Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i BBC Music Magazine

ON AIR Live in Liverpool As its 175th anniversary celebrations continue apace, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra has commissioned a new work from Christian Lindberg (pictured). Listeners to Radio 3’s Live in Concert on 3 March will hear the Swede conduct his Concerto for Wind and Brass, alongside Nielsen’s Symphony No. 5 and Bernstein’s On the Waterfront Suite. See p100 ONLINE The big Apple BBC Music Magazine has become Apple Music’s very first classical music playlist curator. Subscribers to the streaming service will be able to access our exclusive playlists of the music we talk about and review throughout the magazine and our website, from Composer of the Month to news, reviews and interviews. applemusic.com/bbcmm ON STAGE Passions abound For many choral enthusiasts, Passiontide is all about JS Bach. In…

GUITAR GREATS Back in December 2007, I was able to hear how an evening could be transformed into enchantment, as Milos Karadaglic played to a most appreciative audience here in Louth. It is such a pleasure to hear that such an outstanding talent is now being widely recognised (see February issue). When I started studying at the Royal College of Music in 1951, I had the pleasure of meeting Julian Bream, who at the time was learning how to transcribe Bach’s lute repertoire – written in tablature – so that he could play it on the guitar. Similarly, in 1957 I was taking part (on the viola) in a live broadcast of chamber music from the old ATV studios in Kingsway, when in the course of the programme a very…

Following the closure of Finchcocks Musical Museum in December, many of its instruments are to go on sale. The auction on 11 May, overseen by Dreweatts and Bloomsbury, will see the sale of most of the historic keyboard instruments that have been collected by Richard Burnett, a fortepianist himself, for nearly 50 years. The proceeds will go to the Finchcocks Charity, which supports the study and maintenance of historic instruments and performances on them. The catalogue of instruments to be auctioned has not yet been published, but it will include several of very significant interest, such as a 1766 chamber organ by the London organ maker John Byfield, and a Conrad Graf grand piano dating from around 1820. Of the museum’s 70-plus instruments, a few will be retained by the…

Chart for week ending 15 January 2016 1 New Year’s Concert 2016 Vienna Philharmonic/Mariss Jansons Sony Classical 88875174772 Happy New Year! Sony’s rush release of this year’s Viennese celebrations proves popular 2 Brahms & Bartók Violin Concertos Janine Jansen (violin); LSO & Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/ Antonio Pappano Decca 478 8412 Bartók to rave about, recorded by a dream team 3 Nessun Dorma The Puccini Album Jonas Kaufmann (tenor); Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Sony Classical 88875092492 An attractive selection of tenor arias 4 Taverner Missa Corona spinea Tallis Scholars/Peter Phillips Gimell CDGIM046 Nominated for this year’s BBC Music Magazine Awards, here are the Tallis Scholars on fine form 5 Bach Magnificat Soloists; Dunedin Consort/John Butt Linn…

BENJAMIN APPL baritone I studied Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder with the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and I believe his recording of them, conducted by Karl Böhm, is the best. There really is nothing to criticise. The Kindertotenlieder are very difficult works to perform, as you have to find exactly the right balance between showing the songs’ emotional impact and also being able to take a step back. Fischer-Dieskau gets this balance, and Böhm’s tempos are perfect. In the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Robin Ticciati’s new recording of Haydn’s Symphonies Nos 30, 71 & 101, you can really hear that it’s the performance of a young conductor – it is sparkly, fresh and has almost a twinkle in the eye. Ticciati brings a new approach to these symphonies, and in the SCO has…

ITALIAN JOB Gianandrea Noseda has been named as the new music director of the National Symphony Orchestra. The highly rated Italian, 51, whose previous positions include principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic, will begin his new post at the Washington orchestra in the 2017-8 season, taking over from current encumbent Christoph Eschenbach. SURPRISE SCORE A handwritten sketch by Beethoven that was discovered by surprise in the US has been sold for $100,000 (£67,000) at auction. The sketch, from the composer’s notebook for the incidental music for King Stephen, had been hanging unnoticed in a house in Connecticut where it was spotted by Brendan Ryan, a professional appraiser on a routine visit. ‘I was bouncing off the walls,’ says the cock-a-hoop Ryan. VOTE NOW! As this issue hits the shops, there…

Boulez rattled the cages of the musical establishment and was controversial in his writing PIERRE BOULEZ Born 1925 Composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was a trailblazing composer who, quite simply, shook up the musical establishment in the mid-20th century. The extent of his musical influence was extraordinary: a champion of new composers, he expressed the need for greater experimentation; and as a pioneer himself, he developed his own ‘controlled chance’ technique that allowed performers to have choices about what to perform. A firebrand from an early age, Boulez studied with Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire, where he became familiar with the 12-tone system. He rattled the cages of the musical establishment by declaring that any composer who did not acknowledge the necessity of this technique was ‘useless’. He also caused…

‘Ihate that word – exciting.’ I’m sitting with Jirí Belohlávek in his room at the Rudolfinum in Prague, home of the Czech Philharmonic, and he’s preparing for his third concert of the week. It’s quiet, and we’re alone. He’s looking his years as he recovers from illness, and talks very quietly. But don’t imagine that everything is calm. An hour later, he produces an electrifying performance in the Dvorák auditorium in the beautiful neo-Renaissance building – the first symphonies of Martinu and Mahler – and ‘exciting’ is precisely word that you might choose to describe the atmosphere. ‘I’ll tell you why I dislike the word,’ he says. ‘Everything is supposed to be exciting. Quick and thrilling. No. What is needed is quality. That is exciting enough.’ This is a state…

In June 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach took up the baton of one of the most prestigious musical positions in Germany: Cantor of the Lutheran church of St Thomas in Leipzig and director of the town’s civic music – a post he was to retain for the rest of his life. Leipzig was a vibrant cultural and commercial centre, with an outstanding musical tradition, an opera house, a university, innumerable publishers and booksellers, and a cosmopolitan outlook thanks to the famous international trade fairs that drew merchants and goods from all over Europe, Africa, America and Asia. A popular song of the time sings of its splendour: ‘Here must be an angelic life! Here it must be an Eden!’ With its parks and elegant houses, the city must have appealed to…

St Matthew Passion Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Barbara Bonney etc; Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists/Gardiner Archiv 427 6482 Gardiner takes this glorious music to new heights. St John Passion Gerd Türk, Chiyuki Urano etc; Bach Collegium Japan/ Masaaki Suzuki BIS BIS-CD921/2 Beautiful ensemble work and sensitive musicianship. Easter Oratorio Hannah Morrison, Meg Bragle etc; Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists/John Eliot Gardiner SDG 719 A profound performance of a life-affirming masterpiece. Magnificat in D Soloists; La Chapelle Royale, Ghent Collegium Vocale/ Philippe Herreweghe Harmonia Mundi 901326 Joyous and uplifting: music-making to stir the heart.…

Mozart Spaur Mass, K258 Broadly speaking, Mozart’s masses fall into two categories: the short and succinct missa brevis or the lengthier, more formal missa solemnis. Like the Coronation Mass, however, the Spaur Mass is something of a hybrid – a missa brevis in duration, it has the grander instrumental scoring of a missa solemnis. Set on their way by a strident and self-confident Kyrie, the two works share the same key – C major – and the same celebratory feel throughout. The latter’s nickname comes from a mention that Leopold Mozart makes to a mass written for the consecration of Count Ignaz Joseph von Spaur in 1776, though whether he was referring to this specific work is unclear. Recommended recording: Collegium Aureum, Augsburger Domsingknaben/Reinhard Kammler Deutsche Harmonia Mundi RD77090 J…

MOZART Così fan Tutte Kermes, Ernman, Maltman, Tarver, Kasyan, Wolff; MusicAeterna/Currentzis Sony Classical 88765466162 176 mins ‘There’s undeniably a strong sense of personality to everything the conductor does… at its best the music simply pulses with life, without a hint of routine.’ February 2015 BRITTEN • SHOSTAKOVICH Sinfonietta • Cello Concerto No. 1; Symphony No. 1 Steven Isserlis (cello); The Mahler Chamber Orchestra/Currentzis DVD: EuroArts 2059818 82 mins ‘Best of all is the Cello Concerto: Steven Isserlis, at the height of his powers, gives a riveting performance. Currentzis is entertaining to watch, with his balletic stance and mobile hands.’ January 2015 TCHAIKOVSKY • STRAVINSKY Iolanta • Perséphone Soloists; Young Singers of the JORCAM/ Ana Gonzalez; Teatro Real/Currentzis Teatro Real DVD: TR7011DVD 187 mins ‘In the Tchaikovsky it would be hard…

DUTILLEUX Le loup; Trois sonnets de Jean Cassou; La fille du diable; Trois tableaux symphoniques; Quatre mélodies Vincent Le Texier (baritone); Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/ Pascal Rophé BIS BIS-1651 (hybrid CD/SACD) 74:20 mins In 1953 the 37-year-old Henri Dutilleux had a major success with the ballet Le loup, after which he was immediately deluged with ballet commissions. A complete recording appeared in 1954, an incomplete one under Georges Prêtre, in 1961… then 44 years of recording silence. Centenaries can be useful, and none more so than in giving us this wonderfully rich and tuneful score, ranging from the sensuous to the jaunty, from the lyrical to the terrifying. Here, and in the Sonnets of Jean Cassou, Dutilleux shows his attraction towards Alban Berg’s orchestral colours, as he…

BEETHOVEN • BRAHMS* Violin Concerto • Violin Sonata No. 2*; plus Vitali: Chaconne in G minor Gioconda de Vito (violin); RIAS Symphony/Michael Raucheisen Audite 95.621 (1951, 1954) . . . . . 78:29 mins De Vito imbues every note in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with such heartfelt intensity that it’s impossible not to be mesmerised by her hyper-Romantic playing. PERFORMANCE RECORDING DVORÁK • FRANÇAIX* Cello Concerto • Fantaisie* REGER Cello Suite No. 3 Anja Thauer (cello); Czech Phil/Zdenek Macal; Jean Françaix (piano) Eloquence ELQ4822181 (1960s) 70 mins Thauer delivers a refreshingly unaffected and fast flowing account of the Dvorák. There’s also some wonderful interplay with the idiomatic woodwind soloists. PERFORMANCE RECORDING TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto No. 1; Violin Concerto; Variations on a Rococo Theme BEETHOVEN Triple Concerto Eloquence ELQ4822085 (1980s) 145…

Nina Stemme and Jonas Kaufmann are sincere and tender PUCCINI DVD La fanciulla del West Jonas Kaufmann, Nina Stemme, Tomasz Konieczny; Vienna State Opera Chorus & Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst; dir. Marco Arturo Marelli (Vienna, 2013) Sony 88875064069 138 mins If La bohème is about young love, La fanciulla del West is about old love. Its heroine, Minnie Faulkner, has never been kissed yet she is clearly a grown woman, weary after years of running a bar in a mining camp in Gold Rush California, toting a gun, teaching Bible lessons and mothering the miners. When handsome Dick Johnson arrives at the Polka Saloon, Minnie is as skittish as a teenager, squeezing her tired feet into her best shoes. Johnson has secrets: his real name (Ramerrez), his criminal record, an uncertain relationship…

Crowe and Berger uncover shamefully neglected Schumann DUET Works by Schumann, Mendelssohn & Cornelius Lucy Crowe (soprano), William Berger (baritone), Iain Burnside (piano) Delphian DCD 34167 60:23 mins The effect on repertoire of our celebrity culture, with its overfeeding of the performing ego, is a topic worthy of investigation. The thought is inspired by this delectable recital of rarely-performed 19th-century duets – a form of music making all but lost during the course of the last century. Here we have little-known songs by Cornelius, Mendelssohn and Schumann, lovingly championed in the mellow and spacious acoustic of St Mary’s, Haddington, in East Lothian. Peter Cornelius first – that somewhat neglected younger contemporary of Mendelssohn and Schumann. Lucy Crowe and William Berger are vocal soul mates, as revealed at once in the…

WEATHER REPORT The Legendary Live Tapes 1978-1981 Joe Zawinul (keyboards), Wayne Shorter (saxophone), Jaco Pastorius (bass) etc Sony Music 8875141272 247mins (4 discs) These official bootleg recordings taken from Weather Report world tours are an unexpected treat for devotees of the influential fusion super group. Previously unreleased, the unembellished live cuts were made on cassette tapes from the desk by the band’s engineer. Even the Grammy-winning live double album 8:30 was retouched in the studio, whereas these sides are left raw. Without the overdubbing and mixing alchemy usually associated with the group’s epic studio sound, it’s a warts-and-all insight. Defying any notion of what constitutes a rhythm section, Pastorius’s electric bass playing is absurdly, naturally limber and Erskine’s drumming is fresh and action-packed. The quintet sides have Thomas adding organic…

YEMEN: Hasan al-Ajami: The singing of Sanaa Ocora C 561173 72:38 mins NORTH KOREA : Yu Ji-suk: Traditional songs Ocora C 560265 56:26 mins HAITI: Meringue & Konpa 1952-1962 Fremaux & Associes FA 5615 249:25 mins (3 discs) BALI 1928: Anthology: The first recordings World Arbiter 2018 74:58 mins CRETE: Stelios Petrakis: The art of the lyra Ocora C 560264 64:07 mins LA SQUADRA: In scio ton Musique du monde 4746521 48:08 mins The news coming out of Yemen is all about death and destruction, so Ocora’s re-release of The Singing of Sanaa is timely. Recorded in 2002, this contains three generous tracks which reflect the austere elegance of the Yemeni capital’s traditional song-form. Powered by a contemplative form of medieval love poetry, this…

Jessica Duchen Critic and writer ‘Having been variously stirred and shaken by pianist Khatia Buniatishvili’s playing in the past, I was eager to find out what makes her “tick”. I hope I’ve put across some of her amazing energy and imagination.’ Page 22 Alex Marshall Author and journalist ‘When I began researching national anthems, I’d thought it’d take a week. But these songs’ stories are so fascinating – political, emotional, funny – I’m still looking into them four years later. It’s a shame so many have awful music!’ Page32 Kate Bolton-Porciatti Critic and academic ‘Having lived and breathed every note of JS Bach while programming his complete works for BBC Radio 3’s A Bach Christmas in 2005, I can only reaffirm Brahms’s immortal words: “Study Bach.…

BRAHMS AND BERKELEY For your So, where next…? feature on Brahms’s Horn Trio (January), may I suggest Lennox Berkeley’s Horn Trio? Musicians whose names begin with B can be hard acts to follow – Brahms certainly felt this acutely when composing his First Symphony, and I am sure Berkeley must have had similar misgivings when he was commissioned to write a piece for the same combination of instruments that Brahms used. Berkeley’s Horn Trio was first performed in 1954 by Dennis Brain (horn), Manoug Parikian (violin) and Colin Horsley (piano), who also recorded the work for HMV. The music was a breath of fresh air after the turbulence of World War II but the composer was to become rather overshadowed by Benjamin Britten whose Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings…

‘I guess I saw the piano as a toy… and still do in many ways!’ Musicians in our Rising Star series often relate how they started playing at a very early age. Víkingur Ólafsson takes it one step further. ‘I played the piano before I was born!’ he laughs. ‘My mother is a pianist, and she was six months pregnant when taking her final exams, so I was very close to the keyboard.’ That said, when he did make his way into the outside world three months later, Ólafsson did not go on to have what he calls ‘a Wunderkind career’. Growing up in Iceland, he waited till the age of 16 for his first appearance with an orchestra, then took the ‘random decision’ to go and study at the…

THIS MONTH KATHRYN STOTT pianist British pianist Kathryn Stott has nearly 60 recordings to her name, including the complete Fauré piano music for Hyperion. Last year she celebrated a 30-year musical partnership with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and Sony recently released a nine-CD set of her complete solo recordings. My finest moment Fauré Complete solo piano music Kathryn Stott (piano) Hyperion CDS44601/4 (1995) I don’t know if this is my finest recording but it was a defining moment for me. It was a dream come true to record every piano piece Fauré wrote. His music hadn’t been widely recorded at that time and wasn’t even played that much compared with now. But it’s such a fantastic journey. On the whole I only knew the early music so…

Here’s an easy way to listen to music written about and reviewed throughout the magazine – Apple Music has made BBC Music Magazine its very first classical music playlist curator. All of which means that subscribers to Apple Music’s streaming service will be able to listen, throughout the month, to our specially selected playlists of, say, Passiontide music by JS Bach (see p58), performances by our cover star, pianist Khatia Buniatishvili (p22)and a selection of only the finest national anthems (p32). To find us on Apple Music, visit www.applemusic.com/bbcmm and our curator page will open in iTunes.…

@paulcareyjones Any time I feel like complaining how hard this role is, I look across at #Lulu doing everything Schön does but backwards in high heels. Opera baritone Paul Carey Jones (left) gives respect where respect is due @fatboyclayton Pat Nevin on Mourinho: “It builds up and comes to a crescendo, but every time it then ebbs away.” I don’t think he’s passed Grade 5 theory. Tenor Allan Clayton is unimpressed by the musical knowledge of Radio 5live’s football commentary team @alexdariescu Just bought 3 Pomelos. Best thing I’ve done all day #mondaymotivation Life just got that little bit fruitier for hungry pianist Alexandra Dariescu… @ed_lyon 3 Manhattans count as dinner, right??? …while tenor Ed Lyon’s diet takes a slightly more decadent turn @AliceSaraOtt “Are you Mario Sara Ott?” “Uhm,…

Oliver Condy Editor My year’s subscription to the Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall, where you can watch concerts live online, kicked off with a splendidly effervescent concert of Stravinsky given by the Simón Bolívar Orchestra under Gustavo Dudamel. The complex rhythms and drama of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring were no match for this extraordinary group of players who looked as exciting as they sounded. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor My son has been helping me re-explore my CD collection by standing in front of the shelves and picking discs at random. A recent choice was Songs my Great-Grandfather Taught Me, a disc of Dvo›ák pieces recorded by violinist Josef Suk shortly before his death in 2011. Accompanied by Vladimir Ashkenazy, Suk’s performances are as charmingly performed as they are…

The BBC has launched a contest for ensembles of amateur tootlers, bangers and scrapers At last someone up there has deigned to notice that Britain has hundreds of amateur orchestras. And not just notice, but celebrate them as well. The BBC has launched a TV contest for ensembles of amateur tootlers, bangers and scrapers (see p10). Perhaps they should call it The Great British Blast-Off. It’s backed up by a nationwide initiative called Get Playing, which aims to do exactly what its title suggests: encourage even the most lapsed or elementary players among the adult population to pick up their instruments again, and persuade others that it’s never too late to start. Though organisations such as Making Music do their best to promote them, amateur orchestras have long seemed like…

MODEST MUSORGSKY WAS anything but a modest type of composer. ‘The universe of sounds is without limits,’ he once wrote. ‘It is the brain that is limited.’ His, though, apparently was not, if his piano writing in Pictures at an Exhibition is anything to go by. Musorgsky is alive to the nightmarish potential of the images The work, dating from June 1874, was written in just three weeks; its quality of white-hot inspiration is no coincidence. The artist Viktor Hartmann, a close friend of the composer, had died in 1873, aged only 39. Musorgsky visited a retrospective exhibition of 400 pieces of his work – to which he contributed some from his private collection – and the paintings described in the resulting musical transposition of that experience are Hartmann’s. Indeed,…

Early years: Born in Czechoslovakia in 1946, B›lohlávek sang in a children’s choir from the age of four and played the cello and piano. Development: He studied cello and conducting at the Prague Conservatory and the Academy of Performing Arts. In 1971 he was a finalist in the Karajan Conducting Competition. Next steps: In 1995 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and from 2006-2012 served as chief conductor. In 2012 he was awarded a CBE for services to music. Back to Prague: In 2012, B›lohlávek returned to the Czech Philharmonic as chief conductor and artistic director after having resigned from the post in 1992.…

THEY’D ALMOST CERTAINLY be official husbands in today’s climates and were so in all but name. Vitally, Peter Pears and Giancarlo Menotti stand alongside the great figures in this article by virtue of their own musicianship as life-partners respectively to Benjamin Britten and Samuel Barber. Pears, Britten’s other half from 1939 until the composer’s death in 1976, we know as the creator and inspirer of many great Britten roles and song-cycles. Peter Grimes, Captain Vere in Billy Budd and Aschenbach in Death in Venice, among others, would possibly not have existed in their operatic forms without Pears, and he was also instrumental in pointing Britten towards many of the poets he set so memorably. Although they had met some years earlier, Britten and Pears did not become closer until their…

Born in nearby Nora, Dag Wirén (1905-86) attended Örebro’s Karolinska School, during which time he played bass drum and celesta in the town orchestra. After studying in Stockholm, he travelled to Paris, where he encountered the music of Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Les Six. He returned to Sweden to compose, became a critic on the Svenska Morgonbladet and performed as a pianist on Swedish Radio in the 1930s. He wrote five symphonies (some recorded by the old Örebro Chamber Orchestra), but his most popular piece is 1937’s Serenade for Strings.…

Musical oration ‘Music before 1800 speaks; subsequent music paints.’ So conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt describes rhetoric in pre-Romantic music. Bach exploits rhetorical structures and figures (balance, repetition, contradiction, silence), as well as speech-inspired phrases and articulation, to move the listener. His contemporary Johann Mattheson (pictured) called it Klang-Rede – ‘musical oration’. Chiasmus Bach’s mature vocal works, including the B minor Mass, the Christmas Oratorio and the Passions, use symmetrical inversions and cross-balances, so-called ‘chiastic’ structures common in Classical rhetoric. The term comes from the Greek word chiasmus, the root of which is the Greek letter X (chi) – the sign of the cross. Theology For Luther, music was fundamental to the Proclamation of the Word; Bach’s sacred cantatas, therefore, are essentially ‘musical sermons’.…

Recording of the Month Violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and conductor Teodor Currentzis offer a brilliant and original take on Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, plus a dazzling Stravinsky’s Les noces, p66 The storytellers of classical music Of course, not every CD needs a ‘concept’. You know what you’re going to get with, say, the complete Tippett string quartets (p81) or complete Nielsen Symphonies (p70). But every so often an album comes along for which, as conductor Teodor Currentzis explains on p67, there is ‘a story and a vision’. It’s been a joy to be surprised (and sometimes, I’ll admit, baffled) by the photoshoot and booklet notes of our Recording of the Month. A fresh, daring take on Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, with soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, has inspired the look of the whole album.…

The Greek conductor tells REBECCA FRANKS about his first recorded collaboration with Patricia Kopatchinskaja This is your first disc with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and it seems like a meeting of minds. How did your partnership come about? I met Patricia while I was conducting Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. We started to talk about musical dreams and I felt I had found a person with whom I shared a common language. We started to talk about music every week by phone and found an opportunity to arrange something together. We met in Paris to talk about every note of the Tchaikovsky. Everything was precisely planned but always leaving a place for the unknown, which is the most important thing. Next we want to do Berg, Mendelssohn and Brahms. Stravinsky’s…

BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos Nos 1-5 Dénes Várjon (piano); Concerto Budapest/András Keller Hungaroton HCD 32757-59 174:52 mins These generally fine performances get off to a slightly shaky start: in the opening movement of the First Concerto András Keller fails to draw any genuine fortissimo playing out of the orchestra, and the sforzando accents that are such an essential feature of the music’s character are likewise underplayed. As a result the piece is rather short on drama. However, there are compensations – notably Dénes Várjon’s splendid account of the long, weird and wonderful cadenza which Beethoven added many years after the event – and the remaining movements are altogether more satisfying. In the central development section of Concerto No. 2 the wind players of Concerto Budapest capture the music’s air of subdued…

Ludomir Rózycki (1883-1953) Despite having many symphonic poems, operas and ballets to his name, Rózycki has fallen into obscurity, especially in comparison to his better-known friend and colleague Szymanowski. Rózycki studied in Warsaw and Berlin, with Engelbert Humperdinck, before becoming conductor at Lwów Opera. He later turned solely to composing and teaching, often exploring Polish history in his works. Alongside three piano concertos (see review, left), Rózycki’s output also includs a violin concerto, songs, piano and chamber works.…

MARIA CALLAS IN CONCERT: 1959 & 1962 Works by Verdi, Rossini, Bizet, Bellini, Gounod, Spontini and Massenet Maria Callas (soprano) Warner Blu-ray: 2564605423 119 mins The 1959 concert shows Callas at her greatest, with stunning accounts of a wide repertoire; the 1962 concert is more parsimonious, but still shows her genius in everything she does. PERFORMANCE RECORDING MARIA CALLAS Toujours – Paris 1958 With Gobbi, Lance, Rialland, Hurteau, Mars; Orchestre et Choeurs du Théâtre National de l’Opéra de Paris/Sebastian Warner Blu-ray: 2564605415 91 mins This recording of Callas’s Paris debut, with Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, lugubriously accompanied, is electrifying and will set standards for anyone who loves these pieces. PERFORMANCE RECORDING MARIA CALLAS Covent Garden 1962 & 1964 With Cioni, Gobbi, Bowman; Royal Opera House Chorus & Orch/Cillario Warner Blu-ray: 2564605440…

JS BACH Motet: Der Gerechte Kommt Um; Missae Brevae – in G minor, BWV 235; in A minor, BWV 234 Warnier, El-Bushra, Toro, Fierro; Ensemble Pygmalion/Raphaël Pichon Alpha 302 (2007) 61:39 mins Suppleness, energy and accuracy define the choral singing here, with sensitively scaled solo contributions. Colourful instrumental playing under Raphaël Pichon’s purposeful conducting. PERFORMANCE RECORDING BLISS Madam Noy; Rout; The Enchantress; The Beatitudes Gerald English, Heather Harper; various choruses; BBC Symphony/Arthur Bliss Lyrita REAM.1115 (1964) 74:73 mins The live Proms performance of The Beatitudes, in decent mono, is superior to the sole alternative (the premiere from two years earlier). Heather Harper shines in her solos. PERFORMANCE RECORDING PERGOLESI Pergolesi, Stabat Mater; plus Durante: Concerto in E minor No. 4 etc Bovi, De Vittorio, Arrieta; Les pages & les chantres…

L BERKELELY Six Preludes, Op. 23; Piano Sonata; Sonatina for four hands; Theme and Variations, Op.73 for four hands, etc Raphael Terroni, Norman Beedie (piano) Naxos 8.571369 (1993) 58:11 mins Terroni’s delivery is both refined and involved, revealing Berkeley’s Six Preludes as a set of nonchalant jewels, and (with Beedie) the four-hand Theme and Variations as a wryly inventive statement. PERFORMANCE RECORDING BRIDGE • SCOTT Bridge: Piano Quintet in D minor; Scott: Piano Quintet No. 1 Terroni (piano); Bingham Quartet Naxos 8.571355 (1990) 67:05 mins Bridge’s Quintet operates in Brahmsian territory, with harmonic shifts unmistakably his own; Cyril Scott’s idiom, strikingly individual, filters Fauré and Scriabin through an English sensibility. Fine, sweepingly powerful performances. PERFORMANCE RECORDING BRITTEN String Quartets Nos 1-3, etc Brodsky Quartet Challenge Classics CC72655 (2001) 95:41 mins…

Morton Feldman (1926-87) Born in New York, the son of Russo-Jewish immigrants, Feldman studied piano. In 1950 he met John Cage after a performance of Webern’s Symphony, Op. 21 by the New York Philharmonic. Encouraged by Cage, Feldman began experimenting with nonstandard compositional practices and notation: Feldman’s use of chance elements in his score inspired Cage to make similar experiments using the Chinese divination text, the I Ching. Cage introduced Feldman to visual artists including Jackson Pollock, whose work inspired his…

IN-EAR HEADPHONES RHA T20i £190 Impressed by both the RHA headphone models (the MA600i and MA750) that I reviewed previously, I felt it was about time we looked at RHA’s flagship T20i (above). We’re looking at a considerable step up in price here, so you might want to know where the extra £100 goes. It’s all in the detail, not least the two voice coil components in the speakers that help separate the high and low frequencies, rather than lumping them together as traditional speakers do – the T20is keep plenty of power in the bass without it muddying the other frequencies. The over-ear design keeps them firmly attached to your head and once you have moulded them around your ears they stay in shape. You can choose from a…

In the 1780s Haydn received a request from Spain to write a score illustrating the ‘Seven Last words of Christ on the Cross’. This came from the Canon of Cádiz for use in a service at an underground church, the Oratorio de la Santa Cueva. The composition had to conform to the strict order of the service, where the Bishop would pronounce each of the seven Words before leaving the pulpit to bow down at the altar. Each of these gaps would need to be filled with music. ‘It was no easy task to compose seven Adagios lasting ten minutes each, without boring the listeners,’ commented Haydn. Seven Last Words was first performed in public on 6 April 1787. It was scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, bassoons, trumpets and…

BORN IN DORSET, Natalie Clein won the BBC Young Musician of the Year and the Eurovision Competition for Young Musicians at 16. She studied at the Royal College of Music and with Heinrich Schiff in Vienna and has performed with orchestras worldwide. Her recordings for Hyperion include works by Saint-Saëns, Bloch, Bruch and Kodály. Recently appointed director of performance and artist in residence at Oxford University, she will direct the Purbeck Chamber Music Festival in September. My earliest musical memories are of falling asleep on the sofa as my parents played Schubert, Haydn and Beethoven string quartets with friends. My mum is a professional violinist, my dad a passionate amateur violinist and violist. That sense of musical conversation went into my unconscious in a very deep way. My dad came…

JS Bach Partitas and Sonatas  Jascha Heifetz (violin) EMI 217 3122 Mozart Divertimenti K563 etc  Jascha Heifetz (violin), William Primrose (viola), Emanuel Feuermann (cello) Opus Kura OPK2062/3 Beethoven The Complete Quartets Amadeus Quartet Deutsche Grammophon 463 1432 Schubert Die Schöne Müllerin Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (baritone), Gerald Moore (piano) Warner 0852092 Sibelius Complete Symphonies  Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra/Gennady Rozhdestvensky Melodiya MELCD1001669…

It takes a brave musician to change the way we think about a masterpiece All artists want to make a permanent mark in the music world and there’s no better way to do that than in a recording. But a balance has to be struck – eccentricities are fine as long as they’re to the service of the music. No one minds a bit of murmuring or singing along… But it takes a brave musician to change the way we think about a masterpiece, particularly one that many of us hold dear. Listeners will be surprised to hear the performance of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto on our Recording of the Month – violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja takes each and every phrase, rips them up and recasts them. It’s bold and, on…

Beethoven testament Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s final recording has been released, on Sony Classical. The 86-year-old conductor announced his retirement in December 2015, explaining that his ‘physical strength requires me to cancel my future plans’. For his last disc, he’s chosen to showcase Beethoven’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies with Concentus Musicus Wien, the pioneering period-instrument group he co-founded in 1953. The Fifth, says Harnoncourt, represents ‘the revolt of the masses’. It’s the first time he has conducted his Viennese ensemble in these pieces, although he has previously recorded them with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. And it’s a live recording, taken from two concerts at Vienna’s Musikverein. Choral reflections ORA has released its first album, Upheld by Stillness: Renaissance gems and their reflections, on Harmonia Mundi. ‘We are in a second golden…

After hearing his solo recital disc, our critic described Francesco Piemontesi as ‘a Mozartian force to be reckoned with’. Now he’s recording Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos 25 & 26 with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Andrew Manze in Usher Hall, Edinburgh, for Linn Records. A 12-year-old Norwegian treble, Aksel Rykkvin, has recorded a recital of Baroque music with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. A crowdfunded project, the disc features arias by JS Bach and Handel and will be released by the Signum Classics label. Cellist Leonard Elschenbroich and pianist Petr Limonov are recording a Schnittke disc in Deutschlandfunk Cologne for Onyx Classics. And it will include one of Elschenbroich’s own compositions, recorded for the first time: Shards of Alfred Schnittke on the 10th anniversary of his death. The…

Arrau, Rubinstein, Moiseiwitsch and Hess all play as if the music could never be played any other way I love making archive programmes. Years ago, the BBC asked me to make one about my native Northamptonshire. We Northamptonians indulge in our particular accents – my organ teacher, the county music adviser Malcolm Tyler, claimed that at Christmastime he could tell exactly where he was in the county simply by listening to people sing ‘Good King Wenceslas looked eighwt’. As I listened to ancient interviews from round the county, I jumped with surprised recognition when I heard a woman say ‘We moved to teighwn in…’. Unmistakably the accent of my own village, Long Buckby, I thought – and so it proved, as her story unfolded. My new TV programme Perfect Pianists…

George Cobby Amersham Shortly after I discovered classical music in the mid-1940s, I heard Sir Adrian Boult conduct Schubert’s Great C major Symphony on the radio. Despite noble efforts from such luminaries as John Barbirolli, Otto Klemperer and Josef Krips, Boult has remained my yardstick, although I have always felt that a ‘perfect’ reading was impossible. Until now, that is. Jonathan Nott and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra do not just play the notes, but they hear the music conceived as one spontaneous and seamless movement, the repeats blending as never before. At the end, you know that Schubert really did achieve his ambition to compose the ‘grand symphony’. Douglas J May Edinburgh I have been listening to Pekka Kuusisto play Nielsen’s Violin Concerto with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Edinburgh…

SAIMIR PIRGU IL MIO CANTO His technique is superb, and the lyric quality of his voice is so beautiful!’ Praise from Placido Domingo for Saimir Pirgu whose new CD is released to coincide with his appearance in La traviata at the Royal Opera House. CD OUT NOW MERCHANT OF VENICE SHAKESPEARE Royal Shakespeare Company In the melting pot of Venice, trade is God. When the gold is flowing, all is well - but when a contract is broken, simmering racial tensions boil over. DVD & BLU-RAY VERDI & SHAKESPEARE THE OPERAS (BOX SET) MACBETH (Royal Opera House) OTELLO (Liceu) FALSTAFF (Glyndebourne) Shakespeare provided lifelong inspiration for the towering operatic genius that was Giuseppe Verdi, but just three of the Bard’s plays ever emerged fully-fledged from the composer’s pen. 4 DVD…

‘A national anthem must have bad music,’ wrote Shostakovich In January 1797, Haydn wrote what was, in one respect, the biggest failure of his career. Austria was at war with France, Napoleon’s cannons were threatening even Vienna and Haydn was commissioned to write a piece to keep them back. He thought of his time in London where he heard ‘God Save the King’ almost daily, and he thought of La Marseillaise , whose rousing, bloody call to arms seemed to be getting closer by the minute. And then he decided to write Austria its equivalent. He had been given lyrics to write to – ‘Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser’ (God Save Emperor Francis) – and he sat down and penned a melody that he is said to have believed could…

Judith Weir ‘New music should serve as wide a group of people as possible, including young and adult learners. But there isn’t enough of it that’s both interesting and playable by those groups. I often say to students, “Is there a way, without letting go of your inner principles as a composer, to produce a simplified model of how you normally write? Can you do it in a way that doesn’t involve difficult instrumental technique?” It’s an invigorating way to think of your work.’ Michael Finnissy ‘It’s important to write music for non-professionals as you get such fantastic feedback. Us composers sometimes like to think we’re insolated in an ivory tower, and we can write what we like, but that’s not the case. We’re very much in the business of…

Members of the World Federation of International Music Competitions World Federation of International Music Competitions · Fédération Mondiale des Concours Internationaux de Musique 104, rue de Carouge · CH-1205 Genève · Suisse · Tél: +41 22 321 36 20 · Fax: +41 22 781 14 18 · fmcim@fmcim.org · www.fmcim.org · www.wfimc.org BBC Music Magazine Competition Guide – To advertise here please call Dan Baker on 0117 314 7407…

Örebro Konserthus The newly renovated concert hall, run by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, offers a full programme throughout the year. Aside from the SCO’s own series, there are also visiting enembles, high-profile soloists and jazz concerts. orebrokonserthus.com Opera på Skäret Just outside Örebro lies Kopparberg (Copper Mountain), the sylvan setting of a summer opera festival staged in a huge barn by a lake (30 July-18 August 2016). The Swedish Chamber Orchestra is the in-house band for Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman this summer. Vintage trains to the festival can be caught from Stockholm, and there are ‘wild and foraged’ food menus of elk, deer and locally caught trout. operapaskaret.se Norrköping Concert Hall Just 117km south of Örebro lies the town of Norrköping. Its concert hall,…

THE LIFE 1685 Johann Sebastian Bach is born in EISENACH on 21 March, the eighth child of Johann Ambrosius Bach and Maria Elisabeth Lämerhirt. Ambrosius is director of the town musicians and his brothers are all professional musicians. 1707 He marries MARIA BARBARA BACH , his second cousin and they have seven children (four survive to adulthood). He becomes organist at the ducal court in Weimar in 1708. 1717 The Duke of Weimar responds to Bach’s request to take up a new post at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen by jailing him for nearly a month. He is eventually allowed to leave. 1720 Maria dies while he is away. The following year he marries young soprano Anna Magdalena Wilcke, with whom he has a further 13 children, six of whom survive.…

NO ACCOUNT OF THE CORONATION MASS possesses a more considered sense of style than Christopher Hogwood’s (right). His performance is founded on the singing of the Choir of Winchester College’s Chapel – the ‘Quiristers’ – whose distinctive character, with boy trebles, emulates the sound with which Mozart would have been familiar in Salzburg. Even more importantly, the interpretation is not just light on its feet but full of energy and, where necessary drama – the period-instrument players and dynamically purposive direction combine to create an indelible sense of identity. Given the choir’s clear diction and commitment to the text, such important moments as the ‘Et incarnatus est’ maintain a real sense of mystery. The soloists match each other as well as they do Hogwood’s historically informed approach. The treble-like qualities…

Julian Haylock writer, editor A former editor of CD Review and International Piano magazines, and author of biographies on Mahler, Rachmaninov and Puccini, Julian writes extensively for a wide variety of publications. For inspiration, nothing beats a brisk countryside stroll with his three devoted dogs. John Allison editor, Opera; critic, Sunday Telegraph Nicholas Anderson Baroque specialist Terry Blain writer Kate Bolton-Porciatti lecturer, New York University, Florence Garry Booth jazz writer & critic Geoff Brown critic, The Times Michael Church writer, critic The Independent Christopher Cook broadcaster, critic Martin Cotton producer Christopher Dingle Professor of music, Birmingham Conservatoire Misha Donat producer, writer Jessica Duchen critic, novelist Hilary Finch…

RAVEL Boléro; La valse; Ma mere l’Oye; Pavane pour une infante défunte; Rapsodie espagnole LSO/Pierre Monteux Eloquence 480 8890 (1961/64) 77:11 mins Beautiful and atmospheric, whether the fairy tale simplicity of Mother Goose (albeit, the recording gratuitously spotlights the LSO leader through the opening of ‘Le jardin féerique’) or the nightmarish glamour of La valse. PERFORMANCE RECORDING SIBELIUS Symphony No. 2; Finlandia; Four Legends, Op. 22; The Tempest – Overture; Suite No. 1; etc L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/ Horst Stein Eloquence 482 3922 (1971-81) 193:34 mins (3 discs) Those who don’t mind poor woodwind tuning and lacklustre strings may enjoy a fine, vigorous Second Symphony. Alas, the listed Night Ride is in fact a duplication of En Saga. PERFORMANCE RECORDING STRAVINSKY Petrushka; Le baiser de la fée Leningrad Philharmonic…

This is a long-loved, lived-in interpretation of the Elgar Concerto ELGAR • WALTON Cello Concertos GUSTAV HOLST Invocation IMOGEN HOLST The Fall of the Leaf Steven Isserlis (cello); Philharmonia Orchestra/Paavo Järvi Hyperion CDA 68077 73:01 mins It’s no surprise, perhaps, that Steven Isserlis’s latest reading of the Elgar concerto should be special: this is a long-loved, lived-in interpretation in which every superfluity has been scoured away leaving only an extraordinarily pure line of expression. He – and Paavo Järvi – steer a course between the astringent dynamism of Elgar’s own reading, tender intimacy and the grand passion of Jacqueline du Pré. Ensemble is hand-in-glove, wind solos eloquent. The scherzo has plenty of attack, the Adagio is almost unbearably poignant while Isserlis’s finale explodes into life with a bristling humour and…

CAVALLI L’amore innamorato: extracts from Il Giasone, La Calisto, La Rosinda, L’Artemisia, L’Eliogabalo & La Didone; plus music by Kapsperger & Falconieri Núria Rial, Hana Blaÿíková (soprano); L’Arpeggiata/Christina Pluhar Erato 2564616642 66:52 mins (CD only) Erato 2564616643 66:52 mins (CD, plus bonus DVD 111 mins) Christina Pluhar’s ensemble L’Arpeggiata celebrates its 15th anniversary with this fragrant potpourri of opera extracts by Francesco Cavalli – the Puccini of the mid 17th century. The all-pervasive theme is love, as the collection’s title (taken from a lost Cavalli opera) implies. We hear varied excerpts from Cavalli’s La Calisto, about the mythological nymph seduced by Jupiter in drag, the music by turns wistful, sensuous, playful. By way of contrast are the tragic and passionate outpourings of the forsaken Queen Dido (La Didone), hypnotic laments…

JS BACH Lasst uns sorgen, Lasst uns wachen, BWV 213; Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten!, BWV 214 Joanne Lunn (soprano), Robin Blaze (countertenor), Makoto Sakurada (tenor), Dominik Wörner (bass); Bach Collegium Japan/Masaaki Suzuki BIS BIS-2161 (hybrid CD/SACD) 73:17 mins Bach composed these secular cantatas as birthday gifts for the son and the wife of the Elector of Saxony in the early 1730s, later recasting much of the music for the Christmas Oratorio . The originals are allegorical dramas: in BWV 213, the Greek hero Hercules (aka the Elector’s son) resists the heady charms of Lust in preference for Virtue; while in BVW 214 four Greek goddesses sing the praises of the Elector’s wife, Maria Josepha. Many qualities typical of Masaaki Suzuki’s cantata series are here: lithe choral singing, balletic rhythms,…

BRAHMS • SCHUBERT Schubert: Introduction & Variations on Trockne Blumen; Sonatina in A minor; Brahms: Cello Sonata No. 1 Pieter Wispelwey (cello), Paolo Giacometti (piano) Evil Penguin Records Classic EPRC 0021 70:18 mins Pieter Wispelwey’s restless creativity has made him one of the great pioneer-cellists of our time. In this, the second instalment of a project to claim the duos of Brahms and Schubert for the cello, he teeters on the edge of impossibility. In his notes, he argues that the cello is a natural voice for these two giants of the lied; but is this grounds for appropriating the flute’s ‘Trockne Blumen’ variations? In fact, he finds enough in the troubling lied from Die schöne Müllerin to justify the experiment. Certainly, there are variations where frothing streams of notes…

JOHN LUTHER ADAMS Ilimaq Glenn Kotche (percussion) Cantaloupe CA 21112 47:58 mins John Luther Adams’s 2014 Become Ocean for double symphony orchestra offered a tumultuous meditation on the earth’s rising sea levels. An active and longstanding conservationist, Adams has engaged with the natural world in his music. In Ilimaq, a five-movement sequence composed for percussionist Glenn Kotche, Adams draws on the sound and spirituality of the frozen north. ‘Ilimaq’ translates from the native Alaskan Inupiaq language as ‘spirit journeys’. Inspired by the shamanistic tradition of using drumming as a gateway to the spirit world, Adams has created (in his words) ‘a journey through soundscapes drawn from the natural world and from the inner resonances of the instruments themselves’. From fierce rhythmic repetitions on the drum to more free-form, ambient soundscapes,…

ENCOUNTERS WITH BRITISH COMPOSERS Andrew Palmer Boydell Press 9781783270705 501pp (hb) ‘Benjamin Britten, the most striking composer in British music today, needs little introduction.’ So wrote Murray Schaffer in 1963 in the preface to one of his 11 subjects featured in British Composers in Interview. When, more than 50 years on, Andrew Palmer writes that Peter Maxwell Davies ‘needs little introduction’, you may question his judgement: times have changed since composers occupied such a public role in British society. So, too, has the notion of Britishness. Yet Palmer continues along much the same path set out by Schaffer and Paul Griffiths – whose New Sounds, New Personalities included interviews with 20 British composers of the 1980s – with a collection of first-person accounts that broadly explore why and how composers…