We have a Family Ticket - up to four tickets - to give away for the Lytham Proms, starring soprano Lesley Garrett and Manchester Camerata. On the 21 August 2010, Lytham Green will be transformed into a stunning concert arena as we join Lesley Garrett and the Manchester Camerata for Lytham Proms 2010. What better way to spend a Summer evening than sipping champagne and watching Britain's most popular soprano on Lytham's fabulous Green. Sit back and enjoy your picnic, or sample the VIP restaurant and hospitality options available, whatever you choose you are guaranteed an evening of rousing music and spectacular Firework Finale. Cuffe & Taylor Event Management in conjunction with Fylde Borough Council, The Music Partnership and the Manchester Camerata celebrate 70 years since the Battle of Britain in a spectacular Proms Concert. Read more about Lytham Proms

Entries need to be received by midnight on Wednesday 18 August 2010

This event is not a seated event.  You should bring your own picnic, but for safety reasons NO fires or barbecues Seating and cover is not provided so do bring chairs, tables, picnic blankets and umbrellas. No dogs, other than guide dogs, can be admitted. Please come early to allow plenty of time for parking. Special parking is available for disabled concert-goers. Gates Open 5pm, Support Act 6pm to 7pm, Concert Starts 8pm, Concert Finishes 10.30pm

No cash or alternatives will be offered

Manchester Camerata Terms and Conditions Apply - read them here

Venezuelan/Italian  violinist and rising star Giovanni Guzzo joins Manchester Camerata as leader

Manchester Camerata has announced that the twenty-four year old Venezuelan/Italian violinist and rising star Giovanni Guzzo will be joining the orchestra as leader from the 2010/11 season onwards. This news closely follows the orchestra's appointment of the great Hungarian musician Gábor Takács-Nagy, who takes over from Douglas Boyd as the orchestra's new Music Director in 2011.

Speaking about Giovanni Guzzo's appointment, Manchester Camerata's Chief Executive, Bob Riley, said "These are thrilling times for Manchester Camerata. Giovanni Guzzo is widely recognised as one of the leading performers of his generation. The fact that he sees his future as lying with Manchester Camerata is an indication of the esteem in which our orchestra is now held on the international scene. With Giovanni on the front desk and Gábor Takács-Nagy soon to be at the orchestra's helm, we are poised for some wonderful years' music-making ahead."

"What's more, it is only with Manchester Camerata that UK audiences will be able to experience these two outstanding musicians: I am delighted to say that both of them have signed exclusive three year contracts with the orchestra."

Giovanni Guzzo is excited by his appointment. "The thing that attracted me most about Manchester is the orchestra and the appointment of Gábor Takács-Nagy as the new Music Director. It's just such an exciting group of musicians. They are all world class and it's a great place and a great environment to work. The future of the orchestra is one of the brightest for chamber orchestras in the UK and the world."

Gábor Takács-Nagy is equally delighted with Guzzo's appointment, ""Giovanni Guzzo is a brilliant young artist, a really creative Leader, who knows exactly how to lead an orchestra, so I am very excited about the relationship between Giovanni and myself and Manchester Camerata. I feel he understands me very well. A great Leader makes the others even better players."

Audiences have two opportunities to see Giovanni Guzzo in action early in the forthcoming Manchester Camerata Season.

On Wednesday 29 September 2010 at 7.30pm at the Stafford Gatehouse Theatre he is the soloist in Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 and directs the rest of the programme from the violin. Prior to the concert, at 6.30pm, Guzzo is also the subject of the evening's Talking Point - a relaxed opportunity to learn more about this exciting musician.

The second concert, on Saturday 23 October 2010 at 7.30pm at the Royal Northern College of Music, delivers an opportunity to witness the collective musical energy generated by Manchester Camerata's two new international signings. Giovanni Guzzo leads the orchestra, while Gábor Takács-Nagy conducts. With Miklos Perenyi, one of the truly great cellists of his generation, also on the platform, this promises to be an electrifying evening.

Hear Giovanni talking about his appoinment and Manchester Camerata

Listen to Gábor Takács-Nagy discussing his existing close working relation with Giovanni

The Manchester Jazz Festival has been described as "a rare breed of musical beast that seeks to challenge pre-conceptions as well as get everyone toe-tapping with daily free performances...this is not your usual jazz fest"

The Manchester Jazz Festival is now underway, and runs until the 31st of July. Most events are free, so why not head over for an experience you won't get anywhere else - one that will stay with you for a long time and open up your ears to a different world of music.  It will probably take you by surpise, challenge your perceptions, entertain you and make your spine tingle. It's a journey to discovery that we hope you'll make with us... find your jazz!

We have two sets of tickets to be won for the ticketted events in the Festival Pavillion on Friday 30 July and Saturday 31 July.

Details of the Manchester Jazz Festival

The competition closes on Friday 30 July

Manchester Camerata Terms and Conditions Apply - read them here

Far from taking it easy over the summer months, Manchester Camerata's Music Director designate Gábor Takács-Nagy has been working with young chamber musicians high in the Swiss Alps.  Back in 2007, he was appointed Music Director of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra. The orchestra takes young musicians from across the world, and guides them through the treacherous waters of the professional world. This is Gábor Takács-Nagy's fifth Verbier Festival.

"It's very very busy because so many concerts are taking place, and there aren't many rehearsals for one production, but of course everyone wants to give his or her best. So the work and the rehearsals are really special and intensive."

"Being here in the mountains, in a Summer festival, it gives a new imagination somehow. It's away from the normal concert halls. This has something special, the Swiss Alps and the artists also here - it's a kind of artistic family - we know each other very very well, because there is a core. Martin Engstrom the boss of this festival, invites back lots of the same people year after year so we know each other. It has a special atmosphere."

The Verbier Music Festival started 17 years ago.  The idea was to find a reason for people to some up to the Alpine ski resort in the Summer Months.  Today it attracts the best performers from around the world who are drawn by the informal atmosphere and the chance to play with like minded musicians.

The Festival's chamber orchestra is comprised by young players from dozens of countries.  But does that make it hard to create a coherent body of players?

"I have to give - one, two, three days to get things together. But how can I put it? - Music is such a universl language, if you talk about musical issues,  suddenly through the music different persons are getting together. If you are talking about Music Music, Music, the technique will be the same. Even if people are coming from different schools or countries."

"It's a magical thing, the magic of music making. This of course needs talented youngsters, but here at Verbier

everyone is at such a high level."

Gábor Takács-Nagy toured Asia with the orchestra and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade. He was a founder  member and first violin of the Takács Quartet, but since 2001 has devoted himself full-time to orchestral conducting. Since 2007, he has been guest Chief Conductor of the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra and the Budapest Symphony Orchestra MAV, and regularly conducts the Irish Chamber Orchestra.

Appointed professor of chamber music at the Geneva Conservatory and the Ecole Supérieur de Musique in Sion in 1997, Gábor Takács-Nagy also gives masterclasses at numerous international academies.

Gabor has several concerts with Manchester Camerata this coming Autumn, and takes up the rold of Music Director in September 2011.

Read more about Gábor Takács-Nagy

Find out about the Verbier Festival

Read about the Verbier Fetsival Academy on the Borletti-Buitoni Trust website

See Gabor performing at Verbier on Medici TV

Composer Nina Whiteman is creating a new work which will be performed as part of Manchester Camerata's new season concert on 23 October 2010 - Pictures from St Petersburg. Here she blogs the composing experience.

"I'm delighted to be composing a new piece for Manchester Camerata's ‘Urban Symphonies' series. St. Petersburg was built by Peter the Great as a ‘Window to the West', or a 'Window through which the West will come'. The piece will invite listeners to step through this ‘window' of grandeur and illusion, revealing what may lie beyond. The city was constructed on a marsh and hundreds of thousands of workers died during the building work, leading to a local saying that ‘Every step you take, the dead take something from you'.

My work will consider the lives sacrificed to build this magnificent city as well as the hardships suffered by its inhabitants over the years.

The river Neva is a constant in the life of the city - it has witnessed the building of the city, carried disease, and engulfed the city in its waters many times. It freezes over every winter, changing the landscape of St. Petersburg with the seasons. The importance of the river in the city has led me to the idea of a constantly-evolving line that weaves its way through my piece. Part of my compositional process has been to trace the line of the Neva from a series of maps (dating from 1726 to the present), and to use these lines to create musical material.

As well as reading a number of books on the history of St. Petersburg, I've been reading literary works created in the city. Many of these poems and short stories will also inform and shape the music I'm writing and will be presented as ‘windows' that are juxtaposed against or interrupt the ‘river' material. I'm particularly interested in the poetry of Anna Akhmatova, and her frequent reference to colour (of the sky, the river, the buildings) is providing me with ideas for orchestration and timbre in the music.

My provisional title is ‘Windows on the Neva' and I'm very much looking forward to working with the orchestra in October."

Nina Whiteman

Follow the Manchester Camerata Blog

Read more about the Pictures from St Petersburg Concert

www.myspace.com/ninawhiteman 

The BBC Proms has announced that Manchester Camerata's Music Director Douglas Boyd will replace the late Sir Charles Mackerras to conduct the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's prom on Thursday 29 July.

The late night prom - featuring Dvorak's Serenade in D minor for winds, cello and double bass, opus 44, and Mozart's Gran Partita serenade - is one of two which would have been conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras who died last week at the age of 84. Douglas Boyd played oboe for Mackerras when he conducted Brahms's First Symphony with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. "Sir Charles had a huge influence on a whole generation of musicians and his death was met by great sadness. I am so honoured to be asked to take over the Prom that he was going to conduct. The programme is one that I was brought up with, first as an oboist with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and as a conductor with Camerata. Performing at the Proms with Manchester Camerata has been incredibly exciting and I am delighted to go back to what is probably the greatest music festival in the world." Douglas Boyd has worked with the SCO before and has previously conducted twice at the Proms. He is currently Music Director of Manchester Camerata - the 2010/11 Season will be his tenth and last with the ensemble. He's also  Chief Conductor of the Musikkollegium Winterthur, Principal Guest Conductor of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of City of London Sinfonia.

This coming Sunday's prom at the Royal Albert Hall will be dedicated to the great conductor.  The baton will now be wielded by Vassily Sinaisky.  Dvorak's Slavonic Dance in E minor, opus 72 number 2, will replace a Strauss waltz in honour of Sir Charles's championing of Czech music.

Read the news on the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Website

Tom Service in the Guardian previews the Proms tributes

BBC News reports Tribute Concert

Read more about Douglas Boyd

Manchester Camerata is featuring in a promotion led by The Times in association with iTunes aimed at promoting British Orchestras and their music this summer.

The Sunday Times is offering its readers the opportunity to download 15 free tracks on Sunday 11th July and another 15 tracks on Sunday 18th July. The promotion is entitled A Great Summer of Music from Great British Orchestras and highlights the live work that Association of British Orchestras members are doing around the country at festivals this summer as well as featuring their recordings available through iTunes. The promotion, the Association of British Orchestras and orchestras involved will be trailed in print and online in The Times from today. Fifteen ABO member orchestras are taking part in the promotion.

Manchester Camerata's contribution will be the first movement of our Beethoven first symphony recording.

See Manchester Camerata at Cholmondeley, Hyde Park Tameside Proms and at the Lytham Proms - win tickets to these events.

Visit the Times Online and Sunday Times Online websites

17 year old Jonathan Woolgar - who had a piece premiered by Manchester Camerata in March this year - is celebrating winning his first major commision.

Jonathan entered the BBC Young Composers' Competition 2010 with an original five-minute piece written for clarinet, violin and piano. His winning composition will now be performed during the BBC Proms season and broadcast on BBC Radio 3. But his big prize is a commission for the BBC which could even be performed at the Last Night of the Proms. Now in its twelfth year, the prestigious BBC Young Composer's competition attracted hundreds of entries from young composers aged 12 to 18. The prize is what most composers dream of: the chance to have their music played by professional musicians and broadcast on Radio 3 as well as a sought-after commission from the BBC.

Jonathan, a student at Chetham's School of Music in Manchester, submitted his own piece entitled 'Dead Sea Scrolls' and was judged to be one of six winners. Now recognised as one of the best young composers in Britain, he will get to work with leading composers and musicians to develop a new piece of work for the BBC.

Composer Fraser Trainer was one of the competition judges.

He described Jonathan's entry as "a compelling piece which unearths an array of colours and character from only three instruments and is the sign of a very mature and talented young composer."

Jonathan was born in 1992 and lives in Pontefract, West Yorkshire. He currently studies at Chetham's School of Music with Dr Jeremy Pike and Dr Gavin Wayte.

Hear an interview with Jonathan Woolgar talking about his involvement in the Manchester Composer's Workshop, which saw his piece Asesinato en la Danza showcased by Manchester Camerata on the 13 March 2010 at The Bridgewater Hall.

Read more about the Manchester Composers' Workshop Weekend

Yorkshire Evening Post article on Jonathan's success

The BBC has launched a Proms archive, listing all performances, composers, works, soloists, conductors and ensembles in its 115-year history.  Details of all the 7,168 concerts which have taken place since 1895 can be searched in the online database.

It's taken two years to compile and cross-check the database using old Proms programmes.

Roger Wright, director BBC Proms, said it was a "fascinating" snapshot of musical trends over the last century. Some of the facts uncovered include:

* Wagner is the most performed composer

* Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 (Land Of Hope And Glory) has been performed 146 times

* Wagner's Tannhauser is the most performed work

* Sir Henry Wood - the Proms co-founder - conducted more than 23,000 pieces

* Sir Simon Rattle's first Prom was in 1976, when he was 21 years old

Manchester Camerata appears in the database on 27 July 2005 and 20 July 2209.

The team who worked on the database faced several challenges while compiling the record.

There was a huge effort to standardise spellings and how particular works are listed, and to recognise changes in the titles of works and the names of ensembles over the years.

Programme listings also had to be cross-checked with what actually happened at the concerts, as works and artists were often added or changed at the last minute.

Another challenge was identifying pieces of music by now-forgotten composers and working out who actually performed them.

Search the Database

Read Tom Service in the Guardian blogging about the Archive

Visitors to The Manchester Museum will find that a new temporary structure called Reflective Room has appeared in the Museum's Courtyard from this week.

The structure was chosen as the winning design in a competition between 5th year Architecture students from the Prototype and Re_Map studio units at the Manchester School of Architecture (msa) and will be in the Courtyard until October - entry is free. The Courtyard Project invited the students to design an environment within the Courtyard space outside The Manchester Museum's entrance to align with the summer programme and exhibitions and to form part of the preparations for the major redevelopment of the Museum's Animal Life 1 (mammals) gallery, closing in September 2010 and reopening in May 2011. A shortlist of five proposals were selected and developed further, a summary of which you can see on display at the Museum. Inspired by the changes that unfold in the Courtyard over the course of the day, the Reflective Room team designed a new environment in which people can reflect and re-engage with their surroundings. Using everyday materials, including plywood and black glazed ceramic tiles, its design is both subtle and delicate and creates an experiential space. The aim is to utilise the ordinary to create the sublime. Fabricating a room within the Courtyard space will enable people to sit and relax whilst reviving their awareness of the environment. Enclosing this space will enable the courtyard to be revealed in a less direct way, reducing it to a more accessible human size.

Reflective Room is supported by:

The Manchester School of Architecture which was formed in 1996, as an innovative collaboration between Manchester Metropolitan University and The University of Manchester. 

The Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design - MIRIAD - based at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Pilkington's Tiles Plc - established in 1891 and is the UK's largest manufacturer of ceramic tiles. The tiles, which have been donated for the project, are manufactured at the factory and UK Head Office, in Manchester.

Atelier One is an Engineering consultancy committed to creating innovative solutions which are appropriate for and contribute to building design through the close collaboration with the design team.

Read more about this project

Manchester Camerata is again back at the stunning surroundings of Cholmondeley Castle in Cheshire for an evening of music and fireworks on Saturday 17 July 2010. 

Cholmondeley is a curious mix of Romantic Gothic styles which reflect the changing status of the family that's lived there for hundreds of years.  The current building started life as an Italianate villa, which then had towers and battlements added providing the stunning vista we see today.

The gardens have also big changes, the current layout part of the Landscape Movement of the 19th century.

But as James Hall, organisor of the Pageant of Power Weekend at the castle explains, "it may look very imposing, but it's very much a comfortable family home inside"

The Pageant of Power festival weekend was added to the Cholmondeley calendar four years ago.  It started with Classic cars tearing abou the estates very own race track, and has now grown to include power boats, Breitling Wing Walkers and Spitfires.

"The average price of the cars taking part are in excess of a million pounds. All the major brands are here - it's an amazing sight, and somehow enhance the landscape." says James Hall.

The festival weekend is hoping to raise money for the Help for Heroes Charity, and there'll be military and medical displays during the weekend, and some really atmospheric music such as the Battle of Britain, Bridge on the River Kwai, and of course the 1812 Overture.

Why the military connection?  "We called on the expertise of Royal Engineers to create the race track and build bridges around the estate, so it seemed logical that we should pay them back in some way."

The evening classical concert on the Saturday night has been running for 20 years - most poeple locally know it simply as the Camerata Concert!  Certainly it's become a feature of the Cheshirte calendar. "Some people go to town with picnics and champagne. And why not - there are military and pipe bands on hand to get people in the mood. And the Royal Artillery are bringing their field guns for the 1812 finale." says James Hall, "People expect it now.  A few years back the 1812 was left out fo the programme and we had a near riot on our hands."

The fireworks very much compliment the main feature of the music.  Although they can sometimes steal the show. Two years ago, the smoke effects in the battleents during the Wagner Rude of the Valkyries was just a little too relisatic and eleven fire appliances turned up.

We have two pairs of tickets for the Manchester Camerata Fireworks Concert up for grabs, click below to enter our competition.

Hear this interview as a Podcast

Book Tickets

Read about Cholmondeley Castle in Cheshire

Young composer, Gavin Higgins, blogs about his assignment to create a new work to be played as part of Manchester Camerata's concert on 25 September 2010.

"About two months ago I was selected from a number of applicants to write a piece for the Manchester Camerata Orchestra, something I was very excited to be involved with. Not only is the orchestra based in my adopted 'home city', they even rehearse in my old college, the RNCM. 

The concert in which my new work will receive its premiere has been fashioned around the theme 'Prague' and as such, I was asked to ensure that my new work was in someway, however tenuously, linked to the theme. So, I thought, 'I need to get back out to Prague and look for some inspiration'. I booked flights and began researching the city. With my 'dark sided' interests (to quote a crazy American evangelist) I was gripped by the idea of a chapel made from bones. Sedlec ossuary is actually situated about an hour outside of Prague in Kutna Hora, a town that wears the signs of its Soviet past like an old jumper.

This incredible church is decorated with over 40,000 human skeletons; bones cling to walls, skulls look perversely on at a sacrificed Jesus and rib cages form an elaborate chandelier at the very centre of the chapel.

The church was consecrated on soil brought from the Holy land and as such, thousands of people desired to be buried here. When the Black Death broke out in the 14th Century, the small graveyard was overrun with bodies. It was decided to commission someone to get rid of the bones and what resulted was the ornately decorated crypt.

Although a visit to this church was the main purpose of my trip, I did not feel this was the right subject matter for my new work - it was too religious and not as perverse as I had expected.

Instead I have taken my inspiration from the Astronomical Clock in Prague's Old Town. My fascination with clockwork creations and the macabre drew me to a particular character on the clock - The skeletal figure of Death who, every hour on the hour, ominously turns an hourglass and rings a bell. I found the idea of a clockwork Death interesting and began thinking about the cycles of life and death. We exist purely in the moment; all things die and from this comes new life. Over vast periods of time things quite literally evolve, but Death is always there, turning his hourglass.

I also took inspiration from the book The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins. The title is taken from William Paley's 'Watchmaker' analogy; A metaphorical attempt at proving God exists by comparing the complexities of the natural world to the intricacies of a clock. In the book Dawkins discusses the beauty of Darwinism and shows how the evidence of evolution can completely destroy the 'intelligent design' argument.

What is most breathtaking about evolution is how over unfathomable amounts of time, living organisms have changed, adapted and evolved into the incredible array of animals, plants and minds that exist today. What's even more incredible is that over unfathomable periods of time we will continue to change, adapt and evolve.

Of course these are big topics and something I can hardly hope to do justice to in a short orchestral piece. Instead, the piece is really an exploration of the organic (in the form of strings and wind) verses the cold and relentless chimes of time (brass). Juddering 'Bells' occur relentlessly throughout whilst the wind and strings change, adapt and evolve. "

Hear a Podcast with Gavin Higgins

Listen to Camerata's Head of Artistic Planning, Manus Carey, talk about this concert 

See Details of the Mozart and Prague concert

Visit Gavin's website  

More about SAM (Sound and Music)

Visit the Manchester Camerata Blog

BBC Radio 3' Discovering Music features Manchester Camerata's Das Lied von der Erde

Stephen Johnson examines the ideas and meaning of Mahler's great symphony of song, Das Lied von der Erde, through the chamber version made by Arnold Schoenberg and Rainer Riehn after Mahler's death. For superstitious reasons, Mahler would not call it his Symphony No 10 (too many composers in the past had died while writing a tenth symphony) and Mahler's own frail health at the time strengthened his fatalistic instincts.

The Song of the Earth, is based on translations of Chinese poems, and as Stephen explains, there is a strong Eastern philosophical influence throughout the entire work.

Stephen's workshop is illustrated by the Manchester Camerata and Douglas Boyd, with singers Jane Irwin and Peter Wedd, and the programme was recorded as part of the Manchester Mahler celebrations at the start of 2010.

Listen to the BBC Radio 3 Discovering Music programme

The performance was recorded, and is now available for purchase as a digital download. 

"It is a wonderful recording. The sound is beautiful with playing of the highest order. It is one the enduring fruits of the Mahler in Manchester series and one of Douglas Boyd's greatest achievements on the stage of the Bridgewater Hall." - The Bridgewater Hall Artistic Consultant and Mahler Expert Peter Davison.

BBC Radio 3's Discovering Music has featured Manchester Camerata's Dido and Aeneas.

Purcell's 350th anniversary was celebrated in January last year with a semi-staged performance of his most famous opera which was staged in partnership with the Royal Northern College of Music.

Dido, Queen of Carthage, falls in love with Aeneas, only to be thwarted by an evil sorceress who, disguised as the God Mercury, reminds Aeneas of his destiny to become the founder of the Roman Empire. His departure leaves Dido heartbroken, and leads to an inevitably tragic ending.

RNCM students took the lead roles and provided members of the chorus.

The concert began with a BBC Radio 3 Discovering Music recording, exploring excerpts from the opera, followed by the performance after an interval.  See this recording.

Performers:

Nicholas Kraemer conductor

Carolina Krogius Dido

Philip Smith Aeneas

Fleur Bray Belinda

Hanna-Liisa Midwood-Kirchin Second Woman

Kathryn Rudge Sorceress

Elise Dye First Witch

Soraya Mafi Second Witch

David Shaw Sailor

Jennifer France Spirit

RNCM Chorus

Manchester Camerata Learning Project

During December 2008 and January 2009, 25 pupils from Chorlton High School worked with composer Richard Barnard, dramatist Anna Jewitt, Camerata musicians and vocal students from RNCM to develop a prequel to Dido and Aeneas.

Read more about this project

Henry Purcell's When I am laid in Earth, from the opera Dido and Aeneas, has been named the nation's favourite aria.

Listeners to Rob Cowan's breakfast show on Radio 3 voted for their top aria as part of the BBC's opera season.

It beat popular pieces by Mozart, Wagner and Puccini, among others.

"It's touching that it's an English rather than an Italian bel canto aria that's won the most support," said co-presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch.

Over the past month, listeners have been invited to email the station with their favourite arias, before an online vote was used to choose the winner. A tie resulted in the Top 10 becoming 11.

TOP 11 ARIAS

1. When I am laid in earth (Dido and Aeneas, Purcell)

2. Dove sono (Marriage of Figaro, Mozart)

3. Liebestod (Tristan and Isolde, Wagner)

4. E lucevan le stelle (Tosca, Puccini)

5. Casta diva (Norma, Bellini)

6. Song to the Moon (Rusalka, Dvorak)

7. Che faro senza Euridice? (Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck)

8. Der holle Rache (Magic Flute, Mozart)

9. Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben (Zaide, Mozart)

10. Gluck das mir verblieb (Die tote Stadt, Korngold)

11. Mon coeur s'oeuvre a ta voix (Samson and Dalila, Saint-Saens)

Dido and Aeneas is Purcell's only fully sung stage work and is one of the earliest English operas in the regular repertoire.

The aria comes at the end of the opera as Dido, Queen of Carthage, having been abandoned by the Trojan Prince Aeneas, flings herself on a funeral pyre. 

Watch Nicholas Kraemer and Stephen Johnson explore the work with members of Manchester Camerata

Read this story on the BBC Website

See the whole of the BBC Radio 3 Poll result

Read comment from Tom Service in the Guardian

During December 2008 and January 2009, 25 pupils from Chorlton High School worked with composer Richard Barnard, dramatist Anna Jewitt, Camerata musicians and vocal students from RNCM to develop a prequel to Dido and Aeneas.

Read about the Manchester Camerata project

MEN looks ahead to Manchester Day - 20 June 2010

"Rummage through Manchester history and you are constantly reminded of a maverick spirit, a city with its own ideas of doing things. 

The face we show to the world has often been defiant and unconventional, be it the 50,000 disenfranchised souls gathering in St Peter's Field in 1819 demanding electoral reform, the mass trespassers marching onto Kinder Scout in 1932 to assert the right to walk on open country or the barmy hedonism of Madchester demanding merely the right to party.

As Britain's second city, Manchester has had an impatience, a bloody-mindedness, a radicalism which has sometimes rubbed others up the wrong way. When the city's grand Victorian neo-gothic town hall was completed in 1877, who better to cut the ribbon than Queen Victoria herself? The invitation went out, but Her Majesty declined. Two years earlier, Manchester Corporation had commissioned a statue of Oliver Cromwell to stand opposite Exchange Railway Station. Victoria was not amused by the idea of arriving in Manchester beneath the gaze of the man who had unseated the monarchy two centuries previously.

We can trace Manchester's history back to Roman times. The conquerors established a fort at Castlefield in 79AD and a civilian settlement grew up around it. The name of this place, Mamucium, meant breast-shaped hill, referring to the sandstone ridge on which it stood between the Irwell and Medlock rivers. The Romans left in 411AD and subsequent centuries saw a succession of invaders until 923 when Manchester came under the dominion of the West Saxon kings.

Fast forward a few hundred years and the English Civil War saw cannon fire down Deansgate in the Siege of Manchester in 1642 - the city remaining loyal to the Roundhead cause and refusing to hand over its gunpowder stocks to the Royalist forces.

Fast forward again and we come to a defining moment in Manchester's history - Peterloo. Mancunian bolshieness has its roots deep in history, and by the end of the 18th century, there were those in the burgeoning disenfranchised urban population agitating for a minimum wage and other rights.

There was a food riot at the Manchester Exchange, machine-breaking Luddites trying in vain to stop the industrial revolution, and virulent opposition to the Corn Laws, which placed import tariffs on grain and so raised the cost of food.

So when Henry "Orator" Hunt went to speak about parliamentary reform in St Peter's Field on August 16 1819, it proved the biggest meeting England had ever seen, with 50,000 coming from far and wide. In the melee following magistrates' order to arrest Hunt, 15 people died as cavalrymen charged, hacking at people with their swords.

Typically, it was Manchester where another battle for the vote was launched in 1905. When Christabel Pankhurst spat at the policeman remonstrating with her for raising a banner at a Liberal party meeting in the Free Trade Hall, it was the start of the suffragettes' campaign.

So Manchester was never short of passion and radical ideas. It was just up the road in Rochdale, for instance, that the principles of the co-operative movement were founded in 1844. It was here, not London, that the Manchester Guardian became, under the long editorship of the legendary CP Scott, the beacon of liberal thought among the national press.

Manchester can boast the oldest public library in Britain in Chetham's, founded in 1653. Here was where Karl Marx worked at a desk with Friedrich Engels, whose Condition of the Working Class in England took his observations on grinding poverty in Manchester and turned them into a seminal work on social reform.

Industry begat culture in Manchester. The widow of textile tycoon John Rylands set up a library in his name on Deansgate in 1900, home to 2,000 year old papyrus, illuminated medieval manuscripts and a Gutenberg Bible. Likewise, the great engineer Sir Joseph Whitworth gave his cash and name to Whitworth Art Gallery.

It was the pioneer spirit of a city conscious of its own worth that gave us the rise of Granada as a TV programme-making capital, just as it fuelled Tony Wilson's belief, when he founded Factory Records, that the music business could be done somewhere other than London.

The late great Wilson was fond of mentioning the wordsmiths Shaun Ryder and WB Yeats in the same breath. Perhaps he might also mischievously have juggled comparisons between the ecstasy-fuelled cultural explosion surrounding the Hacienda and the predilections of perhaps Manchester's greatest literary son Thomas De Quincey (1785 -1859), whose lifestyle was summed up in his best-known work Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

Wilson knew that Manchester could confidently straddle archaic divisions between "high" and "low" culture.

The Hallé Orchestra, founded in Manchester by Charles Hallé in 1858, is the oldest permanent professional symphony orchestra in Britain, its home now the Bridgewater Hall - one of the most strikingly designed concert halls and among the best acoustics of any in Britain. The Manchester Camerata and BBC Philharmonic Orchestra also call Manchester home.

Read this article and others about Manchester Day on the MEN website

BBC Radio 3 broadcasting January's Das Lied von der Erde concert on Monday 14 June.

From the Performance page of Radio 3:

"Manchester Camerata, conducted by Douglas Boyd, bring a coda to the critically-acclaimed cycle of Mahler symphonies performed by Manchester's orchestras, with the symphonic song-cycle that Mahler himself called a symphony, though it's not part of the numbered sequence.

Before that, Bushra El-Turk's Mosaic is a new work inspired by the Mahler."

Programme:

Bushra El-Turk: Mosaic (World Premiere)

Mahler (arr. Schoenberg/Riehn): Das Lied Von Der Erde

Performers:

Jane Irwin (mezzo-soprano)

Peter Wedd (tenor)

Manchester Camerata,

conducted by Douglas Boyd

Followed by "Mahler the arranger", including his "Bach Suite".

Visit the BBC Radio 3 site for details of the broadcast (Limited time only)

Read a review of this concert in the Sunday Times

Hear a podcast interview with Bushra El Turk, talking about her Eastern and Western influences

This concert was recorded by Manchester Camerata and is now available as a digital download

Exhibition of behind the scenes photos of The Bridgewater Hall by William Ellis opens Thursday 10 June

Elbow bringing the house down with the Hallé; Joan Baez blasting stripped-down, politically-charged folk rock; the slick blues roll of mid-flow Buddy Guy; Liza Minnelli giving it both barrels in a trademark showstopper - The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester's state-of-the-art international concert venue, has hosted them all in the last couple of years.

One of the few other factors linking this diverse roster of artists is world-renowned music photographer William Ellis, who - as his imminent exhibition at Manchester's Richard Goodall Gallery attests - has been a stage-side fixture at these and many other recent Bridgewater Hall shows.

Commissioned by The Hall in 2008 to produce a body of work reflecting the range and dynamism of their year-round concert programme, Ellis set about capturing an arrestingly intimate series of performer portraits. Noting one further trait shared by his disparate Bridgewater subjects, Ellis describes the project as "a challenging and exhilarating assignment, working with so many different artists with at least one thing in common: a total commitment to their art."

What makes Ellis's resulting shots particularly fascinating is the contrast in moods captured, particularly between the quiet intensity of his backstage subjects and the kaleidoscopic bombast of their public performances. This exhibition's overarching theme is one of peculiar intensity - whether evoked by Herbie Hancock's unwavering focus during a piano rehearsal, or KD Lang lost in the orchestral swell of a full-blown live show.

As Bridgewater Hall chief executive Nick Reed confirms, "We are excited to be working with such a great photographer - William's images really capture the essence of live performance, and this long-term project has been a fantastic opportunity to showcase the diversity of music and artists appearing at Manchester's iconic concert hall."

Held in conjunction with The Hall, Ellis's resulting exhibition finds a natural home at Richard Goodall Gallery, the Northern Quarter contemporary art space that has long occupied a unique position at the cultural crossroads of fine art and music. Recent rock-related solo shows hosted at the Gallery include such names as Leonard Cohen, Kevin Cummins, long-term Oasis associate Michael Spencer Jones, and Colombia Records head Mike Smith.

William Ellis's exhibition opens on June 10th and shots from the artist's singularly extensive archive of jazz photography will also be available throughout.

One of the world's leading music photographers, William Ellis is widely recognised for his visual documentation of the contemporary jazz scene in Europe, Africa and The Americas.

Commissioned over 18 months ago by The Bridgewater Hall to capture the life of the venue and its visiting artists, Ellis has created a unique and compelling collection which provides a fascinating glimpse behind-the-scenes of the Hall. With exlcusive access to the artists both in performance and backstage, Ellis has been able to create a compelling portrait of live performance as well as a fascinating testament to the diversity of The Bridgewater Hall's programming.

During his time at The Bridgewater Hall Ellis' subjects included Elbow, The Halle, Christy Moore, Buddy Guy, Herbie Hancock, Buena Vista Social Club, KD Lang and Liza Minnelli, amongst many others.

The collection will be at The Richard Goodall Gallery on High Street from10 June through to 10 July. The Exhibition is sponsored by The Bridgewater Hall, Vitamin Water, Barefoot Wine, and supported by Linn Products and Chris Brooks Audio

See a slide show of the exhibition on the BBC Manchester Website

Read more about William Ellis at the Richard Goodall Gallery

Das Lied von der Erde was Manchester Camerata's acclaimed contribution to the Manchester Mahler Series - a celebration of 150 years since the birth of the great composer. The series has seen all the Symphonies played in order, plus Das Lied von der Erde, and is a partnership between The Bridgewater Hall, The Halle, the BBC Philharmonic and Manchester Camerata. The live performance at The Bridgewater Hall at the end of January was recorded and is now available to purchase as a digital download.

The recording engineers were at the concert in January to record the latest in Manchester Camerata's Beethoven cycle - a long term project to record the complete Beethoven Symphony cycle with Artistic Director Douglas Boyd.

"So it seemed a perfect opportunity to get them to record Das Lied von der Erde" says Manchester Camerata Chief Executive, Bob Riley.

"But that meant a gruelling recording session for all involved, including soprano Jane Irwin and tenor Peter Wedd" he adds.

"That day saw the musicians work through the Beethoven for three hours, then the Mahler for a further three hours. Then came the live performance which also included a new work by Bushra El-Turk. Then, after the audience had filed out, the innevitable `patching' or re-records had to be carried out to complete the Beethoven recording. And then, as if that weren't enough, everyone piled back the next day to do the patching for the Mahler."

"It was an exhausting experience, made possible by the laser guided concentration and commitment by the Manchester Camerata musicians and Douglas Boyd."

To get this exciting recording to the public as quickly as possible, a digital download version of Das Lied von der Erde has been made and is now available to buy.  Click the BUY NOW tab, and you'll be taken to our CD shop. After you've made a secure payment, you'll be guided through to a delivery page where you can download the tracks to your computer or mp3 player.

Read the Sunday Times review of the Concert

PRS for Music Foundation launches New Music 20x12 as part of London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

We're looking for 20 brand new musical works, of outstanding creative excellence, each lasting 12 minutes. Together these will celebrate the UK's musical talent and creativity throughout 2012 and beyond.

We have up to £10,000 available for each of the 20 commissions and each of these will be broadcast round the world on BBC Radio 3.

Are you a not for profit organisation, venue, promoter, ensemble or festival commissioning work from UK-based composers, music creators or ensembles? And do you have a proven track record of being able to successfully promote, produce and host new commissions? If this sounds like you then submit your application now.

If you are a composer, ensemble or music creator you will need to partner with one of the aforementioned not for profit organisations in order to apply. Your best first port of call will be your local established arts, cultural and creative centres and venues.

UK-wide call for applications is now open; deadline 1st October 2010.

Read more about this and hear an interview on the BBC about the project