Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2021 i BBC Music Magazine

Kate Wakeling Writer and musicologist ‘It was a true delight to meet composer Caroline Shaw. We discussed everything from synaesthesia to flower pots to Kanye West, and her conversation proved just as vibrant and thoughtful as her music.’ Page 34 Steph Power Writer and composer ‘Delia Derbyshire created the iconic Doctor Who theme – and much more still to be recognised. Researching this great electronic music pioneer, I wish I’d known about her as a youngster, fascinated by sound.’ Page 46 Clare Stevens Classical music journalist ‘Exploring Parry’s Songs of Farewell brought back happy memories of performing the first song in the set; it was a pleasure to deepen my knowledge of the other five by listening to some fine recordings.’ Page 90…

13 … musicians in the West End’s Phantom of the Opera orchestra to lose their jobs, ahead of the smash-hit musical’s re-opening this summer. 400,000,000 … pounds given in grants and loans by the UK’s Culture Recovery Fund to help with the return of live performance. 2 … new countries to appear in BBC Cardiff Singer of the World this year; a baritone from Madagascar and a soprano from the Republic of Kosovo. 6 … per cent remains of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, the only place where the Pernambuco tree (above) – one of the best materials for violin bows – grows.…

On paper, Paul Robeson was an American publicist’s dream. He had a law degree from Columbia University, he was a first-class athlete and a star player in the National Football League, he could act and he could sing. Moreover, as a man of colour he embodied the American ideal of a society open to everyone, whatever their ethnicity or social background. Yet there was a problem, not rare among sensitive intellectuals of his generation: disillusioned by Western democracy, Robeson began looking to the East for political solace. His principal motivation is not hard to fathom. His reverend father had been born into slavery, and all his life Robeson had suffered racial abuse. Even at the height of his fame, restaurants and hotels would refuse him entry on account of his…

Musicologists, acousticians and other whizzes have teamed up to show how choral music would have sounded at a Scottish castle 500 years ago. An installation in the ruined chapel of Linlithgow Palace (left) uses laser technology to recreate what James IV might have heard during a visit in 1512, with the acoustic impact of floor tiles, the roof and even soft furnishings taken into account. It’s not the first clever use of technology to bring the music of the 16th century to life… In 2017, The Vyne, a National Trust property in Hampshire, invited visitors to listen to music by composer Nicholas Ludford in a recreation of the soundscape of 1535, when Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn came to stay during a summer tour. The music – choral, organ and…

Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Hurray for toast. A quick mid-work nip down to the kitchen on a Friday morning coincided with Radio 3 playing the orchestral version of Saint-Saëns’s Une nuit à Lisbonne. In just three minutes or so, this gorgeous barcarolle vividly captures a calm evening in the Portuguese capital, the Atlantic waves lapping up against the sea wall. Toasted up, I headed back to my desk and downloaded the recording by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Neeme Järvi. Alice Pearson Cover CD editor While checking out the works of Dvoÿák’s son-in-law Josef Suk for a future BBC Music Magazine cover CD, I discovered one of Suk’s later works, the symphonic poem The Ripening. Rather appropriately for these times, it’s a musical depiction of the triumph…

Gershwin Porgy & Bess With Cynthia Haymon, Bruce Hubbard et al; Glyndebourne Chorus; London Philharmonic Orchestra/Simon Rattle Warner 476 8362 In this now legendary Glyndebourne production, White is in magnificent form and inhabits the role with an unmatched charisma. The Paul Robeson Legacy With Neal Thornton (piano), Geoff Gascoyne (bass), Richard Bolton (guitar) Linn AKD218 White brings a palpable intensity performing songs associated with his great predecessor and civil rights activist, Paul Robeson. Bartók Duke Bluebeard’s Castle With Elena Zhidkova; LSO/Valery Gergiev LSO Live LSO 0685 White’s noble and deeply considered performance as the Duke was described by BBC Music Magazine as ‘magnificent’. Wagner Die Walküre Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Simon Rattle Bel Air Classiques BAC 034 Willard White’s performance as Wotan really needs to be seen on screen to be fully…

The eight-piece vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth is the brainchild of Brad Wells, who brought the singers together in 2008 for a residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary of Art. Wells arranged for experts in various native styles from across the world to teach their vocal techniques to the new ensemble, from Inuit throat singing and Hindustani classical singing to alpine yodelling and Korean P’ansori. The group also worked with a variety of composers including Harry Stafylakis, who taught them how to sing with ‘supraglottal laryngeal constriction’, a technique used by death-metal singers. This was indicative of where the ensemble was heading – Brad Wells has described how the great project of 20th-century music was to liberate instruments from their prescribed sounds, which is something he now endeavours to…

As part of its successful bid to be 2021’s UK City of Culture, Coventry announced the name of a street in a new Stoke Heath housing estate: Derbyshire Way. ‘Originally it was to be named Derbyshire Road,’ says Coventry Music Museum director Pete Chambers. ‘I suggested “Way” instead to give it a double meaning, as Delia was a genius and strong personality and really did do things in her own way.’ The Coventry Music Museum has a display devoted to Derbyshire, featuring her tape recorder and personal copy of the score for her version of Ron Grainer’s Doctor Who theme. The BBC is shining a light on Coventry in some of its programming this year, including the broadcast on BBC Four of Delia Derbyshire: The Myths & The Legendary Tapes,…

From 1959 until his death in 1968, Indianapolis native Wes Montgomery (pictured above) made recordings that changed perceptions of the guitar’s role in jazz music. The former welder used his thumb rather than a pick to play melodies in parallel octaves and achieve a warm, robust tone that influenced subsequent standouts George Benson, Jimi Hendrix and Pat Metheny. Montgomery’s work was acknowledged in the form of two Grammy Awards, and critics selected him as the top guitarist five times in annual DownBeat magazine polls. The first film documentary based on Montgomery’s life is scheduled to premiere in March 2023 and coincide with the 100th anniversary of his birth.…

The Rodolfus Choir Ralph Allwood (conductor) Herald HAVPCD 217 The 2018 centenary of Parry’s death brought several new recordings of the Songs of Farewell, and the overall quality of the performances currently available is very high. Despite such exceptional competition, however, this 1998 version by the Rodolfus Choir, alumni of the Eton Choral Courses of that era, stands out through the wonderful balance it achieves between text and music. Fidelity to the score and performance instructions is absolute, yet there is a real sense of immediacy and freshness. Impressive momentum is sustained from beginning to end of the sequence Every word is clear; every phrase is beautifully shaped and controlled. An impressive momentum is sustained through each piece and from beginning to end of the entire sequence as the choir…

Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 4 in F minor; Symphony No. 6 in E minor London Symphony Orchestra/ Antonio Pappano LSO Live LSO0867 68:06 mins As Antonio Pappano points out in an eloquent booklet introduction, his interpretations of Vaughan Williams’s two most combative symphonies coincided with historic evenings: the Fourth of 1934 on a tense, angry election night, the post-World War Two Sixth fading to nothing before the lights were switched off in concert halls around the country at 5.30pm the next afternoon. Privileged to be there on both occasions – the entire concerts were unforgettable – I wondered how the performances would hold up in a recording. There was no need to have worried: they’re both electrifying, and they sound absolutely magnificent. Too much so in the case of the…

What do you recall about the night of performing the Sixth? It was very overwhelming, because it was the last time we were on stage together as an orchestra. We suspected we were going to have to have a month off; no one imagined it would be this amount of time. Obviously programmes are worked out far in advance, but it all felt so poignant and perfect. Every piece that night ended so quietly, which you don’t usually get in a concert, and I think it affected the way we played. Is it a better experience for musicians to record live? You might normally have to patch a couple of bars here and there, because of some cough they couldn’t muffle in post-production, but I think what has always been…

Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole The composer’s first major orchestral work to get a public airing, Rapsodie espagnole is one of several pieces in Ravel’s catalogue to romanticise his Spanish heritage. The Spanish flavour of this atmospheric and colourful four-part work is derived from dance rhythms such as the Malagueña and Habanera, which appear in the second and third movements, the latter based on a two-piano piece Ravel composed in 1895. The final section is all-out fiesta, replete with castanets. The work was premiered in Paris in 1908 and performed at the Proms under Henry Wood in 1909.…

Lutoslawski • R Schumann • Tchaikovsky Lutoslawski: Cello Concerto; R Schumann: Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129; Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33 Andrzej Bauer (cello); Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra/Jacek Kaspszyk Frederick Chopin Institute NIFCCD 072 66:34 mins Bauer and the Katowice forces tease the music out lovingly Three contrasting cello concertos cast fresh light on each other in performances by Polish cellist Andrzej Bauer, whose cultivated, singing tone is a constant virtue. He employs it first to unshowy effect in Schumann’s non-virtuosic (though still highly challenging) Cello Concerto in A minor, an enigmatic late work full of poetry. With the conductor Jacek Kaspszyk and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, he captures a quintessentially Schumannesque mood of pensive intimacy. Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme…

Jake Heggie Songs for Murdered Sisters Joshua Hopkins (baritone), Jake Heggie (piano) Pentatone PTC 5186 270 (digital only) 27:22 mins This striking and moving piece was prompted by the murder of Nathalie Warmerdam, the sister of Canadian baritone Joshua Hopkins. Warmerdam was killed by her former partner in 2015 and, as Hopkins describes, the tragedy not only devastated his family and community but also opened the singer’s eyes ‘to the worldwide epidemic of gender-based violence.’ In response, Hopkins set about commissioning the song cycle from composer Jake Heggie and the writer Margaret Atwood. The resulting work, Songs for Murdered Sisters, is at once powerful and tender, and also prompts a remarkable vocal performance from Hopkins. The song cycle takes Schubert’s Winterreise as its starting point, and casts Hopkins as a…

JS Bach The Well-Tempered Consort, Vol. 2: arrangements from Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 & 2 Phantasm Linn records CKD 657 70:05 mins Whereas viol consort Phantasm’s first venture into reimagining JS Bach’s keyboard music ranged across The Well-Tempered-Clavier, the Musical Offering, and Clavier-Übung III, a welcome sequel restricts itself to the two volumes of the ‘48’ – their fugues especially. ‘Restricts’, however, is the least appropriate word to use in this context, for Laurence Dreyfus’s transcriptions generate fresh insights into the workings of Bach’s contrapuntal ingenuity and humanity – the latter not least because of the communal nature of the discourse, liberated from the controlling fingers of a single performer. And with fugues so numerically dominant, Dreyfus effectively proposes a companion ‘Art of Fugue’, albeit without the original’s singlemindedness of…

JS Bach Klavierwerke – Preludes and Fugues, Fantasias etc Rinaldo Alessandrini (harpsichord) Naïve OP 30581 73:02 mins The strength with which bass lines are shaped is impressive Arranging Bach’s enormous corpus of keyboard works for a recital or recording is problematic. Bach himself helps out with the various suites and partitas arranged by key, and Rinaldo Alessandrini, in navigating his way through the wealth of Bach’s other keyboard works, takes his lead from the composer by presenting them in three groups by key: A minor, D minor and C minor. While this has undeniable logic, the listener might be forgiven for wanting some major key leavening, but this collection, taken mostly from the early 1720s, is thoughtfully assembled. Alessandrini performs on a copy of an instrument by Dulcken, one of…

Bizet’s Carmen Uncovered Richard Langham Smith Boydell 340pp (hb) £39.95 This is a deeply researched, illuminating volume that no Carmenophile or budding producer can be without. Sadly, it is marred by careless copy editing and an inadequate index: for instance, the Carlist Wars are mentioned, but with no explanation of who the militant forces were or why, and the wars don’t appear in the index. Also, unpaged references to distant plate numbers take time to find. The book inevitably starts slowly since the scene has to be set and, for those of us not well up with early 19th-century Spain and its music and musicians it’s quite a steep learning curve. But with the opera itself featuring ever more largely, the interest quickens through a wealth of fascinating surprises. So…

June round-up For After the Real Thing, his debut album as leader, pianist Roy Mor presents a rich mix of his own compositions, standards by Kurt Weill and Hoagy Carmichael, plus two Israeli classics, symbolising his journey from Tel Aviv to New York and back. It’s encapsulated in the opening tracks: the beguiling sound of the oud introduces an atmospheric traditional song, the title track exemplifies classic piano jazz before ‘Jerusalem Mezcla’ melds both worlds splendidly. An elegant and sparkling improviser, Mor has already won several awards and performed with many distinguished international musicians. This album should strengthen his reputation further. (Ubuntu UBO0081) ★★★★★ Recorded last September during a relaxation of Covid restrictions, Sunrise Reprise was a cathartic experience for the Chris Potter Circuits Trio after so long being unable…

It must have been around 12 months ago that one of the more intriguing impacts of the coronavirus lockdown was reported from Venice: namely that, without daily traffic, the previously murky water of the Italian city’s canals had become both clean and clear, a sight that would have been familiar to residents and visitors in times past. The news will have doubtless have been noticed by Paul Atkin who, as George Hall explains in his fascinating feature on page 38, is doing his own bit to restore a former Venetian glory. Atkin’s project to rebuild the Teatro San Cassiano, the world’s first ever opera house, still has some way to go in terms of both funding and planning but, if realised, should prove a wonderful asset for both opera enthusiasts…

Le Dudamel de Paris Gustavo Dudamel has been named as the next music director of Paris Opera. The brilliant Venezuelan, 39, who first made his name as music director of his home country’s Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra (as it was called then) before joining the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009, begins his new role this August. He says his aim is ‘to build on the success of the past, but at the same time look toward the future.’ Key signatures The New York music world is mourning the death of Lois Kirschenbaum, a familiar figure at The Metropolitan Opera, even though she never appeared on its stage. Instead, Kirschenbaum, 88, made her name at the venue as the autograph hunter sans pareil, waiting patiently to grab singers’ attention at the…

8th George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel is published by Secker & Warburg. Within it, Orwell presents a dystopian future complete with totalitarian concepts such as the ‘Thought Police’ and ‘Big Brother’ surveillance. ‘I do not think I have ever read a novel more frightening and depressing,’ says The Statesman’s reviewer, VS Pritchett. 11th The composer and mandolin player Giovanni Gioviale dies aged 63. Born in Catania, Sicily, Gioviale forged a career as an internationally touring virtuoso, primarily on the mandolin but also on the banjo, guitar and violin. From 1926-9, he lived and worked in New York, where he made a large number of recordings, of both his own music and arrangements of other composers. 14th A rhesus macaque called Albert II becomes the first ever primate to go…

Olav Anton Thommessen Stabsarabesque The Staff Band of the Norwegian Armed Forces Simax PSC1308 In Norway we have a very strong military band tradition. This piece was written for the biggest band, the Staff Band of the Norwegian Armed Forces, and I first heard it when I was very young. It has some Norwegian folk music vibes, but also some Arabic/ Middle Eastern lines. It’s quite intense and draws you in, which I really like. It’s quite abstract sometimes, too, in the kind of language that Thommessen uses. Trad. Sonderho Bridal Trilogy Danish String Quartet Dacapo 8226081 The Danish String Quartet went to a cabin out in the wild in Denmark and recorded traditional folk tunes from different Nordic countries. The first time I heard this I completely fell in…

Tessa Lark Violinist During the pandemic I took some time away from the violin, but the artist that got me back to playing was Fritz Kreisler. I have a soft spot for early 20th-century violin playing. Kreisler’s sound is so embracing and warm and kind – a lot of things we haven’t been feeling in the last year! I usually listen to his original compositions: Caprice Viennois is the most gorgeous token he could have left us, and Liebeslied creates a sense of timelessness. Vivaldi’s aria ‘Vedrò con mio diletto’ combines melancholy with sweet softness I recently came across the baritone Gérard Souzay and in particular his recordings of songs by Fauré. There’s so much heat in his sound, as well as deep emotion and attention to detail in the…

So what gives you the creeps? I mean, excluding politicians, bankers, estate agents and journalists – the four tribes that always top surveys of ‘most detested professions’. Let’s stick to music. Elsewhere in this issue, Ashutosh Khandekar surveys the spookiest scenes in opera. Fair enough, but in opera the composer gets a helping hand from the terror inherent in the drama. The same is true of film music. I could fill this column with a discussion of just one composer’s soundtracks for one film director – Bernard Hermann’s scores for Alfred Hitchcock, and especially his avant-garde use of strings (and, remarkably, just strings) in Psycho. Yet here again the composer is really heightening terrifying scenes that already exist. I’m not belittling that art. But creating a mood of terror in…

Not all ghostly goings-on at the opera are confined to the stage. Several opera houses across the globe boast their own ghosts, from the wailing presence at Beijing’s 1807 Huguang Guild Hall to the brick- and bolt-throwing phantom reported during the Royal Opera House’s renovation in the late-1990s. Most famous of all is the ghost at Paris’s Palais Garnier, which inspired Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera. Leroux had his imagination sparked by several incidents at this grandest of venues during his time as a reporter for Le Matin, not least in May 1896 when the counterweight for a chandelier came crashing down from the ceiling during a performance, killing a concierge – caused, in fact, by a supporting wire having melted. Leroux also made several visits…

Louise Farrenc is a major musical personality hiding in plain sight. Composer, pianist, researcher, editor and educator, she was praised by Berlioz and Schumann; she became the Paris Conservatoire’s only 19th-century female professor of piano; she fought for equal pay as a woman, and won it. Born in the year Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, when Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony was contemporary music, she lived to see the devastation of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the birth of Saint-Saëns’s Société Nationale de Musique. Most significantly, her music – too long neglected – is seriously good. Farrenc was composing dazzling concert pieces that require a powerful technique She was born Jeanne Louise Dumont on 31 May 1804, into a Parisian family of artists. Her father, Jacques-Edme Dumont, was from a…

The work Hubert Parry’s six choral Songs of Farewell were first performed as a complete set on 23 February 1919, in the chapel of Exeter College, Oxford. The occasion was a memorial service for the composer, an alumnus of the college, who had died less than six months previously. Parry’s literary tastes and understanding of how to handle rhythm and metre set him apart In the current context, it is poignant to reflect that the actual cause of his death was a combination of blood poisoning and influenza, caught during the pandemic that ravaged Europe towards the end of the First World War; but Parry had been suffering from ill health for some years, experiencing minor heart attacks several times a week. While the timing of their publication makes it…

Tenebrae Tenebrae’s sopranos and altos have a warmth and heft when required, yet their delicately layered entries at points such as ‘And you whose eyes shall behold God’ in the fifth song display a gossamer-like purity. The choir effortlessly negotiates every technical challenge while paying thoughtful attention to the text. Antiphonal sections are a little lacking in drama, but there are many magical moments in this 2011 recording, enhanced by the warm but never overwhelming acoustic of St Alban’s Church, Holborn. (Signum Classics SIGCD267) Vasari Singers Under conductor Jeremy Backhouse, the Vasari Singers pack a punch from their opening statement and the impactful crescendo that follows, in a 2005 recording distinguished by its striking dynamic range and satisfying balance between the parts, each really relishing their stand-out phrases. The unanimity…

There’s something fascinating about unfinished works. In some cases we’ll never know what the composer had in mind; in others there are enough clues to help modern-day artists join the dots. This month we’ve new recordings of some of Mozart’s incomplete music, most notably Timothy Jones’s completions of four violin sonatas (see p112). There’s also fresh looks at the Larghetto and Allegro, which was probably intended for a two-piano concerto, and an Allegro that is thought to have been conjured as the first movement of an oboe concerto. Beyond that we’ve great archival recordings in a Historical round-up, books on Indian ragas and sea shanties, plus more than a little French flavour peppered throughout.…

CPE Bach – Beyond the Limits Complete String Symphonies Gli Incogniti/ Amandine Beyer (violin) Harmonia Mundi HMM 905321 67:02 mins The distinctive, often quirky character of these symphonies is partly the result of the aesthetic movements of the north German Empfindsamer Stil and the incipient Sturm und Drang. Where the first of them is concerned, CPE Bach is the generally acknowledged master. His imagination was coloured by this sensitive style to an extent whereby it could almost be regarded as his own, deeply personal response to an aesthetic which defies precise definition. The essence of both aesthetic movements is present in the surge of feeling, tension, subjective and agitated gestures and spontaneous outbursts that define Bach’s language of feeling in these remarkable symphonies. The set of six for strings and…

Bartók Bluebeard’s Castle Mika Kares, Szilvia Vörös; Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra/ Susanna Mälkki BIS BIS-2388 (CD/SACD) 60:30 mins Given its absence of stage action, Bartók’s symbolist masterpiece goes well on disc, just as it does in the concert hall. Recorded live (with a bit of studio topping up) at the Helsinki Music Centre in January 2020, this latest version has a number of pluses. With the Hungarian libretto, the nationality of both the Judith (Szilvia Vörös) and the Prologue’s narrator (Géza Szilvay) is a clear asset, while the Finnish language – the native tongue of Mika Kares’s Bluebeard – turns out to be related to Bartók’s Hungarian. Both singers possess the scale, range and richness required to take on his sizable orchestration: the orchestra, indeed, almost represents a third character in…

Charmes Songs by Kaprálová, A Mahler, C Schumann and Viardot-García Olena Tokar (soprano), Igor Gryshyn (piano) Orchid Classics ORC 100154 50:14 mins Tokar and Gryshyn inhabit the joy and pain of this music Olena Tokar and Igor Gryshyn present a fascinating, varied recital, starting with Alma Mahler-Werfel, Clara Schumann and then Pauline Viardot-García and Vítezslava Kaprálová. Tokar’s introduction recalls that these women were ‘muses’ (ugh), but the main liner notes are insightful and informative. Mahler-Werfel’s rambling songs benefit from these impressively shaped performances. The luxuriant bloom of Tokar’s voice is perfectly matched by Gryshyn’s old-fashioned, elastic piano accompaniments. Tempo choices are generous and unhurried; Schumann’s ‘Er ist gekommen’, often a hysterical scramble, retains poise. ‘O Lust, o Lust’ is playfully exuberant, and ‘Geheimes Flüstern’, one of the finest songs ever…

Beethoven Violin Sonatas Nos 4, 5 & 7 Viktoria Mullova (violin), Alasdair Beatson (piano) Onyx ONYX 4221 66:37 mins Beatson articulates the occasionally menacing bass lines with relish Incredibly, it is ten years since Viktoria Mullova last recorded Beethoven violin sonatas – a scintillating coupling of Nos 3 and 9 with Kristian Bezuidenhout (ONYX 4050). In terms of their dramatic rethinking of texture, balance, articulation and expression, these performances form a vital part of the bracingly fresh interpretative emphasis on this music evinced by the likes of Faust/Melnikov (Harmonia Mundi), Ibragimova/Tiberghien (Wigmore Hall) and Sepec/Staier (Harmonia Mundi). Recorded in July last year, Mullova, playing a 1750 Guadagnini with gut strings and a Ralph Ashmead classical bow, and Alasdair Beatson on a replica of an 1805 Walter fortepiano by Paul McNulty,…

Florence Price composed these four piano pieces between February 1929 and April 1932. The first, dedicated to fellow composer Margaret Bonds, was premiered in 1932 in a two-piano arrangement performed by Price and Bonds at a ballet performance. Each virtuosic work showcases Price’s skill, drawing together influences ranging from German Romanticism to the spirituals and folk dances of her ancestors. The Fourth went through a number of revisions before its eventual premiere in 1937, while the Third has recently been reconstructed.…

Balsys Violin Concerto No. 1; Reflections of the Sea; Dramatic Frescoes Dzeraldas Bidva (violin), Indre Baikstyte (piano); Lithuanian National Symphony/Modestas Pitrenas Ondine ODE 1358-2  Balsys is a key figure in Lithuania but not yet hugely known internationally. This recording makes a real case for his rich, colourful orchestral scores, which have a touch of Sibelius about them. (FP) ★★★★ Beethoven Symphony No. 7; The Creatures of Prometheus Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/ Gottfried von der Goltz Harmonia Mundi HMM90244647  Nothing is left in the locker in these terrifically raw and punchy performances of a much loved symphony and all-too-rarely heard ballet. Tempos plod a little here and there in the Seventh, but it’s a minor quibble. (JP) ★★★★ Dobrzynski • Nowowiejski Orchestral Works Sinfonia Varsovia/Grzegorz Nowak NIFC NIFCCD060  Two Polish composers of…

Three to look out for Alan Davey , the controller of BBC Radio 3, picks out three great moments to tune into this June A Nightingale’s Map of Berlin  Berlin has become a refuge for nightingales, some of the most mythologised birds on earth. Between the Ears brings to life the sounds and stories of the nightingale across the districts of the city. Between the Ears: 6 June, 6.45pm Tranquility Inc. Elizabeth Alker (see p22) steps back to the 1980s, when a new kind of music emerged in Japan, thanks to the huge advancements in music technology. It became known as ‘Kankyo Ongaku’, meaning ‘environmental music’, which combined traditional Japanese techniques with hyper-modern practice. Sunday Feature: 27 June, 6.45pm Ivor Gurney: Unmouthed Ivor Gurney spent the final years of his…

Though she initially made her name in historically informed performances and recordings of Baroque composers, the Bedford-born Carolyn Sampson’s repertoire ranges from the Renaissance to the 21st century. With pianist Joseph Middleton she has recently released Album für die Frau, a recording of songs by Robert and Clara Schumann, and on 20 June she joins Middleton and baritone Roderick Williams in recital at the Leeds Lieder festival. I was about 15 when I sang in MAHLER’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony in the Royal Albert Hall with massed choirs and the Bedfordshire Youth Orchestra conducted by Michael Rose. It was an extraordinary experience to be high in the choir stalls, surrounded by singers, with the orchestra on stage and bands in every corner. I’d never heard the whole piece – we’d only rehearsed…

Sneak preview Unwanted noise (see also left) can occur in the concert hall too. The Bridgwater Hall in Manchester sits on giant rubber bushes to eliminate vibration from the nearby railway, but the Hallé Orchestra’s previous home, the Free Trade Hall, was woefully short on soundproofing. If there was a quiet bit in an opening overture, the soloist in the concerto which was to follow could regularly be heard tuning up or indeed practising a recognisable passage. This went on for years, and the management must have known… Patrick Hoyte, Minehead Melodious Routledge In your feature on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (May issue), the accompanying ‘A big-name Beggar’ box about the 1984 BBC film adaptation comments favourably on the singing of Patricia Routledge as Mrs Peachum. I first heard…

Randall Goosby Violinist Born: San Diego, US Career highlight: It was so inspiring to perform the great Bach Double Violin Concerto with my teacher Itzhak Perlman and witness his artistry from the stage. Musical hero: Violinist Sanford Allen was the first African-American member of the New York Philharmonic. I am so grateful for his dedication and perseverance to his art. Having navigated the music industry at a time when racism was commonplace, he is one of countless black artists who have paved the way for musicians like me. Dream concert: My dream is to look into the audience and see people of all ages and cultural backgrounds enjoying the concert. Yiqing Zhu Composer Born: Shanghai, China Career highlight: Winning first prize at the Basel Composition Competition and working…

Conductor Jonathan Berman began recording Franz Schmidt’s symphonies at the beginning of 2020, but for obvious reasons had to pause his plans. The first is out now (see review on p100), and Berman and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales will finally continue recording in November. Accentus is releasing the symphonies individually, and digitally, ahead of a CD set to be produced in time for Schmidt’s 150th birthday in 2024. Also heading into the studio later this year are cellist Leonard Elschenbroich and pianist Alexei Grynyuk. The duo are set to record Brahms’s cello sonatas and arrangements of the FAE’s Scherzo and Four Serious Songs at Abbey Road in September. Onyx will release the recording next year. Orchid Classics has announced a new collaboration with the Yehudi Menuhin School…

That’s really not all folks, as the final credits of Looney Tunes don’t quite say. Cartoon music deserves to be taken seriously; as seriously as this: ‘The innovations of composers such as Carl Stalling and Scott Bradley, making scores for those archetypal Jungian animated beings known as “Bugs Bunny” and “Elmer Fudd”, “Tom”, and “Jerry”, created a new musical form in Hollywood’s animation studios of the 1930s and ’40s, an idiom of paradoxically coherent discontinuity and virtuosically precise parody.’ That curlicued pseudo-musicology is my cartoon-like parody of a summation of the value of cartoon music. But there might be some truth in it – seriously. Stalling’s music for Bugs Bunny’s cartoon adventures and Bradley’s for Tom and Jerry’s achieves something that music had never done before. In the quick-fire time-scale…

Daniel Jaffé I’ve just caught up with the Testament label’s release of the 1960 premiere of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as recorded by the BBC. Staged at the intimate venue of Aldeburgh’s Jubilee Hall with a chamber ensemble rather than full orchestra, the performances all round are more immediate and compelling than in the later Decca recording. Fascinating, too, to hear sections Britten subsequently amended, and Jennifer Vyvyan’s characterful, darker-hued Tytania.…

Teatro di San Carlo, Naples The world’s oldest continuously active opera house first opened its doors on 4 November 1737. With six tiers of boxes, it used to seat more than 3,000, though the composer Spohr thought it was too large. It now seats 1,386. Teatro alla Scala, Milan On 3 August 1778, Salieri’s Europa riconosciuta welcomed the first audience to what has since become the world’s most famous opera house (above), hosting many premieres, not least of Verdi and Puccini. La Fenice, Venice Built in 1792, Venice’s La Fenice (‘The Phoenix’) hosted premieres by Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and Verdi in the 19th century. It has twice completely burned down, in 1836 and 1996. Teatro Massimo, Palermo Italy’s largest opera house in terms of area, if not number of seats,…

Decades before the first-ever female Doctor Who challenged perceptions that only a man could inhabit the role of Time Lord, an unknown composer was quietly realising the series’ theme music at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. That theme, elaborating ideas by Ron Grainer, would create a sensation on inaugural transmission in 1963 and go on to become one of the most recognisable and influential in all television. Yet despite being lauded by many as one of the great pioneers of electronic music, its creator has only recently – and since her death – begun to be more widely recognised. Doctor Who is an early highlight of a career which saw her elegant musique concrète and electronic sound synthesis grace an astonishing range of media from drama and documentary to live theatre;…

Viennese style in France Farrenc’s predilection for chamber music and symphonies is rooted in the Viennese classics. Her style has a drama, lyricism and worked-out argument comparable to the soundworlds of Schubert (above), Weber and Mendelssohn, but with an energetic spirit entirely her own. Brilliance, clarity, stamina Most of Farrenc’s chamber music involves her own instrument, the piano, and the majority of her works are solos for it. Her writing is never flashy, but still presents the pianist with a major workout requiring a fast, light, even touch, great clarity and tremendous staying power. The unsentimental Romantic Unlike some, she avoided grandiosity or sentiment. Her rigour of construction and purity of thought prefigures Saint-Saëns. If her pianistic focus places her in line with Chopin, she never let herself head for…

Sixty-seven years old when he completed the Songs of Farewell, Hubert Parry had by that stage enjoyed a long and distinguished career as both a composer and teacher. A stalwart of the recently founded Royal College of Music from 1883 – first as professor of composition and then, from 1895, as head – he passed on his wisdom to gifted students such as Vaughan Williams, Holst and Bridge. As well as his ultra-popular Jerusalem and the coronation anthem I was glad, his own compositions included a wealth of other choral music and four well-crafted symphonies.…

John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Terry Blain, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, Geoff Brown, Michael Church, Christopher Cook, Martin Cotton, Christopher Dingle, Misha Donat, Jessica Duchen, George Hall, Malcolm Hayes, Julian Haylock, Claire Jackson, Daniel Jaffé, Erica Jeal, Berta Joncus, Erik Levi, Natasha Loges, Andrew McGregor, David Nice, Roger Nichols, Bayan Northcott, Freya Parr, Steph Power, Anthony Pryer, Paul Riley, Jan Smaczny, Michael Tanner, Sarah Urwin Jones, Kate Wakeling, Alexandra Wilson, Barry Witherden…

Brahms Symphony No. 2; Academic Festival Overture Gewandhausorchester Leipzig/ Herbert Blomstedt Pentatone PTC 5186 851 55:00 mins Herbert Blomstedt takes a decidedly autumnal view of Brahms’s Second Symphony – and he has every right to do so when you consider that at the time this live recording was made, in October 2019, he was 92. There is glowing playing throughout from the orchestra His lingering account of the first movement alone occupies well over 20 minutes, and comes complete with the long and seldom observed first-half repeat. The transition back to the beginning is only heard if the repeat is made, and it offers us eight bars of virtually unknown Brahms. The scherzo-like episodes of the otherwise graceful third movement find Blomstedt again a little more reserved than we’re used…

JS Bach – Bach Unbuttoned Brandenburg Concertos Nos 2, 4 & 5; Double Concerto in D minor, BWV 1043 (arr. flute and oboe); Orchestral Suite No. 2 – Badinerie Ana de la Vega (flute), Ramón Ortega Quero (oboe), Cyrus Allyar (trumpet), Alexander Sitkovetsky (violin), Johannes Berger (harpsichord); Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn Pentatone PTC 5186 893 62:26 mins ‘With Mozart you are allowed to have fun: he was naughty and giggled a lot,’ declares flautist Ana de la Vega as she explains the rationale behind her latest disc. ‘With Bach you are to kneel on one knee…’ Yet including the ‘Badinerie’ from Orchestral Suite No. 2 rather shoots her contention in the foot. Is there a more ‘unbuttoned’ minute and a half of unadulterated fun to be found in the entire Western…

Beethoven • Verdi • Wagner  Beethoven: Ah! Perfido, Op. 65; Fidelio – Abscheulicher! Wo eilst du hin?; Cherubini: Medee – Dei tuoi figli la madre tu vedi; Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana – Voi lo sapete o mamma; Verdi: La forza del destino – Pace, pace mio Dio!; Otello – Ave Maria; Wagner: Wesendonck-Lieder Lise Davidsen (soprano); London Philharmonic Orchestra/Mark Elder Decca 485 1507 63:28 mins Davidsen is the most exciting new operatic presence for a decade Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen is the most exciting new operatic presence for at least a decade and already, at 33, has a large repertoire of demanding roles. Her first solo recital album was greeted with universal praise, and I would be amazed if this one – much more demanding – isn’t given an even more…

This set of 12 songs is a bit of a curiosity and is rarely performed in concert today. The cycle came about after Strauss unwittingly signed a contract agreeing to provide a set of songs to a music publisher he had rather a distaste for. Not wishing to gift them any of his prized finished works, he instead opted to write Kramerspiegel (The Shopkeeper’s Mirror) instead. With specially written words by Alfred Kerr, the songs are filled with in-jokes and jibes at the publisher. Suffice to say, they didn’t accept the work and it sat in Strauss’s drawer, unperformed for a number of years.…

Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 30 in E, Op. 109; Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat, Op. 110; Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111 Sunwook Kim (piano) Accentus ACC 30527 68:03 mins This disc is of sublime music, gloriously played, and it is one of those occasions when it seems superfluous to say much more. Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas, together with the two that precede them, and the Diabelli Variations, are the summit of his writing for the solo instrument. They are also, especially Op. 111, incredibly hard to play, both technically and interpretatively. Yet the number of magnificent recordings of them is large, with Igor Levit and Steven Osborne the most recent of the contenders – though the idea of competition at this level is…

June round-up Havergal Brian – In Memoriam; Gothic Symphony features the New Philharmonia Orchestra under Charles Groves, and the 1976 BBC recording comes across with a warmth which matches the Romantic language of the early In Memoriam, although its 20-minute span does sprawl. That’s less of an issue in the first three movements of the Gothic Symphony (all that was played in the concert) where the playing isn’t always quite as confident or accurate, and the more intricate orchestral detail in some passages is lost. It’s sometimes the fault of the composer, rather than the acoustic of the Royal Albert Hall, and quieter sections are more successful. (Heritage HTGCD 172 ★★★ ) One of Brian’s great champions was Robert Simpson, and the premieres of Simpson’s own Symphonies Nos 5 &…

What is a headphone amplifier? Like a stereo amplifier, it converts the signal from your source (computer, smartphone, turntable) for use with quality headphones. They also include a DAC which converts your digital files into analogue music and offers significantly better sound than your computer or smartphone can manage on its own. Do I really need one? If you’ve invested in a pair of high-quality wired headphones, even a cheap headphone amplifier will power them more effectively and present new levels of depth and detail in your favourite recordings. Will it improve audio quality? Absolutely, but the quality of the source material is vital. Compressed MP3 tracks can sound terrible, so you’ll need to play hi-res music files, CDquality (16 bit – 44khz) or ideally higher (24bit – 96khz/192khz, lossless…

BBC Cardiff Singer of the World returns this month, with 16 singers from 15 countries competing for the top prize. They will all be accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Orchestra of the Welsh National Opera under the baton of Andrew Litton and Michael Christie. BBC Four is also presenting a new OperaGlass Works production of Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw this month, filmed at Wilton’s Music Hall in London with 13 musicians from the Sinfonia of London and conductor John Wilson. Based on the 19th-century novel by Henry James, Britten's haunting chamber opera explores innocence, corruption and the supernatural in the setting of an old English country house. BBC Cardiff Singer of the World’s Song Final and Grand Final will be broadcast in…