MusicUpClose III
22nd October 2013 · 12:00am - 12:00am
In person | Virtual event
Presented by Richard Sisson. London at the turn of the century enjoyed a vibrant musical life. The Queen’s Hall was a thriving venue and the Crystal Palace concerts attracted visitors from all over the country. The Royal College of Music had recently been established in Kensington and the London Symphony Orchestra was newly founded. Elgar was poised to write the first great British symphony… [ Tickets ] Session Two: Scandinavia Tuesday 29 October 2013 19.30 – 21.00 Presented by Tom Hammond. What was going on in the Frozen North at the start of the 20th Century? Were composers aware of what was happening in the rest of Europe and America? Why was Sibelius writing music so far removed from other traditions? Why does his music get compared to / programmed with Carl Nielsen when Helsinki and Copenhagen are more than 700 miles apart – nearly as far as London to Madrid? Conductor Tom Hammond offers a musical smörgåsbord… [ Tickets ] Session Three: White Nights Tuesday 5 November 2013 19.30 – 21.00 Presented by Karl Lutchmayer. The end of the 19th century saw the beginning of a radical new Russian musical identity. Grafting nationalist outlooks on traditional forms a new style emerged at once shocking and universally fashionable. However the Revolution overturned such free-thinking and composers turned their imaginations to plotting a course between great art and Siberian banishment. [ Tickets ] Session Four: Gay Paris! Tuesday 12 November 2013 19.30 – 21.00 Presented by Professor Barbara Kelly. Author of a recently published book about music in paris between the World Wars Professor Barbara Kelly is joined by conductor Jonathan Tilbrook sound collective and students from Trinity Laban to explore and perform composers such as Milhaud Poulenc and Stravinsky… [ Tickets ] Session Five: Viennese Twirls Tuesday 19 November 2013 19.30 – 21.00 Presented by Karl Lutchmayer. Fin de Siècle Vienna was a decadent moribund and culturally self-satisfied city in which only the Operetta flourished. It provided a perfect breeding ground for radical musicians such as Schoenberg and Webern who with their Expressionist aesthetic changed the nature of music and its performance for at least a generation and returned Vienna to the cultural prominence it had enjoyed a century before. [ Tickets ] Session Six: New York New York Tuesday 26 November 2013 19.30 – 21.00 Presented by Kenneth Woods. Music from the Dawn of the American Century: When Gustav Mahler left Vienna for New York in 1908 it marked not only the beginning of a new chapter for him but the beginning of the end of Vienna’s primacy as the centre of the musical universe. Already New York was well on the way to becoming a musical metropolis to rival any European capital. From the mystic mishmash of Ives to Scot Joplin and the dawn of a new music driven by syncopation which would evolve from Ragtime to Jazz to Rock to Hip-Hop it was all happening in in the Big Apple in the early decades of the 20th Century. [ Tickets ] Made possible with welcome support from the Lucille Graham Trust