Magazine Archives - 2MBS Fine Music Sydney

French Master par excellence

Classical Fine Music Magazine

Former French Prime Minister Charles de Freycinet was walking amongst the urbane people of Paris when he recognized César Franck approaching at a fast trot, his uniform an oversized frock coat, grey trousers hoisted too high, top hat haphazardly brushed against the nap. The Prime Minister slowed to talk, but Franck, without breaking stride, called as he passed, “Will you come with me to Sainte-Clotilde? But don’t speak to me. I heard last night heavenly things, and I don’t want to forget them!”

Focus on the Words

Classical

Angela Cockburn introduces a new series on librettists. Starting in January and running through to June, in the first week of the month Treasures of the Voice will feature a series about the librettists – the wordsmiths that create the stories and the dialogue that keeps an opera or a musical moving right along while still being singable for the performers.

The female crescendo

Fine Music Magazine

Having gone to an all-girls’ school, I met a fair share of our species. Some were fierce, others mild and maternal. Pinned outside the philosophy club was a poster, known these days as a ‘meme’: I’m a female. Fe = Iron Male = Man Therefore, I am Iron Man. One doesn’t need to be a chemistry or Marvel Comics nerd to appreciate the mettle of women.

Aretha Franklin – An Icon

Fine Music Magazine Jazz

Born with an amazing voice, Aretha Franklin grew up surrounded by music, especially by her mother who was an accomplished piano player and vocalist. Franklin began singing when she was nine, and around this time began to learn the piano – by ear! Her life changed when she was 18 and she walked into New York’s Columbia Records to record with the Ray Bryant Combo. Even at 18 her voice was astonishing and powerful, although Columbia did not have any idea of her future. A year later in 1961, Franklin was declared ‘New-Star Female Vocalist’ in the DownBeat Critics Poll, a measure of general agreement for the jazz press.

A Life of Max Reger

Classical Fine Music Magazine

The German composer and musician Max Reger was both a conservative and a visionary, looking back to the musical forms of the 18th century and forward to the harmonic adventures of the 20th. Reger inherited the gifts of his musician father, quickly developing an ambition to become a composer. This resulted from hearing Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Parsifal during his first pilgrimage to Bayreuth.

Hubert Clifford: A true pioneer

Classical Fine Music Magazine

Paul Cooke surveys an early Australian symphonist Hubert Clifford’s Symphony 1940 was something of an anomaly among his compositions. While his...

2MBS Fine Music Sydney Magazine – September Out Now!

Fine Music Magazine

The September issue of the 2MBS Fine Music Sydney Magazine has just been released. This month Virginia Ginnane talked to the 2019 Winner of the 2MBS Fine Music’s inaugural Ken Weatherly Jazz Scholarship, Kate Wadey, about her third album, the song-writing collaboration with the musicians she works with, and the relief of coming out of lockdown. Our cover features Ensemble Offspring’s Listen Up!, a micro festival of new music at the National Art School in Darlinghurst this month.

Immigrant, Exile, Outsider

Fine Music Magazine Uncategorized

In 1940, 18-yr-old Felix Bischofswerder arrived in Australia along with his father, having fled Nazi Germany in the mid 1930s for London, where he studied Fine Arts and Architecture. He shortened his surname to Werder and proceeded to play a significant role in the cultural life of his adopted country for most of the next 70 years. As a composer, he was not constrained by genre, writing chamber and electronic music, symphonies, concertos, opera and more. He was also an influential teacher, critic and public intellectual.

Jacques Ibert

Fine Music Magazine

Perhaps not as well-known as some of his contemporaries, Jacques Ibert nonetheless made a name for himself as a composer. Studying at the Paris Conservatoire as well as privately, his fellow students included Arthur Honegger and Darius Milhaud. Ibert’s studies were interrupted by World War I, but after winning the Prix de Rome in 1919 for his cantata Le Poète et la fée, he continued his studies in Rome.

2MBS Fine Music Sydney Magazine – February Out Now!

Fine Music Magazine

The February issue of the 2MBS Fine Music Sydney Magazine has just been released. You can read the entire magazine through our website! This month we take a look at Simone Young, Lloyd Swanton of The Necks, as well as Jacques Ibert: A Composer To Whom All Systems Were Valid. You can also get access to this months program guide so you don't miss your favorite show!