BBC launches modern classical music website

BBC Four has made a host of programmes about 20th-century music permanently available to watch in a new online Modern Classical Music Collection. The television programmes in the collection include an interview with the American composer John Adams, a concert of music by Philip Glass performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and a BBC Proms performance of music by Michael Berkeley, Benjamin Britten and Vaughan Williams. Introducing the collection on the website, broadcaster and writer Clemency Burton-Hill says: ‘If you’re prepared to open your mind, limber up your brain, and go on an auditory, sensory and intellectual adventure through some of the most fascinating cultural figures of the past hundred or so years, I’m confident you’ll find much about this collection that is rewarding, illuminating, provoking and beautiful.’
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Rachel Barton Pine: Violin Lullabies The Chicago violinist (and new mom) plays pieces from around the world specifically composed as lullabies,

Selections by violinist Rachel Barton Pine newly added to the playlists of several of our radio stations from her new album VIOLIN LULLABIES from Cedille Records. Pine and her sensitive pianist, Matthew Hagle, include several famous lullabies, including those by Brahms, Schubert, Faure and Gershwin (“Summertime”). Others may come as a surprise: the “Berceuse Écossaise (Scottish Lullaby)” by Ludwig Schwab is a delightful Scottish accent; Oror (Lullaby), by a young Alan Hovhannes is colored with Eastern exoticism; and the lullaby from Stravinsky’s Firebird may not soothe a child to sleep, but it’s certainly enthralling on its own terms. The album’s dramatic centerpiece may be William Grant Still’s Mother and Child, full of sweep and drama. Excellent liner notes complete the package.

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Classical Music for special Holidays

A List of suggestions for playing specific classical music on holidays and special occasions

List of Holiday Music

Suggested music can be obtained through the Amazon links.

Classical Music Theme Songs Radio Tv Film

CLASSICAL MUSIC THEME SONGS IN MEDIA
THEME MUSIC INDEX TO CLASSICAL MUSIC USED IN FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION...
Classical Music Theme Songs directory  http://www.classicthemesong.blogspot.mx/

Conductor COLIN DAVIS dies at age 85

Colin Davis, the former principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and one of Britain's elder statesmen of classical music, has died at 85. The orchestra said Davis died Sunday 14 APR 2013, after a short illness.

One of the best-known figures in British music, Davis worked with the London symphony for more than half a century.

He first conducted for the LSO in 1959 and took the principal conductor post in 1995, serving until 2006 before becoming president.

Wikipedia

Francaix: Music for String Orchestra KERRY STRATTON

In order on the disc, the works are Symphonie d'Archets (Symphony for Strings) (1948), Ode sur 'La Naissance de Vénus' de Botticelli' (Ode on 'The Birth of Venus' by Botticelli) (1960), and a ballet, Die Kamelien: Pantomime für Schauspieler ('The Camellias': Pantomime for an Actor) (1950). The 21-minute String Symphony, while expertly written, makes little impression on this reviewer. It is not one of Françaix's carefree jeux d'esprit, for which he is to well-known. Perhaps my lack of response is because much of the music either has vague tonality or is modal, and also because I much prefer music by Françaix that makes such ingenious use of the orchestra's winds which, of course, are absent here. Recorded sound seems a little thin at times. The 5-minute Ode on Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus' is altogether more enjoyable. Commissioned by RTF (French Radio & Television) for use in a program about the life and works of the early Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, its hymnlike setting invokes a mood of quiet contemplation of and rapt absorption in the famous painting. The 25-minute score of the ballet, The Camellias, based on Dumas's 'La Dame aux camélias', was written for and premièred by George Balanchine and his New York ballet company in 1951. This is its first recording.(excerpt Scott Morrison amazon reviewer).
  Conductor Kerry Stratton

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