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! 🙂
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.
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.
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.
“Liederen uit de hele wereld klinken in de huizen. Wie heeft er nog aandacht voor een traag oud lied, dat vroeger de lange winteravonden kortte of een eindeloze werkdag op het land?”
Op 23 juli 2010 is op 84-jarige leeftijd de Nederlandse radiomaker en volkskundige Ate Doornbosch overleden. Hij is op 29 juli gecremeerd. Doornbosch presenteerde van 1957 tot 1993 dertienhonderdzestien keer het populaire radiopogramma ‘Onder de Groene Linde’ waarin hij overal in Nederland mensen thuis bezocht en opnamen maakte van door henzelf gezongen, mondeling overgeleverde liederen. Doornbosch legde op die manier zo’n 5000 traditionele liederen vast. Zijn inspanningen leverden een imposant archief op dat in Amsterdam wordt beheerd door het P.J. Meertens Instituut.
I don’t think any of the world’s best classical pianists has ever done this… but she does. Out of loyalty and gratitude to her worldwide following Valentina Lisitsa is running a live webcam inside her practice studio at home until the 4th of July (midnight to be exact).
Buffy, one of Valentina’s cats, joined in at some point and started a piano duet… what a treat! 🙂
The use of technology to connect with an audience, like no other pianist Valentina Lisitsa knows how to do this. Her live-rehearsals involve working on recital and concert programmes that she has to perform next month. The number of pieces she’s working on in these rehearsals: 55 ! That’s FIFTY-FIVE, yes, and more than half of the material is Continue reading →
Valentina Lisitsa plays the theme of the Rachmaninoff/Warenberg ‘5th’ Piano Concerto’s 2nd movement, recorded in Amsterdam. A very beautiful interpretation, that imho combines and fuses a poetic delicacy with soulful temperament and powerful passion that only Valentina can bring out to the listener. I’m sure you’ll enjoy her playing here as much as I do.
This piano concerto is an arrangement by Alexander Warenberg of Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Symphony. The recording presented here is used with permission and part of video-material shot by Alexei Kuznetsoff (Valentina’s husband) in Amsterdam, May 2010, that features Valentina playing piano solo parts of the Rachmaninoff/Warenberg Piano Concerto #5.
Valentina was performing in The Netherlands in May 2010. On 29 May 2010 I did a video-interview with Valentina in Rotterdam on the Rachmaninoff/Warenberg 5th Piano Concerto after she played the concerto with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra on 28 May 2010.
Me and Valentina after the interview in Rotterdam
I will present this interview in a video-report later on this year combined with the video-material, shot in Amsterdam, of Valentina playing piano solo parts of the ‘5th’ concerto.
On Saturday 22 May 2010 electrifying world class classical pianist Valentina Lisitsa is performing in Leiden, The Netherlands. She’s gonna play an exciting and daring programme: two Beethoven Sonatas (the ‘Mondschein’ and the very complicated ‘Hammerklavier’) and all(!) 24 etudes of Chopin. For more information on the location and sale of tickets, click here. On Friday 28 May she will perform the Rachmaninoff / Warenberg 5th Piano Concerto (European premiere) with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Both concerts are really a must for evry lover of classical piano playing.
Valentina Lisitsa during a rehearsal in the Abbey Road Studios, London, December 2009 (photo: Pieter de Rooij)
I consider Valentina Lisitsa a once-in-a-generation pianist and one of the best classical pianists ever. To illustrate my words I’ll present below ten videos of Valentina that show the immense range of her musical powers. Most of these videos are from her Youtubechannel, which is actually the world’s best visited channel of a classical pianist. I also would like to refer to my Youtube video-documentary on Valentina’s Rachmaninoff recording project with the London Symphony Orchestra that can be found on my Youtubechannel, along with other videos I made last year in London of Valentina talking and playing. If you live in Holland and you like classical piano then don’t miss this great opportunity to hear the one and only Valentina Lisitsa live on stage in May 2010 in Leiden and Rotterdam.
In 1985 volgde ik als 21-jarige derdejaars-student antropologie een boeiend thematisch studieonderdeel: ‘Body & Mind’. Voor de Body & Mind werkgroep schreef ik een artikel over een neuroantropologische kijk op ritueel gedrag, toegespitst op Soefi-zikr-rituelen. In 1986 werd het geplaatst in het gerenommeerde ‘Sociologisch Tijdschrift’, een wetenschapstijdschrift dat normaliter nooit werk van studenten publiceert. Die eer viel mij wel te beurt. In het artikel vestig ik aandacht op de vraag hoe tijdens (religieuze) rituelen bepaalde (vaak van jongs af aangeleerde) ‘technieken van het lichaam’ worden ingezet die blijkbaar regelrecht in verband staan met de totstandkoming van transcendente (religieuze) ervaringen van deelnemers aan die rituelen. Klik hier om het artikel te lezen.
Om een en ander aanschouwelijk te maken, hieronder een filmpje van YouTube, met overigens beelden en taferelen die als schokkend kunnen worden ervaren…
Twee jaar na publicatie van dit artikel studeerde ik af op een heel ander onderwerp: opera. Ook heel leuk en boeiend!
Voor wie het aandurft… op 31 oktober 2010 gaat het spoken in de Leidse Waag en klinken de engste klassieke composities in een HALLOWEEN CONCERT met daredevil-pianiste VALENTINA LISITSA ! Kaartverkoop via de Stadsgehoorzaal Leiden.
Klik enkele malen op de foto hierboven om het concertprogramma te vergroten
Een review in Mixed No. 9, zomer 2009 over ‘Darbar Arts Culture Heritage’, een kleurrijk fotoboek over het jaarlijks in Engeland plaatsvindende Darbar Festival, het grootste ragamuziekfestival buiten India.
Klik enkele keren op de foto om de review te vergroten en te lezen.
Uit het fotoboek een foto van zangeres Kaushiki Chakrabarty tijdens haar optreden op het Darbar Festival 2008.
Mijn recensies uit 2009 in het blad Mixed met betrekking tot Indiase muziek. Besproken worden:
* Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia – An audience with
* Pushparaj Koshti – Surbahar
* Rahul Sharma – Santoor
* Rajan and Sajan Misra – Benares
* Kalapini Komkali – Sacred Breath
* Najma Akhtar & Gary Lucas – Rishte
Klik op de foto -en daarna nog enkele keren om verder te vergroten- om de recensies te lezen.
