Know Your Composer
ON Stage brings you excerpts from the NCPA Quarterly Journal, an unsurpassed literary archive that ran from 1972 to 1988 and featured authoritative and wide-ranging articles. In the second part of a two-part series, George Ruckert draws a comparison between Bach’s music and Indian ragas. Johann Sebastian Bach was
Reviews
Oper Leipzig’s staging of Puccini’s 1903 opera Madama Butterfly proved yet again how effectively theatre can enhance music, with imaginative sets, good casting and extremely good acting. The story is (almost too) familiar: a US Navy officer, Benjamin Franklin (!) Pinkerton, hungry to ‘make his own/the flowers of
Music Education
Sometimes a tremolo is just a tremolo, but sometimes there’s more to it than that. Pianists, when you’re playing orchestral reductions of opera scores, the pages can seem littered with tremolos. At worst, they can make you feel like you’re a living player-piano in an old saloon;
Reviews
A prelude to his appointment as Gewandhauskapellmeister this autumn, Andris Nelsons’ 2nd June concert with the Gewandhaus Orchestra at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, had all its familiar magic. That he continues to hold his Music Directorship at the Boston Symphony Orchestra in parallel, allows for fruitful musical cross-fertilisation, an example of
Features
I loved music since I was a kid. I lived my childhood in a small city of Pakistan, Quetta, in Hazara Town. There, I was busy playing and studying in a small public school. I had a few friends. In that place, I used to sing every day. It was
Interviews
Nikhil Sardana: What does the name "Stop-Gaps" stand for? Alfred D'Souza: The Stop-Gaps initially started as a spontaneous and temporary choral group formed to raise funds for a pressing social need. Our aim was to provide relief to the washermen, or "dhobis," whose homes
Features
Any music-making operates within a context, and it is important to identify the specific context, leading to the visibly active presence of the Western classical guitar in India today. The Pune Guitar Society was founded in March 2015. It is really the culmination of considerable ideation, discussions, and playing and
Interviews
As I was leaving the Tata theatre, I ran into the composer Reena Esmail after her premiere performance of ‘This Love Between Us’. She expressed great pride in seeing the ramparts around the precinct of the NCPA, bearing her name and photograph. Though my heritage is entirely Indian, I come
Reviews
The highlight of the 19 May concert performed by the Staatskapelle Dresden under the direction of Christian Thielemann at the Theatre de Champs Elysées, Paris, was undoubtedly Renée Fleming’s rendition of Strauss’s Four Last Songs. It took on a special poignancy because Ms Fleming is in the process
Know Your Composer
Was Johann Sebastian Bach Western classical music’s “last Asian composer”? The question was raised in Bombay in March at a seminar celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of the great German composer. The seminar focused on one of Bach’s final works, the famous Art of the Fugue.
Interviews
Nikhil Sardana: What is the history of Musée Musical? When was it established in India and how did your family come about acquiring this business? MH Das: I recollect my father informing me that the owner of Misquith, a Portuguese citizen who was a piano tuner by profession, incurred a
Reviews
In their recent collaboration, Neemrana Music Foundation, along with Embassy of Spain and Instituto De Cervantes presented works by a prominent 20th Spanish composer, Manuel de Falla. The operas that were selected for the Indian audience were Pedros’s Puppet Show (El retablo de Maeso Pedro; 1923) and the 1904