by Kenneth Woods | Dec 16, 2019 | A view from the podium, Piano, pianists and pianism
Notes I wrote for the 6 CD Albany Records collection of live performances by the great American pianist, Howard Karp. These are proper live recordings – taken mostly from archival reel-to-reel 2 track tapes of Howard’s concerts in Madison and Urbana. Give...
![The good, [the] bad and [The] Messiah](https://kennethwoods.net/blog1/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Messiah-Groom-Square.jpg)
by Kenneth Woods | Dec 7, 2019 | A view from the podium, Not quite the news, Performing Life, Satire
NB – I have become aware in recent years of a special category of internet pedants who have made it their job in life to police the completeness and formality of the title of the work being discussed in the following post. Out of concern for their...
by Kenneth Woods | Nov 14, 2019 | A view from the podium, Piano, pianists and pianism
Leonard Bernstein was fond of saying of his friend and mentor that Aaron Copland was almost two composers, almost two men: one the smiling, genial, public composer of Appalachian Spring and Billy the Kid, and the other, more severe figure, “a cross between Walt...
by Kenneth Woods | Sep 21, 2019 | Lists
Three modern British masterpieces by English Symphony Orchestra Composers-in-Association: If you’re trying to base you decision on which country to live in on the basis of where you are most likely to hear fantastic new symphonies, you could do a lot worse than the...
by Kenneth Woods | Aug 20, 2019 | Nuts and bolts
Vibrato has been a subject of lively debate in the discussion of performance practice for a couple of generations now, but usually when we talk about orchestral vibrato, we mean string vibrato, and, usually, we’re talking about abstaining from said string...
by Kenneth Woods | Jul 27, 2019 | A view from the podium, Lists
They say “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but that just won’t do for music. Surely there must a scientifically sound way of determining once and for all what the most beautiful openings are in the history of symphonic music? Well, here you go....
by Kenneth Woods | Jul 27, 2019 | A view from the podium
This made me laugh. I am, generally speaking, not an aficionado of the short. As far as I can tell, shorts are at their most permissible as recreational or sporting clothes for kids or grown ups (biking shorts are allowed as long as you are on a bike, kids should be...
by Kenneth Woods | Jul 25, 2019 | A view from the podium
Recorded LIVE at Cadogan Hall, 9 June, 2019 English Symphony Orchestra Kenneth Woods – conductor “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony also received one of the best performances I have heard live. Woods’s fine and sane musicality ensured...
by Kenneth Woods | Jul 21, 2019 | News and Reviews
by Kenneth Woods | Jul 10, 2019 | News and Reviews
From the Summer 2019 issue of Musical Opinion Quarterly, a new five-star review from Guy Rickards: There are a number of orchestrations of Brahms piano or chamber works, most notably (perhaps) Rubbra’s of the Handel Variations, Op 24, made in 1938, and Schoenberg’s of...
by Kenneth Woods | Jun 25, 2019 | A view from the podium, Not quite the news, Satire
Just ten months ago, the City of Manchester Ensemble was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Ticket sales were dropping faster than Boris Johnson’s pants at a Royal Ascot after-party, and the orchestra was haemorrhaging money at an alarming rate. It looked like their...
by Kenneth Woods | Jun 17, 2019 | Mahler, Mahler- Performer's Perspective
Here’s a bit of music history I didn’t know I had. Gerhard Samuel, who gave the first performance of Hans Rott’s Symphony Symphony in E, repeated the work for his final concerts before retiring from the podium as conductor of the Cincinnati...
by Kenneth Woods | Jun 13, 2019 | News and Reviews
by Kenneth Woods | Jun 3, 2019 | Explore the Score
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847) Concerto in E minor for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 64 There were surely many Felix Mendelssohns, but perhaps the most singular of them is the figure described by Michael Steinberg as “the most astonishing of all the composing...
by Kenneth Woods | May 30, 2019 | Explore the Score, Nuts and bolts
Ken will be conducting Vaughan Williams Fifth Symphony with the English Symphony Orchestra at the 2019 Elgar Festival in Worcester Cathedral on Saturday the 1st of June, 2019. Details here. In 1952, when Vaughan Williams was asked to pick one of his symphonies for a...
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