Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i BBC Music Magazine

Freya Parr Editorial Assistant ‘Vladimir Jurowski’s curious spirit and inspired programming make him a thoroughly deserving RPS Award winner. I’m still pinching myself that I got to interview him for my first magazine feature!’ Page 22 JPE Harper-Scott Writer and academic ‘The biggest mystery about Elgar’s Enigma Variations is why he created the idea of an “enigma” at all, when the piece itself is so endlessly interesting and moving. Still, he liked his “japes”.’ Page 26 Kate Molleson BBC Radio 3 presenter ‘An hour with Danielle de Niese is the interview equivalent of circuit training – apparently she doesn’t need to stop to breathe like us mortals. She is diva incarnate: big ambition, big charisma, big heart. And great fun.’ Page 36…

A conductor and a gentleman I was pleased to see the tribute to conductor Jesús López Cobos in your April issue. I will always remember a Beethoven Missa Solemnis just after the death of his wife here in Madrid in the Teatro Real – then still a concert hall – and his concert version of Wagner’s Lohengrin as the season’s closing concert, just before the renovation that brought us back the great Opera theatre that is the Teatro Real. This was during his tenure at our National Orchestra (ONE), a not exactly easy period both privately and professionally for him. But despite that, when I approached him several times as a (then) young concert-goer, he always had a smile and a couple of minutes to talk to me. A longer…

1st: To safeguard raw materials and free up workers and factories to aid the war effort, Oliver Lyttleton, President of the Board of Trade, announces that clothes rationing is to be introduced across the UK. Though food rationing is already in place, this new restriction takes many by surprise. 18th: Though most sporting events in Britain are cancelled due to World War II, the Derby goes ahead, watched by a crowd of 50,000 at Newmarket racecourse. Billy Nevett rides Owen Tudor, a 25/1 outsider, to victory. Nevett has been given special leave from serving in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps to take part in the race. 22nd: Operation Barbarossa, the Axis powers’ invasion of Russia, begins, and is hailed by German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as ‘a march that, for…

Telemann Das Seliges Erwägen Freiburg Baroque Orchestra; Choräle Chorals/Gottfried von der Goltz Aparté AP 175 This was my discovery at Easter this year. It’s really interesting to hear Telemann works like this one. I like him as a composer and played a lot of his music last year for his anniversary, and yet I didn’t know this piece at all. It’s a big work – two hours long – and describes the story of the Passion of Christ. Each aria expresses the different feelings of the people surrounding the Passion, watching this tragic story. This recording with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra is very refreshing and well done. Rosenthal Carnaval de Vienne Vassilis Varvaresos (piano) Aparté AP 172 V for Valse is the most recent recording from pianist Vassilis Varvaresos, with…

Peter Hill Pianist What completely bowled me over was going to hear Wagner’s Ring cycle in Dresden earlier this year. Vitalis Kowaljous was simply the most stupendous Wotan I’ve ever seen. He really is the most commanding physical and vocal presence. He was superbly matched by Christa Mayer as Fricka, who brought a real finesse to the role, and made a very rounded figure of her. There was also a very fine Brünnhilde, Petra Lang. Those three singers alone were worth travelling hundreds of miles to see. I recently got out the CDs by the Lindsay Quartet of the Bartók String Quartets. I was wondering why we hear so little Bartók nowadays – when I was 20 or so, Bartók was one of the 20th-century composers that everyone could agree…

Audiences and Engagement Classically Yours This project, run by Orchestras Live with the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, engaged new audiences by bringing live orchestral performances to scattered communities handicapped by limited public transport. Chamber Music and Song Spitalfields Music’s Schumann Street This ‘quirky and creative song-crawl’ took its audience through Spitalfields’s historic houses, in which vocalists re-imagined songs from Schumann’s Dichterliebe. Chamber-Scale Composition James Dillon: Tanz/haus Triptych 2017 A work which ‘immerses its audience in a music theatre of the mind’, it was praised for the ‘striking soundworlds conjured from its nine-piece ensemble’. Concert Series and Festivals ‘This is Rattle’ (London Symphony Orchestra) Simon Rattle’s debut season with the LSO symbolised a new era for the orchestra. Placing British music at the fore, it delighted the UK with its…

In the programme note at the premiere of the Enigma Variations, Elgar laid down the gauntlet for music detectives: ‘The Enigma I will not explain – its “dark saying” must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connexion between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set, another and larger theme “goes” but is not played.’ To this day the enigma remains ‘unsolved’. Here are five of the most popular theories… Auld Lang Syne A long-time favourite of the counterpoint theorists, who feel the solution lies with a melody that can be played at the same time as Elgar’s original theme. It was first suggested by Dora Penny (see Variation X), but refuted by the composer. The…

“All of the elements of my career add up to what I do on an opera stage” Danielle de Niese is doing at least five things at once. Mainly she is telling me in animated detail about the psychodynamics of Don Giovanni’s relationship with Donna Elvira, but she’s also singing the entire cast, rapid fire, covering Mozart’s opera from overture to hellfire in two minutes flat. Meanwhile she’s demolishing a plate of calf’s liver, texting her husband to say she’s running late and applying a new layer of makeup to her eyes. ‘Girl!’ she exclaims when I admire her ability to do so without a mirror. ‘I grew up in Los Angeles! I’ve been multitasking forever! Lipstick at the wheel, eyeliner in traffic jams, mascara at the lights…’ An hour…

In 2009, stories began to appear in the press about an intense relationship between Lind and Mendelssohn, evidence for which had been deliberately destroyed by her widower, Otto Goldschmidt following her death. What evidence has survived has been explored by George Biddlecombe who published his findings in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association. Documents relating to the relationship exist at the Royal Academy of Music as part of the holdings of the Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation. Papers given by members of the Foundation’s Committee in 1980 record that at a dinner at Claridge’s in 1947 it was revealed that a memorandum had formerly existed stating that following Lind’s death a number of passionate love letters from Mendelssohn were discovered ‘in which over and over again he begged her to elope…

Mechanised rhythm: After the First World War, many composers were determined to break with the past by exploring a world of ‘new age’ radicalism. A major feature of this was a fascination for Antheil and others with machine-age rhythm. Futurism: Antheil styled himself as a futuristic composer – an idea also pursued by Italian artistic types such as the poet Filippo Marinetti (above) and composer Luigi Russolo, with their intonarumori ‘noise machines’. Transcendence: The 1920s saw the appearance of musical works requiring huge or unconventional forces, as if reaching for new sound-worlds on a cosmic scale. In this respect Ballet mécanique relates to the likes of Ives’s Fourth Symphony and Varèse’s Amériques. The polymath: Antheil’s sense of invention also led to forays into various other activities. Intrigued by science (see…

With each piano piece, Maurice Ravel (above) seemed to enter a different world. After the Lisztian Gaspard de la nuit came the neoclassical Le tombeau de Couperin and the dreamy Valses nobles et sentimentales. Ravel’s music is unerringly precise and carefully calibrated, but his influences were colourful and varied, from gypsy music to mechanical clocks. A true master of instrumental colour, he orchestrated several of his piano pieces, including Ma mère l’Oye, and ‘Alborado del gracioso’ and ‘Une barque sur l’ocean’ from Miroirs.…

Music and friendship went hand in hand for Elgar. Just think of his Enigma Variations, explored in our cover feature, subtitled ‘my friends pictured within’. And in this month’s reviews section there are some wonderful examples of the fruits of musical friendship. Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim first met when they were children, playing together under a piano. That was in 1949. Fast forward to 2016 and their BBC Prom was a highlight of the season. The DVD of the occasion is one of our top choices this month, p72. As is ‘Amanda and Julius’, pianist Bengt Forsberg’s homage to Amanda Maier and Julius Röntgen, p94. These two 19th-century composers were friends, then partners. This album showcases their music, and the Dialogues piano suite they wrote together. Rebecca Franks reviews…

The level of performance is stellar from start to finish Liszt • Wagner Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 1; Wagner: Excerpts from Tannhäuser, Götterdämmerung, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Lohengrin; works by Schubert and Widmann (DVD) Martha Argerich (piano); West-Eastern Divan Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim EuroArts DVD: 8024297058; Blu-ray : 8024297054 115 mins For many, this was the pick of the 2016 Proms season. Presented here without breathless presenters’ chat, nor additional features, this DVD confirms that this was indeed a remarkable and memorable evening’s music-making. Jörg Widmann’s Con brio offers a short and sharp opening squib. Next, Martha Argerich, whose recording of Liszt’s First Piano Concerto made nearly a half-century ago set new standards in its command of the music’s flickering virtuoso incisiveness and panache. Here her scintillating articulation and beauty…

Musical details are incisively etched in this refreshing account Vivaldi The Four Seasons; plus Concerto for strings, RV 270 (Il riposo); Violin Concertos – in E, RV271 (L’Amoroso); in D, RV 208 (Il Grosso Mogul) Rachel Podger (violin); Brecon Baroque Channel Classics CCS SA 40318 (hybrid CD/SACD) 75:24 mins Although the catalogue is fairly bursting with recordings of Vivaldi’s seasonal foursome, who wouldn’t want to hear Rachel Podger’s take on Op. 8’s most famous concertos? Her 2015 recording of L’estro armonico with Brecon Baroque utterly nailed that exhilarating collection, and predictably they have plenty to say that is fresh about Le quattro stagioni. Fresh, but without falling back on exaggerated histrionics – Autumn’s drunkenness feels more like the product of an extra half schooner of sherry than full-on Bacchic abandonment.…

A cleric, poet and diplomat, Machaut was also one of the greatest composers in music’s history. Inspired by the ars nova movement which came to France from Italy, Machaut created several works of contrapuntal ingenuity: his rondeau Ma fin est mon commencement (‘My end is my beginning’) illustrates the words by having three singers simultaneously read a single line of music in three different ways. His masterpiece is the Messe de Notre Dame .…

Maier studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, Stockholm between 1869 and 1872, and in 1872 became Sweden’s first-ever female Director of Music. In Leipzig between 1873 and 1876, she studied composition, and also took lessons in violin with Engelbert Röntgen, whose son, Julius, eventually proposed to her. After her marriage to Julius Röntgen in 1880 they lived in Amsterdam. Though she gave up public appearances, the couple held musical salons.…

June round-up It’s good to see how both the age and gender gaps in British jazz are being closed by an influx of exciting young female players like trumpeter Laura Jurd, leader of Mercury listed quartet Dinosaur. She’s part of a new wave of musicians that plays fast and loose with jazz mores – the group’s first album tipped a purple velvet fedora towards prog rock. The new one, Wonder Trail, has more than a sprinkling of ’80s synth pop in the original mix but there’re other ideas; standout track ‘Set Free’ combines a pastoral folk chorus with gangsterish fusion. Altogether, a fizzing collage of sounds threaded together beautifully by Jurd’s lucid trumpet lines. (Edition EDN1111 ★★★★ ) Pianist Brad Mehldau is a restless spirit, just recently contemplating Bach as…

How Shostakovich Changed My Mind Stephen Johnson Notting Hill Editions 978-1-9107-4945-6 170pp (hb) £14.99rrp For Stephen Johnson, coping with bipolar manic depression and traumas rooted in early family life, Shostakovich’s music has been his lodestone of sanity, as he explains in this friendly sized book, only slightly bigger than a pocket diary. No one familiar with Johnson’s BBC Radio 3 Discovering Music programmes will be surprised by his perceptive comments on various pieces. Yet the book ranges well beyond Shostakovich’s work, and explores – with reference to current theories of anthropology and psychology – how we perceive music, the distorting effects of depression and how music can reconnect us to emotions and fellow humanity. Johnson argues that Shostakovich, contrary to the usual notion of composers writing predominantly about themselves, testified on…

9. Ulster Hall Where: Belfast Opened: 1862 Seats: 1,000 Designed by William J Barre, built by public subscription in 1859 and opened three years later, the ‘Grand Dame of Bedford Street,’ as Ulster Hall is known locally, is one of the oldest purpose-built concert halls in the UK. It also boasts a pipe organ of similar age and nobility: built by William Hill & Son, it was named the Mulholland Grand Organ in honour of the former mayor of Belfast, Andrew Mulholland, who had donated £3,000 towards the cost of the building in the 1860s. In 1903, the hall was decorated with 13 scenes from Belfast history, painted on canvas by Joseph W Carey and depicting the city and the surrounding area in an idealised rural style. Originally hung high…

Alan Davey , the controller of BBC Radio 3, picks out three great moments to look out for this June Forests This year, Radio 3 is focusing its attentions on forests, one of the most common motifs in art, music and literature throughout history. This week of programmes will explore the forest in summer, and later in the year the season will return to enter the forest in autumn and winter. The Essay; 18-24 June The Glory of Polyphony Conductor Peter Phillips introduces us to the jewels of Renaissance choral music, examining the works of 12 composers against the social and cultural landscapes of the time. This six-part series will explain the original purposes of music and its power to affect worshippers and audiences alike. The Glory of Polyphony; Sundays,…

The BBC Music Magazine podcast is back! Those of you quick off the mark will have noticed that not only do we now produce just the one podcast per month, but that it’s packed with all sorts, from a run-down of the latest classical news and a flick through the month’s magazine, to a discussion of the Recording of the Month and our pick of the latest, most intriguing new discs. But that’s not all – we’ve even commissioned our own jingles (which radio programme is complete without its own jingles? Radio 3 take note). Composed by Christopher Maxim, each one is in the style of a different English choral composer: Tallis, Handel (yes, he’s English – we’re keeping him), Parry, Howells, Rutter and some pastiche Gregorian chant to top…

Treasurable tune The identification of a passage of music in a 1660s painting has led to a song from the era being recorded for the first time. The music, which can be seen in The Paston Treasure by an unknown Dutch artist, has been discovered to be from Robert Ramsey’s 1630 Charon, O Charon heare a wretch oppreste, the manuscript of which is in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Using the Bodleian source along with the painting, Professor Jo Wainwright of the University of York has constructed a version that can now be performed. St John’s shortfall There are fears that St John’s Smith Square, one of London’s best loved concert halls, may close if a new source of funding isn’t found soon. Richard Heason, director of the venue, a former church,…

Pianist William Howard (see Rewind interview, right) has lately had love much on his mind. Following his 2016 album Sixteen Love Songs, he’s now recorded an up-to-date companion: Sixteen Contemporary Love Songs. Among the composers involved are Judith Weir, David Matthews, Howard Skempton and Cheryl Frances-Hoad. This will be released on Orchid Classics. Carolyn Sampson and The King’s Consort have been in the new Suffolk studio, Alpheton New Maltings, to record Handel. The album, out on Vivat in the autumn, features arias from Handel’s secular cantatas Tra le fiamme, Armida abbandonata, Agrippina condotta a morire and Figlio d’alte speranze. Just after performing the inaugural concert in London’s newly reopened Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank Centre, Chineke! headed to All Saints East Finchley to record an album of new…

Could music be used to make us feel a certain way about a product or person? Music gives us the chills. We all know this to be physiological fact, from those goosebumps that your favourite moment in La bohème gives you as Mimì and Rodolfo express their undying love for one another, to the thrill of recognition and pleasure that courses through your brain and body when you hear your tune in a bar, concert hall or club. And these physical manifestations of deep emotional connection – the tingles, the feels, whatever you call them – have been codified and analysed by scientists so that we can now explain what’s happening to us in moments of musically inspired emotional extremis. As psychologist Victoria Williams says, the results of an experiment,…

Oliver Condy Editor At the launch of the 2018 BBC Proms at London’s Imperial War Museum, and surrounded by the doodlebug, V-2 and other sundry instruments of 20th-century warfare, the BBC Singers gave a moving performance of Parry’s ‘My soul, there is a country’ from the Songs of Farewell. Under the direction of their new chief conductor Sofi Jeannin, the Singers’ blend and sound seem at something of an all-time high. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor June’s diary will be a fraught affair, as I try to balance musical engagements with some serious World Cup football watching. How will I choose, for instance, between Germany versus Sweden and going to Britten’s War Requiem at nearby Tewkesbury Abbey? Actually, that’s an easy decision. Britten wins, to be prefaced by some…

Criticism should be carefully weighed and phrased, not spewed out in a stream of rash tweets As my children will scornfully affirm, I am a very late, very reluctant convert to ‘social’ media. I use the quotation marks deliberately, because I can think of few things more likely to tear apart the fabric of civilised society than some of the vitriol I have read (and indeed been victim of) on Twitter and Facebook. Indeed, I signed up to the former only because the newspaper that pays my mortgage insisted that I tweet my articles to my ‘followers’ to increase the online hits those articles were getting. Since all newspapers now employ cyberspatial beancounters to tot up the number of hits each article receives, I felt it advisable on grounds of…

Though none have had quite the lasting impact of the composer himself, a number of the friends depicted in the Enigma Variations have not disappeared entirely without trace. Entries from Alice Elgar’s diary, for instance, still provide an interesting insight into her husband’s life and work, and Dora Penny’s book, Memories of a Variation can still be found in libraries, secondhand bookshops and online. Copies of Richard Baxter Townshend’s 1921 Inspired Golf (pictured above), a short guide to the game, are a little harder to come by but still available if you hunt around online. Enjoying the handiwork of Troyte Griffith is much easier. As an architect, he was creative brains behind a number of landmarks in the Worcestershire area, including the Diamond Jubilee Toposcope on top of Worcestershire Beacon…

Danielle de Niese will be joining performers such as percussionist Evelyn Glennie, pop singer Taylor Swift, violinist Nigel Kennedy and Stereophonics at BBC Music’s The Biggest Weekend this year. The festival is taking place on the late May bank holiday weekend (25-28 May) at four stages across the UK: Titanic Slipways in Belfast, Scone Palace in Perth, War Memorial Park in Coventry and Singleton Park in Swansea. De Niese will be performing in Perth on 25 May alongside Scottish singer-songwriter Karine Polwart, Glennie, and Kennedy and his band. They will be joined by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Martyn Brabbins, in an event presented by BBC Radio 3’s Katie Derham (above). All of the performances will be broadcast on TV on BBC One, Two and Four,…

‘‘Artificial Intelligence is just the latest development in a long history of people using algorithms to compose” In an undisclosed location in Luxembourg, a two year-old called Aiva spends eight hours a day composing. Which may sound cruel, but you have to work hard if your aim is to become ‘one of the greatest composers in history’, as hers is. Aiva has already become one of Luxembourg’s greatest composers, with 37 compositions to her name, from solo piano works to film music. Admittedly, one of those sounds like John Williams and another drops into something remarkably similar to Pachelbel’s Canon halfway through, but what composer wasn’t influenced by the greats? Understandably, Aiva is getting a lot of attention – 15 commissions so far – while a venture capital firm has…

1900 LIFE: George Antheil is born on 8 July in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of German immigrants. TIMES: US President William McKinley, having overseen America’s increasing prosperity, secures the passage of the Gold Standard Act, which holds until 1933 when the gold standard is abandoned. 1923 LIFE: Encouraged by Stravinsky, Antheil moves to Paris, taking an apartment above the bookshop Shakespeare and Company, where he mixes with leading writers and intellectuals. TIMES: James Joyce, a regular at Shakespeare and Company, begins Work in Progress, which eventually becomes Finnegans Wake. 1942 LIFE: With Hedy Lamarr, an actress, he develops the concept of frequency hopping for radio-controlled torpedoes, for which they are granted US Patent 2,292,387. TIMES: The US launches the Doolittle Raid, involving bombers launched from USS Hornet in the…

Argerich plays Gaspard de la nuit like a child who can fearlessly do cartwheels Martha Argerich (piano) Deutsche Grammophon 479 4883 (1974) In an interview in 1978, Martha Argerich explained how she came to learn Gaspard de la nuit. The young Argentine pianist was studying in Vienna with her idol Friedrich Gulda, who was starting to get frustrated with how long she was taking over a Schubert sonata. As a spur to action, he asked her to prepare Schumann’s Abegg Varations and Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit for the next lesson – in just five days’ time. And she did. How did Argerich pull off the feat? ‘I did not find it difficult, because I did not know it was supposed to be,’ she said. Like a child who can…

Enfers Rameau: Messe de Requiem sur des thèmes de Castor et Pollux; plus extracts from Zoroastre, Dardanus, Hippolyte et Aricie, Les Surprises de l’Amour, Les Boréades; Gluck: Extracts from Iphigénie en Tauride, Orphée et Eurydice; J-F Rebel: Les Élémens – Chaos Stéphane Degout (baritone), Pygmalion/Raphaël Pichon Harmonia Mundi HMM 902288 78:29 mins Rameau and Gluck could put on one hell of a show – literally. Their Gothic underworld stage scenes are the focus of Raphaël Pichon’s new recording, Enfers. Pichon, who has evolved from top countertenor to top conductor, bases his programme around Rameau’s Castor et Pollux. So evocative were its infernal scenes that they were re-set as a Requiem Mass. Around each of this Requiem’s movements – Introit, Kyrie, Gradual, Sequence, Offertory and Communion – Pichon has clustered other…

Beethoven Symphony No. 3 Warner Classics 9029573998 (1968) 54:08 mins Sir John Barbirolli takes a muscular approach to the Eroica with the BBC Symphony Orchestra: tempos are extremely broad and expansive, but never at the expense of rhythmic dynamism. ★★★★★ Bruckner Symphony No. 9 SWR SWR19411CD (1996) 62:19 mins Carlo Maria Giulini and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony vividly encapsulate the terror, anguish and uncertainty of the monumental climaxes; yet there is consolation and hope in the deeply moving final bars. ★★★★★ Dvořák Symphonies Nos 5 & 6 Praga Digitals DSD350142 (1951/65) 77:27 mins Karel ›ejna injects much freshness into this very attractive coupling. The Czech Philharmonic’s distinctive timbres are evident even through the recording’s compressed dynamic levels. ★★★★ Mahler Symphony No. 4; Das Lied von der Erde, etc Eloquence 482…

JS Bach Violin Concerto in A minor Elgar Violin Concerto Helicon 02-9655 (2011) 61:12 mins Recorded live in Tel Aviv’s Mann Auditorium, Pinchas Zukerman sounds more urgently spontaneous in the Elgar with the Israel Philarmonic Orchestra under Zubin Mehta than in either of his studio versions. ★★★ Beethoven • Bruch • Mendelssohn Violin Concertos Eloquence 482 5171 (1950-59) 124:04 mins (2 discs) Alfredo Campoli’s silvery tone and narrow-fast vibrato are beguiling in two accounts of the Mendelssohn (with Eduard van Beinum and Adrian Boult), and a radiant Beethoven with Josef Krips and the LSO. ★★★ Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1; Seven Fantasies dB Productions dBCD183 (1970/80) 69:57 mins These Swedish Radio Recordings reveal pianist Hans Leygraf (with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Stig Westerberg) as a fine Brahmsian,…

Bartók Bluebeard’s Castle Sony 19075810782 (1960) 54:27 mins Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra on top form – fearful strings, anxious woods and a wall of sound at the fifth door. Singing in English, Jerome Hines is a world-weary Bluebeard and Rosalind Elias is a touching Judith. ★★★★ Massenet La Navarraise Sony 9075811262 (1975) 40:17 mins Lucia Popp gives a high voltage performance in the title role and Alain Vanzo as her soldier lover is properly French vocally. The LSO under Antonio de Almeida play their espadrilles off! ★★★★ Piazzolla María de Buenos Aires Warner 9029573817 (1998) 93:87 mins Aficionados will welcome this reissue of Piazzolla’s tango operetta from Kremer Musica and Coral Lirico Buenos Aires – a surreal work that oozes its way through the Buenos Aires underworld. ★★★★…

Fretwork have lost none of their verve and polish – as this disc testifies Jenkins Complete four-part consort music: Fantasias Nos 1-17; Pavan in D minor; Pavan in E minor Fretwork Signum Classics SIGCD 528 83:02 mins (2 discs) John Jenkins’s long life stretched from the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign to the early years of the Restoration – turbulent decades that saw the Gunpowder Plot, the Civil War, and the execution of Charles I. Yet, despite these troubled times, his music for viol consort retains a serenity that sets it aside from his moodier contemporary William Lawes. Scored for treble, two tenors and bass viol, the works on this disc comprise 17 felicitous Fantasias and two Pavans which plumb more melancholy depths. Jenkins casts mellifluous melodies, choreographs fleet…

John Adams American Berserk Liviu Neagu-Gruber (violin), Holger Groschopp (piano), et al Cragg Foundation CF003 A varied disc of solo instrumental and chamber works, it is a vibrant listen with the usual tropes of minimalist music presented in an easily digestible way. (FP) ★★★★ Bartók String Quartet No. 1 Brahms String Quartet No. 2 Ariel Quartet Avie AV2384 Fierce, fiery Bartók that engages from the start and Brahms that has real shape and drive, although I could have done with more yearning passion. (OC) ★★★ Bortkiewicz Piano Concertos 2 & 3 Stefan Doniga (piano); Janácek Philharmonic Orchestra/Porcelijn Piano Classics PCL 10146 Two concertos, one written for the left hand alone, that display a late-Romanticism akin to Rachmaninov. Sumptuous stuff, well performed. (JP) ★★★★ Chopin Piano Sonata No. 2 Liszt Années de pèlerinage II…

THIS MONTH: NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONES HIGH›END CHOICE KEF / Porsche Design Space One Wireless £349 Once you try a pair of active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones on a plane, you’ll never travel long-haul without them again, which explains why business travellers are willing to spend big to get the best. Joining the likes of Sony’s exceptional WH-1000XM2 (£330) and Bowers & Wilkins PX (£329), the KEF Space One Wireless offer slick design, impressive features and first-class sound quality. With a 30-hour battery life – and that’s with Bluetooth and ANC turned on – you’ll hardly ever need to charge them. There’s real attention to detail in the build quality and the button layout, too, and the noise cancelling makes it almost a pleasure to be on a plane. Sound quality always suffers…

Vienna in the Square with the Tonerl Symphony Orchestra On 15th June at 7:30pm the TSO will perform Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto (Andrei Iliushkin-piano) and Bruckner’s 3rd Symphony (Henry Kennedy- conductor). The TSO is a new, young orchestra whose members come from the London music colleges. Concert entirely in aid of Parkinson’s UK. None of the young musicians are taking a fee for this performance. 020 7222 1061 www.sjss.org.uk RAF Centenary Concert with London Concert Choir A new work by Roderick Williams, Per Ardua ad Astra - Through Adversity to the Stars, celebrating the first 100 years of the RAF, will be performed on 11 June at the Barbican by London Concert Choir, Canticum, a children’s choir, Counterpoint Strings and the RAF Central Band, conducted by Mark Forkgen…

Born in London, Claire Tomalin graduated from Cambridge University before going on to become literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times. As an author, she is particularly well known for her biographies of major literary figures such as Charles Dickens and Samuel Pepys. She has recently published her autobiography, A Life of My Own, which she will be presenting on 24 May at the Bath Festival, with musical illustrations from tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Anna Tilbrook. My mother, MURIEL HERBERT, was a composer, and her music has run through my life. She was taught at the Royal College of Music by Charles Stanford and encouraged by Roger Quilter at a time when there was still a tradition of writing music for people to sing in the…

Check the halls I enjoyed your article about London’s lost venues (May issue), but as a professional Northerner – and adopted Scot – I can’t but think you’ve missed a trick in your London-centric view. A more balanced article could have included the likes of Manchester’s Free Trade Hall, Glasgow’s St Andrew’s Hall, previous iterations of Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall, Perth’s City Hall, and The Leith Theatre, to name but a few. How about a future article showcasing our glorious architectural concert heritage outside of the capital? Philip Whitley, Edinburgh Carpet carp When I was 11, I sang in the chorus of a school production of HMS Pinafore, an experience which engendered a deep love for Gilbert and Sullivan, then by extension for all opera and the whole classical genre. I…

Composer Mark-Anthony Turnage recently got himself embroiled in a Twitter row with critics over his opera Coraline. The chamber opera for children enjoyed a sold-out run at the Barbican – but met with a mixed critical response. Least impressed was Rupert Christiansen of the Daily Telegraph, who sniffed: ‘Turnage’s score is grey, sluggish and lacking in either charm or spookiness.’ The composer’s response culminated in a declaration that ‘There will be no further operas by me… I’m done with the genre.’ Turnage isn’t the first composer to hit back at critics. After the first performance of Reger’s Sinfonietta in 1906, Rudolf Louis of the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten wrote a typically negative review. Reger’s famously scatological response was: ‘I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your…

This month: WILLIAM HOWARD The Schubert Ensemble MY FINEST MOMENT Franck Piano Quintet; Violin Sonata Schubert Ensemble Champs Hill Records CHRCD 004 (2009) My favourite of our recordings is definitely the César Franck Piano Quintet. It’s the closest we’ve come in a recording to the exciting to perform. It’s a piece of massive extremes in terms of emotion – a hymn to unrequited love. It seems to invite total commitment. At the same time, something that’s been incredibly important in our lives in the ensemble is exploring all Fauré’s chamber works, which require a very different kind of approach. We love finding the drama beneath the surface, finding refinement of sound and balance. We’ve worked at it for years and years. So with the Franck Quintet it’s rather like we…

Did Sigmund Freud ever hear Elgar’s Enigma Variations, which were put before the world in the same year as the great Austrian psychoanalyst’s The Interpretations of Dreams (1899)? Possibly not, but if he did, he would surely have enjoyed the fact that its birth narrative centrally features a cigar. One evening, so Elgar’s (later remembered – or concocted) story goes, ‘After a long day’s fiddle teaching in Malvern, I came home very tired. Dinner being over, my dear wife said to me, “Edward, you look like a good cigar”, and having lighted it, I sat down at the piano … In a little while, soothed and feeling rested, I began to play, and suddenly my wife interrupted by saying: “Edward, that’s a good tune.” I awoke from the dream. “Eh!…

‘‘Jenny Lind has a genius for song such as can appear hardly once in centuries ’’ There are great singers who are forgotten after their deaths, and others who are remembered. With sopranos like Maria Callas, Rosa Ponselle or Nellie Melba, we have recordings that allow us to experience at least something of the spell they cast; but with earlier singers we must rely on visual depictions and written records to approach the reality behind the legend. One such is the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. Lind was more than a star. To describe the extent of her fame we might have to use a term such as ‘global celebrity’ or ‘megastar’. Cultural figures placed her at the pinnacle of her art. ‘No book or personality whatever has exerted a more…

Manual labours: David Cope in 1995 with his Experiments in Musical Intelligence Robots on the rostrum What could be a more apposite choice to conduct a piece of AI music than a robot conductor? In September 2017, YuMi, a dual-armed collaborative robot (ie able to work unaided alongside humans), made her debut in a concert in Pisa. On this occasion, however, the music was written not by computers but by Mascagni, Puccini and Verdi, as YuMi conducted tenor Andrea Bocelli, soprano Maria Luigia Borsi and the Lucca Philharmonic Orchestra. Though the performance went without a hitch, YuMi’s efforts were described by critics as ‘lacking emotion’. ‘Robotic’ perhaps?…

Rutland Boughton’s music, beautifully crafted and often thrilling, has been championed by a number of labels, of which Dutton and Hyperion are the biggest flag-wavers. Among Dutton’s riches are the rambunctious Symphony No. 1 and a selection of Elgarian orchestral songs including Fair is our Lot and the John Ireland-esque The Coastwise Lights. Dutton has also recorded Boughton’s opera The Queen of Cornwall in an acclaimed performance. You can hear The Immortal Hour and Bethlehem on Hyperion alongside symphonic and chamber music, and Oboe Classics has recorded the complete music for oboe.…

Antheil was determined to make his mark in Berlin as an ‘ultra-modern pianist-composer’ The face of the young composer-pianist already tells you something. That of an all-American rising star, the hard-charging hero of the college football team? Or a German air ace in World War I? George Antheil would surely have felt much in common with either. Born in New Jersey in 1900, the first-generation American child of German immigrants, the future composer of Ballet mécanique quickly showed a supercharged, out-of-the-blue talent for music which had his shoestore-owning father wondering what on earth to do about it. According to Antheil’s account in his cheerfully unreliable autobiography Bad Boy of Music, his mother tried to hose down his ‘craziness’ about music by packing him off to the country where, she reasoned,…

Bertrand’s Gaspard de la nuit appealed to Ravel and his love of the macabre The work In 1908, Maurice Ravel entered a world of sleeping princesses, magical gardens and supernatural spirits. Inspired by the stories of Charles Perrault and Madame d’Aulnoy, he began work on his piano duet Ma mère l’Oye. His five exquisite fairytale vignettes, dedicated to his friends’ children Mimi and Jean Godebski, take us from the hypnotic ‘Pavane de la Belle dormant’ to the vivid burst of ‘Le jardin féerique’. There could hardly be a more charming, innocent piece. Yet that same year Ravel’s thoughts also took a darker turn. Gaspard de la nuit was the result, a fiendishly hard solo piano work haunted by strange sprites, devilish creatures and the spectre of death. Gaspard’s three movements…

How did this unusual recording come about? I have known Raphaël Pichon for some years. We decided to explore 18th-century music with the point of view of the male tragédien. When we talk about tragedy it is always about a female character who is really strong and is destroyed, forgetting that there are also some husbands and lovers around who are suffering. Then it became more precise: the idea of a journey into hell. I also had in mind this singer who created a lot of roles, Henri Larrivée. Tell us a little about Larrivée… He was born in Lyon, like me. He started as a wigmaker in Paris. Someone heard him singing and he had a voice, obviously. He worked a lot with the composers of that time, especially…

From 1979 until 1983, Erkki-Sven Tüür headed the Estonian progressive rock band In Spe, which achieved cult status before Tüür left the group to devote himself full-time to composition. He studied under Jaan Rääts at the Tallinn Conservatoire (1980-84), and also took private lessons from Lepo Sumera in Tallinn. His breakthrough work was Insula deserta for string orchestra (1989), premiered by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra conducted by Juha Kangas. By 1992 he was able to live entirely from his work as a composer, and is commissioned by ensembles around the world.…

Elements of the erotic surface in Leighton’s Of a rose is all my song A Rose Magnificat Howells: Salve Regina; J Lane: There is No Rose; Leighton: Of a rose is all my song; MacMillan: Ave Maris Stella; Martin: A Rose Magnificat; Park: Ave Maris Stella; J Sheppard: Ave Maris Stella; Tallis: Videte miraculum; Warlock: As dew in Aprylle; R White: Magnificat; Wylkynson: Salve Regina Gabrieli Consort/Paul McCreesh Signum Classics SIGCD 536 77:52 mins ‘A symbol of both chastity and fertility, of virgin and mother; a woman inviolate yet often presented erotically.’ Paul McCreesh’s reflections on Mary frame this CD examining how the Virgin’s story has been illustrated in music of the Renaissance and modern periods. Elements of the erotic surface at the outset, in Kenneth Leighton’s Of a rose…

The short works are in the vein of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces Amanda & Julius Works by Amanda Maier and Julius Röntgen Bengt Forsberg (piano, organ); Hanna Aberg (singer), Cecilia Zilliacus (violin) dB Productions dBCD185 61:87 mins Julius Röntgen’s name may be most familiar as a recipient of letters from the more famous Brahms and Grieg. But the German-Dutch composer (1855-1932) is a missing link in traditional-veined late Romanticism – and so is his wife, the violinist and composer Amanda Maier (1853-1894), the first female graduate to become director of music from Stockholm’s Royal College of Music. This beautiful disc from the splendid Swedish pianist Bengt Forsberg is virtually their love story through their music. The pair met in Leipzig, where Röntgen took a while to propose. Maier, a splendid violinist,…

Playing jazz can mean taking your chances, pursuing a personal style even if it’s at odds with the taste of your time. The fate of the unappreciated artist may be a romantic cliché, but it’s all too often been a simple fact of the jazz life, and a particularly lamentable example is the trumpeter Woody Shaw. Born in 1944, his technical brilliance and creative ambition made him heir to the virtuoso bebop tradition of Fats Navarro and Clifford Brown, which he compounded with the harmonic daring of Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane. An exhilarating mix of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, his playing was lyrical, subtle, explosive, intense. Shaw should have had a great career; indeed, he was hugely admired by his peers, including Miles Davis. But the inexorable rise of rock…

LONDON Wagner’s Lohengrin Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 7 June – 1 July Tel: +44 (0)20 7304 4000 Web: www.roh.org.uk Conducted by Andris Nelsons, David Alden’s new production of Wagner’s ground-breaking opera relocates the action to a bombed-out, dystopian world under threat. Tenor Klaus Florian Vogt is the eponymous knight. Bach Weekend Barbican, 15-17 June Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891 Web: www.barbican.org.uk John Eliot Gardiner masterminds a Bach Weekend bookended by cantatas featuring his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. But he’s not keeping Bach to himself. Solomon’s Knot tackles the motets, Isabelle Faust and Kristian Bezuidenhout despatch two of the sonatas for violin and harpsichord, and the Goldberg Variations fall to French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau. Britten’s Turn of the Screw Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, 22-30 June Tel: +44…

1 FRIDAY 6.30-9am Breakfast 9am-12noon Essential Classics 12 noon-1pm Composer of the Week Giovanni Gabrieli 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert 2-5pm Afternoon on 3 5-7pm In Tune 7-7.30pm In Tune Mixtape 7.30-10pm Radio 3 in Concert live from Sage Gateshead. Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations, Andante Cantabile, Symphony No. 4. Jian Wang (cello), Royal Northern Sinfonia/ Julian Rachlin 10-10.45pm The Verb 10.45-11pm The Essay 11pm-1am Music Planet 2 SATURDAY 7-9am Breakfast 9am-12.15pm Record Review – Building a Library Schumann Symphony No. 4 12.15-1pm Music Matters 1-3pm Inside Music 3-4pm Sound of Cinema 4-5pm Jazz Record Requests 5-6.30pm J to Z 6.30-8.30pm Opera on 3 from the Royal Opera House, London. Benjamin Lessons in Love and Violence (world premiere). Stéphane Degout (King), Barbara Hannigan (Isabel), Gyula Orendt (Gaveston) et al, Orchestra of the Royal Opera…