Gramophone: Gerard Schwarz, July 2019 Cover
Benstein, Barber and buddies were terrific symphonists, but what about their lesser-known 20th-century compatriots? Gerard Schwarz flies the flag for music that deserves wider acclaim.
Gramophone
The hidden giants of American Music
Benstein, Barber and buddies were terrific symphonists, but what about their lesser-known 20th-century compatriots? Gerard Schwarz flies the flag for music that deserves wider acclaim.
Read the article covering the music of Paul Creston, William Schuman, Alan Hovhaness, David Diamond, Howard Hanson, Peter Mennin, and Walter Piston in Gramophone’s July issue available here.
The Strad: Shanghai Quartet – May 2019 Cover
Keep an eye out for the Shanghai Quartet on the cover of the May 2019 issue. What a celebration of their 35th anniversary this season!
The Strad
Keep an eye out for the Shanghai Quartet on the cover of the May 2019 issue. What a celebration of their 35th anniversary this season!
The issue is available for purchase online here.
Excerpt:
‘When we formed the Shanghai Quartet in 1983 chamber music in China was almost non-existent,’ says the ensemble’s first violinist Weigang Li. ‘Western music had been introduced to the country in the 1920s and 30s, and the first generation of classical musicians included my grandfather, a violinist, who played in a quartet with Yo-Yo Ma’s father (also a violinist) before the latter moved to Paris. But most Chinese musicians, even by the 1980s, simply weren’t aware of the scope and depth of this fantastic repertoire.’
Li is speaking to me at the 2018 Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition, where he is serving as a jury member. His fellow quartet members are here too, providing the professional element for the chamber music round. The significance of the Stern name is not lost on Li, who in 1979, at the age of 15, was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China.
Read more here.
The Strad Cover – June 2018
The second part of Terry Borman’s detailed examination of Anne Akiko Meyers’ violin, ‘Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri ‘Del Gesù’, with contributions from experts in the latest technologies, investigating acoustics, dendrochronology, varnish analysis and plate thicknesses.
The Strad
Terry Borman
This is an extract from the second part of Terry Borman’s detailed examination of the ‘Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri ‘Del Gesù’, with contributions from experts in the latest technologies, investigating acoustics, dendrochronology, varnish analysis and plate thicknesses. Download the June issue on desktop computer, via the The Strad App, or buy the print edition
Two months before his death in June 1881, Henri Vieuxtemps was considering selling his beloved 1741 Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin. He was no longer able to play, having suffered a stroke, and in a letter dated 9 April 1881 he told his friend, cellist Joseph Van der Heyden, that the instrument would ‘cost the buyer a lot, but it will be well worth it because this violin is a unique pearl’.
In early January 2013 the world found out how prescient his comment was, as the newspapers were flooded with reports about the violin’s sale to an anonymous buyer for an undisclosed sum – stating only that it was in excess of $16 million (£9.8 million).
That made it, at the time and still five years later, the most expensive violin in the world. The news also stated that it was to be a lifetime loan to the US violinist Anne Akiko Meyers.
The ‘Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri ‘Del Gesù’
Photo: J. & A. Beare Ltd
Read the full excerpt here.
Watch: Anne Akiko Meyers plays Saint-Saëns’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso on the ‘Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri