December 2009

Van Walsum Management wishes you all the compliments of the season. Please note that our office will close on Wednesday 23 December and reopen on Monday 4 January 2010. Emergency contact details will be available on our main switchboard number.

We will be bringing you a much fuller newsletter in January. In the meantime, we have three of our artists to congratulate for being nominated along with Beyoncé and Lady Gaga for the 52nd Grammy Awards. The awards will be announced on 31 January.

photo: Kasskara - DG

Yuri Bashmet has been nominated in the ‘Best Instrumental Soloist(s) Performance (with Orchestra)’ category for Deutsche Grammophon’s recording of Bartók’s 3 Concertos, (Pierre Boulez, conductor, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Yuri Bashmet, Gidon Kremer, Neil Percy, Tamara Stefanovich & Nigel Thomas; Berliner Philharmoniker & London Symphony Orchestra).

‘Yuri Bashmet, soloist in the viola concerto, is equally indispensable. Forget about the viola as the string family’s shrinking violet: Bashmet’s big round tone struts and swoons through a piece that might not be 100 per cent pure Bartók, but gives quite enough pleasure and intoxication of its own’. (The Times)

Michael Tilson Thomas has been nominated in the ‘Best Choral Performance’ category for SFS Media’s recording of Mahler’s Symphony No 8 and the Adagio from Symphony No 10, (Ragnar Bohlin, Kevin Fox & Susan McMane, choir directors and Laura Claycomb, Anthony Dean Griffey, Elza van den Heever, Katarina Karnéus, Quinn Kelsey, James Morris, Yvonne Naef & Erin Wall; San Francisco Symphony; Pacific Boychoir, San Francisco Symphony Chorus & San Francisco Girls Chorus).

‘...the superlative orchestral playing, which is as consistently fine and well integrated as in any Mahler cycle currently available on disc, and the exceptional dynamic range and refinement of the recorded sound, which is demonstrated even more spectacularly than before in the grandeur and aural spectacle of the choral Eighth’. (The Guardian )

photo: Jaroslaw Deluga-Gora

Antoni Wit has been nominated in two categories: ‘Best Orchestral Performance’ for his interpretation of Szymanowski Symphonies Nos 1 & 4 (Jan Krzysztof Broja, Ewa Marczyk & Marek Marczyk; Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra) and for ‘Best Choral Performance’ for Penderecki’s Utrenja (Gennady Bezzubenkov, Iwona Hossa, Piotr Kusiewicz, Piotr Nowacki & Agnieszka Rehlis; Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra; Warsaw Boys' Choir & Warsaw Philharmonic Choir) both on the Naxos label.

‘Naxos here completes its second recorded cycle of Szymanowski’s orchestral works. And that apparent duplication seems less remarkable once you hear the passionate and exceptional musical understanding of the Warsaw Philharmonic under their general and artistic director’. (Gramophone Magazine)

Of the Penderecki, ‘Antoni Wit presents the work in a Naxos recording that vividly illuminates the contrast between Mr. Penderecki’s emotionally direct a cappella vocal writing and orchestral effects that mimic electronic music’. (New York Times)