In Wednesday’s (5/20) Guardian (London), Sally Weale reports that in the U.K., “ ‘The Ride of the Valkyries,’ the most famous part of Wagner’s Ring cycle, is to be used as part of a nationwide programme to encourage teenagers to fall in love with classical music.… It is one of the BBC’s Ten Pieces programme, which last year attempted to introduce a generation of primary school children to classical music, and this year will be extended to pupils in secondary schools. The programme also includes” music by Verdi, Bizet, Haydn, Shostakovich, and Bach, as well as “ ‘Mambo’ from Bernstein’s West Side Story and Night Ferry by the contemporary British-born composer Anna Clyne, whose work was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2012.… Schools can access online resources to extend their music studies.… [At] the BBC Proms in July … the BBC National Orchestra of Wales will perform all 10 pieces alongside creative responses from children who have studied them. The initiative comes amid calls for classical music education in schools to be better funded and concerns about how to get young people interested in the classical repertoire.”
Posted May 21, 2015
