Valentina Lisitsa / livestream webcast recording sessions 24 Etudes Chopin

On August 17th, 18th and 19th 2010 I attended in the Beethovensaal in Hannover Valentina Lisitsa’s rehearsal (17th) and recording sessions (18th and 19th) of the 24 Etudes of Chopin. While a live-webstream was running during Valentina’s playing and Alexei (Valentina’s husband) was putting it on his cameras, I did some webhosting and on the 17th I also filmed some of the rehearsing.

In the upstairs studio there was producer Michael Fine, assisted by Tammy Fine and sound engineer Wolf-Dieter Karwatky.

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Valentina and producer Michael Fine

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Alexei (Valentina’s husband), Valentina and producer Michael Fine

Valentina played on a veery beautiful Steinway D Hamburg, prepared and taken care off by piano technician Gerd Finkenstein.

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Valentina in the Beethovensaal in Hannover

The 24 Etudes were played by Valentina with great artistic depth and a deep understanding of Chopin. There were tiny details and truly magnificent colours that I had not heard before in her playing of the Etudes. Truly amazing!

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Me and Valentina during a coffee break

Valentina and the whole crew really loved the wonderful response from the livestream webcast’s visitors.

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Right after finishing the recordings Valentina takes a look into the chatroom and starts chatting

As soon as Valentina had finished Op.25-12 she switched to another keyboard and entered the chatroom for a final talk with the viewers and ‘followers’. Big Fun for evryone ! 🙂

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Balinese Gamelan: unique footage of legendary composer I Wayan Lotring

Recently published on YouTube in two videos: selected segments of unique footage from 1972 of the legendary Balinese composer, musician, dancer I Wayan Lotring (approx.1898-1983).

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Lotring is arguably Bali’s most influential gamelan composer/musician of the twentieth century. And of course a great dancer as well. We see Lotring at old age dancing and playing his own compositions with fellow musicians. When playing, we see Lotring mostly as the leader of the ensemble, playing the kendang (drum). Segments are shown of the famous 1972 performances that have been published on Ocora in 1974 (rereleased in 1989). Below you’ll find part two. At 2’40” in this video the famous piece ‘Gambangan’ is played and from 6’16” there’s my very favourite piece ‘Liar Samas’ 🙂

Great as this footage of Lotring might be, there are also two regrettable minuses regarding this material:

1. It’s in black and white (filmed from a black and white tv screen?). I can’t imagine (ethno)musicologist Jacques Brunet shot this material in black and white. Moreover, his recordings of these sessions are presented on Ocora along with colour photos in the cd booklet.

2. Sound and image are not sync. It would be very easy to correct this. I’m always surprised to see this. Why do uploaders not correct this before they publish? As a consequence we don’t get to see the real artistic beauty of Lotring’s dancing along with the music and of his (drum)playing with the orchestra. Ooooww!!! 🙁

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Valentina Lisitsa : solo takes Rachmaninoff #4

On August 7th, 2010, I’ve published two new videos on my YouTubechannel with another 18 minutes of some exquisite playing by Valentina Lisitsa, filmed by me in London, Abbey Road Studios, December 6th, 2009.

It’s some of my footage of Valentina doing solo take recordings of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.4, as part of her Rachmaninoff Project with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), conducted by Michael Francis and produced by Michael Fine.

For this project with the LSO – that’s bound for release by the end of 2010 – Valentina recorded at the Abbey Road Studios in London Rachmaninoff’s four piano concertos and Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations in September 2009 (piano concerti 1 and 2), in December 2009 (piano concerti 3 and 4) and in March 2010 (Paganini Variations).

If you like Rachmaninoff you can’t afford missing Valentina’s exquisite, brilliant, electrifying and delicate ‘Rachy touch’. Listen and enjoy! 🙂

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British newspaper recognises stature of dutch radio pioneer Ate Doornbosch

It’s quite amazing that the best newspaper coverage on the demise of dutch folksong collector and radiomaker Ate Doornbosch (1926-2010) comes from an overseas neighbour: British music journalist Ken Hunt wrote an excellent obituary about Ate Doornbosch for the British newspaper The Independent. To read this obituary, click here.
I think it’s regrettable that the dutch national NOS Journaal of public television broadcasting didn’t report on television on Ate Doornbosch’s passing away.

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Ate Doornbosch, busy transcribing

Of the big dutch newspapers (Telegraaf, Volkskrant, Parool, Trouw, NRC) only NRC published a short obituary. Still, without any doubt Ate Doornbosch was a figure of national importance. He became famous with his radio programme ‘Onder de Groene Linde’, that ran 1316 times between 1957 and 1993 and in its heydays attracted 350.000 listeners per episode. It was the longest running radio programme ever on dutch national radio.

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Ate Doornbosch recording old dutch folksongs at the people’s homes

“Few folk-song collectors anywhere match Doornbosch’s achievement, the public face of which was the long-running radio series Onder de Groene Linde (“Under the green linden”) and “his work was fairly compared to that of the US collector Alan Lomax”, writes British music journalist Ken Hunt about Ate Doornbosch in the aforementioned obituary.
It’s great to see that a foreign newspaper fully recognises the meaning and stature of the pioneering work of Ate Doornbosch. Here’s the link to the obituary once more.


Ate Doornbosch in 1990

* outside of the dutch press and media the only extensive dutch obituary I found is this one, written by professor Louis Grijp of the Meertens Instituut in Amsterdam.

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