50 of the finest JS Bach recordings available – complete with the original Gramophone reviews – featuring Glenn Gould, Angela Hewitt, Isabelle Faust, Murray Perahia and more
Clonmelâs Finding a Voice festival, a festival devoted exclusively to music by women, is happening online this year, the only way thatâs possible for it. The great Japanese marimba player Keiko Abe and percussionist/composer Evelyn Glennie are among the names represented in the opening programme performed by Alex Petcu, who will also play a new work by Elaine Agnew.
There will be songs by Pauline Viardot, marking the bicentenary of the birth of the great French singer and composer, for whom Berlioz made the now-dominant version of Gluckâs Orfeo ed Euridice with Orfeo cast as a mezzo-soprano. Thatâs in concert by soprano Kelley Lonergan, actor Aideen Wylde and pianist Gabriela Mayer.
Gramophone Thursday, February 25, 2021
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Last modified on Fri 19 Feb 2021 16.42 EST
Osian Ellis, who has died aged 92, delighted in playing the harp in every available lineup. Among his many fine recordings, his account of Handel’s Harp Concerto directed by Thurston Dart (1959) won a Grand Prix du Disque, and that of Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro with the Melos Ensemble (1962) remains a classic. But he was particularly associated with the music of Benjamin Britten.
The composer first heard him in 1959, in a performance of A Ceremony of Carols. When the premiere of Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed at his festival in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the following year, the second harpist baled out, but the day was saved by Osian, who devised a way of playing very nearly all the notes himself.
Osian Ellis, harpist known for his association with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears – obituary
Britten wrote several works for him and he later became the regular accompanist for Pears, rethinking piano accompaniments for the harp
Osian Ellis
Osian Ellis, who has died aged 92, was a dynamic Welsh harpist best known for his association with Benjamin Britten, who wrote several works either for Ellis or featuring his instrument.
After Britten’s heart surgery in 1973 Ellis became the regular accompanist for Britten’s partner, the tenor Peter Pears, rethinking the composer’s original piano accompaniments for the harp.
Ellis’s involvement with Britten’s circle had begun on January 4 1959, when he played the harp part in a performance of the composer’s A Ceremony of Carols conducted by George Malcolm in central London.