Frederik Magle’s Blog

Yesterday’s Concert

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

e written a post about the concert yesterday with Nikolaj Znaider and the “Nordic Music Academy” on Magle International Music Forums.

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A »Cameo« Performance with Nikolaj Znaider

Sunday, July 15th, 2007

An old friend of mine, the violinist Nikolaj Znaider, called me today and asked if I would do what can best be described as a »cameo« performance tomorrow evening - the 16th.

Nikolaj is giving a concert performing as soloist, as well as conducting, among other works Fritz Kreisler’s »Concerto for Violin & Orchestra in C Major - in the style of Vivaldi« with his »Nordic Music Academy« Orhcestra. It so happens that this concerto includes a part for organ, so I’m jumping in and will play it. I don’t have the score or organ-part so I’ll do it prima vista at the general rehearsal tomorrow, but it shouldn’t be difficult to play.

Unfortunately The “Tivoli Concert Hall” in Copenhagen (where the concert takes place) doesn’t have a pipe organ, and there’s too little time to arrange for a decent digital organ to be brought on stage, so I’ll have to do with a standard keyboard, but I’ll get the most out of it, and it’s always a pleasure performing with a great musician like Nikolaj. It’s going to be fun, no doubt!

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»Journey in Time« in Spain

Thursday, May 3rd, 2007

Tomorrow - May the 4th, 2007 at 20:00 hours - my Variations and Theme »Journey in Time« for violin and piano is going to be performed at the Conservatorio Superior de Música “Rafael Orozco” in Córdoba, Spain by an excellent violin and piano duo consisting of Encarnación Almansa (violin) and Javier Santos (piano). See the current list of concerts at the Córdoba Music Conservatory (in Spanish). Besides my work, the duo will perform works by Schubert, Debussy-Heifetz, and Anatoly Varelas.

I cannot attend the concert myself but I will be looking forward to hear how it goes - hopefully very well! :-). I wish Encarnación and Javier all the best for the concert tomorrow and send my appreciations for them performing »Journey in Time«!

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Thinking About Buying A Digital Studio/Tour Organ

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

I have just returned from a visit to the island of Fyn where I have tried out a so called “electro-acoustic” organ. An advanced and unique digital organ build by Flemming Fald of Scandinavian Organ Center using the state of the art electronics. I wrote a post about the organ a while ago. I created the disposition and partly also the exterior design characteristics. But it was too expensive for me to buy back then, so it was instead bought by a virtuoso organist and organ professor at the conservatory. He’s owned it for some years but is now ready to “upgrade” to an even bigger organ and thus looking to sell the “old” organ. How can I resist? It’s “my” organ

The disposition:

Grand Orgue

Bourdon 16′
Montre 8′
Flûte harmonique 8′
Salicional 8′
Bourdon 8′
prestant 4′
Flûte octaviante 4′
Doublette 2′
Cornet V 8′
Fourniture IV 1 1/3′
Trompette 8′
Clairon 4′

Récit expressif

Flûte traversière 8′
Viole de gambe 8′
Voix Céleste 8′
Cor de nuit 8′
Quintaton 8′
Flûte douce 4′
Plein Jeu III 2′
Bombarde 16′
Trompette harmonique 8′
Basson-Hautbois 8′
Voix Humaine 8′
Clairon harmonique 4′

Pedales

Contre-Bourdon 32′
Flûte 16′
Contrebasse 16′
Flûte 8′
Flûte 4′
Contre-Bombarde 32′
Bombarde 16′
Trompette 8′

The organ has been envisioned with a double function; part home/studio organ, part tour/concert organ capable of playing together with various ensembles, including symphony orchestra, with proper amplification of course. This is the reason for the rich and powerful reed batteries, and not least the two 32-feet voices! (well, that and I’m just a sucker for romantic-symphonic organs).

One thing is the disposition, but more importantly: how does it sound? Well, I only heard it through the build-in speakers (useful for “home-use”), but with that in mind I must say it sounds really well. Whenever possible I still prefer a “real” pipe organ, and I probably always will. But for home and tour-use outside churches and large concert halls with organs, where a pipe organ would be almost impossible (at least impossibly expensive) this is as good as it gets. And that’s actually not bad.

I will need to think about this for a couple of days before I decide whether I buy it or not. One of the important things to consider is economy. I have to take the organ out and play public concerts on it, or rent it out to others, at least a couple of times a year in order to be able to afford it. Even though I get to buy the instrument at a significantly reduced price compared to when it was new, it’s still very expensive to me. So, will it be possible for me to take the organ on tour (or maybe just a few individual concerts outside churches)? I’ll have to consider that as well.

I’ll let you know what I decide soon…

Posted in Music, Pipe Organs, Organs | No Comments »

A Tale Of Two Music Forums

Thursday, December 28th, 2006

A little over four years ago (in 2002) I founded Magle International Music Forums. Initially it worked as a sort of glorified »guest book« in addition to my personal site. But very soon - within the first 6 months - I took it in a completely different direction and largely removed the affiliation with my person. For example by adding sections where other composers and musicians can promote their music and have it reviewed. Since the launch the forum has grown significantly and consists today of close to 16,000 posts covering a wide array of musical genre and topics: classical music, pipe organs, crossover & fusion, progressive rock, film music, etc.

In the beginning of 2006, my megalomaniac tendencies took the better of me, and I began considering ways to expand even further… One thing I considered was possibly buying other sites, and thus I went looking on the net. I came across a site called Talk Classical, which is a »classical music forum« of very high quality, but at the time it was almost dead. It had about 3500 posts and 200 members, but the level of activity was very low with only a few new posts per week. It sparked my interest - perhaps a chance to revive it? I went as far as looking up the owner of the domain and began thinking about how to approach him by email, but for various reasons I decided to leave it for the time being.

And then the miracle happened, only about a month after I had considered contacting the owner, in the middle of February, I stumbled across a classified ad (post) on a forum about dealing with domain names - completely by chance! It so happened that the owner had put talkclassical.com up for an online auction! That was a sign I couldn’t resist, and it ended up we me buying the Talk Classical forum and domain name. It was the first time I had bought a website but the takeover went pretty smoothly.

To begin with I also took over the hosting account, but it was a so called »shared hosting« (running on a server with maybe hundreds of other sites) causing the forum to run annoyingly - sometimes unbearably - slow. Magle International Music Forums was also running on shared hosting (though at a different company) and also experienced low performance. So, on June 6th, 2006 I finally took the step all out and moved both sites to a dedicated server. It’s extremely expensive and causing me quite big “losses”, but (after some initial teething problems) both sites now run at excellent speed. So I consider it an investment in the future - it better pay of some day!

After taking over Talk Classical I started doing small but significant technical improvements, besides moving it to the dedicated server. I also began a long term internet ad campaign that has brought in many new members. The first 6 months, things went slow. Posting rates improved but only at a relatively slow pace, and I myself had unfortunately only limited time for posting. Then in the fall the breakthrough happened! The rate of new members and posts began to increase exponentially, and here we are today with Talk Classical being a rather thriving and growing classical music forum.

As of recently, some days Talk Classical is even more active than Magle International Music Forums. My goal is of course for both forums to be successful. Originally I contemplated some sort of technical merger, but I have since abandoned that idea and will instead run the two forums as separate but somewhat interconnected »sister sites«. There’s actually a little competition between them on the subject of classical music, but I believe a little friendly competition can only be good thing.

The challenge now is to build on the momentum and keep the growth of Talk Classical and further expand Magle International Music Forums. In fact the latter is probably the one requiring the most work right now as it has seen a slight slowdown as of recently. How do I differentiate the two forums, and how do I use and expand their individual strengths to mutual benefit? Those are some of the challenges facing me.

One thing’s for sure. Running a forum, yet alone two, is a big job. I constantly have to consider how to do it without it taking time away from me composing - I guess I’ll just have to stay awake a few more hours a day Without the help from dedicated moderators and co-administrators it would be outright impossible, luckily for me (and the communities) there are some great moderators/co-admins on both forums. No matter what, the joy from seeing such a project succeed is immense and will make it worth it all.

I will keep you posted on the progress

Best regards,
Frederik Magle

Posted in Music, Classical Music, Personal, Web | No Comments »

»Kosmos« revisited

Saturday, March 18th, 2006

A couple of days ago I got a call from a Danish organist. A trumpet player debuting from the music conservatoire had asked him if he could buy the score for my work »Kosmos«, since he would possibly like to play it at a concert this summer (after having heard it on CD - an MP3 excerpt can be downloaded at my brass music downloads page.)

I composed »Kosmos« in 2001. It was a commision from a Danish freemasons lodge of the same name, in celebration of their 150th anniversary. In 2003 it was recorded for the CD »Kosmos«, which was released on Classico Records in 2004. I’ve spend most of today revising the final bars of the piece, as I’ve never been 100% satisfied with them. I think what I changed today was for the better. 10 minutes ago I send the score out by email.
Anyhow, I’ll of course let you know if and when the performances of »Kosmos« will take place.

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Symphonic poem »Cantabile« progress log

Thursday, March 16th, 2006

For a very long time now I have been working on a large-scale work of classical music; the symphonic poem »Cantabile« (MP3 download of the first movement). It is nearing its completion, the only thing missing is for me to finish the third movement (the first, second, and fourth are all ready). I’m running a “sorta” blog about the progress on my music forum here. Major developments will be announced on the forum, but this blog will be used for day to day progress reports. I think I’ll work a few hours extra on it tonight to make up for the time spend setting up this blog today

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Welcome to my new blog!

Thursday, March 16th, 2006

This is my first personal blog, and also the first website running “live” on my new dedicated server.
I can’t guarantee how often I will find time to update this blog, but I’ll try to post frequently.

Of course I also recommend visiting my other website and my music forums

Best regards
Frederik Magle

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