CENTRAL ENGLAND: Mike Wheeler's concert reviews from Nottingham and Derbyshire feature high profile artists on the UK circuit - often quite early on their tours.
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DISCUSSION: John Dante Prevedini leads a discussion about Improvisation in the classical world and beyond, including contributions from David Arditti, James Lewitzke, James Ross and Steve Vasta.
Catalan composer and conductor Fernando Obradors was born in Barcelona in 1897. His teachers were his mother Julia, Lluis Millet and Joan Lamote de Grignon, but Antonio Nicolau is also credited with giving him compositional advice. He later studied in Paris, then regularly conducted in Barcelona after the Spanish Civil War.
Later he was conductor of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria (1944-5), and taught at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Canarias, Las Palmas.
He is best known for his Canciones clásicas españolas (1921-41), four volumes of arrangements of Spanish poetry, and particularly for the first volume, which takes the form of a song cycle, and contains a poem by his friend, Federico García Lorca. He also wrote several zaruelas, and an orchestral work inspired by Kipling's Jungle Book stories.
Obradors died in Barcelona in 1945.
Ensemble. Wit and Effervescence - Music in the Time of Goya, by Derek Murray
Ensemble. Winning Flexibility - A recital by Agnieszka Kozlowska and Beate Toyka, reviewed by Mike Wheeler
Stage presence - Keith Bramich listens to soprano Anya Szreter in London's Regent Hall