Introducing her rapturous and rhapsodic album Love Songs (Hyperion), the pianist Angela Hewitt quotes Hector Berlioz. Debating the relative powers of love and music, he concludes: “Love can give no idea of music: music can give an idea of love… Why separate one from the other.
For Olivier Messiaen, Sundays were sacrosanct. For more than six decades he was organist of Sainte-Trinité in Paris, having first deputised there as a 20-year-old in 1929. Remarkably, that same year also saw the appearance of his first published compositions, the eight Préludes for piano, so it seemed fitting that six of these were central to Angela Hewitt’s Sunday morning recital at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
There's a new superstar pianist on the horizon: Behzod Abduraimov. Haven't heard of him yet? That's not surprising — at just 21, this native of Tashkent, Uzbekistan has kept a very low profile so far. He's spent the past five years in the U.S., but not at a big-name school like the Curtis Institute (like Lang Lang or Yuja Wang, for example) or at Juilliard, where he was accepted as a student. Instead, he went to study with Stanislav Ioudenitch Park University in Salt Lake City Parkville, Missouri, where he's still enrolled.
“I think with Bach it's much easier to practice for many hours than with some other composers,“ said Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov, who has always wanted to spend more time with Bach. “It’s so harmonious and everything makes sense, even the most complex polyphony still makes sense.”
On his new recording, Bach: The Art of Life, Trifonov explores the scientific, emotional and spiritual dimensions of the composer. The album is centered around Bach’s late mystical masterpiece, The Art of Fugue.
One of the first major classical concerts to fall victim to COVID-19 back in March 2020 was a recital by the pianist Daniil Trifonov featuring Bach’s “The Art of Fugue.” Trifonov, at the time, was known chiefly for his seemingly effortless performances of demanding virtuoso repertoire, so it was tantalizing to wonder what he would make of Bach’s last, unfinished work, which carries an air of mystery and exists halfway between a piece to be performed and a treatise on counterpoint.
Instrumental music intrinsically has an earnestness that probably comes from its wordless-yet-plainspoken musicality. And the music of strings produces just such an endearing blend between the manmade and the organic — a naturally occurring material is held taut between two points which, when struck with intent, produces vibrations that can “heal this world through spiritual nourishment,” as Ustad Amjad Ali Khan puts it.
A collaboration that’s about a decade in the making, classical guitar artist Sharon Isbin joined forces with sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and his sons, Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash, for the album Strings for Peace, released on May 22nd via ZOHO.
Blues is the base of everything,” begins Fatoumata Diawara. “Blues is the heartbeat. It comes from your soul. And from this soul and from this one heartbeat, you can do anything – any type of music.”
A prolific collaborator, the Grammy Award nominee has indeed cast her creative net far and wide while featuring on numerous studio recordings alongside the likes of Flea, Herbie Hancock and Bobby Womack, and sharing the stage with such luminaries as Paul McCartney, John Paul Jones and Damon Albarn.
Fatoumata Diawara is a true multi-hyphenate – an esteemed Malian singer, songwriter and actress who left her home country at 19 to pursue her artistry in France. By way of Como, Italy, she delivers a riveting performance alongside her bandmates, many of whom have toured with her since 2018. The guitarist and keyboardist here – Yacouba Kone and Arecio Smith – both contributed to her Grammy-nominated album, Fenfo.
When the Pulitzer-winning composer Caroline Shaw wants a snack, she soft-boils an egg. She knows that six minutes and 15 seconds leads to the ideal texture — a jammy yolk, with a chalky outer edge and a flowing center. But her ritual for the past few years has been to surrender the process to music, letting whatever she's listening to that day dictate the precise cook time.
