Sound Bites
Grand cru tenor
Laurence Kilsby enjoyed a bubbly moment in early September as he was named as the winner of the Wigmore Hall/Bollinger International Song Competition. The 24-year-old British tenor is no stranger to competition success, although he was a few inches shorter the last time he hit the headlines: in 2009, he was a treble at Tewkesbury Abbey when he won the title of BBC Radio 2 Young Chorister of the Year.
Brilliant in Banff
Also enjoying life at the top are the Isidore String Quartet, who have won the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC) in Canada. The American foursome enjoyed victory at the end of an event that saw nine quartets from around the world perform in four different programmes across seven days. The Norwegian/Swedish quartet Opus14 and the Balourdet Quartet, again from the US, took second and third place.
A Finn in Berlin
The Philharmonie in Berlin is set to be filled with the music of Esa-Pekka Salonen over the next nine months or so. The Finnish composer and conductor has been appointed as composer-in-residence by the Berlin Philharmonic, which will be performing works including his Helix and Karawane plus the German premiere of his Organ Concerto. Salonen is also currently music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Philharmonia.
Live reactions
Manchester Camerata is to take part in research that will examine audiences’ neurological and biological responses to live and recorded music, and how they differ. The study, which is being carried out by the MANCS (Music, Audiences, Neuroscience, Cognition and Society) research team, was sparked by the Covid lockdown, in which many said they enjoyed recorded music but missed the thrill of live performance.