THWOTH wrote:Whatever you think of his personality Nigel Kennedy is sincere and honest communicator when he has his axe under his chin...

With the Irish Chamber Orchestra playing a programme of Bach (1hr 20m)...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtC1McG-fEE[/youtube]

telegraph.co.uk wrote:Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze, who has died aged 86, was a major figure in the music of the past half-century and the leading German composer of the post-1945 era; but he was often at odds with his native country politically and aesthetically.

In his personal life and his music, Henze was a natural outsider but not perhaps a natural rebel. He embraced Communism, especially Fidel Castro’s Cuban variety, campaigned for homosexual causes and still accepted patronage from capitalist and subsidised institutions, including those in Germany. He made synthesis in music into an art form. At one time a strict adherent to the serial technique of composition, he later abandoned it. Declaring his belief in melody, he was regarded by the avant-garde as a traitor to the cause. But he experimented with electronic instrumentation.

During the 1960s it seemed that Henze was stranded between the new and the old wave of musical fashion. To the conservative general public his music (although often what is called accessible) still presented enough challenges and difficulties for him to be regarded as dangerously “modern”. But the middle ground of musical opinion welcomed him as one of its own. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Pears, Elisabeth Søderstrøm, Irmgard Seefried, Benjamin Britten and Julian Bream were among those who admired and performed his works. ...

Full article »»

Louis Riel is an opera in three acts by the Canadian composer Harry Somers.
This full length opera was written for the 1967 Canadian centennial. It concerns the controversial Métis leader Louis Riel, who was executed in 1885, and is one of Somers' biggest pieces.
It is arguably the most famous Canadian opera. Somers set the music to an English and French libretto by Mavor Moore and Jacques Languirand.

[...]

The libretto depicts the post-Confederation political events bounded by the Indian and Métis uprisings of 1869–70 (Red River Rebellion) and 1884–5 (North-West Rebellion) and the personal tragedy of the leader of the uprisings, the Manitoba schoolteacher and Métis hero Louis Riel. After the premiere, Kenneth Winters described the opera in the Toronto Telegram (25 September 1967) as a 'pastiche ... big, efficient, exciting, heterogeneous ... It had no ring of eternity but it was a vigorous harnessing of current and choice; a brash, smart, cool hand on the pulse of a number of fashions, social, dramatic and musical.'

Kazaman wrote:Do you want to download that specific recording, or any?

Kazaman wrote:Oh, I see. I'm afraid I can't help you .... You may end up having to buy another copy.