Ryszard Bakst News
Polish musician
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2024-04-25
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Faces of classical music
2019-11-24 09:11:00
The best new classical albums: November 2019
[…] palpable, muting the birds' song as it wilts the entire landscape. Even a threadbare warhorse such as "Alborada del gracioso" emerges freshly vibrant with a blend of uncommon harmonic emphases and kinetic vitality.As evocative as the Ravel pieces undoubtedly are, the two Stravinsky ballet transcriptions belong in a category that can only be described as conjury. When all is said and done, you may ask yourself, as I did, where did these brilliant colours evoking Bakst come from, this protean energy punctuated by such rhythmic authority, these reserves of power? Or perhaps find yourself pulling out your Monteux or Boulez to see if the orchestral originals could really sound so prosaic in comparison.There's no question that Rana is an immensely resourceful pianist who can pull off dazzling effects when warranted. But it is her sane, thoughtful music-making, inerrant in focus, often strikingly original and always from the heart, that sets […]
2019-09-10 13:54:00
British Tone Poems vol 2 - Bliss, Fogg, Howell, and more
[…] feels "physical", as if crying to be choreographed. Each section is brief, yet distinctive, as in a ballet, the larger tutti segments suggesting a corps of figures leaping and running. Fanfares and exuberance, contrast with swirling strings. Low timbred brass and winds introduce darker textures, cut short by forceful single strokes on timpani. Bliss wrote Mêlée fantastique in memory of his friend Claude Lovat Fisher, a painter and theatre designer, influenced by designers like Leon Bakst and the clean lines of modernism, who died young, hence perhaps the terse ending. Vivid performances all round from Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic.Orchestra, very much in the innovative spirit of these works from the years of change, around and after the Great War.
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Faces of classical music
2018-11-04 03:47:00
Claude Debussy and the Poetic Image
[…] centered on a D sharp Dorian scale. These key areas, however, don't necessarily lead from one to another in a pattern of tension and release. Rather, Debussy uses different pitch collections to distinguish different blocks of sound that aimlessly merge from one to another, like drifting clouds on a gray day. Nijinsky's Faun Costume in "L'Apres Midi d'un Faune"from the front cover of the programme for the 7th seasonof the "Ballets Russes". Illustration by Léon Bakst, 1912 Debussy and Symbolist Poetry: Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun)Debussy was also significantly influenced by the writers of the French Symbolist poetry movement. Symbolism sprang from literary roots, gaining inspiration from writers including Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe. Symbolist poets rejected previous artistic leanings towards naturalism and realism, instead favoring dreams, visions, and the power of the imagination.Symbolists were interested not in representing or describing […]
2018-04-04 07:55:22
Planet Hugill’s roving music correspondent, Tony Cooper, reports on Berlin’s Festtage
[…] for the part, fell well short of the rehearsal time. Therefore, Vallin sang the role and Debussy insisted on her singing it in the fully-staged production, presented by the impresario, Gabriel Astruc. Such was Vallin’s relationship with Debussy that she continued her association with him and gave the première of his Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé in 1914 at the Salle Gaveau in Paris, accompanied by the composer.The sets and costumes were created by Léon Bakst, stage direction by Armand Bour and choreography by Michel Fokine - a trio of ‘greats’. The orchestra was conducted by Debussy’s protégé, André Caplet, who also orchestrated a lot of the material and possibly wrote some of the score.Alongside Rubinstein as Saint Sébastien, Adeline Dudlay sang La Mère douloureuse, Vera Sargine, La Fille malade des fièvres and Ninon Vallin, the celestial voice while Desjardins sang the role of the emperor and Henry Krauss the […]
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