brisbane hate

Alexandra Dariescu's virtual-reality piano recital ballet marvel The Nutcracker and I is off on a world tour soon, taking in China, Romania, Belgium, Germany, Austria (four performances in Vienna's Konzerthaus), Sweden, Australia and the UK (including, among others, the London Piano Festival and the Ryedale Festival). Above, the Trepak, with Alex at the piano and ballerina Amy Drew meeting some rather special friends. Full tour dates here. Last year Alex decided to record a CD of the complete music - some of the arrangements have been specially commissioned for the project - with a souvenir booklet, targeted at the young audience she hopes will be attracted to experience a piano recital for the first time. But you can't put virtual reality into audio or print...so she needed a text version of the story. I was more than thrilled when she asked me to oblige. The script, recorded by Blue Peter presenter Lindsey Russell, has been very cleverly woven into the music (it works eve...

...I'm off to Glasgow to give a pre-concert talk about Chopin for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Concert Hall. Curtain-raiser for a gorgeous programme bookended by Smetana and Dvorák, and in the middle David Kadouch is the soloist for Chopin's Piano Concerto No.2. Matthias Pintscher conducts. I'll be telling the story of the young Chopin, the significance in his life and output of his 'Second' Piano Concerto (inverted commas used for a good reason there) and the various elements that went into forming his style then, and which would stay with him for the rest of his life. The talk starts at 6.45pm and the concert is at 7.30pm, broadcast live on Radio 3. More details here.  It is actually, embarrassingly, more years than I'd care to admit since I last went to Scotland at all, and I'm looking forward to revisiting this vibrant metropolis, if all too briefly.

Thanks for coming to tonights QuestGaine at Newmarket You can input your answers   here . The map is available here Feel free to post your route in the comments below.

2018 - Week 13 - Newmarket 25 April @ 7pm- This week we'll be starting at the SE corner of Mc Cook Park in Newmarket.  Thanks to Errol for setting this weeks map, and offering to cook some snags while everyone is out on the course. When registering please let us know if you are staying for the BBQ afterwards. This week we are only running Wednesday evening . Maps will be available on this blog if you would like to print your own map and run the course on Thursday or later. We'll be using the regular question and answer format this week. Please arrive by 6:45 to sign on and grab your map ready to turn maps over at 6:58.  Please register below -  BY MIDDAY WEDNESDAY -  so that we can print enough colour maps. Entry is Free!  Timing: Please arrive by 6:45pm Map handout at 6:58pm Turn over maps for two minutes of route planning at 6:58pm Mass start at 7:00pm Finish at 8:00pm - 20 point penalty for every minute you are late 8:00pm onwards - enter your answers into th...

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch It's rare for any concert in hall in London, except the eclectic Southbank Centre, to present anything with overtly political overtones. So all credit to John Gilhooly at the Wigmore. Watching the cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, 92 and a survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, address the Bundestag in Berlin a few months ago, he decided she must give the address to London as well, in English - from the stage of his hall. She will speak about her own experiences and the importance of learning from one of the darkest moments of human history. The event, on 8 July at 3pm, will also feature her son Raphael Wallfisch (cello) and John York (piano) in music Bloch, Ravel and Korngold. It will be live streamed on the Wigmore Hall website . Gilhooly says: “After I saw Anita Lasker-Wallfisch's address to the Bundestag, I felt it had to be heard in London, so I invited her to give the address in English at Wigmore Hall. As a non-Jewish leader working in the arts, I ...

It's the Proms launch today and the great news is that the Last Night commission goes to our very own Roxanna Panufnik! Roxanna rules the waves She is writing a choral piece, Songs of Darkness, Dreams of Light , for the combined forces of the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers involving a poem by the World War I poet Isaac Rosenberg and lines from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Today's tension is reduced, of course, by the fact that the whole programme went online at 7am, so there will be no repeat of the little adrenaline rush that accompanied the opening of the nice fat brochure at the press briefing, let alone of the time I teared up there on seeing the words KORNGOLD SYMPHONY on a Proms page for the first time ever. Everyone is tweeting their highlights and I've had a quick zip through the website to see what jumps out. No doubt I will have missed plenty, so please forgive me if your favourite concert does not appear in this post... For opening night there is another n...

Thanks for coming to tonights QuestGaine at Rochedale South You can input your answers   here . The map is available  here Feel free to post your route in the comments below.