therefore also appreciate the composers we already know from an entirely new perspective\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t believe we\u2019ve made it to 30 issues \u2013 thank you all so much for your ongoing support of the project. And as ever, huge thanks to John, Ton and John and I hope you enjoy the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Hannah Baxter (Editor)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome. This colourful issue not only delves into the work of Beethoven and Bach \u2013 two of the greatest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public","pmpro-has-access","clearfix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8YX8Q-tJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1843"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1868,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843\/revisions\/1868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notesfromthepodium.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}