Dr. Fuddle's Musical Blog: Music News

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What Would Beethoven Do?

This is not your grandparents’ classical music. This is classical music for everyone.

For decades, this has been the story: classical music is at death’s door. With the advent of a technologically brave new world, who could be interested in this stodgy art form? Yet, classical music has enduring significance. It still stands as a pillar—if a somewhat wobbly one—of our culture today.

Although financial difficulties and declining attendance rates plague many orchestras, new technology and shifting audience demographics have inspired some artists to think creatively and step outside the box. Classical music lives.

“What Would Beethoven Do?” highlights recent innovations that are breaking down the genre’s highbrow perception and introducing classical music to a broader audience. Despite some institutional reluctance about maintaining the “purity” of the genre, many musicians and artists are taking risks to reinvent classical music for a new age.

The classical music world is at an exciting crossroads “What Would Beethoven Do?” focuses on individuals and organizations that are taking classical music to the next level and paving the way for future success.

Treble Productions, a documentary film crew that believes that there are many individuals and organizations out there doing great things to propel classical music forward. Their film, What Would Beethoven Do? shares the stories of people like Benjamin Zander, who is building the next generation of classical musicians in the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra; Eric Whitacre, who is bringing classical music into the digital age with his Virtual Youth Choir; Bobby McFerrin who is challenging audiences with performances filled with fun and humor; and many more people who are doing amazing things with classical music.

What Would Beethoven Do? | New Documentary Teaser from What Would Beethoven Do on Vimeo.

4 Unusual Ways Music Can Tune Up the Brain

By Bahar Gholipour

Music shapes the brain in many ways — it can alter brain structures in musicians, and enhance cognitive skills in children and adults alike, research shows. Still, scientists are continuing to learn much about the way the brain responds to music.

Here is a look at four ways that music is known to affect the brain.

Unearthing patients' lost memories

Music has the power to bring back memories, leading some researchers to say that music could be used as a treatment for people with memory problems.

In one recent study, researchers found that music could bring back old-age memories in people who had memory problems after sustaining traumatic brain injuries (TBI).

In fact, the musical treatment, which involved playing hit songs from different periods in people's lives, was better than an interview at eliciting past memories, according to the study published in the journal Neuropsychological Rehabilitation in 2013.

Other investigations have found that for people with severe memory problems as a result of Alzheimer's disease or dementia, music can affect the memory when nothing else does. The effect can sometimes be so great that experts have likened it to "awakening" a patient who has been unconscious.

Sharpening emotion-detecting skills

Musical training may turn people into better emotion detectors, some studies have suggested.

In one study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience in 2009, 30 participants watched a subtitled nature film while listening to a very short, almost undetectable clip of a baby's cry. The researchers looked at the brain's electrical waves to measure how sensitive the people were to the sound, and whether their brain's emotional circuits were evoked.

The researchers found that the musicians' brains responded more quickly and accurately than the brains of non-musicians, suggesting the musicians may be better at perceiving emotions even when music isn't being played, the researchers said.

Blocking out the noise

The aging brain normally becomes less and less capable of blocking out background noise, but people with musical training may be better than others at hearing and understanding sounds in a noisy environment as they age.

In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience in 2013, researchers found that even people who took music lessons only in childhood still showed some long-lasting brain effects when it comes to detecting sounds amid a noisy background.

Noteworthy: Learning language through singing

It might help to practice a new language you're trying to learn by singing the words in the shower. Scientists recently found that when learning a new language, singing the phrases can help people learn the language better, compared with simply reading those phrases.

In the study published in the journal Memory & Cognition in 2014, researchers asked 60 adults to listen and repeat phrases in Hungarian, a language entirely foreign to the participants. Some of the participants were asked to simply repeat the phrases, some were told to repeat the phrases rhythmically, and the rest were asked to repeat the phrases by singing them.

The results showed that the participants who sang did significantly better than others in a series of Hungarian language tests.

Reposted From Live Science

Seattle Authorizes Special Loading Zones for Musicians…

What’s worse than loading gear into a venue? Getting a ticket for loading gear into a venue. But that issue may soon go away, at least for a few musicians, thanks to an initiative by the City of Seattle that would authorize musician loading zones outside of venues.

The Musician Load Zone pilot program kicked off in March and currently involves five venues. “Seattle’s Music Commission strives to champion innovative ideas that help local musicians make a living making music in Seattle,” explained Jody McKinley, Chair of Seattle’s Music Commission (and an executive at Seattle-based Rhapsody).

Reposted From Digital Music News

Fred Stobaugh: Amazing story of the 96-year-old's musical tribute to wife that's outselling Justin Timberlake

Jacob and Fred Jacob Colgan of Green Shoe Studios, says: “Instead of a link to video we received a very large manila envelope entitled: Singer songwriter contest.

“When I opened it up there was a letter from a 96-year-old man who said: ‘I’ve written a song for my wife.’

It was only as I read through the letter that I realised his wife had passed away just a month earlier. It was just so heartwarming. He also said he was not a musician and not actually a very good singer.

“In fact on the envelope itself it says: ‘PS I don’t sing – I would scare people, ha ha’.”

Although they felt he was ineligible, the studio bosses instead decided, without even meeting Fred, to set the lyrics to music and record the track professionally.

Jacob, who sang the finished composition, says: “When we told him he said: ‘Well, that’s great, but how much is this gonna cost me? I don’t have any money.’

“Then when we told him we were going to do it all for free he started crying on the phone. He said: ‘Why would you do this for me?’

“We just said we weren’t just doing it for him, that we were doing it together because his words had touched us so much.”

But even before the track was released, a documentary chronicling its creation seemed to capture the imagination of a nation.

From the moment the nine-minute recording was posted online in July, viewings soared on YouTube and Vimeo. It has now been seen by over six million people.

“We thought the documentary might do well,” says Jacob. “But, we never expected the song to hit the charts.

"We’re freaking out. But really, we’re just honoured we’ve been able to do this for the love of Fred’s life.”

Now the studio and Fred are planning a follow up, once again singing the praises of his beloved Lorraine.

In the meantime he has been besieged by the media in the US who’ve both interviewed him at home and flown him across the States to television studios.

His grandson Rocky Hemp, 42, has found himself acting as his chaperone and press officer, fielding calls from TV, radio and the press and making sure he is safe.

“It’s just been crazy,” he says. “But there was no way I would want him to be going off all over the place on his own. I’ve been filling all sorts of roles, including managing his Facebook page – and, you know what, I don’t even think he really understands what Facebook is.

"But this is kind of payback time because when I was younger I was into writing and recording music and when he would go off to Nashville to watch shows he would always take cassettes of my work and try and make sure I ended up in the right hands.

“He’s been a terrific grandfather to me over the years, and I had a terrific grandmother too.”

With huge sales has come some financial reward too, with around a third of the purchase price of each download going to Fred.

"It won’t make him a millionaire though,” laughs Rocky.

“But I think he has really enjoyed these past few weeks.

“He’s a simple, regular guy who’s suddenly had a little taste of stardom – it’s been relief after seeing him so upset and lonely for so long.”

And Fred agrees.

But he says: “As much as I’ve enjoyed the success of the song I would give it all up in a heartbeat to get just a few moments more with Lorraine.”

Originally Posted October 1, 2013 in the Daily Mirror

Taronga Zoo's Leopard Seal Serenaded by a Saxophone

Invented by Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax, the saxophone has been wooing people since 1846 with it’s bluesy serenades. Most recently, seals – namely Casey the seal – has been the recipient of such beautiful sonnets ts the Taronga zoo in Australia, as they have started using the Belgian Saxophone as a tool in their new ‘environmental enrichment’ program.

The leopard seal named Casey has been loving his new program and even singing along as Steve Westnedge the elephant keeper (and apparently seal-keeper) has been taking time to play for Casey each day. The Australian Marine Mammal Research Centre (AMMRC), based at Taronga Zoo, has been watching and studying Casey since he was rescued near Sydney in 2005. Marine mammals supervisor Ryan Tate comments on the program:

“They are certainly aware of new noises, so something like the saxophone was a great way of giving our leopard seal some different environmental enrichment. At certain times of year they really react to the noises and sing back.”

Leopard seals are known for their highly complex sound vocabulary. The fact that this seal and those working at the Taronga zoo are having this experience, is unique for sure. Casey is the only leopard seal in the whole world who is living in a zoo. Most leopard seals reside in the ices of Antarctica, occasionally visiting New Zealand, Aukland and the Campbell islands during the deep winter months. “Underwater vocalizations are of low to medium frequency and long duration. The leopard seal’s lowest frequency call is particularly powerful and can be heard at the surface and felt through the ice.” It seems Casey the seal is liking the deep notes of the saxophone as you watch him dancing and twirling near the glass.

Music played for zoo animals seems like a great idea indeed, especially in light of the fact that these creatures are not in their natural habitats and have to adapt to an environment unlike ‘home.’ Music has been shown to decrease stress in humans, so why not animal life in general? Sound therapy has long been recognized as not only a way to calm the mind and soothe the emotions, but to balance the brain and release healing hormones in the body as well. Animals who have been captured and put into zoos because of injuries like Casey, could greatly benefit and find intense healing from sound therapy, thus allowing their gentle release back into the wild.

Originating in Belgium as a bridge-instrument to “be the most powerful and vocal of the woodwinds, and the most adaptive of the brass—that would fill the vacant middle ground between the two sections” is today, being used as a zoo tool to soothe Casey the seal in Australia. Do you think Adolphe Sax would have ever imagined it? Perhaps more zoos will begin to incorporate music and extend the environmental enrichment program to animals of every species in every zoo. It certainly sounds like a great plan for aspiring musicians – to play for the animals before the people ‘devour them.’

Written by: Stasia Bliss

Classical Music Virtuoso Who Plays Piano and Tablet

Conrad Tao is a 19-year-old virtuoso who tries to push the limits of classical music by combining tradition and technology. His experiments include compositions for piano and iPad as well as stage performances with a bright pink toy piano.

Tao, a New Yorker, began playing children's songs on the piano at just 18 months of age. He gave his first recital age four. He has won several awards, including the Avery Fisher Career Grant, a Gilmore Young Artist Award and eight consecutive Ascap Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.

He believes that classical music needs more than a marketing effort to attract a younger audience. It must "confront contemporary reality", he says.

Produced for the BBC by Anna Bressanin

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Joy in the Congo: A musical miracle

"Joy in the Congo" seems an unlikely -- even impossible -- title for a story from the Congo, considering the searing poverty and brutal civil war that have decimated that country. Yet in Kinshasa, the capital city, we found an unforgettable symphony orchestra -- 200 singers and instrumentalists defying the poverty, hardship, and struggles of life in the world's poorest country...and creating some of the most moving music we have ever heard. Follow Bob Simon to the Congo to hear the sounds and stories of the Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra.

Beauty has a way of turning up in places where you'd least expect it. Kinshasa, the capital, has a population of 10 million and almost nothing in the way of hope or peace. But there's a well-kept secret down there. Kinshasa has a symphony orchestra, the only one in Central Africa, the only all-black one in the world.

It's called the Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra. We'd never heard of it. No one we called had ever heard of it. But when we got there we were surprised to find 200 musicians and vocalists, who've never played outside Kinshasa, or have been outside Kinshasa. We were even more surprised to find joy in the Congo. When we told the musicians they would be on 60 Minutes, they didn't know what we were talking about but, still, they invited us to a performance.

We caught up with them as they were preparing outside their concert hall, a rented warehouse. As curtain time neared, we had no idea what to expect. But maestro Armand Diangienda seemed confident and began the evening with bang.

The music, Carmina Burana, was written by German composer Carl Orff 75 years ago. Did he ever dream that it would be played in the Congo? It wouldn't have been if it hadn't been for Armand and a strange twist of fate. Armand was a commercial pilot until 20 years ago when his airline went bust. So, like ex-pilots often do, he decided to put together an orchestra. He was missing a few things.

Bob Simon: You had no musicians, you had no teachers, you had no instruments.

Armand Diangienda: Yes.

Bob Simon: And you had no one who knew how to read music?

Armand Diangienda: No, nobody. Nobody.

Armand's English is limited. He preferred speaking French, Congo's official language.

Bob Simon: When you started asking people if they wanted to be members of this orchestra, did they have any idea what you were talking about?

Translation for Armand Diangienda: In the beginning, he said, people made fun of us, saying here in the Congo classical music puts people to sleep.

The music, Carmina Burana, was written by German composer Carl Orff 75 years ago. Did he ever dream that it would be played in the Congo? It wouldn't have been if it hadn't been for Armand and a strange twist of fate. Armand was a commercial pilot until 20 years ago when his airline went bust. So, like ex-pilots often do, he decided to put together an orchestra. He was missing a few things.

Bob Simon: You had no musicians, you had no teachers, you had no instruments.

Armand Diangienda: Yes.

Bob Simon: And you had no one who knew how to read music?

Armand Diangienda: No, nobody. Nobody.

Armand's English is limited. He preferred speaking French, Congo's official language.

Bob Simon: When you started asking people if they wanted to be members of this orchestra, did they have any idea what you were talking about?

Translation for Armand Diangienda: In the beginning, he said, people made fun of us, saying here in the Congo classical music puts people to sleep.

But Armand pressed on. He taught himself how to read music and play the piano, play the trombone, the guitar and the cello. He talked a few members of his church into joining him. They brought their friends which brought more problems.

Translation for Armand Diangienda: We only had five or six violins, he said, for the 12 people who wanted to learn how to play the violin.

Translation for Armand Diangienda: So they took turns, he said. One would play for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. That was very difficult.

But more instruments started coming in. Some were donated; others rescued from local thrift shops -- in various states of disrepair. Then it was up to Albert -- the orchestra's surgeon -- to heal them. He wasn't always gentle with his patients, but they survived. Armand told us that when a violin string broke in those early days, they used whatever they had at hand to fix it.

Bob Simon: You took the wire from a bicycle?

Armand Diangienda: Bicycle, yes.

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Applause in Unlikely Places: A Conductor Who Rewrites the Rules

During the “Infernal Dance” of Stravinsky’s “Firebird,” which depicts the subjects of the ogre Kastchei spinning with such savagery that they drop in exhaustion, the music builds to vehement, searing chords. In his performance of the complete “Firebird” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, Gustavo Dudamel drew such blazing colors, slashing attacks and sheer terror from the orchestra that at the climax of the dance some people in the hall broke into applause and shouted “Bravo.” This temporarily drowned out the transition that immediately follows: the powerful chords disperse to reveal mysterious, hushed sonorities.

... It is exciting to hear this charismatic conductor taking risks and following a vision. Now in his fourth season as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he has galvanized the city and become for all conductors a model of community outreach and education. Not bad.

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Revolutionising Classical Music

Beethoven with Your Beer

PERFORMING classical music at a dive bar that serves beer and hot dogs is an unusual concept. But Ensemble HD, a group of musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra, is packing out the city’s Happy Dog bar at their monthly live shows.

The idea for the sextet—piano, flute, oboe, violin, viola and cello—to perform at the bar came from a meeting of minds. Joshua Smith, principal flautist at the orchestra and lead member of Ensemble HD, had long been interested in reaching out to people who don't go to classical-music concerts; and Sean Watterson, owner of Happy Dog, is similarly interested in mixing high- and low-brow culture. After leaving his finance job in New York following the financial meltdown in 2008, Mr Watterson moved back to Cleveland and transformed this rust-belt bar into a hub of cultural programming. In addition to Ensemble HD, the Happy Dog hosts monthly science lectures, regular talks from curators at the Cleveland Museum of Art and polka bands during happy hour. The venue attracts a diverse crowd: "It's great to look over at the bar and see people in mink coats next to twentysomethings covered in tattoos and piercings," Mr Watterson says.

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The Story Behind Bach's Unknown Aria

A printed copy of the lost score, the first vocal work by Bach to surface in 70 years.

For the first time in a generation, a new piece of music by Johann Sebastian Bach has been discovered. The young composer wrote the aria in 1713 while working in Germany. NPR has a portion of the forgotten aria — and its amazing story.

A discovery in Germany has astonished music scholars. On two nearly forgotten pages of a pile of birthday notes given to an 18th century duke, a young Johann Sebastian Bach wrote an aria in his own hand. Until now, nobody knew that this existed.

Finally, a Computer that Writes Contemporary Music Without Human Help

By Matt Peckham

The BBC ran a story about a computer at the University of Malaga in Spain, dubbed “Iamus” after a mythical Greek prophet who could translate birdsong, that’s capable of composing contemporary classical music without human aid (“contemporary” meaning you probably won’t walk away humming a melody unless you’re an aficionado of 20th century classical music).

... Aesthetics aside, Iamus isn’t the 21st century’s answer to Mozart, though that’s the sort of eye-catching headline this technology gives rise to. It’s rather a 21st century flag waver for something known as “melomics music technology” (melomics is a portmanteau of ”melody” and “genomics”). Genomics is the discipline of sequencing, assembling and analyzing all of an organism’s genetic material — its genome. Melomics, then, is an algorithm that fiddles with genome-like data structures to produce plausible music compositions.

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The Perfect Classical Music App

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s The Orchestra puts the Philharmonia on your iPad—in very clever ways.

By Seth Colter Walls

A funny thing happened the last time I was taking in a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (just a few minutes ago). Right smack in the middle of the blaring finale, the conductor reminded me that the composer’s contemporaries “accused him of being drunk when he wrote these pieces.”

The baton-swinger, Esa-Pekka Salonen, didn’t have to stop the Philharmonia to tell me this, because the performance I was watching wasn’t live, but playing on an iPad. Nor did the sound of his voice obscure the main aural attraction, since his words were running as a subtitle track sandwiched in between four different simultaneous views of the world-class ensemble and a “curated score” of Beethoven’s famous work, its notes running across my screen in real time.

Welcome to The Orchestra—a flat-out astounding new app produced by Touch Press, the Philharmonia Orchestra and its principal conductor Salonen. At $13.99, it’s not only one of the best albums—you know, a longish compilation of music—you could purchase for someone; it’s an app that could easily change how you consume classical music outside of the concert hall. Or how we introduce new listeners to symphonic works in the first place.

... Aside from a chuckle over imagining Beethoven pounding back lager after lager and coming up with something as well-constructed as his Symphony No. 5—“which might actually be the case,” Salonen allows—the value of the little history lesson was its reminder that orchestra music has been, and can continue to be, an audience-shocker.

... The Philharmonia’s success here wasn’t guaranteed merely by its being the first orchestra to upload some videos to a tablet’s app store. Rather, their opening gambit was deeply thought through by people who understand both Mahler and the iPad.

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Do Orchestras Really Need Conductors?

by Shankar Vedantam

Does This Guy Matter? Conductor Leonard Bernstein during rehearsal with the Cincinnati Symphony at Carnegie Hall in 1977.

Have you ever wondered whether music conductors actually influence their orchestras?

They seem important. After all, they're standing in the middle of the stage and waving their hands. But the musicians all have scores before them that tell them what to play. If you took the conductor away, could the orchestra manage on its own?

A new study aims to answer this question. Yiannis Aloimonos, of the University of Maryland, and several colleagues recruited the help of orchestral players from Ferrara, Italy.

They installed a tiny infrared light at the tip of an (unnamed) conductor's baton. They also placed similar lights on the bows of the violinists in the orchestra. The scientists then surrounded the orchestra with infrared cameras.

When the conductor waved the baton, and the violinists moved their bows, the moving lights created patterns in space, which the cameras captured. Computers analyzed the infrared patterns as signals: Using mathematical techniques originally designed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Clive Granger, Aloimonos and his colleagues analyzed whether the movements of the conductor were linked to those of the violinists.

The scientists hypothesized that if the movement of the conductor could predict the movements of the violinists, then the conductor was clearly leading the players. But if the conductor's movements could not predict the movement of the violinists, then it was really the players who were in charge.

"You have a signal that is originating from the conductor, because he is moving his hands and his body," Aloimonos explained. "And then the players, they perceive that signal, and they create another signal by moving the bows of the violin appropriately. So you have some sort of sensorimotor conversation."

(The research study is part of a larger project where Aloimonos is trying to figure out if human movements share something in common with human language; he suspects both are not only governed by a grammar, but that both may be based on similar processes in the brain.)

Aloimonos said the study found that conductors were leading the violinists — the movement of the conductors predicted the movement of the violinists, not the other way around.

But the study found more: The scientists had two conductors lead the same orchestra. One was a veteran who exercised an iron grip over the violinists. The other was an amateur.

"What we found is the more the influence of the conductor to the players, the more aesthetic — aesthetically pleasing the music was overall," Aloimonos said.

Music experts who listened to the performance of the orchestra under the control of the two conductors found the version produced by the authoritarian conductor superior. Remember, these experts didn't know which version was being led by the veteran conductor and which by the amateur. All they heard was the music.

Kennedy Center's New Organ No Longer A Pipe Dream

by Nina Totenberg

http://www.npr.org

It was almost spooky. Each night after 11 p.m., when nothing was stirring in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, two men would enter. One would sit at the organ, playing a key or series of keys, and the other would crawl around inside the organ pipes, 40 feet off the floor. The process went on for months.

It was the all but final phase of installing a new organ for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. And on Nov. 27, the organ makes its formal debut.

Towering over the stage, the organ looks big, but you have no idea how big. There are some 5,000 pipes, ranging from five-eighths of an inch to 32 feet long, and weighing a total of 20 tons.

Why A New Organ?

The old Kennedy Center organ, to put it bluntly, was sick — so sick that at one performance a few years ago, they had to stop the concert to unstick a recalcitrant key.

Organ consultant Jeff Weiler was called in to examine the patient and concluded that the instrument was just not salvageable. Other consultants agreed.

The old organ was the "dying gasp" of a once-great company, Weiler explains. Right after it was delivered in 1972, the company, Aeolian-Skinner, went out of business. And when the organ began to falter, inspection showed that it had been jerry-built, using parts and tailings from other projects.

Two years ago, a donation from Kennedy Center Chairman David M. Rubenstein allowed the performing arts center to take the plunge and order a new organ, this time from Casavant Bros., near Montreal, a company that has been making organs since 1879.

Building And Installation

Just building the organ took two years. Then came the installation, a process that from beginning to end has taken more than three months.

The partially assembled instrument was delivered in August by a trio of 53-foot-long semitrailer trucks.

After the organ was assembled in the hall, the delicate process known as "tonal finishing" began.

Each night, while the hall was silent, between 11 p.m. and 8:30 a.m., Richard Marchand and Daniel Fortin, two Casavant technicians, worked away at perfecting the sound of the organ.

These nocturnal magicians say people tend to confuse the two functions they were carrying out — tuning and voicing. The tuning is relatively easy. It's the voicing that is really hard.

"You can sing with an ugly voice but in tune, but you still sound ugly," Marchand explains. "Voicing is to work on the quality of the tone you are projecting."

Tuning, it turns out, takes just a few days. But the voicing takes a couple of months.

Inside The Instrument

Marchand and Fortin, both of them musicians, work together — one sitting at the organ itself, the other climbing up and around inside the organ, using special tools to shift parts of the pipes, opening or closing an air hole here, shaving or moving a part of the pipe there.

Much of this work is done 40 feet in the air, with tiny crevices to use as footholds. The two men switch off roles from time to time. If you just stay at the organ, they say, it is too easy to fall asleep. No such problem crawling around the organ like a cat.
Organ consultant Jeff Weiler (left) and Casavant artistic director Jacquelin Rochette oversaw the tremendous task of building, installing and voicing the Kennedy Center's new organ.
Enlarge Kainaz Amaria/NPR

Organ consultant Jeff Weiler (left) and Casavant artistic director Jacquelin Rochette oversaw the tremendous task of building, installing and voicing the Kennedy Center's new organ.

"If you are afraid of the height, it is not a job for you," Marchand says.

The polished wood console of the organ — the part you see the musician play — is amazingly complex, too. It has four manual keyboards, 32 long wooden pedals and 104 stops. The stops look like porcelain knobs, and each one controls a set of 61 organ pipes, balancing the highs and lows, and the volume.

"Each stop has a role to play in this tonal structure, so we are building sonic architecture of the instrument," says Jacquelin Rochette, Casavant's artistic director.

A Delicate Balance

When we visited a few weeks ago, Rochette said some of the pipes were still "barely speaking," that the sound they emitted was "simply barking." By now, they are supposed to all be singing.

Organs are built to serve different functions. They are built for churches, for theaters, for academic institutions. But in a concert hall, the organ has to have tremendous sonic power so it can soar over a large orchestra and chorus. It is the stops that throttle up the power — hence the term "pulling out all the stops."

But for an orchestra, there is another balance to work out. The organ has to be able to play as if it were just another instrument in the orchestra, blending in so that the listener barely knows it is there.

What is so fascinating about watching the whole process unfold is the anthropomorphic way everyone talks about the instrument.

"The creation of an organ is very much like the birth of a child," says National Symphony Orchestra organist William Neil. "It's brand new, and it starts very humbly and very small and it grows, and as it matures and becomes a full-blown musical instrument, we have almost created here the adult."

A month ago, Neil said the organ was "not quite there yet" but was "on the way."

On Thursday night, the organ, now fully tuned and voiced into adulthood, was ready for its official, grown-up premiere performance.

Mozart Gets Credit for Two “New” Musical Pieces

Mike Vogl/European Pressphoto Agency

The scores attributed to Mozart, in his father’s handwriting.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart continues to make us wonder when his next long-lost composition will emerge from an attic somewhere in Central Europe. In January 2009, the then newly-discovered composition was performed for the first time after being found in a library in Southern France. Now, two new works have popped up in a likely place – inside a music book used during his sister’s clavier lessons.

The two musical fragments – formerly considered anonymous scribblings – are now believed to make up a full movement of a keyboard concerto written by Amadeus himself. The music remained among many pieces that were hand-written inside the practice book, 18 of which had already credited a precocious Wolfgang. Now, it seems that the two new works were indeed written by a young Mozart.

In a New York Times interview, Ulrich Leisinger – the Mozarteum research director responsible for the find – estimates that the pieces were written around 1763, when our beloved Wolfgang was just 7. He believes the concerto “was composed by someone with high ambitions but lacking the expertise to write out the music.”

A Mozart family portrait, about 1780-81: Wolfgang, center, with his sister Maria Anna (known as Nannerl), and father, Leopold.

Lang Lang On Beethoven

The superstar pianist talks about why Beethoven is his musical god and the daunting task of performing all five of his Piano Concertos over three nights at the Royal Albert Hall

Pianist Lang Lang may have played to thousands at the Hollywood Bowl and been under the scrutiny of millions during the televised Last Night of the Proms, but it’s a Beethoven Concerto Cycle with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra that he regards as a real milestone.

You’re playing all five Beethoven Piano Concertos over the course of three concerts at the Royal Albert Hall next March. What are you looking forward to about the series?

The Royal Albert Hall is one of my favourite halls to perform in anywhere in the world. And to do a Beethoven cycle with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia is going to be a very important milestone for me. Over the years I’ve worked on the Beethoven Piano Concertos with many great musicians, including Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Mariss Jansons and James Levine, and everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Beethoven. His music is dynamic but so precise at the same time and he really demands a lot in the scores. When I was in Bonn in the Beethoven museum, I had the great privilege to see some of his hand-written scripts and when you see those original Urtext editions you realise his personality is totally in control of the music he’s creating.

Why are these Concertos so important to you?

Beethoven Piano Concertos are the most recognisable works for a pianist to learn and working on them over 10 years really helped me to understand not only Beethoven’s work but also other Classical and Romantic period piano concertos. The First of his Concertos is actually quite classical and then after the Third he switched to a more Romantic style. And the times changed too. So learning these great works helps me understand musical history better.

Do you have a favourite among the Concertos?

At the beginning of my career I really thought that No. 4 was my favourite, because I played it a lot at that time. And then gradually I started to think No. 3 was my favourite and when I was a kid No. 5 was my favourite. Then when I hear the great performers play No. 2 then No. 2 becomes my favourite. And then I had an amazing performance with Mariss Jansons of the Piano Concerto No. 1 at Carnegie Hall three years ago and I thought ‘Oh my gosh, this is my absolute favourite.’ So my favourite changes a lot. It’s like when you listen to Beethoven’s Ninth, Fifth or Seventh Symphonies and you’re trying to say which one is your favourite – maybe in a different time of your life or your career you might think differently. But at the moment the Piano Concerto No. 3 is my favourite.

Which is the most challenging to perform?

They are all very challenging to perform, particularly if you put them together! I thank God I have one day off in between – Thursday – so I think I’ll spend it in a spa to rest before the last concert on the Friday.

Whose music do you feel most at home playing?

It’s hard to say. It used to be Chopin when I was younger, now it’s harder to say because there are few composers I feel very comfortable with – I’m still trying to improve a lot of things. For me Beethoven was always very difficult and it’s only recently that I have had the confidence to play his music. Beethoven is a real musical god for me because his music is so deep.

You’ve already played in many of the top concert halls around the world and with some of the best orchestras. What do you still want to achieve?

Well to play at the Last Night of the Proms was great – but it would be nice to play another time. There are a lot of great things that I’ve done once and I’d like to do twice, three times, four times, five times. That’s my dream: to keep going.

Interview by Elizabeth Davis for http://www.classical-music.com

Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan sees strength in numbers

BY KYLE MACMILLAN

Today’s classical music world probably boasts more top-drawer piano soloists than ever before, but Inon Barnatan does not fear the competition. In fact, he doesn’t see it as competition at all.

“As I pianist, I feel we’re all so different,” the Israeli-born virtuoso said. “I never believed that if somebody is getting a concert, they’re getting a concert that could have been mine. Or vice versa. feel like if you do what you believe in and if you’re good enough, there will be a spot for you.”

Barnatan, 33, who returns Aug. 26 to the Ravinia Festival for a recital and appears Oct. 28 as part of the Symphony Center Presents Chamber Series, believes it is harmful for artists to look over their shoulders and worry about their counterparts’ success.

“I look at my friends and people who are doing well [in the field], and we are friendly with each other,” he said. “We feel like we actually get more out of learning from one another and collaborating than from cutting each other’s throats.”

Competition or not, the fast-rising soloist has little to fret. He has carved out a niche for himself with consistently intelligent, insightful playing and an uncommon appetite for new and unconventional works, often imaginatively interspersed on his programs with older classics.

This interplay of the old and new is evident on his latest album, “Darknesse Visible” (Avie Records). It mixes contemporary and classic French and English works that were all inspired by literary or other musical compositions and all display elements of both lightness and darkness.

In addition to works by Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy, it includes Ronald Stevenson’s Fantasy on Benjamin Britten’s opera, “Peter Grimes,” and Thomas Ades’ 1992 piano adaptation of John Dowland’s 1610 song, “In Darkness Let Me Dwell.”

“I found it very interesting,” Barnatan said of the Ades piece, “how he can make something modern and fresh-sounding without changing a single note or rhythm from a song that was written 400 years ago.”

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Classical music strikes a chord in Paris cafés

By Sarah Elzas

The Classical Revolution that started six years ago in San Francisco is now reverberating in Paris. Once a month a group of American musicians perform classical music in a Paris café.

Nicolas Boucher and Sarah Niblack of Classical Revolution Paris

Pak-Ming Wan

You don’t usually hear classical music in bars. You’ll hear pop music or rock music," says Kyle Collins. But these days, he's trying to change that. An American musician living in France, he is the co-founder of Classical Revolution Paris, which brings together groups of musicians to play chamber music in bars and cafés.

"People can experience music that they might not have heard of or might not have had an opportunity to hear," he says.

At a recent concert, musicians stood on a raised platform at the back of a cafe in Paris' Belleville neighbourhood in front of a black board announcing the weekly DJ set.

And while a flute duo played Bach and a violin-viola duo played Mozart, people stood at the bar drinking a beer, or sat at the café tables, some paying attention to the music,others chatting with their friends.
"You know in real time what the audience feels, and how they’re engaged," says Sarah Niblack, the other American behind the project.

"In this setting, there is no fourth wall. You have to communicate directly with the people who are sitting right in front of you and with you. And sometimes they’re going to talk. So as a musician the challenge is to really grab the audience’s attention."

Classical Revolution is an imported idea from the United States, born in 2006 in San Francisco at the Revolution Cafe. It spread around the US: Collins was involved in the Cincinnati chapter, Niblack in New York. Both living in France now, they decided Paris needed a dose of classical music for the people.

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The Soul of a New Ensemble: Musicians as Entrepreneurs

Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times

Members of the Declassified, a new collective of young classical musicians, rehearsing ahead of the group’s debut week of performances.

In a New York University lecture hall, business school students poked at iPads and iPhones to produce short melodic loops through speakers. A few feet away, a small group of musicians about the same age played along in a performance of Terry Riley’s Minimalist masterpiece “In C.”

It was part research project, part interactive demonstration and part experiment, but mostly it was the inaugural event this week for the introduction of a new performing group called the Declassified, the latest example of young classical musicians banding together to figure out a future on their own amid a fraying and fragmenting performance world.

The 46-member collective plans to give chamber music concerts in various formations. But it mainly wants to establish residencies for weeks at a time at universities, conservatories and just about anywhere else. Performing would be only part of a menu of teaching, master classes and projects that bring audience members closer to performers.

A couple weeks ago, I was out walking my dog with a friend and her two dogs. One of her dogs is a sweetie, but the other is a real handful. As we discussed the behavior problems she was struggling to tame, she mentioned that she was using special music CDs for dogs.

"For dogs?" I asked.

"For dogs," she replied. "It's called 'Through a Dog's Ear.'"

"What will they think of next?" I chuckled.

"Don't laugh," my friend said, "One of their CD's is on the Billboard list of best-selling classical albums!"

OK, that got my interest. I tracked them down on the Internet and contacted Lisa Spector, co-founder of Through a Dog's Ear to find out more about this classical canine music.

BJG: I recall that old RCA logo of a black and white dog listening to the horn of a wind-up gramophone -- their slogan was "His Master's Voice." That's what comes to mind when I read the name of your company, Through a Dog's Ear. Tell me more about music and dogs.

LS: I'm a concert pianist and I used to own a music school. In 2003, I attended a seminar on psychoacoustics -- the study of how sound effects the human nervous system -= with sound researcher Joshua Leeds. After that, I started applying those principles to my piano students. I learned how to use music to charge -- or discharge -- their nervous systems. I found it was extremely effective in helping them calm and focus.

About that time, I was also a volunteer puppy raiser for Guide Dogs for the Blind and I was raising a very high-energy puppy. I began to notice that when I played the slowed-down, simplified, re-arranged, classical music I used to relax my piano students, my rambunctious pup would be snoozing in no time. The music I had used with my students also worked on this dog!

I began to wonder if the psychoacoustic principles I learned from Joshua would also benefit dogs, so I approached him with the idea of collaborating on creating music recordings to calm canines and relieve anxiety issues. We then went into two years of clinical testing. The results inspired us to launch Through a Dog's Ear, which currently consists of a book and a music series for dogs.

Read Full Interview Here

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