2016

Classical and jazz musicians have a profoundly different approach to the playing of their instruments. Arve Henriksen elicits an extensive array of sounds from his trumpet.   In classical music the emphasis is necessarily on uniformity because the training is, in the first instance, designed for playing in an orchestra. Only a small number ever get to play as soloists and even when they do, they will also play in orchestras. That means that the approach to the various aspects of technique, such as tuning, articulation and tone, has to be uniform. There is also room for expression – usually…

Recomposed by Max RichterVivaldi: The Four Seasons Deutsche Grammophon Listen online on YouTube Reviewed by David James   Re-imaginings are not common in modern classical music. For most of the first half of the twentieth century there was a feverish pursuit of the new, endeavours such as the tuneless use of atonality (known as serialism). When the possibilities for the novel were largely exhausted – harmonic experimentation is, in the end, arithmetically limited – classical composition entered into a rather uneasy relationship with the past. History still weighed heavily on modern composers. What do you do when so much great…