Interviews

Romanian soprano Aida Pascu was named Young Artist of the Year 2024 of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA). The 24-year-old singer answers the questions of Irina Vasilescu, a Senior Producer of ICMA Jury member Radio Romania Muzical. Read More →

Conductor Markus Poschner is the mastermind behind a project to record the complete Bruckner symphonies with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and the ORF Vienna Symphony Radio Orchestra. The Capriccio label is releasing all versions of the symphonies on 18 albums. This edition has won a Special Achievement Awards at this year’s ICMA. Pierre-Jean-Tribot from Jury member Crescendo made the following interview with the conductor. Read More →

French tenor Cyrille Dubois won at this year’s ICMA with his album ‘Jouissons de nos beaux ans’. Jury member Luc Boentges (Radio 100,7, Luxembourg) made the following interview with the singer.

 Cyrille Dubois, what does it mean to you to have won the ICMA prize in the ‘Baroque Vocal’ category?
It was a great surprise to receive this award. I’ve already made a number of recordings and to see this one awarded by this great international competition makes me feel very proud. Read More →

David Philip Hefti was awarded the Composer Award 2023 of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA), and in the summer he was Composer in Residence of the Zermatt Festival. Jury member Andrea Meuli (Musik + Theater) spoke with the composer. Read More →

Karol Mossakowski, titular organist of the Cavaillé-Coll organ in Saint-Sulpice in Paris since last February, is one of the most promising artists among the rising figures of the young organ school. Read More →

On 21 April, the National Forum of Music in Wrocław, Poland, is hosting the annual ICMA Award Ceremony and Gala concert. Jakub Puchalski from ICMA Jury member Polskie Radio Chopin made the following interview with Andrzej Kosendiak, the Director of NFM.

The National Forum of Music is a musical institution, but it’s also a venue – a new complex of four concert halls in Wrocław. A good concert hall for the Wrocław Philharmonic had been talked about for decades. How did the National Forum of Music emerge from these many different plans and concepts?
The story of the NFM began in 2002, when Rafał Dutkiewicz was elected Mayor of Wrocław. The project to build a concert hall was on his agenda. At that time I was his advisor in preparing the programme for culture. Later he hired me as his plenipotentiary – and work began on the construction of the hall. Of course, the Wroclaw community had been making attempts to erect a new concert hall for a long time, but only this one proved successful. Read More →

Fresh from her personal success as Antonia in Tales of Hoffmann at La Scala, Eleonora Buratto is experiencing a particularly happy moment in her career: the Mantuan soprano, in fact, in recent years has racked up a series of debuts in a very wide repertoire, ranging from Rossini’s Otello to Puccini’s Butterfly, passing through that Verdi which, between Ernani and Don Carlo, increasingly appears to be the cornerstone of her current and future career. Nicola Cattò (from ICMA Jury member Musica) met (via Skype) with Eleonora Buratto the day after the end of performances of Offenbach’s opera Les Contes d’Hoffmann and just before she left for New York, where she sung Mimì in a series of performances of Bohème: the occasion was (also) to talk about the recording of Rossini’s Messa di gloria, conducted by Tony Pappano, which won the ICMA 2023 award in the Choral Music category. Read More →

This year, the jury of International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) honours Italian pianist Alessandro Marangoni with a special prize for this ponderous recording venture, which has come to an end and which Naxos has published in a single boxed set. In the ICMA Gala concert in Wroclaw, Marangoni will play Chopin’s Andante spianato et Grande polonaise brillante in the (uncommon) version with orchestra on 21 April. Here is an article from the Italian Jury member Musica, by Nicola Cattò and Luca Segalla Read More →

Since he wrote Winternacht in 1978, the reference to snow has gradually become a constant in the music of Hans Abrahamsen (Copenhagen, *1952). “It captures me”, he says. “What fascinates me about snow is its whiteness, as well as the idea that it can turn to ice”. But Abrahamsen is also very aware of “the other side of winter”, he clarifies, which is that “after winter comes spring”. That is precisely what happens at the end of Winternacht, but also at the end of his opera The Snow Queen (2019), whose production and subsequent DVD release, in its English version, by the Bayerische Staatsoper has just been awarded at the ICMA 2023. With this in mind, Jesús Castañer from ICMA’S Jury member Scherzo shared a warm conversation about his opera and some of his more recent creative interests.

You have written your first opera, The Snow Queen (2019), at the age of 62. Did you think about making an opera before?
Yes. I had plans to write an opera in 1988, but I never managed to find the right story, and also I hadn’t developed a vocal writing of my own to do something like that. Read More →