Steel yourself for some uneasy listening this week, as Mahlerman guides us through Futurism and 'Machine Music'... Late in 1917, with the slaughter of Czar Nicholas and his family a few months away, and the Bolshevik Revolution in full swing, Sergei Prokofiev introduced his Haydnesque Classical Symphony to the world. This ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Mahlerman
This week Mahlerman stands well back and takes in some Big Music... When the Leviathan that is Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony came up for air at the Proms recently, it had been submerged for almost 30 years, and even before that this curate's egg of a work had only been performed ... Read More...
Mahlerman celebrates a quartet of great English composers once dismissively described as the 'cow-pat school'... My default position when asked, as I am from time to time, how one 'gets into' serious music, is to suggest tuning in to Classic FM. I don't tune in myself however, as I don't like music ... Read More...
Mahlerman celebrates a quartet of long-lived musical greats... Leaving aside His Bobness who, for most of us, sits in very thin air atop Mount Olympus, there are a handful of greats still sucking in denser gas below him. Just the mention of their christian names, like Bob, identifies them to most ... Read More...
Mahlerman selects four composers who revolutionised western music... It seems quite reasonable to suggest that in the world of fine art there are pictures, and artists, that changed the way we think about art; Leonardo's Last Supper perhaps; or Titian's Venus of Urbino, staring straight at us wearing not a stitch ... Read More...
'The future of classical music is more in Asia than anywhere else' claimed a famous Maestro a decade ago. So does the Western music canon now belong to the East? Mahlerman considers the evidence... Ah good, I have your full attention. Let us consider the East. By the middle of this century ... Read More...
Mahlerman marks a sombre anniversary in a way that only music can. The words of the 19th Century German writer Berthold Auerbach will come pretty close to many people's ideal on this sombre day: 'Music washes away from the soul, the dust of everyday life' - though I prefer the slightly ... Read More...
This week Mahlerman treats us to some outstanding Americana... The tradition of playing music at home, all but dead in broken Britain, flourishes still in atomized America and produces, along with the reality-wannabies, a never ending stream of talent in the performing arts. And the music they produce usually has a ... Read More...
Mahlerman explains what conductors actually do in an orchestra, with a look at three of the greats... A few weeks ago revered dabbler Nige blogged on the latest BBC red-button gizmo Maestrocam, a most unwise addition to our listening pleasure at The Proms, which concentrates a camera exclusively upon the antics of ... Read More...
Bear in mind that there is but one redemption from the curse weighing upon you: self-destruction. Thus spoke not Zarathustra but, of course, music's great bogeyman Richard Wagner, and no prizes for guessing which race he was addressing. The eclipse of this driven genius has often been predicted, and with friends ... Read More...
