The micro-blogging website Tumblr is a great place to share musical excerpts, photographs and videos quickly and easily, making it ideal for enjoying interesting snippets from the classical music world. Here we present six of our favourite Tumblrs from great music institutions and dedicated classical fans...
1. BBC Radio 3
Radio 3 fills its stream with fascinating photographs from its own archive and pictures of other historical highlights from around the BBC. Recent posts include photographs of Edward Elgar and his daughter Carice Blake looking through the manuscript for his Symphony No. 3 with the conductor Sir Adrian Boult, a set of pictures to celebrate jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong’s birthday, and production shots from Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate, which was staged to celebrate the opening night of the BBC’s second TV station, BBC Two, in 1964.
2. Berlin Philharmonic's Official Tour Blog
The Berlin Phil uses Tumblr to publish some brilliant pictures taken during concert tours all over the world. From a panoramic view of a recent concert at the Lincoln Centre in New York, to tourist shots of the Statue of Liberty, this blog offers musical postcards from one of the world’s best orchestras.
• blog.berliner-philharmoniker.de (screenshot: 10.10.14)
As well as promoting upcoming and past events with photographs and videos, the Lincoln Centre publishes news pieces and interesting photos, including those sent in by audience members. Recent highlights include pictures from a performance of Peter Sellars's staging of Bach's St Matthew Passion by the Berlin Philharmonic, and a news story about a 'double ring basin' on Mercury being named after composer Sergey Rachmaninov.
Apart from general Proms-related news, the BBC Proms's Tumblr is packed full of interviews with performers, composers and even members of the Proms team. While the festival is on, you can also expect behind-the-scenes photographs documenting stage-preparation, rehearsals and the arrival of performers.
On the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s Tumblr you can listen to informative podcasts about composers' lives and music. The blog is also a great way to keep up with upcoming performances by the orchestra through articles, photographs and interviews with the orchestral members themselves.
• sfsymphony.tumblr.com (screenshot: 10.10.14)
6. Classical Music on Spotify
For those new to streaming classical music online it might be worth watching this Tumblr to find out which of your favourite recordings are available on Spotify. The blog features excerpts from new releases as well as selections from classic recordings. It may be most handy for those days where you find yourself struggling to think of something new to listen to.
RELATED ARTICLES