Innholdsfortegnelse for 1-Oct 2015 i BBC Music Magazine

ON AIR Ten plus ten Following the success of the BBC’s Ten Pieces scheme in bringing classical music to the UK’s primary schools, now it’s the turn of secondary pupils. Ten specially chosen works, from Bach to Vaughan Williams, have been recorded for a film by the BBC Philharmonic, and Radio 3 is exploring each one on Breakfast over two weeks. See p110 ONLINE Happy clappers What’s the best way to improve your rhythmic skills? Trying to master Steve Reich’s 1972 Clapping Music is as good as any. We’ve been doing just that with a newly launched app that invites users to, quite simply, tap out a rhythm in sync with one shown and heard on screen. Easy peasy? Not a bit of it, in fact… and it’s horribly addictive.…

NEGLECTED NORTH I was glad to see your mention of Alex North’s rejected score for Kubrick’s 2001 (Music to my Ears, August), and its occasional resemblance to the final one. There’s a good reason for this. Directors and editors often prepare early cuts of sequences or entire films to existing music tracks, to define pace, rhythm and feeling. When the composer comes to write the actual score he often follows this to some extent. This may, for example, explain why the first Star Wars theme recalls Holst’s ‘Mars’. It certainly was done with 2001, in several versions. Arthur C Clarke told me that when he first saw the famous Star Gate sequence it was accompanied by the opening bars of Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antarctica, rather than Ligeti’s Atmosphères – a…

Chart for week ending 30 July 2015 1 Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos 1-5 Leif Ove Andsnes (piano, director); Mahler CO Sony Classical 88843058872 Following his performances at the BBC Proms, Andsnes’s complete Beethoven races to the top 2 Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 Leif Ove Andsnes (piano, director); Mahler CO Sony Classical 88843058862 Andsnes’s individual Beethoven discs are also proving popular, notably the ‘Emperor’ Concerto 3 American Polyphony Polyphony/Stephen Layton Hyperion CDA 67929 Choral delights from across the Pond, as Polyphony’s American disc remains a favourite 4 Todd Alice’s adventures in Wonderland Opera Holland Park Signum Classics SIGCD420 Will Todd’s Lewis Carroll-inspired opera has proved a huge success, both on stage and on disc 5 Sibelius Belshazzar’s Feast Turku Philharmonic prchestra/Leif Segerstam…

ANNA TILBROOK pianist At university, I wrote my dissertation on Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony. It has always hit me how much Tchaikovsky identified with the character of Byron – I find it overwhelming how much of his own life story he put into it. I listened to every recording, as it’s interesting to see how different conductors interpret it, and fell in love with the Oslo Philharmonic’s recording under Mariss Jansons. I have listened to it ever since. I adore John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists’ recording of Haydn’s The Seasons, particularly because of the soloists Barbara Bonney and Anthony Rolfe Johnson. I grew up listening to both of these singers and love their voices – they are probably the reason why I got into Lieder. The work…

BOSTON EXTENSION Now that the players of the Berlin Philharmonic have confirmed that he will definitely not be joining them in the foreseeable future, conductor Andris Nelsons has committed his future to the Boston Symphony Orchestra for at least seven more years. The Latvian, whose first year in New England has been a great success, has signed a new contract keeping him there until 2022. MANCHESTER FAN Also staying put is Gábor Takács-Nagy. Having taking up the position of principal conductor of the Manchester Camerata in 2011, the former violinist has decided he rather likes it there. The Hungarian’s new contract with the chamber orchestra runs until 2018, giving him plenty of opportunity to watch his beloved Manchester United in the meantime. PIPES GALORE As this issue goes to press,…

Brahms Symphonies Gewandhaus Orchestra Decca 478 7471 £22.99 Vivid performances that crown Chailly as one of the finest Brahmsians – this recording won the Orchestral prize at last year’s BBC Music Magazine Awards. Brahms Piano Concertos Nelson Freire (piano), Gewandhaus Orchestra Decca 475 7637 £22.99 Lyrical and beautifully paced, pianist Freire’s performances are breathtaking, as is the orchestral playing. Bach Christmas Oratorio Gewandhaus Orchestra and Dresdner Kammerchor Decca 478 2271 £22.99 Perhaps not a choice for fans of period performances, but this Christmas Oratorio fizzes and crackles. Rossini La Cenerentola Cecilia Bartoli, William Matteuzzi and more; Chorus & Orchestra of Teatro Comunale di Bologna Decca 436 9022 £22.99 A recording from the early 1990s that stands the test of…

ACADEMY OF ST MARTIN IN THE FIELDS Phenomenal artists and thrilling repertoire form the backbone of a superb London season from one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras Celebrated the world over for the brilliance of their performances both on disc and on stage, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and their Music Director Joshua Bell bring the highlights of a bustling 2015/16 touring schedule to London. Visiting the Barbican, Cadogan Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields and Kings Place, masterpieces such as Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, Mozart’s Requiem and Brahms’s Double Concerto sit alongside new works awaiting discovery, including a long-lost arrangement from the depths of the Britten archives and the world premiere of John Woolrich’s new double concerto, To the Silver Bow. SEASON HIGHLIGHTS (SEE MORE AT WWW.ASMF.ORG) 13 DEC…

Many commentators through the ages have talked about the enduring connection between mathematics and music. Gottfried Leibniz, one of the inventors of the calculus, famously declared that ‘music is the sensation of counting without being aware that you are counting’. Of course, numbers are important both to the idea of rhythm and pitch, the ingredients of music. But this is just the first layer of a much deeper relationship between the two disciplines. Whenever I try to explain my belief about how much these two worlds share in common I always experience a certain amount of hostility. Music is a warm place, full of emotions. Mathematics is a cold domain, ruled over by steely logic. But I think both these characterisations fall short of what it means to create both…

One warm summer afternoon, in an old, quiet neighbourhood of Ramallah in the West Bank, a seven-year-old girl followed the sound of a lone stringed instrument drifting through an open doorway. The girl, Alá Shalalda, felt as though something was tugging at her, encouraging her toward the music. She walked through the door and into a broad, sunny courtyard, to see a young man sitting on a stone bench, playing the viola. Alá had seen the man before. A year earlier, when the courtyard was still mostly rubble and trash, she and her big sister Rasha would play house amid the ruins, arranging the items of an ordinary, imagined life. One day the man approached the sisters. ‘My name is Ramzi,’ he said, as a group of foreigners stood behind…

Carl Nielsen Nielsen may be Denmark’s most internationally recognised composer, but his work still deserves to be heard more widely. That has never been a problem in Copenhagen, where Nielsen’s spirit has lived on since his death there in 1931 and where the six magnificent symphonies – as important a part of the literature as those by any other 20th-century symphonist – have always formed a cornerstone of concert life. But he was a multifaceted figure, whose three concertos (for flute, clarinet and violin), chamber music, choral works and two operas also speak with a mixture of dark despair and manic elation.…

Pungency Brass and woodwind instruments had been used strikingly before Mahler, particularly by Berlioz. Mahler, however, brought a hypersensitive appreciation of timbre to the table, using woodwind in particular to voice screams and yelps of existential disquietude, and searing flashes of expressionistic colour. Berg (pictured) and Schoenberg were listening, and learning. Wildlife Mahler had an intense affinity with nature and its creatures, and repeatedly mimics animal sounds in his symphonies. Cowbells tinkling in an Alpine pasture proffer a moment of tranquillity in the maelstrom of the Sixth Symphony, cuckoos and nightingales chirrup in the panoramic Third. Strings Mahler takes the string section of the conventional symphony orchestra, and stretches it vertically. Violins soar keeningly to their highest register, basses plummet to a murky underworld. Acres of emptiness open in the…

Michael Church The Independent Michael has been arts and literary editor on various newspapers and is now music and opera critic of The Independent . He is also an ethnomusicologist, with three CDs of his field recordings released by Topic Records; Boydell and Brewer has just published his book The Other Classical Musics: Fifteen Great Traditions . 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 Christopher Cook broadcaster, critic Martin Cotton radio and recording producer Christopher Dingle Professor of Music, Birmingham Conservatoire Misha Donat producer, writer Jessica Duchen…

BIZET Symphony in C; L’Arlésienne Orchestre National de la Radiodiffusion Française; RPO/Thomas Beecham Warner 2435672312 (1957) 65 mins BBC Music Direct £9.99 Classic Beecham accounts reissued in improved sound. The French forces are a touch wayward in the Symphony, but the RPO’s L’Arlésienne suites are magical. PERFORMANCE RECORDING MILHAUD La création du monde; Saudades do Brasil*; Le bœuf sur le toit Orchestre National de France/Bernstein; *The Concert Arts Orchestra/Milhaud Warner 9463458082 (1978) 67:01 mins BBC Music Direct £9.99 Bernstein clearly has fun in Le boeuf sur le toit and the jazzy La création du monde. Milhaud’s complete recording of Saudades do Brasil make a nice bonus. PERFORMANCE RECORDING RAVEL Le tombeau de Couperin; Ma mère l’oye; Valses nobles et sentimentales, etc Boston Symphony/Seiji Ozawa PentaTone PTC 5186 204 (hybrid CD/…

BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto; Romances Christian Tetzlaff (violin); Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich/David Zinman Brilliant 94857 (2005) 55:46 mins BBC Music Direct £8.99 This account emphasises what Christian Tetzlaff considers the military side of Beethoven’s lyrical Concerto, abetted by the abrasive timpani and aggressive tutti under David Zinman. PERFORMANCE RECORDING MOZART Piano Concertos Nos 10, 19 & 20 Martha Argerich, Alexandre Rabinovitch (piano); Various orchs Warner 2564613134 (1999) 79:31 mins BBC Music Direct £9.99 The great Martha Argerich over-projects the D minor Concerto, making Mozart sound like Liszt. Rabinovitch is good in No. 19, K459 and the two-piano concerto thrives. PERFORMANCE RECORDING MOZART Clarinet Concerto; Sinfonia Concertante Sabine Meyer (basset clarinet), Diethelm Jonas (oboe), Bruno Schneider (horn), Sergio Azzolini (bassoon); Staatskapelle Dresden/Hans Vonk Warner 2435668972 (1990) 56:15 mins BBC Music Direct £9.99 A…

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) For all his daunting reputation as the modernist founder of the Second Viennese School, Arnold Schoenberg composed several luscious late-Romantic works early in his career, including Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) for string sextet, and the sumptiously scored Gurrelieder . His break away from tonality began with the Second String Quartet of 1908, whose vocal part – a first for the genre – includes the lines ‘I feel air from another planet’. By 1925 and his Piano Suite Op. 25, Schoenberg had come up with his 12-tone method.…

JS BACH Cello Suites Philip Higham (cello) Delphian DCD 34150 130:37 mins (2 discs) BBC Music Direct £24.99 Young Scottish cellist Philip Higham made an audacious recording debut with the solo Britten suites, a risk that paid off in performances of remarkable maturity and finesse. To follow that with the six solo Bach suites is yet more daring. Higham explains in the sleeve note that he wanted to record them now before age burdens him with the expectation of a ‘definitive’ reading. So here’s a snapshot of a highly gifted musician in the midst of an exploratory process. The first three suites come off best: Bourrées, Menuets and Gigues are nimble, articulate and glinting with judicious ornament, tempos are unselfconsciously vivacious, rarely fast. He’s gone back to Anna Magdalena’s copy,…

Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos 4 & 5 Hannes Minnaar (piano); Netherlands SO/Jan Willem de Vriend Challenge Classics CC72672 £15.99 Characterful accounts of Beethoven’s final two piano concertos from a young Dutch pianist already making an impressive mark. His lively grace is matched by the sensitive Netherlands musicians and De Vriend. (RF) Brahms Quartets Op. 51 Nos 1 & 2 Cuarteto Quiroga Cobra Records COBRA 0048 £15.99 Brahms discarded over 20 quartets before publishing Op. 51 and Cuarteto Quiroga repay the fastidiousness with lyrical, finely-chiselled readings, though some of the dramatic urgency is a touch contained. (PR) Debussy Préludes Book I; Estampes; Arabesque No. 1 etc Michael Lewin (piano) Dorian Sono Luminus DSL-92190 £20.99 Accomplished, sturdy and sensitive Debussy, perhaps less twinkling, perfumed and magical…

1 DEBUSSY’S PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE Royal College of Music, from 1 October Tel: +44 (0)20 3761 7069 Web: www.englishtouringopera.org.uk ‘Vive la France’ could be the motto for English Touring Opera’s autumn season which features Massenet’s Werther and Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann alongside the UK premiere of Annelies Van Parys’s 2011 reduction of Debussy’s seminal 1902 symbolist masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande. Jonathan Berman conducts James Conway’s new production. 2 ROYAL LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 1 & 4 October Tel: +44 (0)151 709 3789 Web: www.liverpoolphil.com Still revelling in its 175th birthday celebrations, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic isn’t neglectful of other anniversaries, and conductor Vasily Petrenko (below) salutes the centenary of Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony at the climax of a programme that also features mezzo…

Charles Searson Freelance music journalist ‘Riccardo Chailly was one of my favourite interviewees of all time. Genial and charming, from the moment he spoke he offered profound insights into repertoire and performance that most musicians would have had to rehearse.’ Page 26 Sandy Tolan Journalist and author  ‘My article here, and my book Children of the Stone, tell the remarkable story of Ramzi Aburedwan, stone-throwing child of the first Palestinian intifada, and how his music schools help bring healing for Palestinian children.’ Page 54 John Evans Freelance music journalist ‘Great artists talk about passion and commitment, but good music teachers practise it every day in our schools. Researching our music education report, I was struck by their dedication. Let’s not take them for granted!’ Page 58 VISIT CLASSICAL-MUSIC.COM…

LEARNING WITH LLYR David Owen Norris’s infectiously enthusiastic monthly Notes from the piano stool make compulsive reading, and his own recording of Schubert’s Kosegarten Liederspiel is among my treasured possessions. His reference in September to Llyr Williams’s current Beethoven sonata series at Wigmore Hall reminds me of another of this fine young pianist’s ‘collections’, organised when he was a junior fellow at the Royal Academy of Music. He put on three concerts, each of which linked one of Schubert’s major song cycles with one of the three late piano sonatas. Alongside his playing, he also contributed a set of highly professional programme notes. The concerts filled the Academy’s Duke’s Hall, and one wonders why – so far as I am aware – the concept has not been rendered commercially. Jack…

Alpesh Chauhan Conductor When illness prevented Andris Nelsons, outgoing chief conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, from conducting concerts in Birmingham and Oxford in June, his protégé Alpesh Chauhan was waiting to seize his moment. And seize it he did. ‘Chauhan has absorbed much from Nelsons,’ wrote the Birmingham Post about the 25-year-old conductor’s Schubert, Dvo›ák and Strauss, ‘notably his fluid and expressive beat, excellent eye contact with the players and an almost balletic body-language…’ ‘Andris has been fantastic for me,’ says Chauhan, whose contract as assistant conductor at the CBSO has just been extended into a second year. ‘He has so many ideas. He’s always thinking new things and is never set in his views – I’ve learnt so much just from sitting and watching him in…

THIS MONTH MALCOLM MARTINEAU One of the world’s leading piano accompanists, Malcolm Martineau has worked with countless great singers. The fifth volume of his complete Poulenc song series for Signum Classics is out now, and the first instalment of his Fauré song series, also for Signum, is out in November. My finest moment Schubert Winterreise D911 Florian Boesch (baritone), Malcolm Martineau (piano) Onyx ONYX4077 (2011) Winterreise is always the pinnacle of the Lieder repertoire and of collaboration between singer and pianist. Florian and I have done the piece many times in public and this was one of those occasions when the live performance seemed to come into the recording studio – the music really does leap off the disc as if you’re in concert. I had a fantastic…

At the very end of last year, the classical music world was saddened to learn of the death of Michael Kennedy (left), one of the most respected music critics of his era and a peerless expert on English music. Ten months later, many of Britain’s finest musicians will be paying their respects at a concert organised in his memory at the Concert Hall of the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM). Leading the way on 5 October will be conductors Sir Mark Elder and Sir Andrew Davis, and the concert will include Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music – Kennedy was a friend of the composer. Proceeds will go to a new Michael Kennedy Memorial Fund set up to support RNCM students. For tickets, costing £20 each, call +44 (0)161 907…

@alexdariescu So far this week I have spilt a whole mug of coffee on our cream carpet, a glass of water on my laptop & another cuppa on the train #tired If any of you has pianist Alexandra Dariescu (left) round for a cup of tea, put all your valuables on a high shelf… @AngelJoyBlue Good Morning from this gorgeous place! Oh England, you just get better and better. #blessed #nature #peace #serenity We’re just guessing here, but we suspect that soprano Angel Blue rather likes England @PeterHDonohoe Hey diddly dee, a pianist’s life for me. Oh, no – it was fantasy. Turns out I am spending the day putting chairs out & filling forms in Pianist Peter Donohoe enjoys the perks of the job @kirstyjhopkins In a hotel room…

Oliver Condy Editor During a visit to Estonia’s Pärnu Music Festival in July I had the rare chance to hear the Estonian composer Eduard Tubin’s First Violin Concerto performed by soloist Nicolas Dautricourt with the festival’s orchestra under Paavo Järvi. Beautifully scored for both orchestra and violin, Tubin’s is an evocative work, blending Sibelian influences and folk idioms, all topped off with a Korngoldesque Hollywood lustre. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Thomas Quasthoff’s recording of ‘Mache dich mein Herze rein’ from Bach’s St Matthew Passion has long been one of my ‘desert island’ moments, so it was a privilege to see the erstwhile bass-baritone make his conducting debut in the whole work at the Verbier Festival. Doing the ‘Mache dich’ honours was Christopher Maltman, whose graceful and uplifting rendition must have…

Every music-lover needs a favourite bassoon moment. Mine comes a few bars from the end of the Dona nobis pacem in Haydn’s glorious Harmoniemesse. Strings, trumpets and choir are going full pelt towards one of Haydn’s most exuberant endings – but the poor old bassoons, as usual, are confined to parp-parp-parping along in dutiful unison with the cellos. Suddenly, however, Haydn clears away the texture and writes eight bars of virtuosic, scurrying quavers for solo bassoon, which the upper woodwind are made to accompany in minim chords. To me it seems like the musical equivalent of Saturnalia, the Roman midwinter feast when roles were reversed and masters had to serve dinner to their servants. Like the stratospheric solo that Stravinsky generously (!) gave the bassoon at the opening of The…

BELLS AND CHANTS infuse Rachmaninov’s orchestral works even more than they do his piano concertos. The idea of chaste, stepwise movement in Russian Orthodox ‘znammeny’ (‘sign’) chant launches the motto-themes of all three symphonies, and in the earliest of these major works, the Symphony No. 1, joins with the Latin chant for the dead, the Dies Irae. This was to be a thumbprint of lugubrious fate throughout Rachmaninov’s works; it also plays a major part above the haunting, lopsided rhythms of his tone poem based on Arnold Böcklin’s creepy painting The Isle of the Dead and the final battle of his orchestral swansong, the Symphonic Dances of 1940. But death as the end does not triumph here; above the syncopated dancing which follows the climactic treatment of the Dies Irae,…

Peter Gelb is devoted to opera, and scours the world for the singers and directors he thinks will grace the stage at the Metropolitan Opera. He lives for the music. But he’s as much a New York street fighter as an aesthete. ‘The board know that when it comes to artistic decision-making, I just won’t listen to them.’ Approaching his tenth season as general manager of the Met, his elbows are as sharp as ever. Whether he’s talking about the donors that keep the place afloat, the staging and the repertoire, the finances – a tough deal with the unions will save the Met $90m in the next three years – he often sounds like a football manager who’s only as good as his last game: ‘Frankly, I wouldn’t be…

14 Add up the letters of the name BACH according to their position in the alphabet, and you get 14 (2+1+3+8). The numerically minded Bach appeared to enjoy incorporating the number in his music, as in the 14 fugues of the Art of Fugue. 40 Composing in the reign of Elizabeth (right), Tallis was also fixated by numbers. It is no coincidence that in his Spem in Alium, written for 40 parts, those voices all sing together for the first time on the 40th semibreve. Might the work have been written for the Queen’s 40th birthday? 23 This was the ‘pet’ number of Alban Berg (1885-1935). While it’s not sure why he chose 23 in particular, he used it to structure works such as his Lyric Suite and Violin Concerto.…

TO GET A SENSE Of what a political football music education has become, BBC Music Magazine asked the main political parties to state their pre-election commitments to music education. Their answers reveal that whoever is in charge, music will never have an easy ride. Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party did not respond to our requests. Conservative Party ‘A future Conservative government will continue to invest in music education. Britain is admired around the world for its arts and culture – it’s a reputation we’re proud of and we know its future lies with our young people. But we will only be able to fund arts education if we have a strong economy, and only the Conservatives have a long-term plan to build a stronger, healthier economy.’ Labour Party…

Royal Danish Opera Of several new stagings this season, one of the most keenly watched will be Weber’s Der Freischütz , a co-production with Covent Garden that can be seen here first (7 November – 16 December). Royal Opera House director Kasper Holten returns to his old house to take the reins. www.kglteater.dk Danish String Quartet The youthful DSQ has rapidly established itself as one of the outstanding quartets of today, and their Nielsen cycle on CD (Dacapo) is essential listening. Hear them live at home in the DSQ Festival 2015 at Copenhagen’s Bygningskulturens Hus (22-24 October). www.danishquartet.com Danish National Symphony Orchestra The orchestral season at DR Koncerthuset is rich and interesting, and highlights include Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting Nielsen’s Sixth (22 and…

THE LIFE 1860 Mahler is born on 7 July in the Bohemian town of KALISCHT and grows up in nearby Iglau. His father, an innkeeper and distillery owner, supports his musical interests. 1875 Aged 15, he is accepted into the Vienna Conservatory, studying with pianist Julius Epstein and attending lectures by Bruckner. 1889 Forging his career as a conductor and composer in Prague, Leipzig and Budapest, on 20 November he conducts the premiere of his First Symphony in Budapest’s Vigadó Concert Hall. 1897 After six years in Hamburg, his conversion from Judaism to Roman Catholicism clears the way for him to become director at the Vienna Court Opera. 1902 Marrying ALMA SCHINDLER , 20 years his junior and the stepdaughter of painter Carl Moll, he insists she gives up her…

Mendelssohn Calm sea and prosperous voyage Don’t be misled by the title. In 1828, the year of the premiere of this nautical concert overture’s premiere, a calm sea was by no means a good thing – with most boats still powered by sail rather than steam, it essentially meant going nowhere fast. Hence the in-the-doldrums mood that marks the start of a work based on two eponymous Goethe poems. After a couple of minutes, though, we hear a bird call in the flute, and things start to perk up – the prosperous voyage is on its way. What follows is a breezy and uplifting Mendelssohnian journey, as we are borne along by chattering strings, exuberant brass fanfares, rolling timpani and sparkling woodwind. Recommended recording: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/ Edward…

WAGNER Parsifal Soloists; Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/Marek Janowski Pentatone PTC 5186 401 226:20 mins www.prestoclassical.co.uk ‘The various choruses are excellent, and the Berlin Radio Symphony manages to get all the subtle details of the score across in an unusually rapid account. The recorded sound is sensational.’ June 2012 BRUCKNER Symphony No. 2 (1877 version) Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/ Marek Janowski Pentatone PTC 5186 448 54:55 mins www.prestoclassical.co.uk ‘This is very persuasive Bruckner, well paced, warmed toned without heaviness, Romantically atmospheric and with stranger inspirations subtly highlighted.’ November 2013 BARTÓK Violin Concertos Nos 1 & 2 Arabella Steinbacher (violin); Orchestre de la Suisse Romande/Marek Janowski Pentatone PTC 5186 350 61:12 mins www.prestoclassical.co.uk ‘Janowski sets an ideal tempo, and Steinbacher’s entry after the…

JS BACH Concertos for One, Two and Three Violins: BWV 1041-43, 1063 & 1064R Carla Moore, Rob Diggins, Jolianne von Einem (violin); Portland Baroque Orchestra/Monica Huggett (violin) Portland Baroque Orchestra PB 501 75:06 mins www.pbo.org Bach’s D minor Double Violin Concerto and the concertos in E and A minor for solo violin make for pretty standard couplings on disc, but Monica Huggett’s Portlanders frame them imaginatively between two supersized specimens for three violins. The concluding D major, BWV 1064R, is a reconstruction derived from the Concerto for Three Harpsichords in C (itself probably a transcription of a triple violin concerto). BWV 1063, meanwhile, may have started life as a work for three contrasting concertante instruments – following the example of Bach’s contemporary Heinichen, Christopher Hogwood realised a version…

CAMPRA Tancrède Benoït Arnould, Isabelle Druet, Chantal Santon, Alain Buet, Éric Martin-Bonnet, Erwin Aros, Anne-Marie Beaudette, Marie Favier; Les Chantres du centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles; Orchestre les Temps Présents/ Olivier Schneebeli Alpha 958 166:46 mins (3 discs) BBC Music Direct £32.99 André Campra (1660-1774) produced some of the most colourful music in French opera in the generation after Lully’s death. A provincial from Provence, he first made his name in Paris as a church musician, but the success of his opera-ballet L’Europe galante drew him inexorably to the theatre. His finest lyric tragedy was Tancrède, premiered in 1702; presented with eye-catching sets, it was a great success and often revived, including a performance at Versailles in 1748 with none other than Madame de Pompadour as Herminie. The story…

BARTÓK Unaccompanied Partsongs, Duos and Trios; Three Village Scenes Ensemble of Soloists from the Welsh College of Music and Drama/Massocchi Quartz QTZ 2110 (1981) 40:23 mins BBC Music Direct £13.99› Archival recordings, sung in English and intended to promote Bartók’s choral music at a period when it wasn’t widely appreciated in the UK. Mainly of historical interest. PERFORMANCE RECORDING SEIBER Three Fragments; Ulysses, etc. Alexander Young (tenor), Peter Pears (narrator); BBC Chorus; LSO/David Atherton; Dorian Singers; Melos Ensemble/Mátyás Seiber Lyrita SRCD.348 (1960) 75:31 mins BBC Music Direct £15.99 Joyce’s writings are difficult to set, possibly because there’s so much music in them already. But Seiber shows it’s possible in these distinctive pieces, well-executed and confidently performed. PERFORMANCE RECORDING STRAVINSKY Les noces; Messe; Cantata Carolyn Sampson, Susan Parry, Vsevolod Grivnov, Jan…

John McLeod (b1934) Born in Aberdeen, McLeod initially studied clarinet at London’s Royal Academy of Music with Jack Brymer, Reginald Kell and Gervase de Peyer. Changing his focus to composition, he then studied under Sir Lennox Berkeley. He also came under the influence of Polish composer Witold Lutos›awski. Since 1970 he has been living in Edinburgh. As an Ida Carroll Research Fellow at the Royal Northern College of Music, he specialised in the works of Messiaen, Boulez and Birtwistle, all of them important influences in his own prolific output.…

BACH2 THE FUTURE Works by JS Bach, Frances-Hoad, Ysaÿe, Crosse, Biber, Hellawell and Scott Fenella Humphreys (violin) Champs Hill Records CHRCD 102 79:16 mins BBC Music Direct £13.99 A tricksy title, but this is an interesting, diverse programme. It includes three of the six pieces that Fenella Humphreys has commissioned to accompany the Bach solo sonatas and partitas. Bach himself comes first with the Partita No. 3 in E and, although I was not initially convinced by the resonant acoustic, it certainly enhances Humphreys’s rich and varied tone. She shapes the music with skill, and sometimes with humour: I especially enjoyed the almost throwaway ending to the Gavotte en Rondeau, and there is always space for the music in the rhythmic timing and lift to the phrasing. Frances-Hoad’s Suite No.…

KARIN KROG • STEVE KUHN Break of Day Steve Kuhn (piano), Karin Krog (vocal) etc Meantime Records MR22 56 mins BBC Music Direct £14.99 Alongside not many other singers (Norma Winstone comes to mind), Karin Krog’s repertoire ranges from the most whiskery of standards to the sharp end of modernity. She excels at both by treating the latter as commonplace and the former as if they were freshly-minted creations, a process rarely better exemplified than here. Many of these 14 tracks are by the likes of Kern, Hammerstein, Mercer and Porter, but Krog makes them her own, her distinctive voice neither belting nor conventionally intimate but instead hovering around the kind of expressive studio-friendly near-sprechstimme that reminds me more of Sinatra than anyone else. Kuhn is the perfect accompanist for…

BIZET Hugh Macdonald Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0-19-978156-0 300pp www.oup.com One of Professor Hugh Macdonald’s declared aims is ‘to set the composer in the context of French music of the Second Empire’, and this splendid biography fully proves that there is no one better qualified for the task. Georges Bizet, as much as any composer, can only really be understood in the context of the personalities and the mores that surrounded him, not least because he considered himself to be by nature a composer of operas, with all the politicking that entailed. And not just Carmen. Macdonald is keen also to promote other stage works, notably Ivan IV and La jolie fille de Perth, in both cases making compelling arguments for good editions and professional performances. His patent enthusiasm sent…

Britten composed this opera, based on Henry James’s ghost story The Turn of the Screw (1898), after a suggestion by Myfanwy Piper, the wife of stage designer John Piper. She wrote the libretto for him and the premiere took place at the 1954 Venice Biennale. It is written in two acts with a chamber orchestra of 13 players. The opera, like the book, centres around a Governess, who takes up a position at a creepy country house where two children, Miles and Flora, are haunted by two ghosts. One of these is her predecessor, Mrs Jessel, and the other is a former valet, Peter Quint. In the book the ghosts don’t speak but in the opera they do, vying for the attention of their victims. Britten uses celesta and harp…

JOHN LAHR New Yorker critic and biographer BERNSTEIN Candide – Overture London Symphony Orchestra/Bernstein ‘In Bernstein you hear the joy of America and also the oppression. He brings together the combination of high art and the wonderful vulgarity – I use that as a positive word – of popular entertainment. Broadway has defined 20th-century fame: to have your name in lights is not from cinema, it’s from 42nd Street. Bernstein, the monumentally egotistical and complex man, brings all that together in his music. These musicals really did express America at the height of its dynamism.’ JULES STYNE ‘Catch our Act at the Met’ from the musical review ‘Two on the Aisle’ Bert Lahr & Dolores Gray (vocals) ‘My family is really grateful for my father’s role [as the…

STANIS¬AW SKROWACZEWSKI was born in Lvov in 1923. A pianist, composer and conductor, he studied with Nadia Boulanger and became conductor of the Warsaw Philharmonic. Invited to the US by conductor Georg Szell, he became music director of the Minneapolis Symphony in 1960. His positions now include conductor laureate of the Minnesota Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie. He conducts Bruckner’s Fifth with the London Philharmonic at the Southbank Centre on 31 October. Music is in my blood. As a young child I used to creep under the piano in the evening as my mother played. There you hear not just a piano, you experience a rich aural environment – overtones, undertones, vibrations of all sorts. No wonder I thought orchestrally and wanted to compose. I…

Music education couldn’t be a hotter topic at the moment. For many, music should be one of the cornerstones of our school curriculum, helping, as it does, develop and improve cognitive skills, team work and general behaviour. For others, however, music is simply a luxury, to be enjoyed outside school hours and to be paid for entirely by parents. With such a split of opinion, it’s no wonder our music education is in a bit of a state, a curate’s egg, if you will, with some education authorities providing children with imaginative, well-resourced music lessons, while others throw their hands in the air, not quite knowing what to do with the little money that comes their way. As is often the case with sport, the quality of music provision is…

It’s the instrument that famously opens both Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, accompanies Nemorino’s lovestruck ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, and shuffles around sternly as the grandfather in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. And yet, for all these orchestral glory moments, the bassoon is suffering – there are not enough people playing it. With few children taking up the instrument and, as a result, the number of players available to join Europe’s orchestras reduced to a trickle, leading Dutch bassoonist Bram van Sambeek is taking action. Van Sambeek has launched a ‘Save the Bassoon’ campaign which, he says, will bring people’s attention to the instrument through a number of bassoon-related events, not always in traditional concert halls. ‘At the moment, only about one per cent…

Rana’s Russian double Pianist Beatrice Rana (above) has been announced as the latest signing to Warner Classics. A silver medallist and audience award-winner at the 2013 Van Cliburn competition, her first album for the label features popular, virtuosic repertoire: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Sir Antonio Pappano takes up the baton for this disc; after hearing Rana play he wanted to record with her, leading to a session with his Orchestra dell’ Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and a South American tour next year. The 22-year-old Italian has already recorded solo discs for Harmonia Mundi and ATMA Classique, and this is her first concerto disc. Imitation games Jonas Kaufmann has warned his fans on Facebook not to be ‘deceived’ by Decca’s The Age of…

Ronald Brautigam has reached the end of two mammoth recording projects. The Diabelli Variations make up the final volume in his 15-CD Beethoven survey for BIS, recorded in Åkersberga, Sweden; while the Kammermusiksaal in Cologne was the backdrop for the last disc in his Mozart concertos series, turning to the early concertos, Nos 1-4. Igor Levit has also been recording the Diabelli Variations. The pianist’s new, imaginatively programmed three-disc set will also include Frederic Rzewski’s The People United will Never be Defeated and Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Valentina Lisitsa and the BBC Concert Orchestra have joined forces for a recording exploring the piano in Hollywood. The Ukrainian joins the ensemble to perform music by Rota, Rosza, Addinsell, Bennett, Hermann and others, for a disc on Decca. After bringing Francesco Conti’s L’Issipile…

Steve Reich’s Clapping Music Free In short, this pleasingly simple app for iPad or iPhone is an introduction to Clapping Music, the work written by Steve Reich in 1972 that involves two people clapping various rhythms that phase in and out with each other. There is a brief introduction to the piece here, plus a video demonstration of two people performing it. But that only tells a fraction of the story. What this app is really about is a game that invites you to try your own hand at Clapping Music by tapping out the rhythms of one of the performers in sync with the app – the moment you go out of sync, the game ends. There are three levels – Easy, Medium and Hard – and the challenge…

The other day I picked up my Agincourt600 lapel pin at Chawton House, the Elizabethan mansion that was home to Jane Austen’s brother and is now an international study centre for women’s writing. I was sharing an evening on ‘Women and Agincourt’ with my Southampton colleague Anne Curry, who’s such an Agincourt expert that she knows the names of all the soldiers. After some Agincourt music, I presented the audience with a woman’s view of a different battle, just for a change: the Battle of Hastings. I may have previously mentioned the musical vicar, the Rev Jack Courtenay – clarinettist, country dancer and escaper from Colditz – who led me into playing chamber music 50 years ago. The violinist from his ensemble was a Scottish lady who ran the Women’s…

Ted Spickler Connecticut, US A recent streaming broadcast from the New York Philharmonic featured two concertos for violin and oboe: JS Bach’s Concerto, played by violinist Lisa Batiashvili and oboist François Leleux was paired back-to-back with a new concerto by Thierry Escaich. The listeners were advised by conductor Alan Gilbert to listen for the hints of the Bach in the new Escaich piece. This is brilliant programming and I loved hearing the hints. Tamsin Leigh Tonbridge I’ve just purchased a box set of Beethoven’s main works (Arnold Schoenberg Choir and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt), as I need to do some practising for Tonbridge Philharmonic Society’s forthcoming performance of Missa Solemnis. It is rarely performed by amateur groups, and I’m just glad I’m an alto and…

LEGO The only way to play with Lego is sitting cross-legged on the floor, with it spread out around you. I’ve collected it since before I can remember, and have several thousand bricks, kept in two large boxes. When I was about 11, I moved onto Lego Technic, building large cars and aeroplanes with lots of moving parts. I would pore over catalogues, and even wrote to Lego to order individual pieces so I could complete intricate models of my own design. I don’t have time or space to enjoy it regularly now, so make do with an occasional Lego Day, which is an excellent way to clear my head of music the few times a year when I reach saturation point. I am as obsessive about music now as…

At La Scala… Arturo Toscanini had three stints as conductor at La Scala, from 1898-1903, 1906-8 and 1921-9. ‘Artists’ differences’ resulted in him heading off to New York in 1908, and upon his return to Milan he brought in large reforms to the company and took it on tour to the US. He conducted the first Italian performances of many operas, including Wagner’s Die Meistersinger and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. The Milan-born Claudio Abbado was music director at his home city’s opera house for 18 years, from 1968-86. Abbado’s musical choices were decidedly far ranging, performing works by contemporary composers such as Stockhausen and Nono, including the premiere of the latter’s Al gran sole carico d’amore. After his death last year, the La Scala Philharmonic performed the funeral march from…

Early years: Born in 1953, Peter Gelb spent his teenage years working as an usher at the New York Metropolitan Opera while still at high school. Starting out: In 1980, he became Vladimir Horowitz’s manager and over the following decade helped to restore the legendary pianist’s career in Russia. Development: As president of the Sony Classical label, he encouraged recordings of crossover music, including film soundtracks for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Titanic, as well as albums by Charlotte Church and Vangelis. Awards: He received a Grammy in 2002 for co-directing and producing the documentary Recording the Producers.…

ON SATURDAY 26 SEPTEMBER in the Reading Room of the Wellcome Collection in London, Professor Marcus du Sautoy will be appearing with members of the Aurora Orchestra in an exploration of how composers have used mathematical patterns in their music. Works performed will include the overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute, Debussy’s Jardins sous la Pluie and Messiaen’s Île de Feu 2. The concert is just one of a number of broadcasts forming ‘Why Music?’, Radio 3’s weekend residency (25-27 September) at the Wellcome Collection. Other highlights include a recital-lecture given by psychiatrist and pianist Dr Richard Kogan, Radio 3 presenter Andrew McGregor in a study of his own brain scan to find out how and why the brain responds to different sorts of music, and a special edition of In…

The teacher Caroline Gale Head of music, Guildford County School Caroline Gale has been head of music at Guildford County School for 20 years. Under her leadership, in 2004, County achieved specialist music status, a valuable acknowledgement of the school’s high musical standards and level of student participation. Today, 75 per cent of the students are musically active, among them the 280 boys and girls in the school’s two main choirs. Meanwhile, 300 are learning instruments in school with more learning outside. Gale estimates that half of each year’s intake from the local primary schools (about 80 children) are musically active when they arrive. It’s an uplifting story – but Gale is worried. A shrinking budget, what she sees as the distorting and distracting presence of the music hubs…

‘Mahler is always seeking redemption. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be redeemed from.’ The speaker is composer Richard Strauss, and his shrewd words continue to resonate today, in an era when Gustav Mahler’s music is popular in a way that even the composer himself could barely have contemplated. Recordings of the symphonies proliferate, orchestras schedule his output serially, and audiences queue to hear it. And yet Mahler still divides listeners. The conductor Leonard Bernstein said his compositions ‘showered a rain of beauty on this world that has not been equalled since’, and many agree with him. Others side with Daniel Barenboim, a belated and partial convert to Mahler’s music, who feels that too often it’s presented as ‘just a generalised form of extroverted excitement’. Where does the truth…

Symphony No. 3 Bamberger Symphoniker/ Jonathan Nott Tudor TUDOR7170 (see prestoclassical.co.uk ) Mahler’s longest symphony, a vast paean to love, nature and everything. Symphony No. 6 Vienna Philharmonic/ Leonard Bernstein DG 427 6972 (see prestoclassical.co.uk ) A hero strives, tragically: Mahler’s bleakest symphony, conducted by a great interpreter. Das Lied von der Erde Philharmonia Orchestra/ Otto Klemperer EMI 566 8922 (see prestoclassical.co.uk ) The long goodbye: intensely beautiful song-symphony of last things and leave-taking. Symphony No. 10 SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg/ Michael Gielen Hänssler HAEN93124 (see prestoclassical.co.uk ) New vistas of placidity and acceptance open; Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 is incomplete but miraculous.…

Recording of the Month The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir and Marek Janowski give ear-opening performances of Richard Strauss’s Symphonia Domestica and Die Tageszeiten, p76 The genius of JS Bach ‘Study Bach. There you will find everything,’ said Brahms. And today’s musicians are still taking that advice, if this month’s magazine is anything to go by. His genius is a given, but research about his life and music is ongoing, and composers are still moved to respond to him. One intriguing find in recent years has been a text thought to be for JS Bach’s lost St Mark Passion, aiding a new reconstruction that’s been recorded for the first time by Markus Teutschbein p89. Bach himself drew up his family tree, and his work provides the basis for…

The chance to play these pieces can’t come round that often. What was the experience like? We’ve played the Symphonia Domestica a few times before as it’s known in Germany to orchestra and audiences. I don’t know if there has ever been a period when Die Tageszeiten was well known, but it had vanished from knowledge, so it was completely new to us. If you love Strauss, you will love this piece. It’s immediately recognisable as his, with its big lush orchestral sound and atmosphere. It’s surprising that it isn’t famous, and we were very happy to perform it in concert and on record. Hopefully this recording will help make it more commonly known and help it to find its way back into the repertoire. How would you describe Marek…

SCHUMANN Piano Concerto; Piano Trio No. 2* Alexander Melnikov (fortepiano); Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/Pablo Heras-Casado; Isabelle Faust (violin)*, Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)* Harmonia Mundi HMC 902198 57:51 mins www.prestoclassical.co.uk Hearing the Schumann Piano Concerto performed on period instruments is rather like seeing a familiar old master painting afresh after the varnish has been cleaned. The colours are brighter, the textures more transparent and the musical narrative has greater immediacy. What is especially striking in this charismatic and illuminating interpretation is Alexander Melnikov’s capacity to muster such a wide dynamic range and varied palette of timbres from his 1837 Érard fortepiano. The scale of his achievement can be measured by contrasting the surprisingly percussive attack of the opening flourish with the dreamy almost impressionist soundscape conjured up in the Andante espressivo middle section.…

BEETHOVEN String Quartets, Op. 18 Jerusalem Quartet Harmonia Mundi HMC 902207-08 153:24 mins (2 discs) BBC Music Direct £19.99 Beethoven’s debut set of string quartets was released on the very cusp of the 18th and 19th centuries. At times these extraordinary works do seem poised between Enlightenment Classicism and burgeoning early Romanticism. One moment we’re enjoying scintillating conversation in a Viennese drawing room, the next Napoleon is hammering on the doors. Some quartets choose to stress the continuity with the recent past, others to dig out signs of things to come. The Jerusalem Quartet strike a particularly fine balance. We are always aware of an assembly of four individuals, engaged in witty conversation, or perhaps something a little closer to arm-wrestling. Yet animated exchange can quickly yield to lyrical sweetness…

BEETHOVEN The Late String Quartets: Nos 12, 13, 15 & 16; Grosse Fuge, Op. 133 Alban Berg Quartet Warner 2434768202 (1989) 192:12 mins (2 discs) BBC Music Direct £20.99 (2 discs) More urgently expressive than the studio originals, the high sophistication of these ‘live’ performances is thankfully free of bogus ‘late’ gravitas, although rather short on deftness and enchantment. PERFORMANCE RECORDING MOZART String Quartets Nos 16-19 Musikverein Quartet Decca Eloquence 480 7396 (1979) 112:41 mins (2 discs) www.mdt.co.uk Spirited accounts from a quartet drawn from the ranks of the Vienna Philharmonic, which reveal the extrovert side of Mozart’s nature with spontaneity and flair, but tend to underplay its expressive duality. PERFORMANCE RECORDING SCHUBERT String Quartets Nos 10,12,14,15 Alban Berg Quartet Warner 2564612347 (1997) 116:54 mins BBC Music Direct £13.99 (2…

EMIL GILELS IN PRAGUE Brahms: Ballades, Op. 10; Fantasias, Op. 11; Mozart: Piano Sonata in F, K494 Emil Gilels (piano) Praga Digitals PRD 250 309 (1973, 1978) 70:03 mins www.prestoclassical.co.uk Every bar from Emil Gilels is to be treasured, and these Brahms recordings reflect his luminous sound palette. The Mozart is a revelation: luxuriously unhurried, exquisitely wrought. PERFORMANCE RECORDING LISZT Années de pèlerinage: Italie; Deux légendes Wilhelm Kempff (piano) Pentatone PTC 5186 220 (1974) 57:05 mins www.prestoclassical.co.uk This disc celebrates expressivity rather than virtuosity. Kempff builds his great edifices of sound with a sure and loving touch, and the remastering is excellent. PERFORMANCE  RECORDING CHOPIN Piano Sonata No. 3; Preludes, Etudes, Nocturnes (selection); Ballade No. 4 Martha Argerich (piano) Doremi DHR-8036 (1955-65) 80:09 mins www.prestoclassical.co.uk Having given up solo recitals,…

ACCOMPANIED VOICES: Poets on Composers from Thomas Tallis to Arvo Pärt Edited by John Greening Boydell ISBN 978-1-78327-015-6 214pp www.boydellandbrewer.com In his final years, Robert Schumann began to compile his Dichtergarten, ‘Poet’s Garden’, bringing together texts by his favourite writers on the subject of music. He didn’t complete it, but it’s not hard to imagine that he might have enjoyed this wonderful new anthology Accompanied Voices. As its editor John Greening, a fine poet himself, notes in his helpful introduction, this book shows how poets think about music; how music can be memorably translated into words; and it acts as a poetic chronological guide through the history of Western classical music – starting with Thomas Tallis and ending with Arvo Pärt. The resulting volume contains far too many artistic…

TCHAIKOVSKY’S SWAN LAKE While historians still dispute the exact literary source of Tchaikovsky’s 1877 ballet Swan Lake, its popularity today is beyond doubt. Few other ballets are as guaranteed to fill theatres worldwide or contain music as instantly recognisable as the famous ‘Swan’s Theme’. Not that it was always thus – at the work’s premiere in Moscow the music (‘too noisy’), the choreography (‘unimaginative’) and the dancers all came in for flak from the critics. In this acclaimed production, whose most recent run at the Royal Opera House was filmed at the beginning of this year, producer Anthony Dowell draws on the opulence of Russia in the late 19th century, drawing on choreography from the ballet’s 1895 revival in St Petersburg and fashion designs by Fabergé. In the main roles…