Newly 'Discovered' Beethoven Pieces Ignite Scholarly Debate

A lost piano sonata! A forgotten string quartet! A tenth symphony!

Musicologists have long fantasized about uncovering lost works of the immortal composers. More than a few have made it their lifelong mission to assemble composer’s scattered sketches, fragments and jottings into complete, readily-to-perform musical statements. Add the name Beethoven to the mix and pulses really begin to race.

Last month, two newly-reconstructed Beethoven works were given what was billed as world premieres within weeks of one another: one is a two-minute hymn setting barely 74 measures long, performed in Manchester, England. The other is said to be the sketch of an early piano sonata, clocking in at 23 minutes. It was performed in Amsterdam and a commercial recording was made by Martin Oei, a 16-year-old piano wiz.   More

New title -- Wax Poetics

A new title, Wax Poetics, is now available in Con Periodicals.

Happy 70th Birthday, Jimi Hendrix

Today is the birthday of electric guitar hero, James Marshall Hendrix. The "Purple Haze" creator would turn 70 years old if he were still alive today, and this fact is blowing our minds.

On the anniversary of his birth, Jimi Hendrix's hometown of Seattle is celebrating the legendary musician in an exhibit at EMP Museum titled, "Hear My Train A Comin': Hendrix Hits London." Devoted entirely to the guitarist's nine month stint in the UK capital, the collection of lyrics, instruments, photographs and fashion covers Hendrix's 1960s British debut. The period, packed with three unforgettable singles and a magnificently successful album, amounted to the perfect prelude to Hendrix's fiery performance at the '67 Monterey Pop Festival.  More

Football Player Turned Opera Star

  NEW YORK (AP) — Keith Miller was a bruising fullback out of the University of Colorado who never quite made it to the National Football League. He has, however, become a star at the Metropolitan Opera.  How Miller made the … Read More

Musical America Instrumentalist of the Year: WU MAN

Wu Man is the very model of a modern soloist. More importantly, her work is part of a big step in the evolution of Western classical music. The best measure of her achievement is that her instrument, the pipa--a Chinese lute that dates back some 2,000 years--is no longer an exotic curiosity. Symphony audiences have heard her perform concertos by Lou Harrison and Tan Dun. She performs regularly with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, the Kronos Quartet, as a soloist in Bang on a Can marathons, and in chamber groups and orchestras giving the premieres of works by Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Chen Yi, and Bright Sheng, who have written pipa parts into their works with her sound and dexterity in mind.

Musical America Announces Vocalist of the Year: Joyce DiDonato

Joyce DiDonato is the American opera singer par excellence. Onstage or off, there are few people in opera who radiate this Kansas native's degree of natural goodness and warmth. For all these qualities, however, the intensity, fury, and abandon of roles such as Donizetti's Maria Stuarda are well within her emotional range, as she proved at Houston Grand Opera last season. This season she performs a recital program called "Drama Queens," featuring Baroque arias sung by royal characters (recorded by Virgin Records). Operatic appearances include a reprise of the title role in Maria Stuarda at the Metropolitan Opera, Romeo in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Munich and Kansas City, Elena in Rossini's La donna del lago in Santa Fe, and the title role in Cendrillon in Barcelona.

Musical America Musician of the Year: GUSTAVO DUDAMEL

In eight short years, 31-year-old Gustavo Dudamel has become more in demand than any conductor in the world. He is a household name in Los Angeles, where he is music director of the Philharmonic. He is mobbed in Berlin, Vienna, Milan, London, and Caracas, Venezuela, where he is one of his country's best-known and well-loved celebrities. Often compared to Leonard Bernstein, Dudamel shares the American conductor's charisma, tireless advocacy for music education, and expressive music-making. Dudamel studied violin as a child, and in his early teens he was invited to study conducting with José Antonio Abreu, architect of Venezuela's famed El Sistema music-education program. At age 18 he became music director of the Sistema's elite Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra. In 2004, at age 23, he won the Bamberg Symphony's Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition, and in 2007 he began a five-year appointment with Sweden's Gothenburg Symphony, which recently ended with his being named honorary conductor. His Los Angeles appointment, which began in September 2009, has been distinguished by the orchestra's founding of the Sistema-like Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (YOLA) and a continuation of the orchestra's and his own commitment to new music, notably that of John Adams, who is the LAPhil's creative consultant.