Innholdsfortegnelse for Christmas 2019 i BBC Music Magazine

Paul Riley Writer and journalist ‘Accompanied by wheezy village organ or crack period band, sung by a handful of seasoned pros or a cast of hundreds, nothing says “Christmas” quite like Handel’s Messiah. There’s quite a story to be unwrapped!’ Page 28 Owain Park Composer and conductor ‘I was thrilled to be asked to write this year’s BBC Music Magazine carol, and hope that choirs everywhere will relish singing my setting of Frances Chesterton’s beautiful poem Here is the little door.’ Page 42 David Nice Writer and journalist ‘Rimsky-Korsakov’s musical exotica were my way into the Russian fantastical. Only later did I discover how much his mentor Balakirev shaped his imagination, and how bold his own handful of masterpieces are.’ Page 66…

Critical points I’d like to respond to Richard Morrison’s objections to the new English National Opera (ENO) policy of only giving critics one ticket and offering a scheme to open the door to a new generation (November). Maybe some critics might benefit from slumming it with the hoi polloi once in a while. Yes, they are reviewing the whole eperience, but if a critic’s rider is not met, can we be sure that their commentary is then going to be fair and relevant? Educated reviews have value, but showy, obscure references annoy more people than they impress, and it seems like years of exposure can wilt the joy of being in the audience. Why shouldn’t a new generation get involved? Everyone has to start somewhere. A disappointingly traditional production for…

11 …storeys. To encourage exercise, Taiwan’s Kaohsiung Municipal Ta-Tung Hospital has installed a ‘piano staircase’ that plays as it’s walked on. 5 …prizes. The Cory Band is celebrating a record after winning all five major brass band competitions this year. 1,000,000 …pounds. There’s clearly still money to be made from Mozart (see above). This time, a rare early portrait of the composer, attributed to Italian painter Giambettino Cignaroli, is up for sale. 7,500,000 …pounds for Mozart’s London pad (below). The Ebury Street house where the composer completed his First Symphony is on the market.…

Before the Beethoven 250th anniversary year has even begun, the Royal Opera House (left) has already managed to strike a duff chord. By restricting ticket sales for its production of Fidelio almost exclusively to those on its pre-paid membership scheme, the company has been accused of shutting out normal opera-goers from one of the highlights of its season. It won’t, however, be the first time that the audience at Beethoven’s only opera has caused eyebrows to be raised… Few first-night audiences have been as underwhelming as that at the premiere of Fidelio in Vienna back in 1805. With the city recently occupied by Napoleon’s army, the seats of the Theater an der Wien were filled largely by the backsides of French officers who, not speaking German and so having little…

This month: ITZHAK PERLMAN Violinist MY FINEST MOMENT Mozart Violin Concertos Itzhak Perlman (violin); Vienna Philharmonic/James Levine DG 415 9582 (1986) My record company has always said that I ‘let’ a record out; in other words, it had to pass my high standards! When I think about a recording that I’m really proud of, I’d obviously like to say all of them. There are those of the Mozart concertos I did in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic, or the recordings of the Brahms and Beethoven concertos – which I made, I believe, twice. Each one has its own highlights and qualities. I always thought the recordings of the Brahms and Beethoven concertos were pretty good; I recorded them the first time with Giulini and the Chicago Symphony, and then I…

Oliver Condy Editor A trip to New York gave me the chance to see pianist Marc-André Hamelin at Carnegie Hall. His solo programme included Russian composer Feinberg’s fiendish Sonata No. 3, a colossal Scriabin-esque work that stretches the performer’s technique and memory to the absolute max. After his compelling performance, I asked Hamelin how he managed to remember it all. ‘You have to be quite obsessive,’ he laughed. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Keen to apply a bit of topicality to my listening, I was pleased to come across Bach’s Town Council Election Cantatas, composed in Mühlhausen and Leipzig to push the boat out at the inauguration of the towns’ new governing bodies. A duty of his day job they may have been but, this being JSB, they are…

Andreas Scholl released his first solo CD back in 1995. Deutsche Barocklieder ( HMGold HMG501505 ) paved the way for a brilliant discography. ‘I still work to this day with most of the musicians that participated in this recording,’ says Scholl on his website, and Baroque music became a core part of his repertoire. Landmarks include his all-Purcell album O Solitude, for Decca ( 478 4696 ), which won a BBC Music Magazine Award in 2012. Folksong is another passion, kicking off with English Folksongs and Lute songs ( Harmonia Mundi HMC901603 ), which was inspired by Scholl’s discovery of the countertenor Alfred Deller’s recordings. That was followed by a ‘contemporary folksong’ recording, Wayfaring Stranger ( Decca E468 4992 ), which Scholl describes as ‘one of the most polarising CDs…

Russian folk arrangements Balakirev’s pioneering collection of folksongs was praised for its eloquent harmonisations by his pupil Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. In his own works, he balanced genuine folksongs with personal themes in the same vein. Orientalia What became known as ‘the Balakirevan east’ originated in three visits to the Caucasus in the 1860s. Even so, Balakirev was not the originator; his predecessor Glinka had composed Eastern dances for his opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. Orchestration The exotic vein brought forth Balakirev’s most lavish use of percussion. He was also especially fond of the cor anglais, though the influence here may have been that of his beloved Berlioz. The Classical influence Encouraged by his main mentor Alexander Ulybyshev, who loved Beethoven and Mozart, Classical influences surface in Balakirev’s more abstract work and the…

Born in St Etienne in 1842, Massenet was educated at the Paris Conservatoire from the age of 11, but also learnt much of his trade as a timpanist at the Théâtre Lyrique. The winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome for composition in 1863, he initially established his name with a series of oratorios before the premieres of Hérodiade (1881) and Manon (1884) made him a force to be reckoned with on the opera stage. Hugely successful both in Paris and further afield, he eventually settled in the French capital, where he also taught at the Conservatoire.…

Why bring these two piano concertos together? I consider these concertos to be the biggest and most worthy in the Czech music repertoire. Their character is very contrasting in style and in time period, but there are things that are related, like their dramatism. The Dvoÿak concerto is a drama on the highest level – and that was a reason for playing it in its original version. It’s very ambitious and one of the seminal works in this form, like the Brahms and Tchaikovsky concertos. How would you describe the complexities of the Dvoÿak? There are passages that are very difficult, because of the structure and also because of the dynamic and dramatic peaks of the work. You also have to defend your position because the orchestra is so richly…

Arensky • Tchaikovsky  Arensky: Chamber Symphony (arr. Prooijen); Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings Amsterdam Sinfonietta/ Candida Thompson Channel Classics CCS 37119 57:10 mins Not least of the problems presented to performers by Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for  Strings is its disarming title, which refers not to the work’s emotional content but rather its relative formal simplicity and concision when compared to the expressive and structural complexity of his symphonic music. Candida Thompson gets it just about right, fusing the chamber-scale precision and sensitivity of Neville Marriner’s celebrated Academy of St Martin in the Fields 1968 Argo recording with the near-overwhelming emotional heft of Herbert von Karajan’s 1980 Berlin Philharmonic remake for DG. Some might long for the opulent luxuriance of Karajan’s Berliners or Eugene Ormandy’s ‘fabulous’ Philadelphians (CBS/Sony 1960); yet to hear these…

Born in Ukraine, Veprik studied piano in Leipzig but relocated to Russia with his family at the outbreak of the First World War. There he continued his studies, at both the St Petersburg and Moscow conservatories, and became Dean the latter. His passion for traditional Jewish music inspired numerous works, many of which were performed in Europe and the US during the 1920s and ’30s – Toscanini conducted Dances and Songs of the Ghetto at Carnegie Hall. Veprik was jailed in the 1950s for ‘Jewish Nationalism’ and then moved to a Gulag where he oversaw an orchestra for fellow inmates.…

Gounod Faust Benjamin Bernheim, Véronique Gens, Andrew Foster-Williams, Jean-Sébastien Bou; Les Talens Lyriques; Flemish Radio Choir/ Christophe Rousset Bru Zane BZ 1037 173:48 mins (3 discs) The Centre for French Romantic Opera now presents the original 1859 version of Gounod’s operatic masterpiece Faust. This – unlike the more familiar Grand Opera incarnation of 1869 – contains extensive spoken dialogue, occasionally to musical accompaniment, which, on the whole, the cast delivers with credibly dramatic flair. Performing on original instruments, Les Talens Lyriques produces lean string sound and some splendidly pungent wind and brass playing. Christophe Rousset has a strong feeling for the pace of the drama which, in Act IV, reaches heights of eloquence in an Apotheosis as the soul of the much wronged Marguerite enters heaven. As a whole, this…

Born to a cellist father and pianist mother, Stanford found himself performing on the piano in public at age seven. His formal studies began at Dublin’s Trinity College, which he followed with a move across to England and Cambridge’s Queen’s College. Eventually transferring to Trinity, Stanford became the organist there and played a large part in the success of the Cambridge University Music Society. As a teacher, Stanford made a great impact; one of the founder professors of the Royal College of Music, his students included Vaughan Williams, Holst, Clarke and Coleridge-Taylor.…

Britten A Boy was Born, etc; Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Christmas Carols Eloquence 484 0781 (1962/1991) 80:14 mins If David Willcocks’s Fantasia is dated, under Stephen Cleobury the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge bestrides the formidably taxing A Boy was Born. ★★★ Christmas Baroque - Music for the Nativity Works by Bach, Corelli, Charpentier et al Alto ALC 1377 (1996) 75:15 mins In Ex Cathedra’s seasonal selection, festive favourites appear with buzzing musette and chalemie, toothsome French bonbons and Gabrieli à 14. ★★★★ École de Notre-Dame Mass for the Nativity of the Virgin Harmonia Mundi HMO 8901538 (1995) 76:34 mins The cultivated rawness of Marcel Pérès’s Ensemble Organum unlocks the soundworld of medieval Notre-Dame de Paris, with hypnotic Léonin and Pérotin and some Eastern promise. ★★★★ JS Bach Christmas Cantatas…

Dohnányi Piano Quintet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 1; Piano Quintet No. 2 in E flat minor, Op. 26; String Quartet No. 2 in D flat, Op. 15 Takács Quartet/Marc-André Hamelin Hyperion CDA 68238 80:55 mins The performance from Hamelin and the Takács is totally compelling Dohnányi’s First Piano Quintet in C minor enjoyed a particularly auspicious debut in Vienna in 1895, attracting the imprimatur of no less a person than Johannes Brahms. Given the astonishing mastery and strongly defined thematic ideas that characterise the teenage Hungarian composer’s Op. 1, Brahms’s enthusiasm seems to have been entirely justified. The Takács Quartet and Marc-André Hamelin capture the freshness and vitality of this youthful work to perfection, its outer movements and Scherzo projected here with all the necessary exhilaration and rhythmic…

Clementi • D Scarlatti Keyboard Sonatas Divine Art dda 21231 (1981) 58:30 mins (2 discs) Composer and a pianist of wide-ranging sympathies, John McCabe gives lively, loving performances of Scarlatti and Clementi – playing the latter with special feeling for a still underappreciated figure. ★★★★ Hindemith Ludus Tonalis Eloquence 484 0142 (1966) 54:04 mins Hindemith’s polyphonic marathon is rewarding when played with the commanding clarity Käbi Laretei brings to this recording. The lyricism is authentic: she was coached by Hindemith. ★★★★★ Szymanowski Preludes, Etudes and Mazurkas Nimbus Records NI 7730 (1992-93) 74:07 mins Scattered highlights do no justice to Martin Jones’s original four-disc survey of the composer; some restrained performances are not the way to ‘Discover Karol Szymanowski’, as the cover suggests. ★★ Eduardo el Pueyo – The Complete Philips…

Christmas round-up For years the Cologne-based radio station Westdeutsche Rundfunk has broadcast innumerable superb concerts and released many on CD. The high standard is maintained with Live at the Philharmonie Cologne by Bill Laurance and the WDR Big Band. The 18-piece agglomeration, conducted by Bob Mintzer, provides a powerful setting for Snarky Puppy’s pianist in a programme of previously-recorded tunes. Mintzer and other hands did the arrangements but Laurance evidently revels in the opportunity to re-work his compositions with a large ensemble. His sumptuous piano solos and the driving impetus and rich colours of the band (which swings like the proverbials) make this an exhilarating, satisfying listen. (WDR D77074 ★★★★★ ) I didn’t subscribe to the deification The Bad Plus enjoyed/ suffered after signing with Columbia, mainly because I felt…

Do/Sing – Reclaim your voice. Find your singing tribe James Sills  Do Book Co. 978-1-907-97470-0; 118pp (pb) £8.99 James Sills is a self-trained singer and ‘vocal leader’ – his preferred title over ‘choirmaster’ . He aims to break down the formalities of choir singing and bring to it the joy we feel as we’re singing ‘Wonderwall’ around the campfire or chanting football anthems at the World Cup Final. Do/Sing is based on a talk Sills gave at the annual Do Lectures. He quashes misconceptions around group singing and suggests that it might be one of the few ways left for us to disconnect from technology and engage in genuine face-to-face, multigenerational interaction. The book ends with a handful of practical tips for novice singers, such as how to find the…

Born in Sweden, Sofi Jeannin studied conducting and singing in Nice, Stockholm and London. In 2008, she was appointed music director of the Maîtrise de Radio France, a post she still holds today, and since 2018, she has also been chief conductor of the BBC Singers. The BBC Singers will perform the shortlisted entries in the Radio 3 Carol Competition 2019 over the festive period. I grew up in Sweden, where singing is very important and every classroom had a piano. My sister used to come home from choir and teach me different voice parts, so we sang two-part harmony around the house and for our neighbours. When I was about eight, our children’s opera group put on BRITTEN’s The Little Sweep and the music made such a strong impression…

It’s that time of year when choir directors are scrabbling around for new, exciting and, crucially, technically accessible carols for their Christmas services and concerts. Well, once again, allow us to help! For the past few years, we’ve commissioned a new carol from an exciting young composer, and this year we’ve asked Owain Park to add to our swelling portfolio. The result is a beautiful setting of Frances Chesterton’s Here is the little door (see p42) which we hope will find its way into a few orders of service across the world. You can hear two previous and very different commissions on this month’s cover disc, sung wonderfully by the choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford: Dobrinka Tabakova’s sparkling Good-will to men and peace on Earth and Toby Young’s atmospheric…

Sandro Nebieridze Pianist Born: Tbilisi, Georgia Career highlight: I have won numerous international piano and composing competitions. I successfully premiered my first piano concerto in both Georgia and Russia, as well as my two piano trios, which were premiered in Germany. Musical hero: I’ve been an admirer of Shostakovich’s music for years. His sense of musical irony is completely mesmerising. Dream concert: Conducting my symphonic poem with the Georgian National Philharmonic Orchestra in the Tbilisi State Opera or my sonata for piano and cello at an international festival with my great friend Sandro Sidamonidze. Kristine Balanas Violinist Born: Dobele, Latvia Career highlight: Performances with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Also, taking part in a music video with Robbie Williams with my cellist sister.…

Cimarosa Il Maestro di Cappella Philippe Huttenlocher; Lausanne Chamber Orchestra/Armin Jordan Erato STU 71059 I discovered this little opera as a child in my first flute teacher’s apartment. Cimarosa is well known to flute players, as he wrote a wonderful and popular concerto for two flutes. In this brilliant work, he brings us into an orchestral rehearsal to witness the conductor going through all sorts of emotional states. It’s all superbly expressed in the music, which shines a light on the text in a way that reminds me of the Mozart/da Ponte double-act. Amy Beach Piano Quintet Ambache Ensemble Chandos CHAN9752 This is vibrant and expressive music – you hear Beach’s strong personality in it. The Piano Quintet (1905) is a masterpiece she performed herself a good 40 times during…

Kati Debretzeni Violinist  Life would be a lot poorer if we didn’t have Bach’s cantatas and Mozart’s operas, and one conductor who really conveys the essence of what both composers are about is John Eliot Gardiner. His 1991 recording of Mozart’s Idomeneo has an incomparable cast that includes, in the title role, Anthony Rolfe Johnson – his beauty and lightness of tone plus the absolute sincerity and unaffectedness of his singing make him almost unmatched in this repertoire. András Schiff marries a total command of his instrument with an intellectual rigour My admiration for the pianist András Schiff is limitless. He has a total command of his instrument which he then marries with an intellectual rigour – he really thinks about the music, its composer and its context, and also…

Until a few weeks ago it was all going so well for Roomful of Teeth. Founded a decade ago, this eight-strong vocal ensemble had rocked the choral world – well, in the US anyway – by integrating different vocal techniques into its performances. And I don’t mean just the avant-garde techniques you hear in Berio’s Sinfonia or Stockhausen’s Stimmung. Roomful of Teeth (great name!) also incorporates alpine yodelling, Inuit and Tuvan throat singing, Bulgarian belting, death-metal howling and Christian chanting into a great melting-pot of vocal sounds. So it’s a choir for our eclectic times, in which all genres and traditions feed off each other, and composers cross over the old demarcation lines between classical and jazz, rock and soul, pop and rap, tonality and atonality, past and present. Roomful…

I find Christmas a magical time of year, and remember fondly my time as a chorister at St Mary Redcliffe Church in Bristol. There was something special about pitching up so late at night: a sense of anticipation in the air before Midnight Mass, and then wishing each other a ‘Merry Christmas’ in hushed tones as the clock struck, invariably during the sermon. One of my favourite carols was Howells’s 1918 setting of Frances Chesterton’s poem Here is the little door. Howells’s music allows the words to resonate with both choir and congregation – at St Mary’s there was always an extra few seconds of quiet after we’d finished singing it. The poem consists of two stanzas: the first is reflective and subdued while the second is more colourful and…

Polzelli, a violinist, was appointed to the Esterházy court with his mezzo-soprano wife, Luigia Moreschi. It seems neither was particularly talented, or at least not up to Prince Nikolaus’s high standards. Had it not been for his wife’s less-than-private love affair with Haydn, Polzelli would surely have been dismissed. The Prince favoured his kapellmeister, though, and kept them both on despite Antonio’s failing health. Luigia’s romance with Haydn went on for a decade or more and produced, so the story goes, an illegitimate child: the violinist and composer Antonio Polzelli Jr.…

Antonio Pappano (conductor) Roberto Alagna (Werther), Angela Gheorghiu (Charlotte) et al; London Symphony Orchestra/ Antonio Pappano Warner Classics 735 9542 Pappano is an expert operatic conductor with a wide range of musical sympathies. In his first recording of Werther – made initially for EMI in 1998 but now available on Warner Classics – his infallible combination of command and flexibility provides the foundation of a potent interpretation, with some extraordinary yet entirely appropriate surges of passion. The engineers capture the detail of the LSO’s distinguished playing Pappano’s ‘pit’ orchestra here is the LSO, whose colouristic palette is as wide as one could wish, with the result that Massenet’s resourceful orchestral writing comes over as well as on any set. No other operatic composer can beat his skill in accurately depicting…

Is there a more perfect time of year in which to join together and sing? Even the non-singers among you will probably have found yourselves drafted into a chorus of something festive of late, and if you haven’t you know it’s coming. Singing is good for the soul and we review a book this month that will help you find not just your voice but your ‘singing tribe’. Recording-wise we’ve works with many fine voices on the following pages; there are Lamentations from Palestrina and Peñalosa, Stabat Maters from Dvorák and Poulenc and a mighty recording of Handel’s Brockes-Passion. You’ll find a sprinkling of festive music too, with The Centenary Service from King’s College, Cambridge and our picks of some seasonal fare in Brief Notes. Altogether now… This month’s critics…

Christmas round-up Gothic Voices will shortly mark its 40th anniversary, and celebrates with Nowell synge we bothe al and som, a new programme of medieval songs and motets for the Christmas season. The material is a mix of plainchant and polyphony, arranged for various combinations of the ensemble’s four members. The glowing blend of tone and fluidity of phrasing achieved in Dunstaple’s ‘Gaude virgo salutata’ is typical of all 25 tracks on the recording. Among these, mezzo-soprano Catherine King’s gently caressing ‘Lullay, lullay: Als I lay’ and the jubilant ‘Nowell: Owt of your slepe’ are obvious highlights, and the sound is excellent. (Linn CKD 591 ★★★★ ) Alonso Lobo’s Missa Beata Dei genitrix Maria is the anchor work in A Spanish Nativity, a new disc from the 12-voice British ensemble…

Vaughan Williams The Lark Ascending; Fantasia on Greensleeves; Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus; Serenade to Music; English Folk Song Suite; Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis James Ehnes (violin); Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Manze Onyx ONYX 4212 69:23 mins James Ehnes’s delivery of The Lark Ascending is an asset in itself The earlier instalments of Andrew Manze’s Vaughan Williams cycle with the RLPO have produced in-and-out results, so it’s good to be able to report that the success-level here is excellently high. Collectors will savour a genuine rarity: the composer’s own orchestra-only arrangement of Serenade to Music. The work’s design is bound to feel rather static without its Shakespeare text – as in the opening section’s fairly literal restatement, here minus the solo voices of the original version,…

Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1 in C, Op. 15; Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat, Op. 19; Rondo for Piano & Orchestra in B flat, Wo06 Boris Giltburg (piano); Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko Naxos 8.574151 73:51 mins The Rondo, WoO6, was Beethoven’s initial attempt at a finale for his first concerto, known as No. 2 since it was published after its later C major companion piece. It’s an enjoyably playful piece, and the Russian-Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg clearly has fun with it. Giltburg is also impressive in the Concertos, never failing to capture the music’s character. Perhaps he’s a bit cautious with his pedalling in the coda of the Second Concerto’s slow movement, with its deeply poetic recitative-like melodic line. Beethoven marks the whole passage to be pedalled…

Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice Iestyn Davies, Sophie Bevan, Rebecca Bottone; La Nuova Musica/David Bates Pentatone PTC 5186 805 88:33 mins Created in 1762, Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice gave 18th-century opera a makeover: instead of stopping and starting, the action flows continuously; instead of long solos, numbers are a dense weave of solo, chorus and band; instead of pure opera seria, Italian and French traditions combine within a score that’s vast, but led by only three soloists. Sophie Bevan’s Euridice has blazing bravura and increasing intensity Conductor David Bates is, like Gluck, wonderfully radical. Where other directors smooth over disjunctions, he revels in rupture: warping standard tempos, switching mood abruptly, releasing massed forces to wash away solo lines. Recorded at St John’s Smith Square, London, this live performance has…

Desenclos • Poulenc Desenclos: Requiem; Poulenc: Stabat Mater Marion Tassou (soprano), François Saint-Yves (organ); Flemish Radio Choir, Brussels Philharmonic/Hervé Niquet Evil Penguin EPRC 0032 60:08 mins Two assuaging works about death and life. The Flemish Radio Choir and Hervé Niquet have been exploring Requiems, and this pairing make an intriguing final instalment. Written in the late 1950s and first heard in 1963, Alfred Desenclos’s Messe de Requiem has only started to be taken up by choirs in the last decade or so. This performance exudes a liturgical sensibility, the subtle registrations of organist François Saint-Yves enabling the choir to evoke an incense-laden atmosphere. It is a pity, though, that, with the Brussels Philharmonic on hand, the opportunity was not taken to record the rarely heard orchestral version. Like Fauré, Desenclos…

Beethoven Piano Sonatas Nos 8, 12, 14, 23 & 32 Michel Dalberto (piano) La Dolce Vita LDV 78.9 105:55 mins (2 discs) Michel Dalberto has a wide-ranging repertoire and is clearly a pianist in a tradition that is now almost extinct. A virtuoso of the old school, he wilfully plays in a way that is rare among contemporary pianists, though he has recorded quite a few works of Gallic delicacy. In the interesting and lengthy series of answers to probing questions in the accompanying booklet, he is emphatic about how he thinks Beethoven should be played, though it seems to me that he exaggerates the contrast between the school of performance that he emerged from and general present-day practices. For instance, he cultivates non-synchronisation of chords, especially loud ones, to…

Joachim Badenhorst Adventa Mogil Winter & Winter 910 260-2  Your bleak Christmas starts here. Based on Icelandic folklore, this musical poem is dark, brooding and often eerily atmospheric. Beautiful, yes, but ‘Jingle Bells’ it most certainly isn’t. (JP) ★★★★ Balakirev Piano Works Nicholas Walker (piano) Grand Piano GP811  Balakirev’s Chopinesque piano music, arrangements of Beethoven and Glinka and various tinkerings are hardly known, which makes this fascinating series well worth seeking out. (OC) ★★★★ David Bruce The North Wind Was A Woman etc Avi Avital (mandolin) et al Signum Classics SIGCD599  David Bruce writes in a vivid and appealing style, yet his music never quite does what you expect. From golden sun to gentle autumn rain, nature inspires the works on this excellently performed disc. (RF) ★★★★ Patrick Cassidy The…

Hiromi Spectrum Hiromi Uehara (piano) Telarc TEL00081 When you first see her perform it’s still hard to believe such complex, powerful playing is achieved by someone so slight (she has said she often stands up to play in order to exert sufficient force). It is, however, Hiromi’s imagination and wit that really impress. All the tracks are originals except for Lennon-McCartney’s ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Rhapsody in Various Shades of Blue’, a kind of fantasia on Gershwin’s Rhapsody, John Coltrane’s ‘Blue Train’ and Pete Townsend’s ‘Behind Blue Eyes’. ‘Kaleidoscope’, though a dazzling display of virtuosity, avoids descending into a mere show of technique. Her lyrical side is evident on the following ‘Whiteout’. On the light-hearted medium-tempo ‘Yellow Wurlitzer Blues’, she roves lithely over the keyboard, sometimes adopting Harlem stride practices in a…

29. Portico of Ards Where: Portaferry Opened: 2008 Seats: 300 In a former life, Northern Ireland’s Portico of Ards was a crumbling Presbyterian Church. Now, thanks to the efforts of a small but committed group of volunteers, the building – having recently undergone significant repairs, including restoration of the organ – is a thriving multidisciplinary arts venue. Situated on the Ards Peninsula in Portaferry, Portico (as it is known) was built in 1841 as a Greek Doric temple by Belfast architect John Millar. The restoration of the building was completed in 2008, but a prerequisite of the complete organ rebuild by Wells Kennedy was that the instrument should be accessible to the public. As a result, the new console can be played by anyone. Experience is not necessary: a digital…

I was given my first radio when I was four: a Soviet/Estonian LW/ MW model called a Selga. I still have it, as it opened the door to a lifetime of love and enjoyment – not just of sound and of different types of music, but of the medium’s power to whisk us away to other worlds. In 2020, we’ve got plenty of magical moments in store. Natually, we’ll be celebrating Beethoven with our year-long season Beethoven Unleashed. Composer of the Week, for instance, will be looking at all aspects of his music during the year in fortnightly programmes, its biggest commitment to a single composer in many years. The BBC orchestras and ensembles from across the UK will feature heavily in Beethoven Unleashed, with performances on In Concert and…

Grave concerns In response to your interesting 50 Greatest Composers list (December), I note that 22 out of 50 are either still alive or have died since 1950. This reminds me of a recent BBC Radio 3 Music Matters broadcast, in which conductor-composer Odaline de la Martinez remarked that composers can be very easily forgotten after they die unless there is an admirer to champion and promote their oeuvre. For example, I would think Dvorák might merit a special place given his significant advance of Czech music, while his countryman Janácek is seen by many as difficult and limited largely to the opera house. But recently he was brought brilliantly to our notice by conductor Charles Mackerras. Do we really judge composers’ music on merit or just because they are…

New York may be famous its skyscrapers, but great things happen below ground, too. Deep in the catacombs of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, the concert series ‘Death of Classical’ takes place. Pictured here is a recent performance of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater featuring the String Orchestra of Brooklyn and singers Molly Netter and Kate Maroney. The brainchild of New York-born concert producer and promoter Andrew Ousley, the ironically named and hugely popular series is proving that classical music is anything but on its last legs.…

We all fall down Classical music history is full of tales of conductors who have failed to keep their trousers on. Rarely, however, have they lost them mid-performance, a fate that recently befell Muhai Tang. As he was conducting the La Scala orchestra at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan, a belt malfunction meant that the maestro’s boxer shorts were briefly revealed to orchestra and audience alike. His players dutifully carried on. Honorary mention No such worries at Concerto Köln which, over its 35 years in existence, has always operated without a chief conductor. Things are set to remain that way, but the acclaimed period instrument orchestra has, at least, recently announced that it is to appoint its first honorary conductor: namely Kent Nagano, with whom the ensemble has enjoyed…

Delphian Records has a busy January ahead, with recordings in Bristol, London and Tenerife. The Bristol Choral Society heads to St George’s to record works by Bob Chilcott, Judith Weir, Jonathan Dove and Celia McDowall, while in London the label makes its first recording with the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. In Tenerife, clarinettist Maximiliano Martin records concertos by Copland, Nielsen and MacMillan. Composer Jonny Greenwood has launched his own contemporary classical label. Octatonic has already begun streaming its first releases, including Bach’s Partita No. 2 played by violinist Daniel Pioro. Greenwood’s own short works will also feature on Octatonic, with Water just released alongside Michael Gordon’s Industry. The DVD and Blu-ray release this month of a new feature documentary about the life and music of George Butterworth follows…

It’s the simplest thing we can do as a musical community: to sing the same line together, as one, in unison, without the accoutrements of harmony or counterpoint. It serves to strip away our music to its most essential elements, single lines shared between a whole ensemble, chorus or orchestra. Yet unison singing and playing is one of the most powerful and paradoxical phenomena in our musical culture, whether in the context of church choirs or orchestras, footballs crowds and family gatherings, or children singing Christian rhyme, as Cliff Richard puts it at around this time of year. Why? Because when we sing the same melody together, we’re not just creating musical community and communication, we’re also simultaneously celebrating what binds us together and revealing our irreducible individuality. Here’s how:…

Gerard Smith, Warren, MI, US I’m currently listening to music by contemporary composers Patrick Grant and Mario Diaz de Leon. I’m finding the collection of music on Grant’s Fields Amaze and other sTRANGE music revelatory in its variety and scope and can see why it has been nominated for three Grammy awards. I’m also impressed by the moody sparseness of much of de Leon’s Cycle and Reveal. Sometimes the manner in which the notes decay into the spaces in between them is breathtaking. Niall Hoskin , Bristol My winter listening has to be something Russian-tinged, and I’ve been steeping myself in the works of Mieczyslaw Weinberg. The composer’s Third Symphony and Cello Concerto were both performed at the Proms this year, so I’ve revisited them in a couple of…

Even the very best get writer’s block. Michael Morpurgo, however, knows just what to do if he finds himself at a dead end. ‘If things aren’t going very well,’ says the War Horse author, ‘I have one or two ways of getting myself feeling slightly less depressed about it. One is to go for a walk, the other is to absent myself completely from anything to do with the story I’m writing – and listen to music.’ Music inspires his words, then, but it can also play a crucial role in the storytelling. This is evident in Morpurgo’s charming tale Mimi and the Mountain Dragon, which comes to television screens this Christmas. Based on Morpurgo’s 2014 book of the same name, and adapted by Owen Sheers, Mimi and the Mountain…

It’s not only music fans who can become irritating audience members – musicians can occasionally be guilty of poor (if accidental) behaviour themselves. No more so than Brahms, who famously fell asleep during Liszt’s performance of his own Sonata in B minor at the Court of Weimar. Brahms later said it was because he was tired from travelling, but it was too late to pacify the furious Liszt. Perhaps the War of the Romantics might have been curtailed if only Brahms had been able to nap before the recital. While most musicians do their best to finish a performance, sometimes the conditions become untenable. When audiences booed Roberto Alagna during the second performance of Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Aida at La Scala in 2007, the tenor headed off stage and…

Balakirev became leader of The Mighty Handful by virtue of talent and charisma The case of Mily Alekseyevich Balakirev is a strange one. As a composer he created only a handful of minor masterpieces and, of those, two took years to complete: the symphonic poem Tamara appeared a decade and a half after its inception, and the Symphony No. 1, begun in 1866, was finished in 1897. As an influencer, he undeniably moulded and helped bring to fruition the early works of the composers he gathered around him. But the group that has gone down in history as The Mighty Handful (moguchaya kuchka – literally ‘the mighty little heap’) or The Five only existed as a tightly knit group for a decade or so before the others went on to…

The work Premiered just three months before Massenet’s 50th birthday, Werther is a work of the composer’s maturity, produced at a time when he was both highly experienced and highly successful, with a sequence of acclaimed scores – including Le roi de Lahor e, Hérodiade , Manon , Le Cid and Esclarmonde – already to his credit. The opera’s origins, however, go back much further. Paris’s Opéra-Comique originally turned down Werther for being ‘too dismal’ One of the three librettists responsible for this operatic adaptation of a famous epistolary novel by Goethe, Paul Milliet described how the idea for the work arose on a trip he made with Massenet and the composer’s publisher (and in this instance also librettist) Georges Hartmann to attend the first Italian performances of Hérodiade at…

Michel Plasson (conductor) Michel Plasson’s extensive career has included a long-term commitment to the 19th-century French repertoire and to Massenet in particular, and this 1979 recording benefits significantly from his stylistic assurance. Few exponents of the title-role can match the refinement and delicacy of Alfredo Kraus’s realisation – a true masterclass in operatic characterisation. Full of feeling, Tatiana Troyanos’s Charlotte is never overdone, while two French singers – Christine Barbaux and Matteo Manuguerra – add distinction as Sophie and Albert respectively. (Warner Classics 3091132) Michel Plasson (conductor) Here’s Plasson again, this time in a starkly designed production by film director Benoît Jacquot, originally presented at the Royal Opera House and here restaged at the Opéra Bastille in 2010. Entirely engaged both vocally and physically, Jonas Kaufmann conjures up…

Dvorák • Martinu Dvoÿák: Piano Concerto in G minor; Martinu: Piano Concerto No. 4, ‘Incantation’ Ivo Kahánek (piano); Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/ Jakub Hruša Supraphon SU 4236-2 59.24 mins There is no higher praise possible than to say that the spirit of Rudolf Firkušný hovers over this new release. That greatest of all Czech pianists was a consistent champion of Dvorák’s Piano Concerto, recording it many times, and it was also for him that Martinu composed his Third and Fourth Concertos. Ivo Kahánek’s new versions are worthy of standing in this company, and his account of the Dvorák certainly asks the question again: why does this exhilarating work remain so underrated? Some pianists shy away from its virtuosic challenges, conscious that its difficulties are not always obvious to the listener, but…

Dvořák Symphony No. 9; Carnival, etc. Alto ALC 1405 (1986-2012) 71:06 mins Sir Colin Davis and the LSO deliver a fresh-sounding New World Symphony, and Barry Tuckwell conducts a scintillating Carnival. Valery Gergiev’s earthbound way with Brahms’s Haydn Variations disappoints. ★★★★ Kodály Dances of Galánta; Háry János Suite; Peacock Variations; Dances of Marosszék Alto ALC 1394 (1956-59) 75:31 mins Antal Doráti conducts the Minneapolis and Chicago Symphony Orchestras and the Philharmonia Hungarica in performances of brilliant verve and focus. Clear, though rather hard-edged sound. ★★★★ Purcell The Fairy Queen; The Tempest, etc Eloquence 482 5063 (1958/72) 137:21 mins (2 discs) Though ‘inauthentic’, Britten’s arrangement of Purcell’s opera-as-masque is a high-class operation with much superlative playing and singing from Jennifer Vyvyan, Mary Wells et al in fine recorded sound. ★★★★ Wagner…

Rachmaninov Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 3; Vocalise; The Silver Sleigh Bells Daniil Trifonov (piano); Philadelphia Orchestra/ Yannick Nézet-Séguin DG 483 6618 81:50 mins The main focus of this final instalment in Daniil Trifonov’s Rachmaninov Piano Concerto cycle is 1909-17. This was an exceptionally fruitful period, during which the composer wrote several major works in a variety of genres before the Russian Revolution put a temporary halt to his creativity. The orchestra brings a glorious warmth to the string melodies Trifonov frames the two Concertos with two of his imaginative piano transcriptions. First, ‘The Silver Sleigh Bells’ drawn from the first movement of the composer’s epic choral and orchestral work The Bells. The glistening high-pitched harp, celesta and flute figurations that open the original sound just as luminous on the…

Cavalli Gli Amori d’Apollo e di Dafne Glossa GCD 923519 (2008) 156:27 mins (2 discs) Intermittently Anders Dahlin is a handsome Apollo and Rosa Dominguez’s Dafne suitably girlish, and there’s no doubting conductor Gabriel Garrido’s commitment to Cavalli’s opera. ★★★ Charpentier Médée Harmonia Mundi HAX 8901139.41 (1984) 182:14 mins (3 discs) In this landmark recording of Charpentier’s masterpiece, the young instrumentalists of Les Arts Florissants are bursting with invention even if the soloists are less satisfying than on William Christie’s later 1995 recording. ★★★ Mozart Apollo et Hyacinthus Signum SIGCD 577 (2012) 76:38 mins Ian Page offers a matchless account of the 11-year old Mozart’s first opera. Lawrence Zazzo is a fine Apollo and Christopher Ainslie does his best as the wicked Zephyrus. ★★★★★ Rameau Hippolyte et Aricie Eloquence 482…

Handel Brockes-Passion, HWV 48 Elizabeth Watts, Ruby Hughes (soprano), Rachael Lloyd (mezzo-soprano), Tim Mead (countertenor), Robert Murray, Gwilym Bowen, Nicky Spence (tenor), Cody Quattlebaum, Morgan Pearse (bass-baritone); Choir and Orchestra of the Academy of Ancient Music/ Richard Egarr Academy of Ancient Music AAM007 172:46 mins (3 discs) Richard Egarr draws deeply felt, contrasting emotions Handel’s setting of Barthold Heinrich Brockes’s non-liturgical poetic Passion, scored for oboes, bassoon, strings and continuo, was premiered in Hamburg in 1719 but was not performed in England where its German text would have been of little general interest. Following August Wenzinger’s recording in the mid-1960s, Handel’s Brockes-Passion suffered decades in the wilderness. Now, there are four competing versions, all of which do fairer justice to the piece than Wenzinger’s somewhat lustreless albeit pioneering endeavour. While…

Bacewicz Violin Sonatas Nos 1-5; Sonatas for Solo Violin Nos 1 & 2; Partita Annabelle Berthomé-Reynolds (violin), Ivan Donchev (piano) Muso mu-032 124:19 mins (2 discs) Possibly thanks to the double whammy of being a female composer behind the Iron Curtain, the Polish-Lithuanian composer Grazyna Bacewicz has long been sidelined in the western repertoire. Her music, now coming to wider attention at last, is fabulous and fascinating, as witnessed by high-profile recordings of her string quartets and Piano Sonata No. 2. Bacewicz was herself a violinist and, although she wrote prolifically in many different genres, her intimacy with the instrument’s idiom pays dividends in these inventive works – two solo violin sonatas and five sonatas plus a Partita for violin and piano. Bacewicz’s language bears an incandescent emotional intensity, with…

Schubert Piano Sonatas Nos 19-21 Francesco Piemontesi (piano) Pentatone PTC 5186 742 116:49 mins (2 discs) Schubert’s last three piano sonatas, like Beethoven’s, represent a creative summit, less transcendent but still a perfect culmination of his oeuvre. And to complete the symmetry, the first sonata of Schubert’s three opens with a restatement of the theme of Beethoven’s 32 Variations in Piemontesi’s pianism lies in his instinctive good taste C minor. Francesco Piemontesi handles this moment with cool gravity, before embarking on an interpretation which brings out the sheer sweetness of the movement. The following Adagio, permeated with references to Winterreise, radiates a calm serenity, every note being made to count as Piemontesi slows down almost to a halt, all passion spent; after letting the music spring delicately back into life…

Another year passes without the resurrection of the MiniDisc, my favourite failed format of the past 20 years. But, astonishingly, cassettes are back in the shops and I was even recently treated to a demonstration of a new reel-to-reel system. So nostalgia seems to be alive and kicking, influencing the next generation of products. Of course there’s a continued focus on improved streaming quality, but with it a realisation that having access to every song ever written isn’t always as rewarding as it could be. Services such as Roon and Primephonic are embracing the idea of sleeve notes and immersing yourself in the music instead of simply asking Alexa or Siri to play a Mozart or Sibelius playlist. In terms of hardware, you can expect to see more wireless loudspeakers…