John Williams THE SEVILLE CONCERT (Video)

THE SEVILLE CONCERT

 

Anne-Sophie Mutter JOHN WILLIAMS Violin concerto No. 2 (Video)

VIOLIN CONCERTO No. 2

 

Jessie Montgomery: Starburst

John Williams: Violin concerto No. 2 (World Premiere)

John Williams: New arrangements of film themes “Across the Stars“

Aaron Copland: Quiet City

Igor Stravinsky: Suite from “The Firebird“ (1919 Edition)

Camille Thomas VOICE OF HOPE (extended)

 

VOICE OF HOPE

Konstantin Reymaier THE NEW ORGAN

THE NEW ORGAN

 

Xuefei Yang HEARTSTRINGS

HEARTSTRINGS

John Williams / Wiener Philharmoniker / Anne-Sophie Mutter JOHN WILLIAMS IN VIENA

JOHN WILLIAMS IN VIENA

Camille Thomas VOICE OF HOPE

VOICE OF HOPE

Anne-Sophie Mutter JOHN WILLIAMS Across the Stars

Legendary film composer John Williams and superstar violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter have announced a new album, Across The Stars. Released on 30 August, the album will feature Williams conducting new arrangements of some of his iconic movie themes, including pieces written for the Star Wars and Harry Potter movies. Across The Stars was recorded at the historic Sony Pictures Scoring Stage in Hollywood, where many great film soundtracks of the past were recorded, including The Wizard Of Oz, Gone With The Wind, Singin’ In The Rain, Lawrence Of Arabia, and ET.

“There is only one John Williams,” said Anne-Sophie Mutter. “What he writes is just extraordinary. Every time I go to one of his films and there is a violin or cello, I think, I would like to play that! And now I have his wonderful translations of all these iconic themes.” She added it was a “a tremendous honour” to work so closely with John Williams – and that the recording conditions for this album were the finest since she collaborated with Herbert von Karajan.

“Working with Anne-Sophie on this recording has been a pure inspiration,” added Williams. “She has brought vibrant life to these familiar themes in new and unexpected ways, which has been a great joy for me as a composer.”

John Williams explained that for this project he revisited themes from many of his existing scores and completely transformed them. “Presented on the violin, they become a different emotional experience,” he said. One example is his newly arranged version of ‘Hedwig’s Theme’ from the Harry Potter films, which he and Mutter describe as “Harry Potter meets Paginini”, and “a Carmen Fantasy for the 21st century”. The music ranges from Star Wars motifs such as ‘Yoda’s Theme’, from The Empire Strikes Back, to more recent pieces such as ‘Sayuri’s Theme’ from Memoirs Of A Geisha.

John Williams – who has won five Oscars, four Golden Globes, five Emmys and 24 Grammys – is the most successful film composer of all time. He has composed some of the most popular, recognisable and critically-acclaimed film scores in cinematic history. Anne-Sophie Mutter is universally considered to be one of the greatest violinists of modern times. They both consider Across The Stars to be a milestone recording.

“These are melodies which touch us so deeply, they just stay with you,” said Mutter. “That’s the wonderful thing about John’s music – even without the film it has a life of its own.”

Los Angeles Philharmonic / Gustavo Dudamel CELEBRATING JOHN WILLIAMS

On March 15, Deutsche Grammophon released “Celebrating John Williams”, a double album recorded during the four concerts of Williams music conducted by Gustavo Dudamel between January 24 and 27 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The album includes the first official release of ‘Adagio for Strings from The Force Awakens‘, a new concert arrangement of music from the seventh Star Wars score premiered by Williams in 2018.

Anna Wandtke VIOLIN SOUL

In todays world there are few stereotypes concerning string instruments. Contrabasses, due to their size, are associated with small range of motion and peculiarly understood coarseness. In the music community there are thousands of jokes concerning violas and viola players. Traditionally, the most noble roles are attributed to cello and violin. The first of the abovementioned instruments is perceived as a romantic and passionate instrument; the violin is seen as mesmerizing and calls to mind brilliant virtuosos with technical skills. This release disproves some of those stereotypes. Anna Wandtke, an outstanding violinist, proves that violin can beautifully sing and talk about passions, feelings, and emotions without resigning from showing a perfect technique with a pinch of spectacularity. All of these elements produce a perfectly composed whole.

Anne-Sophie Mutter THE CLUB ALBUM Live from Yellow Lounge

In May 2015 Anne-Sophie Mutter put her noble, impressively named “Lord Dunn-Raven” Stradivarius through more than its usual paces. For a change, rather than standing on stage in one of the world’s renowned grand concert halls, she spent two evenings playing in a tiny graffiti-scrawled nightclub in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin. The name of the club was Neue Hei- mat, or “new home”, and on two evenings in early summer it was jam-packed with hip young people. The atmosphere heated up in the usual way for such clubs, but not in the usual way for Anne- Sophie Mutter’s concerts. As she later put it: “It wasn’t good for the Strad’s wood. I’m the sort of person who usually sweats discreetly beneath my clothes. But it was extremely hot in the club, and in the long run it put a big strain on the varnish. So to prevent the original varnish from becoming damaged we applied a thin protective coat to the Strad where it touches my bare skin. But any instrument over 300 years old is bound to show signs of wear and tear.” 

But what’s a Strad doing in a Berlin nightclub? And how did a world-famous violinist wind up in such a place? What looks at first glance like a mistake is, in fact, nothing more than a logical next step for a musician who has always wanted to move forward and who knows that her genre, so called “classical music”, must explore new venues and fresh strategies lest it be mothballed as yesterday’s art. Where is classical music, whose very name spells tradition, headed in the age of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? To a posh concert hall or sometines even to a stylish nightclub? “It felt like I was in the lion’s den. But I definitely wanted to put the audience in touch with the music I love and believe in, music that packs such a huge emotional punch. An audience which, sad to say, I’ll never find in the Philharmonie. So I thought to myself: OK, if there’s a bunch of people who’ll never go to the Philharmonie, I’ll have to go to them. I’ll ‘stalk’ them, so to speak, and go to their club.” 

The first challenge was to find a repertoire suitable for a club gig. How demanding should it be? How “easy” should it not be? Difficult questions, to be sure, and no wonder that the choice of repertoire was at the top of Ms Mutter’s agenda: “I looked at a lot of repertoire, and I really mean a lot. The result was a kaleidoscopic view of the variety of music history, and the variety of music for the violin.” Anne-Sophie Mutter was accompanied on both club appearances by pianist Lambert Orkis and her own Virtuosi, young scholarship holders from her foundation for up- and-coming talent: “I definitely wanted to put my Virtuosi on stage. They’re an integral part of my life. They come from Austria, Poland, the United States, South Korea, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Russia and Spain, and they have ideas as to what music can accomplish in society. In the final analysis, the point is to come together with music and to build bridges, not between generations, but between the cultural differences we’ve erected, between the religious and sometimes dogmatic walls that stand between us. As Heine so nicely put it, ‘Beneath our clothes we’re all naked’.” 

And so the Yellow Lounge programme came about, ranging from the Baroque to the present day. Obviously Vivaldi, the master of tone-painting, had to be there with his Four Seasons. Then came the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria, the Jamaican Rumba, Gershwin’s Preludes, Aaron Copland’s country fiddling and the title theme from Schindler’s List. An expertly prepared journey from past to present.

Even so, the world star had butterflies in her stomach when it was about to begin. “I was very tense, and I’m otherwise never nervous. It was perhaps the first time in my life that I had to struggle with expectations.” But as soon as she stepped onto the stage, surrounded by her musicians and an attentive audience, and tucked her trusty Strad under her chin, she seemed completely present and yet remote, engrossed in her playing. The music she otherwise plays behind a sort of cordon sanitaire in the world’s great concert halls acquired an incredible intensity, if only from her proximity to the listeners. She guided her musicians through the programme with passion and sangfroid, chatted and joked with listeners in a manner barely imaginable in the places where classical music is normally at home. All this did the music a good turn, emphasizing its vitality and, yes, it’s modernity. The audience, to Ms Mutter’s great joy, was equally euphoric in its response: “The applause was moving. But the other side of emotionality in a concert is the sharing of silence, listening with subtlety, tension, perhaps even amazement. And that’s something I sensed particularly strongly in the club. It’s precisely what music builds on, what it waits for: to grow from the intimacy of silence, from completely personal and sometimes whispered meaning into a giant flower, a grand message. I will always cherish the enthusiasm of the audience in these two intimate club appearances – that we managed to become truly one in the silence and the sharing of this very intimate moment.” 

And the Strad? It had to be sent for maintenance work to what its owner calls “The Spa”, where everything about the noble instrument would be tidied up to meet the challenges of new centuries and exciting new venues. (Christoph Dallach)