Innholdsfortegnelse for 1-Sep 2015 i BBC Music Magazine

ON STAGE Electric Leeds Former Leeds International Piano Competition winners have included Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia, and the likes of Mitsuko Uchida and András Schiff have been finalists too. The competition, founded by Dame Fanny Waterman (right) in 1961, has a fine track record of bringing to light the greats of tomorrow, so expect an electric atmosphere at Leeds Town Hall for the final on 13 September. See p86 ON AIR Brahms charms Jamie Barton was an immensely popular winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World in 2013, so will be sure to receive the warmest of welcomes when she makes her debut at the BBC Proms on 1 Sept. For her Albert Hall outing, the US mezzo joins the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in…

PETER THE GREAT Your farewell to violinist Peter Cropper (August) does not do justice to all that he did for chamber music. He and The Lindsays founded Music in the Round in Sheffield, playing in the Crucible Studio with the audience surrounding them 360 degrees at close quarters. They introduced a less stuffy form of music-making – no tails and bow ties – with Peter’s illuminating and amusing commentary on the music. We were all friends! When the Lindsays retired, he founded Ensemble 360 at the Crucible, which included The Elias String Quartet, Tim Horton on piano and distinguished wind players, 11 in all. His vision was to take chamber music to places where it had never been heard, principally in the north of England. Music in the Round, which…

Soprano Nadine Koutcher has won BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2015, joining a list of winners that includes Karita Mattila and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The Belarusian sang Mozart, Rimsky-Korsakov and Delibes in the final, beating four other singers to the main prize. She wins £15,000, the Cardiff Trophy and will also perform a new piece by John Lunn commissioned by the competition. Koutcher, 32, already has an established career. She made her debut in St Petersburg in 2009, joined Perm State Opera in 2012 and has recorded Rameau with conductor Teodor Currentzis. The four other finalists included bass Jongmin Park, baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat, soprano Lauren Michelle and tenor Oleksiy Palychykov. In a final sure to be remembered as one of the competition’s most interesting contests in years, they performed to…

Chart for week ending 4 July 2015 1 Todd Alice’s adventures in Wonderland Opera Holland Park Signum Classics SIGCD420 In the 150th anniversary year of the book, Will Todd’s Alice-inspired opera proves a winner 2 American Polyphony Polyphony/Stephen Layton Hyperion CDA 67929 From Barber to Bernstein, Polyphony’s visit to Uncle Sam was our August Disc of the Month 3 Schoenberg Gurrelieder Gurzenich-Orchestra Köln/Markus Stenz Hyperion CDA 680812 Stenz’s Cologne forces bring a riot of colour and character to Schoenberg’s sumptuous cantata 4 Ysaÿe Sonatas for Solo Violin Alina Ibragimova (violin) Hyperion CDA 67993 The impeccable Ibragimova revels in the glorious isolation of Ysaÿe’s captivating solo violin works 5 Sonic Waves Emmanuel Vass Vass002 Water, water everywhere, from Chopin to Debussy, as Vass invites us…

LARS VOGT pianist I regularly listen to Bach’s cantatas conducted by Ton Koopman as they are simply food for the soul. I love the way that he phrases everything – it is beautiful music-making, clear in its simplicity and clear in its language. I particularly love the final box of CDs in the series, which has the last cantatas that Bach wrote, such as ‘Ich habe genug’. I’ve never performed with Koopman but would love to – let’s hope he reads this! I’ve recently been performing Schubert Lieder with tenor Ian Bostridge, so to get myself into that, I’ve been listening to them performed by baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Gerald Moore. It is so deeply inspiring, and Fischer-Dieskau’s voice is such a miracle – it changes with every…

BOLTON WANDERS Basel Symphony Orchestra has named Ivor Bolton as its new music director. The Brit, 57, will take over from Dennis Russell Davies at the Swiss ensemble at the beginning of the 2016/17 season. He adds this new role to his current positions of music director of the Teatro Real Madrid in Spain and chief conductor of the Dresden Festival Orchestra. ALPESH STAYS While the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra keeps us waiting as to the identity of its new chief conductor, it has at least announced that Alpesh Chauhan will be staying on as assistant conductor for another season. Chauhan recently impressed when, standing in for Andris Nelsons at the last minute, he conducted the CBSO to acclaim in concerts in Birmingham and Oxford. CHORAL CAPTAIN England cricket…

JON VICKERS Born 1926 Tenor Powerfully built with a voice to match, Jon Vickers excelled in big, heroic roles such as Wagner’s Parsifal and Tristan. A major figure on the global opera scene in the 1960s, particularly at the New York Met, the Canadian sang for conductors including Otto Klemperer and Herbert von Karajan and made important recordings of many of his major roles, such as Britten’s Peter Grimes and Verdi’s Otello. As a man of strong Christian faith, however, he avoided roles such as Wagner’s Tannhaüser which he felt offended his beliefs, earning himself the nickname ‘God’s tenor’. He retired from the stage in 1987. WALTER WELLER Born 1939 Conductor Such was Walter Weller’s impact as principal conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra in the 1990s that his image…

A couple of years ago Stephen Kovacevich was driving along and a recording of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 27 in E minor came on the radio. He recalled a recording he had made of the piece and a last movement about which he’d never been quite satisfied. This one was much better. Who was playing? Wilhelm Kempff, probably. The performance ended. ‘Do you know what? It was my own recording, and I didn’t even recognise it,’ he tells me. ‘I wasn’t expecting it, and there it was.’ And the lesson is? ‘Sometimes when you anticipate, you preclude ecstasy.’ It’s a mistake to think too much about what to expect. Let it come to you. Some critics fail to do it, he says, too often. There’s a nice expletive here about someone…

John Foulds Three Mantras Married to Maud MacCarthy, a leading western authority on Indian music, John Foulds (1880-1939) incorporated various elements of it, from scales derived from ragas to microtonal intervals, into much of his work. His orchestral Three Mantras (1930) is made up of preludes from Avatara, his abandoned opera about the god Krishna. Gustav Holst Savitri In contrast to Elgar, whose take on India was his bumptiously Empire-celebrating The Crown of India of 1911, Holst chose to delve deeper into the country’s culture. Teaching himself Sanskrit so that he could read Hindu scriptures at source, he turned to the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata for the plot of his 1916 opera Savitri, scored for three singers, chorus and chamber orchestra. Cyril Scott Indian Suite Along with the…

Italy was always reluctant to claim Wolf-Ferrari (left) as one of its musical heroes, unlike Germany where his music was acclaimed. But he was born and bred in Venice and worked there, always returning when he lived elsewhere. He died in Venice in 1948 and was buried on the cemetery island of San Michele. Famous for his comic operas, particularly Il segreto di Susanna , Wolf-Ferrari initially trained as a painter, which took him to Rome and Munich. He later turned his attention to composing, and although he dabbled with various styles, he was most at home as a neo-classicist.…

A multi-faceted outlook Enescu’s musical idiom represents a confluence of three distinct traditions, the Austro-German symphonic style that he encountered in Vienna, the more sensual approach to harmony and timbre absorbed from his teacher Fauré (pictured below) in Paris, and the exotic improvisatory Romanian folk music which he experienced as a child. Modernist or reactionary? From the 1920s onwards Enescu wrote music that could be uncompromisingly angular and dissonant in places. Yet he never rejected tonality and shunned the irony and sense of alienation that characterises the music of some of his modernist contemporaries. He was in essence an innovative composer profoundly inspired by the great music of the past. Classicism with Romanticism Throughout his compositional career, Enescu consciously adapted baroque and classical musical gestures to his own purposes, but…

Anthony studied music at Cambridge and was an arts administrator before working for BBC Radio 3 for some years, first as a producer and then as presenter of programmes including Record Review and In Tune . He is now a writer, mostly of programme notes, on a wide range of music. John Allison editor, Opera; critic, Sunday Telegraph Nicholas Anderson Baroque specialist Terry Blain writer Kate Bolton lecturer, New York University, Florence Garry Booth jazz writer & critic Geoff Brown critic, The Times Michael Church critic, The Independent Christopher Cook broadcaster, critic Martin Cotton recording and radio producer Christopher Dingle Professor of Music, Birmingham Conservatoire Misha Donat producer, writer Jessica Duchen…

WEINBERG Symphonies Nos 5& 10* Moscow Phil/Kondrashin, Barshai* Melodiya MEL CD 10 02281 (1975) 75:32 mins BBC Music Direct £11.99 If you find Shostakovich prolix, explore Weinberg’s tauter idiom. Both symphonies are conducted by their dedicatees and bristle with authority. PERFORMANCE RECORDING SIBELIUS En Saga; The Swan of Tuonela; Karelia Suite; Finlandia; Valse triste; Tapiola Berlin Philharmonic/Karajan Warner 2434768462 (1976) 78:56 mins BBC Music Direct £8.99 Intense, concentrated performances, with great power in reserve orchestrally. Tapiola’s string playing has exquisite subtlety, Karelia’s brass is fired off like bullets. Some opacity of sound mutes the impact slightly. PERFORMANCE RECORDING JANÁCEK From the House of the Dead: Prelude & Suite; The Cunning Little Vixen Suite; Amarus Soloists; Prague Philharmonic Choir; Czech Philharmonic/Neumann, Jilek Praga PRD 250 308 (1974, 1979, 1988) 75:24 mins…

DVORÁK • SCHUBERT Dvorák: Piano Concerto; Schubert: Fantasy for Piano in C Sviatoslav Richter (piano); Bavarian State Orchestra/Carlos Kleiber Warner 2435668952 (1963/76) 59:30 mins BBC Music Direct £9.99 Dvorák’s Piano Concerto, as played by two great musicians, is full of drama, charm and atmosphere. Richter’s Wanderer Fantasy is magisterial yet genuinely touching when intimate. PERFORMANCE RECORDING GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue; An American in Paris; Piano Concerto in F LSO/André Previn (piano) Warner 2435668912 (1971) 65:15 mins BBC Music Direct £9.99 An ageless album, every performance full of characterful playing, the LSO clearly inspired by Previn’s idiomatic style, infectious swagger and sheer joy in this music. PERFORMANCE RECORDING PROKOFIEV Violin Concertos Nos 1 & 2; Violin Sonata No. 2 David Oistrakh (violin), Vladimir Yampolsky (piano); LSO/Lovro von Mata›ic; Philharmonia/Alceo Galliera Warner…

HAYDN Late String Quartets Op. 76, Op. 77/1 & 2 Alban Berg Quartet Warner 2564612345 (1993) 198:42 mins BBC Music Direct £18.99 (3 discs) Big, projective readings, short on intimacy. The spacious acoustic emphasises the insistent brightness of the leader’s tone and his sometimes mannered phrasing. PERFORMANCE RECORDING HAYDN Piano Trios Nos 32-37 Eric Höbarth (violin), Christophe Coin (cello), Patrick Cohen (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMG 508298-99 114 mins (1990) (2 discs) BBC Music Direct £13.99 (2 discs) Wonderfully inventive music, but the recording favours the period piano over the strings and Patrick Cohen’s often choppy touch inhibits expressive flow. PERFORMANCE RECORDING KROMMER Wind Sextets Nachtmusique/Eric Hoeprich (clarinet) Glossa GCDC80604 (2001) 64:05 mins BBC Music Direct £11.99 Amiable if not very individual Classical serenade stuff by Mozart contemporary Franz Krommer, played…

JS BACH Cello Suites Nos 1-6 Paul Tortelier (cello) Warner 2435628782 (1982) 145:02 mins BBC Music Direct £13.99 (2 discs) Tortelier’s second recording of the Bach was made in Temple Church where his readings inhabit a similarly hallowed spaciousness, the spirit of the dance often tamed by a soulfully Romantic lyricism. PERFORMANCE RECORDING BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas Nos 10, 21 & 23 Vladimir Horowitz (piano) Minuet 428405 (1956/59) 72:16 mins BBC Music Direct £9.99 Horowitz’s first ever stereo recordings of 1959 supplemented by his 1956 Waldstein, but he’s not an instinctive Beethovenian. An air of studied self-consciousness prevails, and the narrative cogency is fitful. PERFORMANCE RECORDING HANDEL Solo Sonatas for transverse flute, recorder and oboe B Kuijken (transverse flute), W Kuijken (viola da gamba), Van Heyghen (recorder), Ponseele (oboe) Accent ACC…

HIGH-RESOLUTION AUDIO PLAYER Astell & Kern Jr £399 Astell & Kern was born out of the popular iriver brand. When iPods were still the talk of the town and the iPhone was barely out of long shorts, iriver created a number of very promising iPod challengers in various forms. Lauded by the critics, these products were extremely good, but the draw of Apple-branded products meant they remained a niche interest. Fast forward a few years and a gap in the portable audio market appeared. There was a need for a hard drive-based high-resolution audio player that Astell & Kern set about filling. Again, lauded by the critics but with eye-watering price tags, Astell & Kern’s first forays into the market were tremendously capable players but the £1,000-plus prices put off…

For detailed concert listings visit www.classical-music.com/whats-on 1 LEEDS INTERNATIONAL PIANO COMPETITION Town Hall & University Great Hall, Leeds, 26 August – 13 September Tel: +44 (0)113 224 3801 Web: www.leedspiano.com Leeds is contemplating the unthinkable. After 54 years at the helm, the chairman and artistic director Dame Fanny Waterman is retiring from the Piano Competition she co-founded in 1961. Before the final stages of the competition get underway – where this year’s winning successor to Radu Lupu (1969) and Murray Perahia (1972) will be declared – the competition’s ‘global ambassador’ Lang Lang is joining 2012 winner Federico Colli (left) on 9 September for a recital of Mozart, Musorgsky and Chopin. 2 VIENNA PHILHARMONIC & SIMON RATTLE Royal Albert Hall, London, 11 September Tel: 0845 401 5040 (UK…

Peter Bouteneff Author and writer ‘How does Arvo Pärt write music that breathes an intense spirituality to people of all faiths and of none? Part of the answer, I think, lurks within his odyssey of inward and outward exile, and his spiritual and musical searches…’ Page 22 Christopher Gillett Baritone and author ‘I’ve worked with countless musicians who, like me, found their musical feet at university rather than at a conservatoire. What inspired them to give up Law, Zoology, Economics (that was me)... and perform for a living?’ Page 44 Erik Levi Professor, critic and author ‘After immersing myself in the wonderful and wide-ranging musical world of George Enescu, there is little doubt in my mind that he is the one great composer of the first half of…

A MEMORABLE START I read July’s Music That Changed Me by Daniel Barenboim during a pause in clearing my house in readiness for down-sizing. It brought to mind a memory that has now been confirmed by finding in said clearing a concert programme for a concert by the New Philharmonia at the Royal Albert Hall, to which my parents took me as a teenager some 46 years ago. The performances that night have continued to live and enrich my very being: the Elgar Cello Concerto played by Jacqueline du Pré, followed by The Dream of Gerontius with Janet Baker, Robert Tear and John Shirley-Quirk. Du Pré’s passion was deepened by Baker’s heavenly angel, Tear’s humanity, and Shirley-Quirk’s diction and clarity of phrasing – truly touches of the divine. That concert…

Kevin Zhu Violinist It took Kevin Zhu around a year to get over his fear of the violin. ‘I started playing when I was about three,’ he tells us. ‘When I was two, my Dad would play Chinese folk songs and give my sister violin lessons. I was really interested in the sounds that the violin made and so would come over to listen. Once or twice my Dad tried to hand me the instrument but I crawled away – I found it scary because it was about as big as I was.’ But once he had got going, there was no stopping him. By five, he knew that playing the violin was something he wanted to do seriously, and by 11 he had become the youngest ever winner of…

THIS MONTH DENNIS RUSSELL DAVIES The US conductor and pianist began his career at the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, and has gone on to perform across the world. He currently holds posts with the Linz Opera, Bruckner Orchestra and Basel Symphony Orchestra, with whom he tours the UK and Ireland this September. My finest moment Schubert Symphony No. 9, ‘Great’ Basel Symphony Orchestra/Dennis Russell Davies Basel Symphony Orchestra SOB03 Schubert’s Ninth Symphony (the Eighth in Germany) is one of those pieces I’ve lived with for a very long time, and I had some pretty strong ideas about how it should be played. In my childhood, growing up in Ohio, I had a George Szell recording I used to listen to, and although I haven’t listened to it for…

We knew it anyway, but now scientific study has proved it – attending a concert reduces stress. In research carried out by the Royal College of Music at two recent concerts of choral music by Eric Whitacre (above), singers and audience members submitted saliva samples and wore ECG monitors to measure their heart activity. When the audience’s results were analysed, a general drop in stress hormones (cortisol and cortisone) was observed, while mood states invariably became more positive. The singers’ stress levels also lowered in rehearsal but, unsurprisingly, rose while performing. ‘Singing is something that many people inherently feel is good for them and relaxes them,’ says the chilled composer himself. ‘But to show biologically (and scientifically) that it can reduce stress is very exciting.’ See Comment, p21…

@ThomasGouldVLN Why so much fuss over a new chief conductor? Maestro-hype only leads to further inequality in how conductors get paid/treated vs. players. As the Berlin Philharmonic names its new conductor, violinist Thomas Gould (left) fails to share in the excitement @Flutelicious Recording of the new concerto finished. I think I may have broken the world record for notes recorded on one session Fast-fingering flautist Gareth Davies is put through his paces by US composer Douglas Knehans @danieltongpiano Now I can fully focus on Beethoven and Wimbledon. Pianist Daniel Tong gets his summer priorities in order @clarebalding Watching the rugby league and @alicearnold1 says of Mark Minichiello ‘why don’t they just call him Violin?’ BBC presenter Clare Balding makes a valid musical point @Paul_McCreesh I’m blessed. Sitting in the garden.…

Oliver Condy Editor While digging around on a music streaming site, I came across the original orchestral score to Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Composed by Alex North , the score was famously ditched by its director in favour of works by Strausses R and J, among others. Fascinatingly, North’s opening ‘Main Title’ music begins with a similar rumble and brass fanfare as Also Sprach Zarathustra, and ends, too, with an organ chord. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Memoirs of a pear-shaped life, a new play about Satie at this year’s Cheltenham Music Festival, has encouraged me to look beyond the Frenchman’s eccentricities and explore his music further. While I have no plans to tuck into all 20-plus hours of his Vexations just yet, I have been enjoying Anne…

It must be galling for scientists to spend months painstakingly gathering evidence to prove some hypothesis, only for the general public to exclaim: ‘Well, that’s bleedin’ obvious, innit?’ This thought crossed my mind when I read the findings of researchers at the Centre for Performance Science in the Royal College of Music. At a concert in London they took saliva samples before and during the performance from 50 audience members (including yours truly) and a dozen of the professional singers taking part. These samples were tested to detect changes in the levels of the ‘stress’ hormones cortisone and cortisol. The results showed a marked decrease in stress among audience members, whereas there was a temporary increase among performers. This, the researchers say, is a psychoneuroimmunological breakthrough (gosh, I love long…

FOLLOWING THE COMPOSITION of Credo (1968), Pärt reached a creative impasse and underwent a dramatic reorientation of style. The impulse for this was twofold, springing from an inner musical necessity brought about by his encounter with plainsong and other early music, and by his religious awakening. Anything that had no properly audible, as opposed to merely textural, purpose no longer had a place in his work. With plainchant offering him a way to proceed, Pärt wrote reams of technical exercises using just a single line of music. Apart from its innate inner strength, what impressed the composer most about plainchant was its cohesiveness, clarity and flexibility. From working with just a single line of music, Pärt began to investigate using two voices, before discovering the simple two-part homophonic unit –…

Starting out: Born on 17 December 1940 in California, he made his public concert debut age 11 in San Francisco, performing Jean Françaix’s Concertino. Heading abroad: At 18, he moved to London to pursue a piano scholarship with Dame Myra Hess before making his European debut at Wigmore Hall in 1961. Notable partnership: Among his most fêted recordings is his 1978 disc of Bartók, Mozart and Debussy piano duets with Martha Argerich, his former partner with whom he has a daughter, Stéphanie. Multi-tasking: 1984 saw his first concert as a conductor with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He has since conducted many of the world’s leading orchestras.…

Piano 1st prize: Dmitry Masleev (Russia, 27) 2nd: George Li (US, 19) 3rd equal: Lukas Geniuÿas (Lithuania, 24) and Sergey Redkin (Russia, 23) 4th: Lucas Debargue (France, 24) Violin 1st prize: Not awarded 2nd: Yu-chien Tseng (China/Taipei, 20) 3rd equal: Pavel Milyukov (Russia, 31), Alexandra Conunova (Moldova, 26) and Haik Kazazyan (Russia, 32) 4th: Clara-Jumi Kang (Germany, 28) Cello 1st prize: Andrei Ionu¸ Ioni¸a (Romania, 20) 2nd: Alexander Ramm (Russia, 27) 3rd: Alexander Buzlov (Russia, 31) 4th: Pablo Ferrández-Castro (Spain, 24) Voice Joint 1st prize: Yulia Matochkina (Russia, 32) and Aruinbaatar Ganbaatar (Mongolia, 27) 2nd equal: Svetlana Moskalenko (Russia, 28) and Chuanyue Wang (China, 30) 3rd equal: Mane Galoyan (Armenia, 21) and Hansung Yoo (South Korea, 30) 4th equal: Dmitry Grigoriev (Russia, 28) and Antonina Vesenina (Russia, 29)…

THE MAIN REASON THAT many professional musicians went to university is that they have no idea what they want to do. Of course they’re musical – they know that – but their teenage sights are often set on something completely different. Wannabe conductors, on the other hand, go to Cambridge because, apparently, that’s where conductors come from. It has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cambridge is a musical madhouse (as is Oxford). If you want to conduct all the Beethoven symphonies you don’t need anybody’s permission; you just find the best players you can, book a hall or chapel and organise it. As for singers, it’s not really in the college choirs that they start to ferment their professional ambitions. It’s in all those extra-curricular concerts and operas that those wannabe…

Edouard Lalo cycle The focus of the Palazzetto Bru Zane’s autumn festival (17 September – 10 November) is Edouard Lalo, with eight concerts exploring the French composer’s chamber music. Performers include the Hermes Quartet and the Cérès Trio. www.bru-zane.com Benjamin Godard cycle Godard’s ‘Berceuse’ from his opera Jocelyn is probably all that’s remembered by him today. But over nine concerts this spring festival (9 April – 15 May 2016) reveals what he wrote for his favourite instruments, the violin and piano. www.bru-zane.com Palazzetto Bru Zane Concerts are held here throughout the year between festivals, still with a focus on forgotten French Romantics. On 15 January, cellist Silvia Chiesa (below) pays homage to Charles Koechlin. www.bru-zane.com La Fenice Verdi’s…

THE LIFE 1881 George Enescu is born on 19 August in Liveni-Vîrnav, a village in north-eastern Romania. His father is an estate manager, his mother a teacher. 1888 AGED JUST SEVEN, he starts studying at the Vienna Music Conservatory. He lives in the city with his violin teacher, Josef Hellmesberger, the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic. 1895 He moves to Paris to study at the Conservatoire, where his teachers include the composers MASSENET and Fauré, and Ravel is one of his fellow students. 1912 He tours Europe as a conductor and violinist, conducting the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra among others. At home, he founds the Enescu Prize to promote work by Romanian composers. 1927 As well as holding teaching posts at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and Harvard university…

R STRAUSS The complete songs, Vol. 6 With Roger Vignoles (piano) Hyperion CDA 67844 67 mins BBC Music Direct £13.99 ‘As well as showing Watts’s ability to weave around a wide-ranging phrase, apparent in the first song on the disc, “Einerlei”, she shows a wicked penchant for donning joke fangs in the song-cycle Krämerspiegel.’ March 2013 ARNE Artaxerxes Christopher Ainslie, Elizabeth Watts, Caitlin Hulcup, Andrew Staples, Rebecca Bottone, Daniel Norman; Classical Opera Company/Ian Page Linn CKD 358 137:49 mins (2 discs) BBC Music Direct £18.99 ‘At its best, as in the soprano showpiece, “The soldier tir’d” (a favourite of Victorian singers) Artaxerxes is very worthwhile; here that aria is resplendently delivered by Elizabeth Watts.’ March 2011 SCHUBERT Lieder With Roger Vignoles (piano) RCA Red Seal 88697329322 69:30 mins Download only:…

CPE BACH Hamburg Symphonies Ensemble Resonanz/Riccardo Minasi Es-dur ES 2053 65:45 mins BBC Music Direct £14.99 The six ‘Hamburg’ Symphonies were in the vanguard of the CPE Bach revival when Christopher Hogwood and Trevor Pinnock both recorded them over 30 years ago, and they continue to fascinate. Even Sakari Oramo recently released a set with the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra (reviewed February 2015). Ensemble Resonanz’s new addition spotlights a tight-knit ensemble based in the city where the symphonies were composed, commissioned by Baron van Swieten – later Mozart’s ‘Baroque conscience’ in Vienna. Curiously, whereas the diplomat deepened Mozart’s appreciation of (JS) Bachian counterpoint and Handelian decorum, he urged CPE Bach to let rip without ‘considering the difficulties’. CPE didn’t disappoint. The symphonies continually ambush the ear, bristling with startling leaps of…

ALBÉNIZ • GRANADOS Albéniz: Concierto fantástico, Op. 78; Rapsodia española, Op. 70; Granados: Concerto in C minor ‘Patético’ (arr. Mestre) Melani Mestre (piano); BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins Hyperion CDA 67918 76:58 mins BBC Music Direct £13.99 The Spanish pianist and composer Melani Mestre is nothing if not bold, and on this CD he presents a concerto ‘by’ Granados, much of which he has himself written. But first he plays Albéniz’s Concierto fantástico and his Rapsodia española, the latter in a score whose status is also a matter of debate. Albéniz’s concerto is impregnated throughout with the influence of Chopin, sometimes to a point where you’d think it was by him – particularly in the lyrical opening. Mestre’s playing is limpid and convincing, with Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Scottish…

Leonardo Vinci (1690-1730) Vinci entered Naple’s Conservatory in 1708. Such was his talent that within three years he had become one of the Conservatory’s teachers. He made his successful debut as an opera composer in 1719, having his comic opera Lo cecato fauzo staged at the Teatro Fiorentini in Naples. For a while he capitalised on this success, writing comic operas in Neapolitan dialect. Then in 1722 he attempted his first serious opera, Publio Cornelio Scipione, which met with success. He began his celebrated collaboration with the librettist Metastasio in 1726.…

DVORÁK Songs Bernarda Fink (mezzo), Vignoles (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMG 501824 (2004) 68:46 mins BBC Music Direct £10.99 The rich and complex colours of Bernarda Fink’s mezzo well suit the late-Romantic emotional world of Dvorák’s songs, while Roger Vignoles gives thoughtful accompaniments. PERFORMANCE RECORDING KORNGOLD Lieder Henschel (baritone), Deutsch (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMA 1951780 (2002) 75:45 mins BBC Music Direct £10.99 This generous selection of Korngold’s songs testifies to his immense lyric gift and technical skills, fully displayed by Dietrich Henschel and his fine accompanist Helmut Deutsch. PERFORMANCE RECORDING ENGLISH SONG Works by Purcell, Vaughan Williams, Butterworth, Moeran, Ireland etc John Shirley-Quirk (bass-baritone), Viola Tunnard, Eric Parkin (piano) etc Heritage HTGCD 283/4 (1960s) 124 mins BBC Music Direct £14.99 A wide-ranging collection of English song that shows the mastery of…

ALKAN Transcriptions, Vol. 1: Mozart José Raúl López (piano) Toccata TOCC 0240 67:47 mins BBC Music Direct £13.99 In typically enterprising fashion, Toccata Classics has identified a project that’s been crying out to be done, and delivered it with sensible programming. Unlike Liszt’s, Alkan’s complete transcriptions make a manageable project, and his Mozart arrangements fit neatly onto a single CD. So far, so good. Yet this recording sets a low benchmark. The mainstay of the programme is the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K466, a companion to Alkan’s arrangement of the first movement of Beethoven’s C minor Concerto. It likewise features typically Alkanesque cadenzas, although not as audacious as the one he supplied for the Beethoven (which at one point introduces the finale of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in…

Brahms Clarinet Quintet B Harlan (clarinet), M Baillie (violin), M Sharp (cello), J Banks (accordion), J Pissaride (santouri) Zum Roten Igel ZRI www.zrimusic.com Buyer beware! On the strength of its gypsy affinities, Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet is dubiously rewritten with accordion and cimbalom, and seamlessly interleaved with enthusiastically played gypsy and klezmer numbers. (AB) Brahms Vocal Quartets, Vol. 1 Norddeutscher Figuralchor/Jörg Straube; Markus Bellheim (piano) MDG 947 1867-6 www.mdg.de The Op. 103 Zigeunerlieder are the main item here, showing Brahms at his most uninhibited and zestful. Colourful performances, excellent sound. (TB) Busoni Complete clarinet music Davide Bandieri (clarinet), Alessandra Gentile (piano); Quartetto di Roma and various musicians Brilliant Classics 94978 £10.99 Intriguing salon pieces from Busoni’s childhood; and from much later an ornate…

SUN RA ARKESTRA Under the direction of Marshall Allen Live at Babylon, Istanbul Marshall Allen (saxophone, flute) etc In and Out Records IORCDDVD771229 CD 78 mins & DVD 104 mins (2 discs) BBC Music Direct £19.99 The music of the sprawling big band founded by the late Sun Ra still manages to imply that his model of this joyful noise we call jazz – and its potential for development – was and remains the right one and that everyone else has simply got it wrong. This live set from Istanbul is an excellent example, stirring classics from the Arkestra’s repertoire and newer material together and redelivering the band’s unique ability to perform the most avant-garde pieces as if they were folk music (which in the Ra universe they essentially are)…

COMPOSITION IN THE DIGITAL WORLD: Conversations with 21st-Century American Composers Robert Raines Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0-19-935703-1, 386pp (hb) www.oup.com An introduction that tells you it’s now ‘hip’ to be a composer, and refers to jazz as a form of ‘popular’ music doesn’t bode well for a book that claims to have its finger on the pulse of new American composition. But this collection of informal Q&As does, as it says, offer a snapshot of how US concert hall composers – from the well-established such as Steve Reich, to ‘radical innovators’ such as Eric Whitacre, to many less familiar names – are responding to the digital age. Some express their concerns about the decline of the recording industry as music is made available free online. Others express how the writing…

Salome is an opera in one act which Richard Strauss (left) based on Oscar Wilde’s notorious play, after he saw a performance in 1902. Very loosely taken from the biblical account of the execution of John the Baptist (Jokanaan), the play and opera’s story instead creates a lustful fantasy, where Herod’s teenage stepdaughter Salome desires to kiss the severed head of Jokanaan, in return for dancing erotically for Herod. The opera met with controversy. The Catholic church condemned the work and Kaiser Wilhelm II only allowed it to be performed if it included a star of Bethlehem. The Kaiser said of Strauss, ‘I like him otherwise, but with this he will do himself a great deal of harm.’ Strauss was able to build a lavish villa on the proceeds of…

CONTROLLER’S CHOICE Alan Davey , the controller of Radio 3, picks out three great moments to tune into in September WHY MUSIC? WEEKEND London’s Wellcome Collection is a world centre for exhibitions and research into the links between science and the arts. Radio 3 is joining forces with it for the first time, in a weekend that looks at connections between music and human behaviour. With a host of musicians and experts on board – including members of the Aurora Orchestra, The Clerks, pianist James Rhodes and music psychologist Victoria Williamson – Why Music? will explore many aspects of music, from its use as a medicine to its ability to scare, soothe or thrill. Performances include Anna Meredith’s Chorale for MRI scanner and string quartet and Radio 3 presenter Andrew…

YO-YO MA WAS BORN in Paris in 1955. He played for John F Kennedy when he was just seven years old, and studied at the Juilliard School and Harvard University. A world-renowned performer, he has made more than 90 recordings, collaborated with jazz singer Bobby McFerrin, the Dixie Chicks, and founded the Silk Road Project. On 5 September he plays JS Bach’s six solo cello suites at the BBC Proms, and in October releases a new album with pianist Kathryn Stott: Songs from the Arc of Life (Sony). I have been playing the suites for solo cello by JS BACH for 55 years. I recall the first time I sat down to the Prelude from Suite No. 1, aged four, learning two bars a day, day by day, taking it…

All musicians, amateur and professional, know only too well that their best friends are a decent 2B pencil and a top-quality white rubber. Add to that coloured felt-tip pens, crayons and Post-it Notes and you’ve got the full arsenal. Marking up a score with fingerings/bowings/pedallings is the first thing many musicians do before the serious practice can begin; as pianist James Rhodes told me for our fascinating piece starting on p32, good fingering can do 90 per cent of the work for you. From then on, the score becomes a musical notice-board of philosophical ramblings, reminders, quotations, directions for the page-turner and even phone numbers of favourite restaurants. This world of intense musical preparation is usually hidden from us, partly because so many musicians perform without the score, but also…

Horowitz treasure trove When the great virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz toured the US, many of his concerts were recorded. But until now much of the material has been languishing in archives, unheard and unreleased. Sony has recently dug out recordings of 25 of these solo recitals, with 13 different programmes, and is releasing them as the 50-CD box-set Vladimir Horowitz: the unreleased live recordings, 1966-1983 this October. Three works are new to the Horowitz discography: Schumann’s Carnaval Op. 9, Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 No. 10 and Scriabin’s Prelude for the Left Hand Alone, Op. 9 No. 1. The set also includes a recital at the White House and his 1978 Rachmaninov Concerto No. 3, his first performance with orchestra for 25 years. Beyond Jerusalem Hubert Parry might be best known as…

René Jacobs and the RIAS Kammerchor have been in the Teldex Studios, Berlin to record JS Bach’s St John Passion for Harmonia Mundi. Jacobs himself sang as an alto soloist in Sigiswald Kuijken’s recording of the work in 1989; his own soloists include Werner Güra as the Evangelist, and Johannes Weisser as Jesus. Pianist Nelson Freire has also been in the Teldex studio, recording his first Bach recital disc. The final choice has yet to be made, but among the works the Brazilian has recorded are the Toccata in C minor, BWV 911, English Suite in G minor, BWV 808, and Partita No. 4 in D major, BWV 828. Elgar, Debussy and Respighi have been occupying violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong, whose latest CD features sonatas by these…

Completeness has a glamour all its own. Last year the Oxford Lieder Festival won prizes for putting on all of Schubert’s songs. I contributed Schubert’s first song cycle, the Kosegarten settings from 1815. These had languished piecemeal in the Complete Edition until 1997, when the scholar Morten Solvik discovered pencilled numbers on the back of the manuscripts and grouped them together – he surmised that their haphazard published order had resulted from so simple a thing as the Imperial librarian dropping a pile of papers. Performed in the numbered order, they form what’s known as a Liederspiel, a charade sung by several singers. There’s a famous painting of Schubert and his friends performing a simple example, the Serpent tempting Adam and Eve. Schubert sits playing the piano with his left…

Tony King Edinburgh I was lucky enough recently to play in the first UK performance of the Norwegian composer Eivind Groven’s Hjalarljod Overture. It is fresh, arresting, tuneful, exciting and deeply affectionate (it’s also nice and short); I cannot for the life of me understand why it isn’t an established concert hall favourite. There’s an excellent recording by the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra under Eivind Aadland on BIS that has been spending a lot of time on my CD player and iPod. David Kane Maryland, US My recent listening has been very varied. In particular, I love the audacious polytonality of Milhaud’s Saudades do Brasil, played by the pianist Eudóxia de Barros. And then Thomas Adès’s Tevot, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle, is one of the most powerful…

KNITTING When I was studying in Germany, the practice rooms were absolutely freezing. At first I cut off pairs of tights to keep my hands warm, but I thought there must be a better way than that. My mum and my gran knitted, and so I started knitting wrist warmers, and it escalated from there. I enjoy challenges, such as cabling and anything else that looks good, but hate knitting with various colours at once. I’m also a little bit lazy in that I like to knit and read at the same time, so it can’t be too complicated or it gets frustrating. One of the great things about knitting is that it’s easy to take with me when I go on tour. I can knit on the train and,…

Day-trippers flocking to Piazza San Marco, street-sellers brandishing selfie-sticks, musicians playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in concerts round-the-clock: modern-day Venice can seem like a tourist’s playground. But in some ways that has always been its essence. Grand but crumbling, bathed in sunshine but filled with shadowy alleys, beautiful, smelly, packed by day and empty by night, this unique lagoon city has long drawn in visitors – with many composers and musicians among them. And it isn’t just the city of Vivaldi and Monteverdi, it also seduced Fauré, Hahn, Gounod, Gustave Charpentier and Mendelssohn. Wagner died in Venice; years later Wolf-Ferrari, Diaghilev and Stravinsky were buried here. It’s a city filled with illustrious ghosts, whose traces can still be found here today. This rich history of 19th-century visitors explains in part why…

The history of music is littered with countless composers that were highly praised by their contemporaries, but nowadays remain unfairly neglected and undervalued. Such a fate has certainly befallen the Romanian George Enescu, except in his native country where he is still very much regarded as a cultural icon. Enescu’s neglect elsewhere, however, is particularly puzzling given the spectacular accolades that were bestowed upon him by some of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. As far as cellist Pablo Casals was concerned, Enescu was unequivocally ‘the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart’. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who spent several years studying with him, echoed this estimation: ‘Enescu was an extraordinary human being, the greatest musician and the most formative influence I have truly experienced.’ Enescu’s talents as a musician were…

Complete Violin Music Remus Azoitei (violin), Eduard Stan (piano) Hanssler HAEN 98035 £16.99 Finely judged performances display Enescu’s brilliance as a violinist-composer. Oedipe Barbara Hendricks, José Van Dam etc; Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra/ Lawrence Foster EMI 948 2752 £15.99 José van Dam as the title role and Barbara Hendricks as Antigone excel in Enescu’s only opera. Symphony No. 3 Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra/Hannu Lintu Ondine ODE11972 £13.99 Enescu’s most colourful symphony is heard in a recording of power and flair. Piano Quartets Schubert Ensemble Chandos CHAN 10672 £13.99 Folky in parts, rhapsodic in others, Enescu’s pianos quartets are a discovery well worth making.…

Recording of the Month Soprano Elizabeth Watts gets to the heart of Mozart in a sparkling recording of arias and overtures, performed with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Christian Baldini, p56 Minimalist milestones This year marks the 80th birthday of two hugely influential composers, entirely different from one another, but both associated with minimalism and both still writing. Working halfway around the globe from each other, one in sunshine and one in snow, Terry Riley and Arvo Pärt spring from different worlds – that much can be heard in their music. The Californian-born Terry Riley kickstarted American minimalism with his 1964 In C; turn to p76 for reviews of new Riley discs from the Kronos Quartet and piano duo Zofo. The Estonian Arvo Pärt developed a bells-inspired style all…

An overture and aria CD is a simple but clever idea. How did it come about? That was all Christian Baldini and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. It was already a project before I was on board. But I wanted to record arias that I had done the full roles of before, so those were the top priorities, and then there were things that were just wonderful arias, like Servilia’s ‘Per pietà’ from La clemenza di Tito. The overtures are small portraits of the entire operas; they are like lockets containing miniatures of Mozart. Did he ever write a duffer? I’m not sure. He’s not like Beethoven in that sense, though they are both gods. When I first heard the Eroica I went crazy about Beethoven’s symphonies. Sadly songs weren’t his…

HANDEL DVD Rinaldo Antonio Giovannini, Gesche Geier, Marie Friederike Schöder, Florian Götz, Yosemeh Adjei, Owen Willetts, Cornelius Uhle; Lautten Compagney Berlin/Wolfgang Katschner; dir. Eugenio Monti Colla (Ludwigsburg, 2014) Arthaus 102207 DVD: 147 mins; plus CD (2 discs): 130 mins BBC Music Direct £34.99 This production of Handel’s first London opera, set at the time of the First Crusade, comes from the festival at Ludwigsburg, where it was performed in May 2014. It’s a most unusual show in that while the music is delivered by live singers and an orchestra, both of them placed in a pit, what we see on stage is enacted entirely by puppets. These are not small puppets of the Punch and Judy variety, however, but created on a life-size scale. It’s a co-production between the theatrical…

Václav Tomásek (1774-1850) A self-taught pianist, Tomásek was Prague’s leading teacher not only of that instrument, but also of music theory and composition. His pupils included the future music critic and champion of Brahms, Eduard Hanslick. Tomásek was one of 51 composers approached by the publisher Anton Diabelli to write a variation on a waltz theme (the theme which provoked Beethoven into composing one of his greatest works). However it was his song writing and subsequent association with Goethe which secured his greatest fame.…

Terry Riley (b1935) Riley is widely credited as the founder of Minimalism in music. In the 1950s he was experimenting with tape loops. His earliest masterwork, In C (1964), works through the use of melodic cells, initiated by the musicians at a time of their choice and repeated a random number of times. Riley’s two greatest influences are Indian classical music, which he imbibed as a student of the Indian classical singer Pandit Pran Nath, and jazz, himself citing John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, and Gil Evans as being musicians he particularly admires.…

RACHMANINOV Piano works, Vol. 2: 13 Preludes, Op. 32; Variations on a Theme of Chopin, Op. 22; Morçeaux de fantaisie, Op. 3; 10 Preludes, Op. 23 Artur Pizarro (piano) Odradek ODRCD 316 133:48 mins (2 discs) BBC Music Direct £19.99 It’s unusual to glean so many echoes of Debussy while listening to Rachmaninov. Yet this is exactly what Artur Pizarro conjures up in this, the second volume of his survey of the Russian composer’s piano music. Even the Op. 3 set of Cinq morçeaux de fantaisie bears witness to such an unexpected kinship. Take, for example, the Elegie, a piece that to all intents and purposes follows very much in the footsteps of Tchaikovsky. Here, however, Pizarro bathes its introverted Slavic melancholy in a kind of impressionist haze through his…

SZYMANOWSKI’S KING ROGER: The opera and its origins Alistair Wightman Toccata Press ISBN 978-0-907689-38-6, 172pp (hb) www.toccatapress.com Published to coincide with Covent Garden’s recent first production of King Roger, this welcome study of Szymanowski’s only full-length opera – if so compact a three-act work can be considered ‘full-length’ – would have been timely in any recent season. An early 20th-century opera that has long held a place in the affections of connoisseurs rather than on stage, King Roger has lately received quite a surge in productions around the world. Alistair Wightman has published extensively on Szymanowski and is also author of the only English-language monograph on Karlowicz. Whether he is justified in his generally unfavourable skimming over of these recent stagings in his book’s concluding performance history survey boils down…