by Kenneth Woods | Dec 20, 2015 | Explore the Score
Antonin Dvorak- Stabat Mater, op. 58 Dvorak began and completed his great setting of Jacopone da Todi’s 13th century poem Stabat Mater under a cloud of great personal tragedy. In 1875 his oldest daughter Josefa died only days after her birth. The grieving Dvorak...
by Kenneth Woods | Jun 18, 2015 | A view from the podium
I was not aware of what had just happened, but sometimes, it’s better not to know. Today my colleagues (Matthew Sharp, David LePage, Suzanne Casey and Catherine Leech) and I played a noontime recital as part of the English Symphony Orchestra’s Magna Carta 800...
by Kenneth Woods | Nov 30, 2013 | A view from the podium
I thought some readers might be interested in a little essay I contributed to the current edition of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras’ newsletter. A text version follows the scan. Youth orchestras are incredibly important- they make a huge difference in...
by Kenneth Woods | Feb 17, 2013 | A view from the podium
I just conducted Bruckner’s Second Symphony for the first time a few days ago- even many of the most pro-Bruckner opinion makers seem to think that only his symphonies from the Fourth onward are worth doing, and the often over-zealous defences of the early symphonies...
by Kenneth Woods | Sep 19, 2011 | Music and Media, Nuts and bolts, Performing Life
Reformist musicologists with a politically-correct worldview might find themselves raising an eyebrow at this week’s Surrey Mozart Players concert, where, with blatant disregard for all the latest scholarship, the orchestra and I will be playing Johannes Brahms’...
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