by Kenneth Woods | Apr 30, 2014 | Explore the Score
‘This traumatic experience…was linked to his First Symphony… This symphony thus spans the years of his ripening, the summer of his life… At that time he developed a stoicism, an ability to suppress his feelings and to tame the chaos within him, just as he mastered the...
by Kenneth Woods | Apr 16, 2014 | A future for music
This week I will be conducting some of the incidental music composed by Edvard Grieg to accompany Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. I haven’t conducted any of Grieg’s Peer Gynt music in over ten years, and I’m very, very excited to be doing it again. There was a time when I didn’t...
by Kenneth Woods | Apr 14, 2014 | A view from the podium
A review from the popular “Classical Candor” blog of volume four in the Orchestra of the Swan’s survey of the complete symphonies of Robert Schumann and Hans Gál. Read the original here. “Gal’s First Symphony is relatively brief, about...
by Kenneth Woods | Apr 14, 2014 | Bobby and Hans, Headlines, News and Reviews
Critic Rick Jones (longtime critic for the London Evening Standard) compares the new Orchestra of the Swan recording of Schumann 1 with that of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Yannick Nezet-Seguin on Deutsche Grammophon. Read the original here. It’s Bobby...
by Kenneth Woods | Apr 9, 2014 | A view from the podium, Mahler, Mahler- Performer's Perspective
A few years ago, Julian Johnson’s excellent book “Mahler’s Voices” had been languishing on various bookshelves here in an embarrassingly half-read state. Eventually, with a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony on the horizon, I began skimming through...
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