I just ran across a very charming little video about ornamenting Bach on the lute and guitar.
The Vienna Philharmonic was one of the first professional orchestras to return to rehearsals and performances since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it wouldn’t have been possible if they hadn’t carried out their own small research study into the way droplets disperse on stage while musicians play.
Only a hundred people were allowed in the audience at their first performance in Vienna in June. It wasn’t even worth selling tickets for, but the musicians were thrilled to be back. “It was a sad time without music and I can't tell you how incredibly happy I am that we can perform,” says Froschauer. “My life is going on stage where I see the conductor and the audience and everybody is experiencing a great performance together.”Meanwhile, other orchestras and music organisations have also taken the initiative to research how they could return to performing.
Read the whole thing to get a idea of the kinds of research that was involved.
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A lot of musicians have been doing instructional videos lately and I think we are all grateful for this one:
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At the Washington Post a review of a new book on music in Nazi concentration camps: In music, imprisoned Jews found comfort, dignity and sometimes a lifeline.
Of the many musicians subjected to Nazi terror, the internationally acclaimed violinist and conductor Alma Rosé was among the best known. She was a niece of the great Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, but the Gestapo agents who captured her as she tried to escape to Switzerland in 1943 cared only that she had been born a Jew. She was deported to Auschwitz.
The Nazis had long since banned the performance of Mahler’s music, along with that of all composers of Jewish heritage. Nazi racial laws had also barred Jewish musicians from performing for or with non-Jews. But because Hitler and his henchmen were also passionate music lovers, they supported the formation of concentration camp musical ensembles made up of Jewish inmates — with a diabolical catch. Under threat of death by Nazi SS guards, these musicians were commanded to perform tasks so abhorrent that at times even their fellow prisoners shunned them. These included playing music to mask the screams of those dying in the gas chambers; to soothe the nerves of German soldiers taking a breather from the Nazi annihilation machine; and to impose an overly fast marching pace for their starved, typhus-enfeebled fellow inmates to hobble to and from their daily work details. In return, the slave-labor musicians had their lives extended, if only for a short while.
I knew one musician who did suffer being put in two of these camps, the last one Auschwitz, but despite spending quite a lot of time with him, including a number of chamber music performances, he never talked about these experiences. I was only told of them by a mutual friend.
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For the envoi today, a bittersweet concert: the Vienna Philharmonic performance of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven at the Salzburg Festival just a few days ago. Conductor Riccardo Muti. Bittersweet because I had a ticket to this concert before the coronavirus hit. Due to the extreme abbreviation of the festival and the viccisitudes of air travel at this time I decided to cancel the trip.
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