“The book of Liszts”

It’s an old adage that talent runs in families. However, there is a twist in the story of the Prokofiev family with Gabriel Prokofiev, grandson of Sergei, eschewing the purely classical tradition to write music that both incorporates and challenges western classical traditions. Now Gramophone Magazine reports that Gabriel Prokofiev has been chosen by the Birmingham…

Do the sung arts have to be monolinguistic to be “accessible” ? The intrinsic quality of the language is why Janacek sounds so wonderful in Czech; and Britten in English  To take the idea to its extreme, the Czechs would be translating “Porgy and Bess” into Czech, and “Peter Grimes” would sung in Italian; opera companies would never be able to…