Guy Sacre
Following a CD published by the Palais des Dégustateurs label with piano works by Guy Sacre played by Billy Eidi (*), we publish this interview with the composer by Remy Franck (French version below). Guy Sacre is known for having written ‘La Musique de piano’ a critical view on a large part of the piano repertoire, covering some 4,000 works by 272 composers. He is also a pianist-composer and author of radio programs and lectures.
(*) Last Children’s Songs, Winter Sonatina, Spring Sonatina, Summer Sonatina, Fall Sonatina, Thirteen Impromptus)
Mr. Sacre, you are a composer, a musicologist and an author. Which of these activities is most important to you?
I am not a musicologist. I wrote, in the fervor and in the immense shadow of Jankélévitch, a book destined, among other things, to make known in my turn some of the unknowns of music, those whose revelation (he predicted) would one day produce a « great upheaval in this world of impostors and clowns ». Read More →
Gerd Schaller gilt als einer der bedeutendsten Bruckner-Interpreten der Gegenwart, als Dirigent, aber auch als Organist. Nach dem großen Erfolg seiner Bearbeitung der neunten Symphonie Anton Bruckners für Orgel, hat Gerd Schaller jetzt die fünfte Symphonie herausgebracht. René Brinckmann hat sich mit ihm unterhalten.
Gerd Schaller
© Axel Bahr
Im Booklet der CD kann man lesen, dass Sie derzeit nicht vorhaben, alle Symphonien Bruckners für Orgel zu bearbeiten. Wieso beschränken Sie sich auf ausgewählte Werke und wonach wählen Sie diese Werke dann aus?
Meiner Meinung nach sind nicht alle Bruckner-Symphonien in gleicher Weise für eine Orgelbearbeitung geeignet. Entscheidend ist für mich vor allem die musikalische Faktur einer jeden Symphonie. Und da gibt es doch wesentliche Unterschiede zwischen den elf Symphonien Bruckners. Read More →
Im Dezember 1998 war die große amerikanische Sängerin Grace Bumbry für ein Privatkonzert in Luxemburg zu Gast. Remy Franck hatte damals die Gelegenheit, mit Grace Bumbry ein Exklusiv-Interview zu machen, das wir hier wiederveröffentlichen.
Grace Bumbry
(c) Remy Franck
Grace Bumbry begann das Gespräch auf ihre Weise, zwanglos und liebenswert wie sie ist, mit Fragen zum Leitartikel der Dezember-Nummer von Pizzicato, den sie, wie sie sagte, mit größter Aufmerksamkeit gelesen hatte, da er von der angeblichen Dekadenz in der Welt der Oper handelte. Die ersten Aussagen drehten denn auch um dieses Thema, mit einer weitgehenden Bejahung der Kritik, die wir in eben diesem Artikel geäußert hatten. Auch Frau Bumbry ist der Meinung, dass es eine Krise in der Opernwelt gibt. Read More →
Der renommierte Pianist und Gründer des Beaux Arts Trio, Menahem Pressler wurde 2011 von der Jury der International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) mit dem Lifetime Achievement Award ausgezeichnet. Mit 88 Jahren war er immer noch einer der gefragtesten Künstler und Lehrer sowie einer der aktivsten Musiker unserer Zeit. Remy Franck machte 2011 folgendes Interview mit ihm, dass wir jetzt, nachdem Pressler im Alter von 99 Jahren verstorben ist, wiederveröffentlichen.
Menahem Pressler
Photo: Bjoern Woll/ICMA
Maestro, was bedeutet Musik für Sie?
Musik ist nicht nur wichtig für mich, unter allen Gesichtspunkten, Musik ist ganz einfach alles für mich: meine große Liebe, mein Leben, meine Existenz, mein Beruf. Im Rückblick bedeutet sie sogar noch viel mehr, weil ich ja zu einem gewissen Zeitpunkt ein Exilant war. Als ich 1938 aus Deutschland flüchtete, war quasi von einem Tag auf den anderen mein ganzes Umfeld verändert. Read More →
Karol Mossakowski, titular organist of the Cavaillé-Coll organ in Saint-Sulpice in Paris since last February, is one of the most promising artists among the rising figures of the young organ school. This year he is a prizewinner of the ICMA (International Classical Music Awards). Here is an interview with ResMusica, member of the ICMA jury.
Karol Mossakowski
You have a brilliant international career throughout Europe and France in particular where you live, where does this close link with this country come from?
I have always been fascinated by the tradition of the organ and organists in France. I arrived in Paris in 2011 for my studies at the Conservatoire, then I worked at Radio France, and at the cathedral in Lille. Read More →
On 21 April, the National Forum of Music in Wrocław, Poland, is hosting the annual ICMA Award Ceremony and Gala concert. Jakub Puchalski from ICMA Jury member Polskie Radio Chopin made the following interview with Andrzej Kosendiak, the Director of NFM.
Andrzej Kosendiak
(c) Lukasz Rajchert
The National Forum of Music is a musical institution, but it’s also a venue – a new complex of four concert halls in Wrocław. A good concert hall for the Wrocław Philharmonic had been talked about for decades. How did the National Forum of Music emerge from these many different plans and concepts?
The story of the NFM began in 2002, when Rafał Dutkiewicz was elected Mayor of Wrocław. The project to build a concert hall was on his agenda. At that time I was his advisor in preparing the programme for culture. Later he hired me as his plenipotentiary – and work began on the construction of the hall. Read More →
Timothy Hopkins dares to do what few dare to do. Born in 1995, the German-American cellist plays iconic violin literature – on the cello. And as if this was not enough, he recorded these demanding works, including Paganini's 24th Caprice and Saint-Saëns' Rondo Capriccioso, for his first album. Tabea Sedlak made the following interview with the young musician.
Timothy Hopkins
Timothy Hopkins’ first instrument was the piano, then he discovered the cello. With a musical home, his curiosity and a little bit of luck in his luggage – as he says himself – he made rapid progress: While he was still going to school, he became a junior student, later completing his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Leipzig and Berlin. However, the ambitious young artist’s first career steps fell during the lockdown period of the corona pandemic – and put a « good spanner in the works » for Hopkins, as he tells us in an interview. Read More →
Fresh from her personal success as Antonia in Tales of Hoffmann at La Scala, Eleonora Buratto is experiencing a particularly happy moment in her career: the Mantuan soprano, in fact, in recent years has racked up a series of debuts in a very wide repertoire, ranging from Rossini's Otello to Puccini’s Butterfly, passing through that Verdi which, between Ernani and Don Carlo, increasingly appears to be the cornerstone of her current and future career. Nicola Cattò (from ICMA Jury member Musica) met (via Skype) with Eleonora Buratto the day after the end of performances of Offenbach's opera Les Contes d'Hoffmann and just before she left for New York, where she sung Mimì in a series of performances of Bohème: the occasion was (also) to talk about the recording of Rossini's Messa di gloria, conducted by Tony Pappano, which won the ICMA 2023 award in the Choral Music category.
Eleonora Buratto
Next year you will be celebrating 15 years of your career, yet because of the breadth of your repertoire and the prestige of the theatres in which you sing, it seems that many more have passed: is it already time for a first balance sheet?
Is that so? I had not realized that! Actually yes, a first balance sheet is also useful to remind yourself of the milestones you have reached, how you reached them, if there were any mistakes, to understand if you could have done better so as not to repeat, in the future, errors of judgment. Read More →
This year, the jury of International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) honours Italian pianist Alessandro Marangoni with a special prize for this ponderous recording venture, which has come to an end and which Naxos has published in a single boxed set. In the ICMA Gala concert in Wroclaw, Marangoni will play Chopin's Andante spianato et Grande polonaise brillante in the (uncommon) version with orchestra on 21 April. Here is an article from the Italian Jury member Musica, by Nicola Cattò and Luca Segalla.
Alessandro Marangoni
(c) Daniele Cruciani
There are several pianists who have approached, in the last fifteen years, the curious and provocative pieces and bits from the fourteen volumes of Péchés de vieillesse, old Rossini’s enigmatic musical testament. Marangoni’s is, however, the first truly complete one, extending to all the chamber music and all the vocal pieces (almost all of them recorded with Italian singers), including pieces coeval with the Péchés but not present in the volumes of the official collection, as well as some twenty recently discovered unpublished pieces. Read More →
Since he wrote Winternacht in 1978, the reference to snow has gradually become a constant in the music of Hans Abrahamsen (Copenhagen, *1952). “It captures me”, he says. “What fascinates me about snow is its whiteness, as well as the idea that it can turn to ice”. But Abrahamsen is also very aware of “the other side of winter”, he clarifies, which is that “after winter comes spring”. That is precisely what happens at the end of Winternacht, but also at the end of his opera The Snow Queen (2019), whose production and subsequent DVD release, in its English version, by the Bayerische Staatsoper has just been awarded at the ICMA 2023. With this in mind, Jesús Castañer from ICMA'S Jury member Scherzo shared a warm conversation about his opera and some of his more recent creative interests.
Hans Abrahamsen
(c) Lars Skaaning
You have written your first opera, The Snow Queen (2019), at the age of 62. Did you think about making an opera before?
Yes. I had plans to write an opera in 1988, but I never managed to find the right story, and also I hadn’t developed a vocal writing of my own to do something like that. Read More →
