Category: Vladimir Ashkenazy

Sydney Symphony Orchestra presents MAHLER 9: ANOTHER WORLD in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House. After a heavy diet of good but depressing nihilistic theatre experiences of late (MUCH ADO… at Bell Shakespeare being the exception) and to help me to gain courage to attend BAAL at the Sydney Theatre Company, I decided “If music be the food of love”, what better way to drink in a whole fountain of love, then to go to hear the Sydney Symphony under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy to a Mahler drowning in sound/music/ love. I love music but am simply…

    Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the present a Benefit Concert at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall: EUROPEAN TOUR FAREWELL CONCERT. The Sydney Symphony, as I write this, are on their way to a two week, eight city, nine concert tour of Europe. Five and a half tons of musical luggage, sixty-five flight cases (on Emirates) to be in Italy for a performance at the Stresa Festival on Sunday (29th August). Last night there was a Benefit Concert for the orchestra. Three big pieces of music conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. The first work was an Australian score by Peter…

Picture: Sasha Rozhdestvensky Sydney Symphony; 2009 Season, Great Classics. RUSSIAN TRIBUTE. At the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. Music is not my field of expertise, however it is part of my theatre going diary. Hence… This program called RUSSIAN TRIBUTE has the Violin Concerto No 1 in A minor, Op.99 by Dmitri Shostakovich (my favourite composer {at this time}) followed by Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky, orchestrated by Vladimir Ashkenazy. The violin soloist is Russian: Sasha Rozhdestvensky and the conductor is Russian: Vladimir Ashkenazy. Russians playing and interpreting Russian. Blissful expectations. And so it was. I bought my…

Photo: Janine Jansen SYDNEY SYMPHONY, 2009 SEASON, EMIRATES METRO SERIES: ASHKENAZY CONDUCTS SHOSTAKOVICH at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.   After the summer, end of holiday feel of the Mendelssohn presentation of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM last week, it was with excitement that I approached this concert. Once again I declare that I am only a concert goer in my appreciation and not an expert. I had in the Shostakovich, admittedly, one of my favourite composers, a great and shattering time.   The first half of the program was Antonin Dvorak’s VIOLIN CONCERTO in A MINOR, Op53 (B.108). The…

SYDNEY SYMPHONY 2009 Season. ENERGY AUSTRALIA MASTER SERIES: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. Overture and incidental music for Shakespeare’s play by Felix Mendelssohn. Text abridged by Tim Carroll.   This concert is a celebration of “the opening of the concert season for 2009… the beginning of the formal relationship between Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Symphony” and the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, two hundred years ago, in 1809.   In the Introductory notes to the performance we are told “the program we’ve devised for tonight speaks to the power of music – not just its power to move our emotions and stimulate…