Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2021 i BBC Music Magazine

Malcolm Hayes Critic and writer ‘Malcolm Arnold’s music has never really been in fashion in our concert halls, but his centenary year has been a good time to explore the sizeable CD catalogue again. I’m more impressed than ever.’ Page 26 Richard Morrison Chief critic of The Times ‘How refreshing that Elgar’s Violin Concerto, one of the masterpieces of English Romanticism, has a brilliantly articulate new champion in Renaud Capuçon – a virtuoso as French as they come.’ Page 34 Amanda Holloway Music journalist and editor ‘I can’t get over the fact that every night Ksenija Sidorova performs with a three-and-a-half stone piano accordion strapped to her chest. But she makes that big beast sound like a million dollars.’ Page 98…

2 …arms good, one leg bad. Russian maestro Valery Gergiev (above) has been told by doctors to take time off and avoid flying due to an injury. 37 …degrees Celsius. To prevent his precious Goffriller violin being damaged by the recent Texas freeze, Aaron Boyd cuddled it in bed. 1,000 …audience members allowed in concert venues in the UK from 17 May, if all goes well. 9 …years old and too loud. A Russian boy’s daily violin practice has seen his mother taken to court by neighbours.…

Clarinettist Alexander Fiterstein introduces favourite recordings from his collection Stamitz Clarinet Concerto No. 3 Yona Ettlinger (clarinet) et al Doremi DHR7859  Yona Ettlinger played principal clarinet in the Israel Phil, made a number of great arrangements and was interested in Baroque music. This is the first concerto that I learned as a student, so I have an affinity for it and I think this recording is great because Ettlinger is very creative with it. He embellishes what could be deemed a simple concerto. The way he plays it, the shadings in the slow movement, what he’s doing with his pianissimos… it all really appeals to me. Aaron Jay Kernis Flute Concerto Marina Piccinini (flute) et al Naxos 8.559830  This stands out as one of the best recent American concertos. Its…

Which living British composers will have their music played a century from now? As I type that question, I realise that answering it will bring me only scorn on social media. And to what end? The bumpy career and wildly fluctuating reputation of Malcolm Arnold – on this month’s cover – reminds us that one era’s critical judgements are rarely shared by the next. Then you have to factor in all the non-musical things that make some composers prominent in their lifetimes while leaving others out in the cold. Were they nifty at networking? Did they have rich friends? Were they lucky enough to be the right gender, class and ethnicity at the right moment? Were they sober at least some of the time? Still, it’s always fun to stick…

Few composers have truly excelled in writing music both for the concert hall and for films: among them are Walton, Britten (in his early cinema documentary scores), Korngold, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. But in terms of quality combined with quantity, Arnold’s achievement is more remarkable even than theirs. While a concert-hall score needs its own self-contained structure and pacing to stand on its own feet, those qualities on the screen are down to the film-editing. This means that besides the music’s main purpose of bringing out drama and atmosphere, it also needs to slot into a wider agenda without dominating. And since the score can only be finished and recorded after the film-editing is done, the composer needs to be able to work with exceptional speed and sureness. Arnold’s skills in…

One musician who was of central importance to both the Violin Concerto and Violin Sonata was Elgar’s good friend, the violinist WH (‘Billy’) Reed. A founder member of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1904 and its leader from 1912, Reed was called on regularly by the composer to offer technical advice on the Concerto and, a few years later, gave the premiere of the Sonata at a private performance, with Anthony Bernard at the piano. ‘I can never play the last movement [of the Violin Concerto] without seeing the River Wye flowing past the meadow at Hereford where Sir Edward and I used to practise throwing a boomerang in our “off-time” between working out these themes in the Finale,’ Reed remembered in a radio interview after Elgar’s death, subsequently comparing…

‘The duck quacked and, in her excitement, jumped out of the pond,’ gasps David Bowie in his iconic narration of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, recorded in 1977. ‘But no matter how hard she tried to run, she couldn’t escape.’ (Recent modernisations are more light-hearted: Alexander Armstrong and the London Mozart Players’ 2020 lockdown video sees the duck – a dog’s squeaky toy – enjoying a cocktail while reading Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Duck by one Swan le Carré.) Just as the duck could not elude her fate – swallowed alive, destined to live out her days inside the wolf’s stomach – nor could the oboe escape an enduring association with its feathery characterisation. It’s not just the oboe. Composers have often sought to depict creatures through particular instruments. The flute’s…

Who isn’t panting for classical music to experience its own spring-like renewal? Imagine you’re a composer living in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s the heart of winter, cold and dark, and you’re under the duvet. The phone rings. You reach out an arm to answer. ‘It’s the BBC here,’ the cheery voice says. ‘Sorry it’s so late,’ – blearily, you try to locate the bedside clock – ‘but we’d love to commission you to write a work to mark the coming of spring. Anything you like. We’ll perform it live on 20 March, the spring equinox, so I hope you can put a spring in your step. How about it?’ How about it indeed? Where would your thinking on the topic begin? After all, the range of spring music in the…

1874 LIFE: Reynaldo Hahn is born in Caracas, Venezuela, the youngest son of a businessman. The family moves to Paris when he is still a child. TIMES: The Church of the Holy Trinidad in Caracas is made the National Pantheon of Venezuela, a resting place for the country’s heroes such as Simón Bolivar, whose body is moved there two years 1907 LIFE: Now enjoying acclaim as a conductor as well as a composer, his devotion to his adopted country is cemented by becoming a naturalised French citizen. TIMES: In demonstrations, the French aviator Louis Blériot flies his new monoplane for over 500 metres. Two years later, he makes history by flying over the English Channel. 1931 LIFE: Three years after the first performance of his Violin Concerto, he conducts the…

Charles Mackerras (conductor) Prague Symphony Orchestra Supraphon SU38482 Excellent recordings of Dvorák’s Eighth are not in short supply. Václav Talich’s pioneering 1935 recording is essential listening, now beautifully restored on the Koch label. It remained the benchmark for many years, a testament to the unique quality of the pre-war Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. As part of complete sets of the nine symphonies, meanwhile, István Kertész (see above right) and Witold Rowicki’s recordings with the LSO in the 1960s and ’70s (Decca and Philips) are both memorable achievements. Mackerras manages to achieve the ideal balance of sunshine and darkness Also with the LSO is Antal Doráti’s blistering 1959 account (Mercury Living Presence) – a thrilling if uncomfortable ride – as is the second of Colin Davis’s two very fine recordings (LSO Live,…

There’s a glimmer of light ahead, with the promise of warmer days, the green shoots of spring and more fantastic music to enjoy. I myself have been particularly delighted by a pair of recordings that shine much-needed light on composers whose music has been shamefully overlooked. Baritone Will Liverman’s triumphant Dreams of a New Day (see opposite) celebrates art song by African-American composers past and present, while the Catalyst Quartet focuses on the student music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor on a sublime new disc (see this month’s Chamber Choice). This issue’s selection really is an embarrassment of riches; we’ve not one but two appearances by violinist Daniel Hope and an eloquent new album of Liszt from pianist Benjamin Grosvenor. Michael Beek Reviews editor This month’s critics John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Michael…

Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin; Suite No. 2; Hungarian Peasant Songs BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/ Thomas Dausgaard Onyx ONYX 4213 72:49 mins Fasten your seatbelts: if you think the concert suite from The Miraculous Mandarin needs a strong stomach, just try the whole ballet. The suite accounts for only about two thirds of it; Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBCSSO) have turned to the entire work, reconstructed and issued relatively recently, following the gruesome Expressionist story to its explicit conclusion complete with wordless choir. Beside the invigorating Hungarian Peasant Songs (it’s not clear why they recorded eight rather than the available nine) and the relatively early Suite No. 2, which is audibly haunted by the composer’s passion for Strauss, The Miraculous Mandarin seems to occupy a different world…

JS Bach Harpsichord Concertos, BWV 1054, 1056 & 1057; Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute and Violin, BWV 1044 Il Pomo d’Oro/ Francesco Corti (harpsichord) Pentatone PTC 5186 889 61:36 mins This is the final instalment of Francesco Corti’s survey of the seven harpsichord concertos in Bach’s autograph. For good measure, he adds to this volume the Triple Concerto in A minor for harpsichord, traverso flute and violin. Corti brings out a wealth of felicitous detail in the solo keyboard writing, generously adding tasteful ornaments if too enthusiastically at times. I also felt some subservient string writing was highlighted in an artificial manner, but the strengths of the performances comfortably outweigh any doubts and disappointments. Highlights include the briskly jubilant rondo finale of the D major Concerto, more familiar as the E…

Beethoven Leonore (1805 Version) (DVD) Nathalie Paulin, Jean-Michel Richer, Stephen Hegedus, Pascale Beaudin, Matthew Scollin, Keven Geddes, Alexandre Sylvestre; Opera Lafayette Chorus & Orchestra/Ryan Brown; dir. Oriol Tomas (NYC, 2020) Naxos DVD: 2.110674; Blu-ray: NBD0121V 148 mins After a pioneering recording of Pierre Gaveaux’s Léonore, Opera Lafayette has decamped from France to Vienna for a more familiar version of the same libretto: Beethoven’s Leonore, composed in 1805. Lafayette’s modest production suggests that first thoughts were good thoughts but that Leonore is a different opera from Fidelio. Not only is the complete story told musically in the Overture (‘Leonora No. 2’), but the placing of the sung numbers, particularly the duet for Marzelline and Fidelio in Act II about marital fidelity, suggests that what interests Beethoven in 1805 is conjugal bliss…

Louis Andriessen The only one Nora Fischer (soprano); Los Angeles Philharmonic/Esa-Pekka Salonen Nonesuch 7559791733 19:35 mins Following the awful news in December 2020 of Louis Andriessen’s dementia, it’s plain that The only one is among the final works of this brilliantly influential composer. There’s no sense of waning powers nor any loss of iconoclastic spirit in its unnervingly surreal 20-some minutes. Composed in 2018 for the genre-straddling vocalist Nora Fischer, it’s effectively operetta-cum-cabaret disguised as an orchestral song cycle. Five autobiographical poems by Delphine Lecompte are set in English translation. Each grapples with profound alienation encountered in everyday banalities of life routines, ageing and lust, couched in alternating glib detachment and abrasive, sometimes harrowing, intimacy. The anti-narrative is perfect for Andriessen who, true to form, eschews conventional ensemble for one…

Coleridge-Taylor Uncovered, Vol. 1 – Fantasiestücke; Clarinet Quintet*; Piano Quintet** *Anthony McGill (clarinet); Catalyst Quartet; **Stewart Goodyear (piano) Azica Records ACD-71336 76:11 mins The musicians capture the composer’s freshness and structural command In his short lifetime, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor achieved fame but not fortune as the so-called ‘African Mahler’ who composed The Song of Hiawatha. He died in poverty in 1912 aged 37, having received no royalties from its many popular performances. The enormity of his loss is brought home by this beautifully performed album of chamber works – astonishingly, composed while still a student. Earliest is the 1893 Piano Quintet which reveals from the start an exceptional melodic gift. Through four colourful movements, the Catalyst Quartet and pianist Stewart Goodyear capture the combination of freshness and subtle structural command that…

April round-up The conductor takes to the podium and is swiftly shot in the back. He lies motionless on the stage while the orchestra lets rip with the iconic James Bond theme. Not your average concert, then, but we’ve come to expect nothing less from the Danish National Symphony and this latest release is one of its best yet. Agents Are Forever charts music for some of the screen’s best-loved spies and detectives. Bond looms large, though standout moments include cues from Michael Giacchino and Joe Kraemer’s recent Mission: Impossible film scores and David Arnold and Michael Price’s swaggering music for the BBC’s Sherlock. (Euro Arts 2067774 (Bluray); 2067777 (CD) ★★★★ ) We’re still waiting to hear Hans Zimmer’s 007 score, and in the meantime his latest superhero effort has…

April round-up Young jazz players often struggle to impose an identity on their music. Not so Matt Carmichael, the 21 year-old Scots tenorist whose debut album Where Will The River Flow immediately establishes him as an appealing and distinctive new voice in a crowded scene. The BBC Young Jazz Musician finalist can write too: the nine tunes here have a strong Celtic connection as well as a Scandinavian feel in places that contribute to the quartet’s bracing sound. ‘Firth’ surges gloriously and romantically along on Fergus McCreadie’s rippling piano riff, while there are enjoyably dangerous rapids for pianist and leader to navigate in ‘The Spey’, for example. Like Charles Lloyd and Abdullah Ibrahim, Carmichael’s got the gift of uplift in his music. (Porthole Music PM 01) ★★★★★ For his 2018…

Born in Riga, Latvia, Ksenija Sidorova has been playing the accordion since childhood. Passionate about showcasing the instrument and expanding its repertoire, she performs classical music ranging from Bach and Bizet to contemporary composers such as Erkki-Sven Tüür, plus folk and flamenco too. Her new album Piazzolla Reflections pairs unusual Piazzolla pieces with new commissions and is out now on Alpha. My connection with the accordion started when I was six and staying with my grandparents in Russia. I was fascinated by a garmoshka, a little folk accordion I found in the attic, so my grandmother acquired a mini accordion from her neighbours. She sang Russian folk songs and I played the accompaniment, and the two of us had parties at home. I carried on learning the piano accordion at…

Malcolm Arnold was an extraordinary man. As you’ll read in Malcolm Hayes’s excellent survey of his greatest works and eventful life, the English composer, whose centenary we celebrate this year, was supremely adept at just about every genre of classical music. At the heart of his output are nine major symphonies (two of which you can hear on this month’s CD) , but there are 45 more orchestral works to explore, as well as 20 concertos, four operas, 40 chamber works, over 60 film scores, several pieces for brass band and much more. As you’ll read from p26, Hayes wonders whether Arnold should be seen as England’s Shostakovich – listen to the ferocious bite and desolation of some of the symphonies and make your own mind up, of course. But…

April Fredrick Soprano Born: Wisconsin, US Career highlight: Performing Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra and singing the role of Jane in the world premiere of John Joubert’s Jane Eyre with the English Symphony Orchestra. She has always been one of my favourite literary characters. Musical hero: Cecilia Bartoli is a singer who is unafraid to be herself, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma has done amazing work to build bridges with other genres and artistic traditions. Dream concert: A reimagining of a 19th-century salon in a house, with thinkers, artists, philosophers and poets, bringing together music, poetry, food and wine. Agostinho Sequeira Percussionist Born: Almada, Portugal Career highlight: Winning the TROMP Percussion Competition in 2020 was a fantastic honour. In 2017, after being named Portugal’s Young Musician…

The Great Music in Irish Houses Festival marked its 50th anniversary with a commission from composer Gráinne Mulvey last year. Great Women has recently been recorded in a Dublin studio by singer Elizabeth Hilliard and will be released in June on Métier. The work, for voice and electronics, celebrates notable Irish women. Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang is in the midst of a new recording project for Warner Classics. She performs concertos by Beethoven and Stravinsky with the Bremen Chamber Philharmonic under Pekka Kuusisto. The musicians began recording at the ensemble’s home venue in January where they’ll return in May to finish the album, ahead of release later in the year. Staying with the violin, Itamar Zorman has been recording a very personal set of pieces at Duke University’s Baldwin Hall…

How to distinguish one composer from another? Are there musical signatures of harmony, melody or orchestration that can uniquely define them? Are there tricks that are theirs, and theirs alone? What’s really the difference between Haydn and Mozart in the late-18th century; what marks Vaughan Williams out from Elgar, or the Bee Gees from ABBA? And what explains that feeling of recognition when we hear music for the first time, but know it’s by our favourite composer, songwriter or band? I can make a potential claim for the horizontality of Mozart as opposed to the verticality of Haydn as part of what makes them distinctive. If you compare the openings of two of their orchestral pieces written in the same key – Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 and Haydn’s Symphony…

Edward Smith Alnwick As a keen clarinettist myself, I’ve always included Jack Brymer in my pantheon of musical heroes so was delighted to hear him performing Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto on your cover CD. Though he famously devoted himself to Mozart, it’s a shame that he didn’t record more music by other composers. I’d particularly like to recommend his recording of Lennox Berkeley’s Sextet for Clarinet, Horn and String Quartet, a splendidly vivacious work which really shows off the virtuosity of Brymer and his fellow players. Michael Hagan Cleveland, US For some reason, the debate of ‘greatest of all time’ seems to crop up with particular regularity when it comes to film composers. Now, I wouldn’t say that Maurice Jarre is necessarily the best, but he surely deserves a place at…

Always happy to wage subversive war against the trappings of musical pomposity, Arnold was attracted to the irreverent concerts devised by his friend Gerard Hoffnung (above). For the first of these, presented at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1956, Arnold provided A Grand, Grand Overture. This is scored for full orchestra, organ, three vacuum cleaners, one floor polisher and four rifles (which execute the floor-cleaning contingent), and culminates in a coda of grand chords which threaten to repeat for ever, or almost. Among other Hoffnung Concert creations by Arnold were Leonora No. 4 – a roguish take on Beethoven’s three Leonora overtures – and the Grand Concerto Gastronomique for eater, waiter, food and orchestra. The light-music side of Arnold’s talent also shone through the sequence of suites of orchestral dances…

“ Paganini achieved an incandescent level of virtuosity when he played Il Cannone” The value of high-quality violins has soared in recent years, especially those made by Cremonese makers Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) and Giuseppe Guarneri (1698-1744). The latter, known as ‘del Gesù’ – due to the cross motif found on his later instruments – is widely considered the finest of all luthiers. His violins, of which less than 200 have survived, are prized for their lustrous sound and luminous tonal colours. Little wonder one of his sublime instruments holds the current auction record of $16 million reportedly paid for the ‘Vieuxtemps’ Guarneri, named after the great Belgian player-composer who once owned it and currently on loan for life to the American violinist Anne Akiko Meyers. Yet there is one Guarneri…

From 1-21 March, spring will most definitely be in the air as Radio 3 celebrates all things vernal. Each weekday, Breakfast will be showcasing a variety of musical ‘springs’ as imagined by Vivaldi, Roxanna Panufnik, Gian Malipiero and more. And its Friday Poem slot will be extended to three days a week, featuring spring-related readings. Turning to Sunday Breakfast, Martin Handley will welcome spring from his home in rural East Sussex with music to celebrate flora and fauna and a special ‘Sounds of the Earth’ mixing noises of the natural world with spring-inspired works. Elsewhere, Essential Classics and Sunday Morning will also be bringing their own breaths of fresh spring air to to the schedule, with Night Tracks presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch taking us on a sonic journey from winter chill…

Sometime around 1907 the Duchess of Manchester gave a soirée in London in honour of the King and Queen. The music chosen for the occasion was Le Bal de Béatrice d’Este for wind band by the 33-year-old French composer Reynaldo Hahn and conducted by him. The Queen was enchanted and, after a pause for refreshments, asked for an encore. The King went off to play bridge, but returned shortly after. A courtier wondered whether, perhaps, some Offenbach? And so Reynaldo sang to his own accompaniment aria after aria by Offenbach, taking the King back to those happy, carefree days when, as Prince of Wales, he had so often escaped to Paris to be entertained by les petites femmes. If the Queen preferred Le Bal, Reynaldo thought that might have been…

Claudio Abbado (conductor) Claudio Abbado is not necessarily the first name to come to mind where Dvoÿák is concerned. However, the Italian’s live 1995 recording of the Eighth stands out for its open-air quality and sense of adventure. The Allegretto grazioso third movement, perhaps the most difficult of the four to bring off successfully, has the feel of a Bohemian dance which somehow eludes many conductors. The Berlin Philharmonic is at its virtuosic best throughout and Sony’s engineers have done a fine job, too. (Sony SK64303) István Kertész (conductor) The Hungarian conductor István Kertész, who died tragically young in a drowning accident at 43, is best remembered today for the first complete recordings of all the Dvoÿák symphonies. The Eighth paved the way, after Decca’s producer Ray Minshull had heard…

Dreams of a New Day – Songs by Black Composers Burleigh: Five Songs of Laurence Hope; Bonds: Three Dream Portraits; Kerr: Riding to Town; Leslie Adams: Amazing Grace; Damien Sneed: I Dream a World; Shawn E Okpebholo: Two Black Churches; Owens: Mortal Storm; Fariña: Birmingham Sunday (arr. Liverman) Will Liverman (baritone), Paul Sánchez (piano) Cedille 90000200 58:57 mins This outstanding disc of African-American art song marks the culmination of years of work by baritone Will Liverman. As noted in the album’s sleeve notes, ‘the corpus of songs created by African Americans about the experience of Black Americans have long been deemed insignificant and relegated to a status of near-invisibility’. Liverman is on a mission to redress this injustice. A true passion project, Dreams of a New Day gives voice to…

Mahler Symphony No. 10 (Deryck Cooke version) Minnesota Orchestra/Osmo Vänskä BIS BIS-2396 (CD/SACD) 78:20 mins The Minnesota is ideally engaged with the Tenth’s depths Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, Bernard Haitink and Georg Solti were among the conductors who excluded the full final journey of the Tenth from their recorded Mahler symphonies cycles. Though Deryck Cooke scrupulously described his edition, the ‘gold standard’ as Jeremy Barham’s excellent notes put it here, as ‘a performing version of the draft,’ it’s essential to hear how the trajectory of the finale argues not only with the opening, fully orchestrated Adagio movement, but also with the ensuing battles of heaven, hell and purgatory. The Adagio is ultimately more human, ending with the great leap of violins and violas beneath which, in the manuscript, Mahler inscribed…

Paris Chausson: Poème, Op. 25; Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1; Rautavaara: Deux sérénades Hilary Hahn (violin); Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France/Mikko Franck DG 483 9847 51:31 mins Hilary Hahn praises the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France as one where ‘emotion is embraced rather than exaggerated’, and the disc is an embodiment of this crucial virtue. I also savour her reference to the ‘measured brutality of Prokofiev’s writing’, this as well amply present in her reading of his First Violin Concerto. She admits it’s technically difficult, though you wouldn’t know it as her poise and silvery tone survive unscathed. In the second movement it’s interesting that where Maxim Vengerov in his 1995 recording follows Prokofiev’s instruction to play the passage on the bridge con tutta forza, with the result that pitch…

Royal Handel Handel: Arias from Flavio, Re De’ Longobardi; Admeto, Re Di Tessaglia; Siroe, Re Di Persia, etc; plus works by Arisoti and Bononcini Eva Zaïcik (mezzo-soprano); Le Consort Alpha Classics ALPHA 662 64:59 mins Singer and players dash, halt and breathe together in a kind of joint intelligence In 2017, Eva Zaïcik dazzled BBC Proms audiences in Monteverdi’s Vespers. This project shows why. From her gut-punch climactic notes to the buttery evenness of her register, Zaïcik’s command is exhilarating. I love especially how she applies vibrato. Whereas many mezzos’ vibrato is part of their core sound, Zaïcik follows Baroque taste in slipping from straight notes into tremolo, trillo and passaggi with intent to enrich her readings. The band director, Franco-American harpsichordist Justin Taylor, is Zaïcik’s constant collaborator and fully…

Gál Hidden Treasure – Unpublished Lieder Christian Immler (bass-baritone), Helmut Deutsch (piano) BIS BIS-2543 (CD/SACD) 72:25 mins Helmut Deutsch sets his peerless pianism at the disposal of Immler The Austrian Jewish composer Hans Gál was director of the Mainz Conservatory when the Nazis came to power in 1933. His job was terminated and his music banned, setting him on a path into exile – first back to Vienna, then to the UK, where he was interned on the Isle of Man. Ultimately he became professor of music at Edinburgh University. Like many composers of this devastated generation, Gál was condemned repeatedly: first for being born in the wrong place at the wrong time and later for staying true to his musical style when it was criticised as being outdated. No…

Beethoven Piano Sonatas Nos 23-26 Boris Giltburg (piano) Naxos 9.70313 61:23 mins Beethoven’s sonatas explore a musical world so wide-ranging that not even a pianist of Boris Giltburg’s quality will excel when exploring every corner of it. Given that the seventh instalment of this complete cycle takes in two major masterworks – the Appassionata, Op. 57 and Les adieux, Op. 81a – plus two smaller and very different ones in Op. 78 in F sharp major and Op. 79 in G major, what impresses is the comprehensive success-rate of Giltburg’s approach, rather than the odd reservation here or there. The Appassionata’s F minor opening instantly focuses attention, and the sweep and drama of Giltburg’s journey through its darkly turbulent outer movements never lets up for a moment; but perhaps the…

Beethoven’s Lives Lewis Lockwood Boydell Press 208pp (hb) £18.99 This short book is well timed: with the avalanche of Beethoven biographies reaching a climax, we needed someone to sort the wheat from the chaff, and to show how these books reflect the mood of their times. No surprise, for example, that Beethoven commentaries in Nazi Germany should stress the Aryan purity of their subject; interesting that Richard Wagner should have nursed ambitions (never realised) to write a life which would be ‘more a great novel about an artist than a dry listing of data and anecdotes compiled in chronological order’. As a leading Beethoven biographer, Lewis Lockwood has earned the right to pontificate, and his commentaries are succinct and authoritative on the heroes and villains of the competition which began…

Three to look out for Alan Davey , the controller of BBC Radio 3, picks out three great moments to tune into this April Stravinsky Day To mark the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky’s death, we’re dedicating a full day of programming to the music of this visionary composer. As well as talking to today’s leading musicians and assessing Stravinsky’s reputation and legacy, we’ll be exploring the best recordings of his Violin Concerto and broadcasting an evening performance of his 1951 opera The Rake’s Progress. Saturday, 10 April Good Friday Concert Tune into Radio 3 on Good Friday for a stunning programme of Easter music from Watford Colosseum. Organist Daniel Hyde – director of music at King’s College, Cambridge – performs with the BBC Singers and BBC Concert Orchestra. Friday, 2…

Frisky Sargent I love the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, so was worried when I saw your March issue CD that one of true great performers on that instrument, Jack Brymer, would be weighed down by Malcolm Sargent’s stodgy conducting. Not a bit of it. The whole thing is so musical. I then came to the Beethoven expecting the same. But again, the BBC Symphony is on great form, and although the recording shows its age, I’m sure Ludwig van B would approve – had Flash Harry been listening to Toscanini? Philip Chant, via email Sax education In Roger Thomas’s review of Fergus McCreadie’s Cairn ( Jazz, March), he refers to a reeds/bass/drums trio and ‘…original pieces inspired by the folk music and rural environment of the saxophonist’s native Scotland’. I’ve enjoyed…

Monte-Carlo move Cecilia Bartoli is to be the new artistic director of Opéra de Monte-Carlo. The Italian mezzo-soprano, who has won considerable acclaim for both her immaculate scholarship and sense of adventure in her recitals and recordings, says that her new post is the ‘realisation of a dream’. She will begin the role in 2023. Venue vandals Several windows were smashed when Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana was attacked by people protesting at the imprisonment of the rapper Pablo Hasél. Earlier in the evening, violinist Lina Tur Bonet and the Vespres d’Arnadi ensemble had been giving a concert at the historic venue, which was designed by leading Catalan architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner in 1905, but most of the audience had dispersed by the time of the attack. A…

‘My idea was to rush back to Paris, in order to mercilessly kill two guilty women and an innocent man. Having done that, I would, of course, proceed to kill myself.’ Over-wrought emotions, from the pages of a melodramatic romantic novel? No. The lines are from Hector Berlioz’s Memoirs, and are in essence true – at one point in his psychologically turbulent young manhood, the flamboyant French composer was indeed intending to initiate a mass shooting incident. The catalyst was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a woman. Camille Moke was just 18 when Berlioz first met her, and already one of the most brilliant pianists of her generation. Berlioz was eight years older, and reeling from a disastrous attraction to the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, an infatuation which fuelled the heady imaginings of…

So frustrated was she by failing to get her music played on the radio that British composer Annabel Bennett (left) had a radical idea: present it as being written by ‘Arthur Bennett’ instead. The trick worked and, now that her male alter ego has started to enjoy regular air play, Bennett recently revealed Arthur’s true identity, to red faces all round. She’s not the first woman composer to have had to take this route, alas… Though Fanny Mendelssohn was supported as a composer by younger brother Felix, he was less in favour of her publishing under her own name. And so, a number of her songs were published within his Opp. 8 & 9 collections, including Italien, Queen Victoria’s favourite of ‘his’ works. Later in the 19th century, Augusta Holmès,…

Oliver Condy Editor I’ve long been a huge fan of guitarist Pat Metheny’s music, but a new album of two chamber suites, Road to the Sun, sees him take a back seat as a player for the first time, relinquishing performance duties to Jason Vieaux and the LA Guitar Quartet. The two suites are everything I’d been hoping: full of wonderful tunes, those trademark Metheny harmonies and a pervading sense of joy. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Though I originally intended to mark the beginning of Lent by listening to various settings of Psalm 51, the haunting beauty of SS Wesley’s Wash Me Throughly had me abandoning that plan and instead sticking with the rest of St John’s College, Cambridge’s 2013 disc of the English composer’s choral music. Yes,…

The Complete Symphonies LSO/Richard Hickox; BBC Phil/Rumon Gamba Chandos CHAN10853(4) Consistently high-quality performances of the essential core of Arnold’s output, split between two fine ensembles. Symphony No. 9 National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland/ Andrew Penny Naxos 8.553540 Fine playing of Arnold’s last, strangest and most remarkable symphony, plus a talk by him with Andrew Penny. Guitar Concerto Julian Bream, Melos Ensemble Alto ALC1174 The benignly gorgeous Guitar Concerto is played by its dedicatee, with solo works by Lennox Berkeley, Ravel and others. String Quartets Nos 1 & 2 McCapra Quartet Chandos CHAN 9122 Two exceptional masterworks in performances of world-class quality. Film Music Vol. 1 LSO/Richard Hickox Chandos CHAN 9100 Suites from five of the best film scores are here, including Kwai , Whistle Down the Wind and The Sound…

“love I am with completely Elgar’s way in of expressing his feelings in music. That’s what drew me in” Down the phone from Paris, Renaud Capuçon sounds like the living embodiment of that rare thing these days – the entente cordiale between France and Britain. ‘Yes, I am French, but I love this piece!’ the 45-year-old violinist exclaims as we discuss his new recording of Elgar’s Violin Concerto. ‘And I had the huge advantage of learning the concerto with British conductors – first Jeffrey Tate, then Paul Daniel and now Simon Rattle.’ Capuçon is as Gallic as they come. Married to Laurence Ferrari, one of French TV’s most glamorous and famous anchorwomen, he directs the Easter Festival at Aix-en-Provence, and is the go-to virtuoso whenever Paris needs a special occasion…

The Lipinski Stradivarius Tartini wrote his ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata for the Lipinski. It’s now played by the Milwaukee Symphony’s leader Frank Almond, from whom it was once stolen in an armed robbery in 2014. 1734 ‘Hercules’ Stradivarius The Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe preferred to perform on his Guarneri, leaving his Strad in its case while on stage. Stolen in 1908, it was later found at a Parisian dealer and is now part of the Israel Philharmonic’s collection. 1703 Guarneri ‘Filius Andreae’ Cremona After he acquired a Stradivarius, Joseph Joachim passed his Guarneri to Felix, the youngest child of friends and collaborators Robert and Clara Schumann. 1713 Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius Twice stolen from Polish violinist Bronis¯aw Huberman. In 1919 it was taken from his Vienna hotel room but returned days later.…

“ David Oistrakh was a good musician, but was working more for the government than for the Conservatoire” One day last year, Sulamita Aronovsky’s phone rang with an unexpected message. A box of 1958 recordings bearing her name had been found in the Vilnius radio archives, accompanied by an instruction that they should be destroyed. That, she had thought, had been her punishment for defecting from the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. ‘And when I listened to those tapes,’ she says, ‘I thought they weren’t so bad.’ That’s typically modest: on the CD now released under the title Amity, her Mozart, Chopin, Ravel, Debussy and Ciurlionis – as a good patriot, she includes a piece from Lithuania’s leading painter-composer – are of a very high standard.…

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was founded 29 days after the settlers arrived Glance up or down any thoroughfare in Salt Lake City and you can’t ignore the looming snow-capped mountains emphasising the remoteness of this isolated valley. By way of contrast, this bustling modern metropolis boasts a spotless hop-on hop-off light rail ready to whisk you around the easily navigated Central Business District. It must be a far cry from the sight that greeted Brigham Young in 1847 when, fleeing persecution, he led 143 men, three women, two children, 93 horses, 52 mules, 66 oxen, 19 cows, 17 dogs and a handful of chickens over the Rockies to stake his claim to a patch of arid wasteland in Utah’s Great Salt Lake basin. Young had succeeded the murdered Mormon prophet…

Lyricism Hahn continued the tradition of Gounod and Massenet in giving voices lines that were sinuous and easy on the voice while being scrupulous in his word setting. At the same time, these lines were never left to drift, but are always imbued with a sense of purpose. Simplicity While his orchestral and chamber music may be more complex, his songs are remarkable in the impact of their simple textures. His accompaniments can look skimpy on the page, but they give singers just the right support in both volume and colouring. Profundity Only rarely does Hahn bang the big drum. But profundity can be achieved by small things if they are in the right place. His talent reminds one of the Roman poet Horace and his ‘curiosa felicitas’ – that…

Dvoÿák was in his late-40s when he conducted the premiere of his Eighth Symphony. By this stage, he had already composed a large body of music, including the Slavonic Dances and Symphonic Variations for orchestra, 11 string quartets and his 1879 String Sextet, which was his first work to be premiered outside Bohemia. Many of the works for which he is best known today, however, were still to be written, including the opera Rusalka , his Cello Concerto and, inspired by his three-year stay in the US from 1892, his ‘New World’ Symphony and the ‘American’ String Quartet No. 12.…

What was the starting point for this project? I wanted to start commissioning and telling new stories; I’d worked with Shawn Okpebholo before, so Two Black Churches was sort of the genesis of it. I got him to set ‘Ballad of Birmingham’ and then he had the idea to do a parallel with the Charleston shooting. I’m an advocate of featuring living composers and normalising their repertoire. Of the other works, which did you regard as essential? I wanted to find pieces to surround that theme of the Black experience in America. So Margaret Bonds’s Three Dream Portraits was the first thing that I immediately thought of. I just had to feature her for being a prominent female black composer. Five Songs of Laurence Hope by Harry Burleigh is a…

Published in 1733, Pietro Locatelli’s L’Arte del Violino for solo violin, strings, and basso continuo introduced a new level of virtuosic violin playing within the genre of the concerto. Most notably, the end of the first and third movements of each concerto features a capriccio for the soloist alone. These are of unprecedented difficulty, involving a left-hand technique which makes use of extensions, octaves, unprepared tenths, double and triple stopping, arpeggios and double trills, often playing extremely high above the stave.…

Beethoven composed just one opera, albeit its two substantial revisions changed the character of the work. Its source was a French libretto by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal, based on a real life event in which a woman daringly rescued her aristocratic husband from prison. Though originally an anti-French Revolution story, when staged in Paris in 1798 as an opera by Pierre Gaveaux the audience took it as revolutionary in intent, as did Beethoven and his librettist Joseph Sonnleithner. Leonore was the opera’s original title, named after its heroine.…

Beethoven • Pleyel Beethoven: Cello Sonatas, Op. 5; Variations on ‘Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen’; Pleyel: Nocturne ‘Souvenir de la Flûte enchantée’ Raphaël Pidoux (cello), Tanguy de Williencourt (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMM902410 64:44 mins Following Beethoven’s 1796 visit to King Frederick II’s Sanssouci palace, where he performed with court cellist Duport, he composed these two ‘grand sonatas for harpsichord or piano-forte with an obligato cello’. They are two of the first where every note of the piano part is written out – and what piano writing! From the obsessive focus on a single tone to a thunderous hurly-burly exploiting the piano’s whole range, the sheer exuberance and invention of these works is brought to vivid life here. Cellist Raphaël Pidoux handles his tawny-voiced Pietro Guarneri with fiery grace, drawing luminous…

JS Bach The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II – excerpts Piotr Anderszewski (piano) Warner Classics 9029511875 75:08 mins The whole set is beautiful from start to finish Piotr Anderszewski delights in wrong-footing his audiences. Sometimes dramatically, viz beginning a Barbican recital lounging on a sofa and sipping tea, as though waiting for someone else to sit at the piano. Sometimes musically: silencing Wigmore applause by announcing that he hadn’t played a Bach partita well enough, so he would play it all again as an encore. This recording creatively wrong-foots our expectations, offering 12 preludes and fugues from Book II of Bach’s 48 in an entirely new order. ‘It seems to me,’ he says in a liner note, that they were published in an order which is ‘not one in which the…

JS Bach Cantatas BWV 72, 92 & 156 La Petite Band/Sigiswald Kuijken et al Accent ACC25320  It’s debatable whether one-to-apart is authentic. It can, however, be unduly thin-textured. This recording features finely defined vocal and instrumental performances, but the choruses do lack heft. (OC) ★★★ JS Bach • Piazzolla Concertos Nikola Djoric (accordion) et al Berlin Classics 0301416BC  The Serbian accordionist pairs Piazzolla with a transcription of Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 1. Although the articulation of the strings could better match Djoric’s playing, this is a dynamic recording. (FP) ★★★ Berwald Chamber music Franz Ensemble MDG MDG9032189  19th-century Swedish composer Berwald’s chamber music is charming, a hybrid of Schubertian sophistication and Weber-esque froth – and it all fizzes along courtesy of these wonderfully refined performances. (OC) ★★★★ Carl Davis The…

BBC iPlayer There is a raft of archive performances from the UK’s top orchestras and choirs currently available to stream on BBC iPlayer. In a concert from City Halls, Glasgow, conductor Alpesh Chauhan and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 and Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, featuring Norwegian soloist Henning Kraggerud. From the EFG London Jazz Festival, there are performances from genre-bending South African cellist Abel Selaocoe, who hosts a jazz takeover with his trio Chesaba and the BBC Concert Orchestra. You can also catch up on the English National Opera’s performance of Mozart’s Requiem, recorded for a lockdown TV audience at the end of last year and presented by soprano Danielle de Niese. Elizabeth Llewellyn, Sarah Connolly, Ed Lyon and Gerald Finley are the stellar…