Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i BBC Music Magazine

Richard Morrison Chief music critic, The Times ‘I expected to find Dalia Stasevska slightly guarded and reticent after the rumpus over last year’s Last Night of the Proms. Instead, I found the Finnish conductor full of joy, good ideas and high hopes.’ Page 26 Terry Blain Music journalist ‘The Irish Free State’s founding in 1922 injected classical music on the island with a new national self-confidence. Today’s generation of composers is the most exciting in its history, and the most distinctive.’ Page 50 Brian Wise Music journalist ‘Living in a large city, car stereos can be a wearying part of the urban din. But taking the driver’s seat to research my article gave me a newfound appreciation for how far auto audio systems have evolved.’ Page 54…

66 … years since it was disbanded, the Yorkshire Symphony Orchestra has been revived to support musicians affected by the pandemic. 13,000 … singers have been encouraged by Truro Cathedral to join a global virtual chorus in Cornwall for the G7 summit. 21 … is the new age limit on free tickets at the English National Opera, which has extended its scheme to audience members above the age of 18. 12 … world premieres, three UK premieres and two London premieres will be performed at this year’s BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall (above).…

From today I seriously intend to enter into lawful matrimony with anyone at all’. Tchaikovsky made this apparently flippant comment to his brother Modest in 1876, when he was 36. Unfortunately, he wasn’t joking. On 18 July the following year, just 11 months later, Tchaikovsky married Antonina Milyukova, a woman eight years his junior, at a Moscow ceremony with most of his family absent. Their union lasted the blink of an eyelid: two months later they separated, never to be reunited. What had gone so spectacularly wrong? The official line, peddled for decades by Tchaikovsky’s friends and family, was that Antonina was to blame. A one-time student of Tchaikovsky’s at the Moscow Conservatory, she wrote to him in the spring of 1877 confessing her long-held love and admiration. Against his…

Ten years after his death, the artist John Hoyland is being celebrated this summer with the exhibition The Last Paintings at museums in Sheffield, the city of his birth. Among those attending will be composer Jim Aitchison, who has been inspired by the dynamic colours of Hoyland’s Elegy (for Terry Frost) (left) to write a string quartet, Four Trajectories after John Hoyland. He is, of course, not the first composer to be thus inspired… By some way the most famous piece of music to depict visual art is Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, written after the composer had visited a gallery displaying works by his late friend Viktor Hartmann in 1874. For both Stravinsky and Walton, meanwhile, it was the bawdy satirists of Georgian England that provided the creative spark.…

MY FINEST MOMENT Monteverdi Orfeo Various soloists; Concerto Italiano/ Rinaldo Alessandrini Naïve OP30439 (2007) We all have composers to whom we secretly pay eternal gratitude, for the meaning they have had in our lives and for what they have been able to teach us. I actually don’t know whom to thank more, Monteverdi or Bach. But if Bach is the composer we all inevitably have to approach to test our learning ability, perhaps it is to Monteverdi that my gratitude goes – albeit in a less obvious way. I have lived some of the most exciting moments of my recording activity thanks to Monteverdi’s music. All of his music actually hides a language that we learn to know better and better with careful perseverence. His attachment to words and their…

George Hall Car listening these days is often non-classical. Of late I’ve been enjoying re-exploring American jazz singer Julie London, whose heyday was the 1950s and ’60s. Her sophisticated artistry is founded on a richly nuanced voice and a magical way with words: her albums About the Blues (1957) and London by Night (1958) absolutely hit the spot, the sensuousness and subtlety of her immaculate vocalism perfectly complemented by arrangements from (respectively) Russ Garcia and Pete King and their orchestras.…

“I’d like for there to be a little bit more of a real community around this music, which really is by and for everyone” The American violinist talks to Brian Wise about his hope to bring classical music to a wider audience, the advantages and trials of his mixed heritage, and about broadening the repertoire Between the entrances, bows, dramatic pauses and other wordless rituals of the concert stage, Randall Goosby ponders what truly connects him to his audiences. ‘I look back at the audiences that I’ve stood in front of, and I try and think about the things I have in common with them other than our interest in classical music,’ he says. ‘There are probably little to none. And I’d like for there to be a little bit…

The New York novelist Sanford Friedman never got to see his last book, Conversations With Beethoven, in print, as it was published after his death in 2010. In it, Friedman tells the narrative of the last months of Beethoven’s life through the medium of imaginary entries in his conversation books, beginning with the attempted suicide of his nephew Karl. More often than not, the notes written by the composer’s friends, family and other acquaintances are left unanswered, with the reader left to guess what Beethoven’s spoken reply might have been. And if Friedman paints a fairly unflattering picture of his subject – he comes across as cantankerous, tight-fisted and obstinate – he does show at least some empathy for a deaf genius surrounded by a cast of busy-bodies and lickspittles,…

My three top overtures: ‘Weber’s Der Freischütz is a wonderful overture: strong, substantial and a Hallé favourite – not just of our founder conductor, Charles Hallé, but also of John Barbirolli. ‘ Berlioz wrote some of the best overtures and Benvenuto Cellini is a fine example: it always gets a good hand from the public. It’s like saying “OK, we’re ready, we’re off”. ‘The Hallé and I had a terrific success with Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture on a German tour a few years ago. The original overture (without the Venusberg Music) is not often done, because the ending has this incredibly difficult violin writing; but if you’ve got time to prepare it, it makes a very big effect.’ And one I hope to do: ‘I think Reznicek’s Donna Diana is quite…

Exeter’s most illustrious musical son left his mark – literally – on the city’s cathedral, where he sang as a chorister. When the historic organ was recently removed for refurbishment, the signature (dated 1638) of the future composer to Charles II was found scrawled into a wall. An enthusiast for the stage, Locke (above) saluted another illustrious Devonian in supplying the music for William Davenant’s masque The History of Sir Francis Drake. And, in the ode ‘What hope for us remains now he is gone’, Locke himself was celebrated by his successor as Charles’s ‘Composer for the Violins’, Henry Purcell.…

1959 LIFE: He moves to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis Institute. Though he initially studies piano under Mieczys¯aw Horszowski, he later switches his attention to composition. TIMES: Musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper are killed when the plane they are flying in crashes in Iowa, an event that later becomes known as ‘The Day the Music Died’. 1983 LIFE: When a hoped-for academic position at Cornell University fails to materialise, his life is increasingly overwhelmed by drink- and drug-related issues. He does, however, continue to perform. TIMES: Sally Ride becomes the first ever American woman to go into space, flying on board the Space Shuttle Challenger. At 32, she is also the youngest ever US astronaut to do so. 1940 LIFE: Julius Eastman is born in…

Today, Borodin is better remembered as a composer than a scientist, but he himself saw his priorities lie the other way round – a highly respected professor of chemistry at the Medical-Surgical Academy, he fit his musical activities around groundbreaking research into the condensation of aldehydes. When time for composing did allow, his finely crafted works included three symphonies, the unfinished opera Prince Igor, the vividly colourful tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia and a handful of chamber works and songs. He died of a heart attack, aged 53, in 1887.…

Handel opera seems to be having a bit of a moment… I think it has been happening for a while, but I agree. When I was a student no-one even looked at the operas; they thought they had beautiful music, but were undramatic and unstageable. We’re now in a golden era of singers, people who really can imbue it with real life, colour and imagination. We’ve also got directors who have found a way to make these pieces feel alive, and period orchestras have helped a lot too. Were the circumstances of this recording challenging? The English Concert is really a listening orchestra; they’re chamber players, so it’s very odd to play chamber music when you’re standing so far away from everyone else and you can’t hear them. I normally…

Mozart Piano Concerto No. 11 in F, K413; Piano Concerto No. 12 in A, K414; Piano Concerto No. 13 in C, K415 (arr. piano and string quartet) Matyá Novák (piano); Wihan Quartet The Wihan Quartet’s sound has a handsome, rounded fullness Nimbus NI6419 77:37 mins  Mozart himself made these chamber adaptations of the first three piano concertos he composed soon after settling in Vienna in 1781 as a freelance composer-pianist. In each of them, the combination of an orchestral ‘feel’ with string-quartet reality requires a kind of circle-squaring from its performers that can be difficult to bring off – and is specially memorable when it succeeds to the wonderful degree that it does here. The Wihan Quartet’s collective sound has a rounded fullness and mellow, tawny-brown colouring which, besides being…

Mascagni’s Iris  Even in his own day, poor Mascagni was considered something of a ‘one hit wonder’. The huge success of his competition-winning one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana pretty much overshadowed anything he composed before or after. Iris came about at the suggestion of librettist Luigi Illica, who wanted Italy’s first Japan-based opera – ‘exotic’ locations were becoming very popular in European opera. The resulting work, full of exoticism and symbolism, failed to light up the stage when it premiered in Rome in 1898. Puccini was there, and Madam Butterfly soon followed.…

Eleanor Alberga The Wild Blue Yonder; No-Man’s-Land Lullaby; Shining Gate of Morpheus*; Succubus Moon† †Nicholas Daniel (oboe), *Richard Watkins (horn), Thomas Bowes (violin), Eleanor Alberga (piano); Ensemble Arcadiana Navona NV6346 49:32 mins Eleanor Alberga’s music receives luxury treatment in this album devoted to works composed between 1995 and 2012. Dreams, the subconscious and contemplation of our fragile human state are ever-present, the unfurling emotions and underlying concepts powerfully expressed. The French horn in Shining Gate of Morpheus seems to call to the hunting of dreams, while the sound of the oboe in Succubus Moon bends and stretches and twists in startling ways, creating a suitably oppressive atmosphere for a work that pits darkness – spiritual as well as physical – against light. These works are splendidly performed by the Ensemble…

Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Vols 8 & 9: Nos 27-32 Boris Giltburg (piano)  Naxos 9.70314 80:42 mins Naxos 9.70315 66:56 mins Boris Giltburg prefaces his liner notes by telling us why this project came about; it began, he says, as a personal exploration driven by curiosity. But in joining forces with the producer Stewart French, a filmmaker, he found himself looking at the oeuvre anew. Stewart’s film technique combines elements from a live performance with those of a studio recording; as Giltburg explains it, the recordings presented in these albums ‘are those very films, stripped of their visual element, but hopefully preserving the spirit and atmosphere of the circumstances under which they were produced.’ In listening, I’m not sure this elaborate rationale has resulted in anything fundamentally different from a routine…

July round-up An acoustic album with an electric sense of place and strong historical significance is Songs Of Govan Old. It’s the debut of Scottish singer/songwriter Norrie MacIver, whose melodic storytelling songs often commemorate working class heroes and heroines, or use the words of poets from Glasgow’s former ship-building neighbourhood. He strums them out on acoustic guitar, with backing by five string players from Govan’s very own ‘regeneration orchestra’. MacIver’s inclusion of several songs in Gaelic, and his supple way and obvious comfort with the language are clear evidence of his own roots on the Isle of Lewis. (Glasgow Barons GLASGOWBARONS01 ★★★★★ ) A spellbound, shimmering sense of place is revealed on Hidden Soul of the Fjords by Bergen-based singer Heidi Torsvik and American composer/producer Winter Lazerus. Torsvik sings vaguely…

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Around 20 of this year’s Proms will be filmed and made available to watch on BBC iPlayer, including the first two concerts of the season: the First Night of the Proms (30 July) and The Golden Age of Broadway (31 July). The First Night sees works by Vaughan Williams, Poulenc, Chevalier de Saint-Georges and James MacMillan performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, who then pass the baton to the BBC Concert Orchestra the following evening for a celebration of Broadway favourites. Richard Balcombe conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra in a programme of works by Broadway legends such as Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin. They will be joined by a line-up of special guest soloists. The First Night will be broadcast live on BBC Four, presented by…

Actor Henry Goodman is an award-winning British actor, equally at home on Broadway, with the Royal Shakespeare Company or on the concert platform. His roles have included Arturo Ui, Shylock, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof and Billy Flynn in Chicago. He narrates the classic folk tale Lubin, from Chelm on Fiddles, Forests and Fowl Fables, a new recording from the English Symphony Orchestra on the Nimbus label. As a boy I went to drama classes in Toynbee Hall in London, just round the corner from Petticoat Lane where I sold watches on the weekend. One day I heard a string quartet practising in the studio upstairs – I didn’t know what they were playing, but I felt deeply engaged, listening outside the door. The impact of an intimate team…

For those with a keen interest in the history of live music, the Proms Performance Archive on the BBC website is an endlessly fascinating resource. One could spend hours in its company, browsing the details of every concert going right back to when Henry Wood first brandished his baton in August 1895. But the names and numbers can only tell you part of the story, of course. In years to come, a click on ‘Saturday, 12 September 2020’ will inform you that Dalia Stasevska conducted a Last Night whose programme included works by Vaughan Williams and Sibelius, plus the traditional festivities. It won’t, though, tell you that she did so with no audience present. When Stasevska returns for the First Night of this year’s BBC Proms, the scene should –…

Heartfelt tribute Friends of the violinist Corinne Chapelle, who died of cancer at the age of 44 earlier this year, have recorded a new work written in her memory. Fellow Yehudi Menuhin School alumni including Nicola Benedetti and Corina Belcea were among the 50-plus performers of Corinne’s Song by Cheryl Frances-Hoad. The piece was originally planned to raise funds for Chapelle’s treatment, but she died before the course could be completed. Stringissimo Cremona, the Italian city in which the likes of violin makers Stradivari and Guarneri once plied their trade, is to become the home of a new centre of excellence for string players. Opening in the 17th-century Palazzo Stauffer in October, the Stauffer Center for Strings will focus on developing talented young players in all aspects of their careers…

c.1st: The final instalment of Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina is published in the periodical The Russian Messenger. With a plot centring on the doomed affair between the title character and Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, Tolstoy’s work explores many of the social issues of the day, including the emancipation of the serfs. 6th: Clara Schumann, who has recently injured her right arm opening a drawer, writes to Brahms to express her pleasure at receiving the score of his arrangement for piano left hand of Bach’s Chaconne, describing it as a ‘glorious refuge’. ‘You alone could have accomplished such a thing,’ enthuses Schumann. 16th: In the Russo-Turkish War, Russian forces under General Nikolai Kridener take the fortified city of Nikopol (in modern-day Bulgaria). The Ottoman field marshal Osman Pasha is sent…

F Couperin Les barricades mystérieuses (arr. quintet) Composers Ensemble/Thomas Adès Warner Classics 0272012 I’ve known about Adès’s transcriptiion of this beautiful piece for a few years and I absolutely adore it. It’s a harpsichord piece originally and it comes to life here in a whole new way, while still keeping the essence of Couperin at its core. Every time I listen, different things jump out at me – different colours and textures – as does the creative way he uses timbre with this really unique selection of instruments. Hubay Der Zephir Joseph Szigeti (violin), Harry Kaufman (piano) Columbia Masterworks 72734-D There’s just something about this work and the way Hubay captures this light breeze. It’s a really fantastic little piece and it encapsulates how creative you can be with the…

Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Hearing the sad news of the death of Anthony Payne (see p21) took me back to over 20 years ago when, as an eager young editorial assistant, I interviewed the composer about his completion of Elgar’s Third Symphony. Though I’ve since gone back on my opinion at the time – that it was even better than Elgar’s First and Second symphonies – I still find the work an inspiring listen and my admiration of Payne’s craftmanship in so seamlessly filling in the Elgarian gaps remains undimmed. Alice Pearson Cover CD editor I’ve been enjoying an album of music by the contemporary Chinese/French composer Qigang Chen, performed by the French National Orchestra with musicians from China. The fusion of cultures is interesting as his work…

Unlike the Last Night of the Proms which, since the 1940s at least, has followed a much-loved set routine, the First Night has been a more shape-shifting beast. The very first First Night, on 10 August 1895, was something of a multi-national pot-pourri, as Henry Wood conducted a range of soloists and the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra in short works by (deep breath…) Wagner, Leoncavallo, Chabrier, Chopin, Eckert, Godard, Kenningham, Kistler, Saint-Saëns, Thomas, Gounod, Liszt, Bizet, Rossini, Schubert, Haydn, Godfrey, Mattei, Eilenberg, Mascheroni, Gungl and Schloesser! A century ago, on 13 August 1921, Henry Wood was still at the helm and conducting works of a short-but-sweet variety, though fewer in number. Interestingly, less than three years after the end of World War I, the first half was an all-German affair,…

When the Irish composer Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest received its UK stage premiere in 2013, the Royal Opera House’s then director of opera Kasper Holten called it ‘the first great comic opera of the 21st century’. A certain degree of puffery was involved, as Holten’s own company was mounting the premiere. The compliment was, however, significant: the word ‘great’ has not frequently been attached to works of Irish classical music over the centuries, and the acclaim of Barry’s madcap Oscar Wilde adaptation seemed genuinely momentous. Not that Ireland is in any way lacking in a rich musical heritage. Quite the opposite – its traditional music, nurtured by generations of singers and instrumentalists, is extraordinarily fertile and remains a potent source of cultural expression in clubs, bars and…

Car manufacturers are increasingly creating ‘sonic signatures’ for interior chimes and as warning alerts for electric vehicles whose engines don’t produce noise on their own. For its growing line-up of electric cars, BMW hired Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer to create a sound that would alert pedestrians and cyclists of the approaching vehicle. The humming, spaceship-like effect changes in pitch and volume according to the car’s speed. The Fiat 500, meanwhile, plays an actual melody when the EV accelerates – specifically, an excerpt from Nino Rota’s Amarcord . In a demonstration video, Fiat executive Olivier François, compares it to a phone ringtone, and predicts that sound will be customisable and ‘not the voice of a computer [but] the voice of the Italian creative spirit’. In 2018, Lincoln hired the Detroit Symphony…

Julius Eastman’s music seethes and soothes; it caresses, charges and challenges. His varied compositions reveal the thrill and pain of being an outsider – many are testament to his intersecting identity. In an unusual triumvirate of talents, Eastman (1940-90) was a composer, musical performer and a dancer. Eastman embraced his colour and sexuality in his compositions with raucous confidence Primarily a pianist, he was frequently in demand as a singer for his intense, flexible baritone and dramatic (if unpredictable) stage presence. In 1970, he impressed internationally with his performance as King George III in Peter Maxwell Davies’s music-theatre piece Eight Songs  for a Mad King. He reprised the role several times, including with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez, and made a benchmark recording with Maxwell Davies himself. Around…

ORC100167 Chopin: In My Voice Chelsea Guo, piano and voice Chelsea Guo brings her dual gifts as pianist and soprano to this, her debut album based around works by Chopin. The programme includes the complete 24 Preludes as well as three songs in which Guo simultaneously sings and plays. ORC100166 Dialogo John-Henry Crawford, cello Victor Santiago Asuncion, piano A varied and insightful debut album from American cellist John-Henry Crawford, named Young Artist of the Year by the Classical Recording Foundation, featuring Brahms, Shostakovich and Ligeti. ORC100164 Heart & Hereafter Collected songs of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Elizabeth Llewellyn, soprano Simon Lepper, piano Elizabeth Llewellyn has established herself internationally as a dramatic and vocal artist, now devoting her debut disc to the music of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, much of it never recorded before.…

Gerard Schwarz Seattle Symphony Naxos 8.572786 It is perhaps futile to try to find an ideal ‘authentic’ performance. Borodin died before he could complete a definitive version of his symphony, and it was left to Rimsky-Korsakov, with Glazunov’s assistance, to tidy its score for publication and add such details as metronome speeds. Most conductors disregard these editorial annotations, presumably thinking Rimsky’s credentials were tarnished by his interventionist editing of Musorgsky; yet Rimsky clearly respected Borodin’s work and his suggested speeds were based on his own experience of conducting the symphony in the composer’s presence. Still, the upshot is a great variety of enjoyable accounts – enough to displace some old favourites, such as Kirill Kondrashin’s live recording with its fast and glamorous finale, outclassed now by more consistently committed performances.…

Handel Rodelinda Lucy Crowe, Iestyn Davies, Joshua Ellicott, Brandon Cedel, Jess Dandy, Tim Mead; The English Concert/Harry Bicket Linn Records CKD 658 188:32 mins (3 discs) Against the odds, director Harry Bicket has gifted us the best ever recording of Rodelinda . The Covid pandemic having forced Carnegie Hall to cancel a planned concert production, Bicket arranged to record in London instead, with the same musicians, each two metres apart. Many would find it impossible to do justice to Handel’s score while keeping socially distanced – blend, ensemble, precision and spontaneous reactions all require proximity. But in extremis this company discovered superpowers within. Bicket’s artistic integrity makes his the definitive Rodelinda . His subtlety pays off especially in slow movements, which are more suspenseful and ravishing than in any previous…

Schreker • Zemlinsky Schreker: Der Geburtstag der Infantin; Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko This is the most satisfying account of Zemlinsky’s score Onyx ONYX 4197 78:20 mins Alexander Zemlinsky’s attitude to his opulently scored Die Seejungfrau, (The Mermaid) remains something of a mystery. After its successful 1905 premiere in Vienna, there were a few more performances in the first decade of the 20th century before he not only withdrew the work from circulation, but even suppressed all mention of its existence. Yet since its rediscovery in the 1980s, Die Seejungfrau has become one of Zemlinsky’s most widely admired works – a position that has only intensified in recent years thanks to the publication of a new critical edition of the score which restores five minutes of music…

Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 ‘Troubled’ might be a good word for Brahms’s first foray into the piano concerto form. The fact it took over four years to complete says a lot, not to mention that Brahms first intended the work to be a two-piano sonata, and then a symphony, before finally settling on a concerto. The death of his friend and mentor Robert Schumann while he was writing it wouldn’t have helped matters, not to mention its initial reception in 1859 – did the audience really hiss? The concerto was the first of his orchestral works to be performed; it’s a wonder he had the courage to write another after all that.…

Byrd Consort Songs (1588) Grace Davidson (soprano); Alamire; Fretwork/David Skinner Inventa INV 1006 157:14 mins (2 discs) The members of Fretwork play with characteristic grace The first complete recording of William Byrd’s 1588 publication of consort songs ‘to content divers humors’ is an endlessly varied collection of sonnets, psalms and pastorals, alongside songs ‘of sadness and piety’, including two funeral elegies written on the death of the courtier-poet Sir Philip Sidney. Byrd’s flexible five-part scoring allows the performer to realise these works in several ways – Alamire’s director David Skinner opting to interweave solo voices and viols with a cappella and instrumental realisations. Though Byrd includes a handful of sonnets ‘to bee merrie’, an underlying wistfulness pervades the music – a quality which sounds all the more poignant in these…

Sonatas for Three Violins Works by Buonamente, Fux, G Gabrieli, Hacquart, Pachelbel, Purcell, Torelli etc Ensemble Diderot The ensemble’s invigorating approach has considerable appeal Audax ADX 13729 76:26 mins  This survey of 17th-century sonatas and related forms scored for three violins and continuo embraces Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, and features several pieces likely to be unfamiliar. What every reader will probably know, however, are the Canon and Gigue by south German Johann Pachelbel. The especially popular Canon demonstrates a skilful exercise of the art of variation, as we find again, further into this well thought out menu, with Purcell’s Three parts upon a ground. Ensemble Diderot’s invigorating approach has considerable appeal. A different kind of exuberance enlivens Giovanni Battista Buonamente’s Sonata, and Giuseppe Torelli’s Sonata a…

Paganini 24 Caprices Alina Ibragimova (violin) Hyperion CDA 68366 104:19 mins (2 discs) The violinist imbues each caprice with its own personality Hyperion’s typically first-rate production includes an invaluable list of the caprices’ various dedicatees, which turn out to embrace several of Paganini’s violin rivals, including Vieuxtemps, Ernst, Kreutzer and Bazzini. Alina Ibragimova turns the performing tradition associated with these finger-crippling miniatures on its head by focusing on their ‘demonic’ aspect. Rather than despatching each caprice at a steadily maintained tempo, with technical fluency the name of the game, she goes behind the notes to reveal a composer fully in touch with, and in many cases innovating, the spectral extravagances of the era. Like a procession of commedia dell’arte characters, Ibragimova creates the same kind of interpretative delirium that inspired…

Gaspard’s Foxtrot Zeb Soanes; illustrations by James Mayhew Graffeg 36pp (hb) £12.99 Anyone who follows BBC Radio 4’s Zeb Soanes on Twitter will be familiar with Gaspard the Fox, the presenter’s very real nocturnal visitor. Soanes has immortalised his handsome friend in a series of children’s books, with this third entry dedicated to and inspired by the BBC Proms. Gaspard’s Foxtrot finds our hero taking a bus ride to ‘Proms in the Park’, where he hopes to reunite his friend with her missing scarf. While there, he finds himself the star of the show after hopping on stage to return the conductor’s flung baton. It’s a sweet tale which is as much a love letter to London as it is a nod to the Proms. Readers are invited to discover…

July round-up It’s been ten years since UK-based saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings first introduced his Sons Of Kemet project, but the group’s torrent of ‘rhythmic relentlessness’ (his words) is unabated. Conceived in the wake of the George Floyd murder, the performances on Black  To The Future are intended to provoke discussion about the black experience. There’s a lot to unpack, with feisty spoken-word flow from poets Moor Mother and Joshua Idehen, plus hip-hop and grime artists Kojey Radical and D Double E rallying around the core group of bubbling tuba and two percussionists. It’s a darkly epic sound, Hutchings’s own complex weave of woodwind in the mix taking protest music to a probing, abstract new level. (Impulse 00602435622323) ★★★★★ Under the influence of Wayne Shorter’s music, and co-led by saxophonist Joe…

Scary Wagner Many thanks for Ashutosh Khandekar’s fascinating article on the supernatural in opera (June issue) and Richard Morrison’s column on ten concert works that scare him (I agree about all ten). The first piece of classical music to give me an authentic frisson of terror and unease was a recording of Otto Klemperer conducting the overture to Wagner’s Rienzi – the atmosphere of brooding malignity and violent arrogance is palpable and distilled. Whether that was the composer’s intention is arguable but I subsequently learned that Hitler, an ardent Wagnerite, claimed to have conceived the idea for the Nazi Party after witnessing a performance of the opera. It is not surprising that, in those once ubiquitous television documentaries on Hitler and the rise of the Nazis, some of the most…

Samuel Abraham Vargas Teixeira Violinist Born: Caracas, Venezuela Career highlight: The opportunity to teach and share music from the heart has been the highlight of my career. Musical hero: I first heard violinist Janine Jansen on YouTube when I was 13. She was playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto at the BBC Proms and it made me fall in love with her playing. Dream concert: Performing Britten’s Violin Concerto at the Royal Albert Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra. As a teacher, my dream concert would be multidimensional, so I could talk to students and audiences about my background and how music saved me. Kristina Arakelyan Composer Born: Budapest, Hungary Career highlight: During the pandemic, I heard the Royal Northern Sinfonia perform my new work Fantasia on a theme by…

Flanders and Swann had a song about the miraculous Wompom, a newly discovered hybrid that’s ‘very much more than a vegetable’. The Wompom’s ‘every part’ produces panacea-like results in everything from personal grooming to industrical production: ‘Hail to thee blithe Wompom/universal aunt! … Vade mecum Wompom/philanthropic fruit!’ The fantastical descriptions of all-encompassing goodness that are made for the, alas, fictitious Wompom are echoed in the claims often made for music in media headlines. Music improves your mood; it elevates your exam scores; it gives us better outcomes when we’re suffering diseases of body and mind; music lowers crime; it even works as an anaesthetic before operations. As Flanders and Swann sing, ‘There’s nothing that a Wompon cannot do’ – and nothing that music isn’t, apparently, capable of doing. There’s a…

Kate Bolton-Porciatti One likes to think that the liquid melodies and sonorous harmonies of Robert de Visée’s Pièces for the theorbo – intended to be played in the evenings in the private chambers of Louis XIV – must have soothed the regent to blissful sleep. José Miguel Moreno’s recording (on Glossa) offers a seductive selection of works that fuse, in microcosm, the rhythmic grace of French Baroque dance, the embellished lyricism of opera and the theatrical spirit of the commedia dell’arte. His stylish accounts have been serene company during the months of lockdown.…

Most readers will know the phrase ‘hope springs eternal in the human breast’. Perhaps slightly fewer will know it comes from a poem by Alexander Pope (An Essay on Man – Epistle I). And even fewer, I guess, will be able to quote the sentence that comes two lines later: ‘The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home, rests and expatiates in a life to come.’ Right now that particular stanza is going round in my head, and I know exactly why. Like millions of other people in Britain who make music for pleasure rather than money, I have been looking forward to that joyous moment when our choral societies, youth orchestras, brass bands, church choirs and amateur operatic groups burst into glorious melody again, after more than a year of…

“ These books give a detailed reflection of Beethoven’s day-to-day doings until the tormented final weeks of his life” ‘Paper. Barber’s razor. Archduke’s receipt. Watch. Suspenders. Blotting paper. Shoe-horn for Karl. Chamber pot.’ In this to-do memo by the 49-year-old Beethoven, the humble items to be dealt with indicate the parameters of his universe. They touch on everything from his composition and business activities to his punctilious control of domestic matters; to his dishevelled dandyism, his attempts to keep dirt at bay and his avuncular concern for his needy nephew, Karl. The daily list was his mainstay, and sometimes it has a terse kind of poetry: ‘Sugar. Spice. Wine. Macaroni. Tooth powder.’ Other times, especially when fuelled by drink, it can reflect manic impulses and nagging worries: ‘Fluff up mattresses.…

My three top overtures: ‘ Weber’s Euryanthe is such a special piece, with a double quartet of eight violins alone creating a shimmering, mysterious mood. Really fascinating – and virtuosic to the last. ‘Rossini’s The Siege of Corinth has very big bones and is very grand – yet it is hardly ever played. ‘Of course, I couldn’t do without Verdi’s Force of Destiny overture! The Sicilian Vespers is wonderful, but the Forza somehow plays better.’ And one I hope to do: ‘ Berlioz’s The Corsair is a particularly brilliant piece of writing by a master of the orchestra.’ Domingo Hindoyan My three top overtures: ‘Both the musical and the philosophical content of Leonore No. 3 are the result of a long search by Beethoven for what he really wanted for…

In St Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork, lies the grave of Arnold Bax (1883-1953). The composer was not, in fact, from Ireland – he was born and raised in London – but became smitten with the island, adopting its culture as his own. It was as a student that Bax was introduced to the work of Irish poet WB Yeats, which he later declared ‘meant more to me than all the music of the centuries’. A visit to the island in 1902 confirmed ‘the Celt within me’ and he would continue to return on many occasions, heading largely to the west – the village of Glencolmcille in County Donegal would prove a favourite haven. Bax’s inner Celt manifested itself in various ways, including writing poems, plays and stories as ‘Dermot O’Byrne’ and…

Music for multiples Several of Eastman’s works are intended for any group of identical instruments, with up to 18 players. The ensuing harmonic overtones (evident when the instruments slip into unison) are a key characteristic. Kukuruz Quartet have shown how well this music works for four pianos. Organic music ‘There is an attempt to make every section contain all the information of the previous section, or else take out information at a gradual and logical rate,’ said Eastman of his harmonic language. He called this approach ‘organic’ music, a style that foreshadowed popular Minimalism. Pluralism By day, Eastman was a contemporary classical devotee, but at night he performed underground dance with Arthur Russell and jazz with his guitarist brother Gerry. His compositions reflect these disparate styles, with pieces such as…

Nikolai Golovanov (conductor) In this extraordinary 1949 recording with the USSR Grand Symphony Orchestra, Golovanov well exceeds the norms of interpretation: his additions to Borodin’s score, underlining the motto theme with rumbling timpani, or ending the Scherzo’s final long-sustained woodwind chord with a bass note, are mere details in a blazing account whose sheer intensity makes even the famously flamboyant Leopold Stokowski seem positively sober. Yet Golovanov’s conviction allied with the superlative quality of his musicians results in a compelling performance. (Urania WS121307) Loris Tjeknavorian (conductor) This 1977 recording captures a committed, red-blooded performance with a good professional orchestra (the National Philharmonic) in resonant yet well-detailed sound. Tempos are generally close to Rimsky’s, with the Scherzo just a touch faster than the published ‘semibreve = 108’. Be warned, though, that…

After well over a year of sitting at my desk at home, I am currently itching to whisk myself off to foreign climes. But while the prospect of a holiday may not yet be on the cards, we can at least travel through music. So join us this month as we visit far-flung places including the US, Haiti and Brazil. On the way, we take in music for a Scottish king, lullabies, a big glittering Handel opera and some brand new guitar concertos, among other delights. There’s a winning debut, too, courtesy of British-Italian tenor Freddie de Tommaso (our Opera Choice), not to mention centenary tributes to the late, great British horn player Dennis Brain. And if you want even more international fare, look no further than a round-up of…

Passione Tenor Arias by Bellini, Buzzi-Peccia, Cardillo, Di Capua, Falvo, Gastaldon, Innocenzi, Leoncavallo, Mazzucchi, Puccini, Respighi, Tagliaferri, Tosti, Trapani/Lange and Valente The tenor spins gold out of the simplest of popular Italian songs Freddie De Tommaso (tenor); London Philharmonic Orchestra/Renato Balsadonna Decca 485 1509 53:18 mins Listen to Freddie De Tommaso at full throttle and you’ll need to lie down in a darkened room. Passione is singing in the tradition of De Tommaso’s hero Franco Corelli: stylish and heartfelt, spinning gold out of the simplest of popular Italian songs. No wonder that the word has been out about this young British-Italian tenor since he bagged a trio of major singing prizes in 2018 just one year out of college. If every aspiring Italian tenor needs to tuck an album of…

R Strauss’s Four Last Songs  This set of songs represents the final word from composer Richard Strauss. Originally intended as a five-part song cycle, he only completed four of them before he died in 1949. His publisher at the time bestowed them with this collective title. Based on three poems by Hesse (‘Spring’, ‘September’, ‘Going to Sleep’) and one by Eichendorff (‘At Sunset’), the songs show the composer in a reflective mood and fully aware of the sun going down on his own life. The songs were premiered at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1950, performed by soprano Kirsten Flagstad and the Philharmonia.…

Bliss’s Conversations Arthur Bliss was viewed as an enfant terrible in 1921 when this five-part work was premiered. After the horrors of the First World War, Bliss and his generation were letting their hair down. The influence of Stravinsky and Les Six is evident in Bliss’s irreverently witty programmatic piece with its colourful movement titles such as ‘The Committee Meeting’ and ‘In the Tube at Oxford Circus’. In ‘The Committee Meeting’, the violin, playing the chairman, is instructed ‘to play a monotonous mf except where marked ff’, while other instruments are ‘to play with the utmost force and vigour throughout’.…

Holst’s Egdon Heath  Originally for orchestra, Holst’s 1927 piece was inspired by Thomas Hardy, who featured the fictional landmark in a number of works – most notably the novels The Return of the Native and The Mayor of Casterbridge. Holst and Hardy were acquanited and they even walked on the very real heath in Dorset that inspired the author. Dedicated to Hardy, the work was written for the New York Symphony Orchestra, which premiered it in 1928 just three weeks after the author’s death. The City of Birmingham Orchestra performed it the following day in Cheltenham.…

Bruckner • M Haydn Motets MDR Leipzig Radio Choir/Philipp Ahmann Pentatone PTC 5186 868 Bruckner’s superb choral works unfortunately tend to be eclipsed by his own symphonies; ditto Michael Haydn by his famous brother. In this fine coupling, both enjoy their deserved moment in the spotlight in polished, passionate performances. (JP) ★★★★ Christopher Cerrone The Arching Path Timo Andres (piano); Ian Rosenbaum (percussion) et al In a Circle ICR021 Cerrone’s music explores concepts of place and memory and these works offer a potent and dynamic listening experience. There’s a great physicality to the performances here, making Cerrone’s soundworld almost tangible. Double Happiness is the album’s appealing, softer centre. (MB) ★★★★ Dvorák • Martinu Cello Concertos Victor Julien-Laferrière (cello); Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège Alpha Classics ALPHA 731 Julien-Laferrière’s rather ponderous approach…

Alan Davey , the controller of BBC Radio 3, picks out three great moments to tune into this July George Bridgetower We now think of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 as the ‘Kreutzer’, but its first performer and dedicatee was George Bridgetower. After a falling-out between Beethoven and Bridgewater, the work was named after a French aristocrat. We join double bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku as she leads a campaign to have the original dedication restored. Sunday Feature: 4 July, 6.45pm The Songs that Shaped Me Author and Indian classical singer Amit Chaudhuri reflects on the music that shaped his teenage years in Bombay during the 1960s and ’70s, from blues and the Beatles to Hindi film song and Indian raga. The Essay: 12-16 July, 10.45pm First Night of the Proms Join…