Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i BBC Music Magazine

Stephen Moss Journalist, The Guardian ‘When we spoke, Andrew Lloyd Webber had spent weeks battling to get his latest production, Cinderella , up and running. Talking about his symphonic suites was a relief, and he was revealing about his epic career.’ Paul Robson Writer and journalist ‘“Children develop more in the first seven years than at any other time in their life.” That quote, from Wells Cathedral School’s Rebecca Allen, begs the question: how can we best share a love of music with the very young?’ Jo Talbot Cellist and writer ‘Last year I was teaching Britten to students, and found his First Suite really grows in stature under scrutiny. Listening to such fine cellists on CD was a privilege, and revealed worlds of colour in this composition.’…

A great Victorian wit The deluge of puns and Gilbertian references in Tom Service’s eloquent article (September) testifies to the impact this incomparable librettist has had on the English language. The brassy splendour and haunting drone accompaniment that bring down the curtain on Act I of The Yeomen of the Guard (poster pictured above) are rightly singled out for praise, fully worthy as they are of the continental-style ‘Grand Opera’ that Arthur Sullivan yearned to write. Another example of ‘serious’ messages hidden among the hilariously witty slapstick is the Nightmare song from Iolanthe, in which unrequited love produces traumatic psychological menace. And it should not surprise us that G&S were threatened with lawsuits when some of their well- aimed barbs against nepotism and incompetence struck home. Even Parliament was not…

30,000 … visitors to this year’s Verbier Festival in Switzerland, despite the difficulties caused by Covid-19. 20 …years of successful business, being celebrated by online classical music retailer Presto Music this autumn. 12 …years left before music falls off the A-Level syllabus in state schools, fear education commentators. 4,000 …songs and 1,200 symphonic works housed by the African Diaspora Music Project, a new database of works by composers from the continent.…

October is springtime in Sydney, Australia, and the weather can be unreliable. But by mid-afternoon on 20 October 1973, a bank of ominous grey clouds had given way to bright blue skies and wafts of cotton-ball cumulus. A strong breeze was blowing, however, as Queen Elizabeth II stepped from a ceremonial Rolls Royce with the Duke of Edinburgh, and ascended a dais to declare Sydney’s architecturally stunning new opera house open. Wearing a silken dress of duck-egg blue and matching hat – ‘not unlike an inverted sail of the opera house’, one observer commented – the monarch gripped the pages of her script tightly as wind buffeted the platform. The speech itself was not without irony: ‘I understand that its construction has not been totally without problems,’ the Queen said,…

Composer Orlando Gough and librettist Stephen Plaice have written a ‘people’s opera, a post-Brexit satire on the Great British seaside sung by the people who live there’. Called Bloom Britannia , its first production will be staged from 22-24 October in Hastings by local company Barefoot Opera, and will involve several local amateur performers alongside a core of professionals. This, we note, is far from the first time an opera has been set at the seaside… Britten’s 1945 Peter Grimes also concerns a local community who rely on the sea for their living, though the ‘intruder’ is not a pleasure-seeking holiday-maker but the title character, suspected of mistreating and even murdering his apprentices. Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers is arguably a direct precedent, set in a Cornish fishing village where the…

Jeremy Pound Acting editor Autumn seems not to have had the decency to wait patiently for its turn this year, pushing its way rudely into line somewhere in the middle of August. Bowing to the inevitable, then, I’ve turned to Respighi’s gorgeous Poema autunnale for violin and orchestra to set the mood for the months ahead. The work sets its seasonal stall out with a wistful opening from the violin soloist before cor anglais, bassoon and the lower strings reply in gloomy empathy. Few works capture the mood of grey skies and turning leaves so evocatively, particularly in the recording by violinist Pierre Amoyal and the Orchestre National de France conducted by Charles Dutoit. Alice Pearson Cover CD editor Trying to listen to music while having a faulty…

The Lloyd Webber household in the late 1960s was rarely a quiet one. Living under the same roof at that time were, among others, the established composer William Lloyd Webber, his older son Andrew, already following in his father’s footsteps, and his younger son Julian, in the early stages of becoming a world-renowned cellist. ‘There was always music around the house,’ remembers Julian. ‘I remember my father, who was still just about composing at that stage, would bury himself away every morning in his room, which was equipped with this extraordinary contraption – a pedal piano, which was basically a piano that was fitted with organ pedals so he could practise at home. My mother, meanwhile, specialised in teaching the piano to young children who would come round for lessons.…

Aside from the quirky combination of instruments, perhaps the next thing that grabs the attention is the name. Why The Hermes Experiment? ‘Hermes was the name of our webmail server at university, so was something we all had in common!’ says Héloïse Werner. It is also, she adds, the name of the messenger in Greek mythology, and the group’s raison d’être is all about crossing boundaries. And an ‘Experiment’ is what they were at the outset. Werner (voice), Anne Denholm (harp), Oliver Pashley (clarinet), Marianne Schofield (double bass) and Hanna Grzeskiewicz (co-director) formed The Hermes Experiment after graduating from Cambridge in 2013. Invitations to perform in leading venues and festivals across the UK soon followed and Here We Are , the group’s debut album, was released last year to rave…

Long before the 18th century, when composers first began writing music for two players sat at the same piano, fellow students and amateur keyboardists had been helping each other out, filling in challenging passages where two hands were stretched to their physical limits. One might, therefore, have expected early attempts at piano duet composition to have revelled in the enhanced virtuoso opportunities available to four hands working simultaneously at one instrument, or harness the potential for richer sonorities and textures. Yet the initial impulse to compose for piano four hands was not so much the medium’s creative potential, but rather the wonderful opportunity it presented for enjoying a proximity with one’s playing partner at a time when such things were otherwise frowned upon. The first major composer to show a…

Less than decade after the Dresden Staatskappelle’s performances at the Queen’s Hall in November 1936, both the London venue and the orchestra’s own home lay in ruins, as German and English bombers took their toll. On 10 May 1941, the Queen’s Hall, the much-loved host of the Proms, held the last ever concert in its 48-year life when Malcolm Sargent conducted the London Philharmonic in Elgar’s Enigma Variations and The Dream of Gerontius; that night, the Luftwaffe would reduce it to rubble. Just short of four years later, it was Dresden’s turn to suffer as, on 13 February 1945, British Lancaster bombers unleashed hundreds of tons of incendiaries on the city. Following the raid, only the burnt-out shell of the Semperoper remained. On the 40th anniversary of that date, the…

Orchestration Though at times dense, and rarely experimental or radical, his scoring has individuality in the woodwind writing (e.g. the opening of Symphony No. 4) and the darker instrumental colours used in chamber music-like passages. Lower instruments such as contrabassoon are often strikingly used, and there are occasional breaks with conventional forces – the 19th Symphony is for brass band only. Late Romanticism Though he came of age in the first decade of the 20th century, unlike Stravinsky Myaskovsky remained true to the ideals of the Romantic symphony, mixing Tchaikovsky’s lugubrious style with the solid constructions of Glazunov (above). Modernism occasionally surfaces, most strikingly in Symphony No. 13. Form Intrigued by sonata form, Myaskovsky rarely shook the foundations like Shostakovich, only occasionally departing from the standard format, as in the…

Reaching his fiftieth birthday in 1963, Britten already appeared something of a ‘grand old man’ of British music with his operas Peter Grimes and Turn of the Screw being performed to great acclaim around the world, while his War Requiem, premiered the previous year at Coventry Cathedral, appeared a crowning success. Yet composers more 'advanced' than himself, such as Peter Maxwell Davies, were now receiving attention, and Britten became aware of needing to revitalise his style. Meeting Rostropovich was a welcome catalyst for his next creative stage.…

Pandemic isolation has inspired a lot of albums of late, but this feels different, more hopeful… I think that’s what I wanted it to be. When I was writing the notes and examining how I feel about it, there was a realisation that it’s definitely a sort of anti-meditation on loneliness, but at the same time it does encompass a little bit of it. The pandemic definitely gave me time to explore music that I might not have returned to, even longer than it took me to return to Mompou. Why did you want to set Mompou at the heart of this? It took me a while to come round to Spanish music as something that I wanted to record. A lot of the repertoire is good music, but it…

Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2; Scherzos Seong-Jin Cho (piano); London Symphony Orchestra/ Gianandrea Noseda DG 486 0435 76:56 mins If we are to judge by the number of recordings currently available, Chopin’s Scherzos seem to have joined his Rondos in not quite making the top grade – which is curious, given their quality and especially their masterly combination of virtuosity and lyricism. Pianist Seong-Jin Cho is equal to their every virtuosic demand, and my reservations rather concern his responses to the lyricism in the works’ varying structures. In the First Scherzo, Chopin specifies ritenutos in the outer sections for one particular passage each time it recurs. For me, introducing them elsewhere blunts what is presumably the composer’s intention, which is surely to answer wildness with reflection. In the Third Scherzo…

Monteverdi L’Orfeo Johan Linderoth, Kristina Hellgren, Adam Riis, Christine Nonbo Andersen, Anna Zander, Daniel Åberg, Ann-Margret Nyberg; Ensemble Lundabarock; Ensemble Altapunta; Höör Barock/Fredrik Malmberg BIS BIS-2519 (CD/SACD) 105:39 mins (2 discs) It’s Malmberg’s energy that gives this performance a brilliant edge This vibrant, idiosyncratic Orfeo grew out of a 2018 Lundabarock festival concert performance. Artists from that event, including Fredrik Malmberg directing from the keyboard, tenor Johan Linderoth in the title role and the 14-strong period band Höör Barock, then teamed up with the nine wind players of Ensemble Altapunta for this recording. Monteverdi’s printed score famously lists 41 instruments, yet the two bands’ quality more than compensates for their small numbers. The singers’ intensity – and the bold, sometimes unusual distribution of instrumental parts – distinguish this Orfeo from…

More Honourable than the Cherubim Russian sacred works by Chesnokov, Dinev, Grechaninov, Rachmaninov, Trubachev et al PaTRAM Institute Male Choir/ Vladimir Gorbik The choir’s vocal range is shades of dark chocolate Chandos CHSA 5287 (CD/SACD) 71:36 mins There’s no shortage of Orthodox choral discs, but here is one worth adding to anyone’s collection. The PaTRAM Institute Male Choir, numbering a little over 55 singers drawn from five countries, is an all-adult choir, so the choir’s range of vocal colour is shades of dark chocolate without the bursts of treble sunlight we may expect from works such as Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil. Yet its well-focused tone ensures that constituent lines are always clear, sympathetically caught in this recording in the resonant but not too lively acoustic of the Church of the St…

JS Bach The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 Les inAttendus Harmonia Mundi HMM 905313 70:34 mins What a chameleon is the accordion! In its various manifestations it can provide the anchoring soul of tango (bandoneon); in the hands of a virtuoso, make light work of the trickiest Scarlatti sonata; or as here, paired with baroque violin and bass viol, lull the casual listener into believing a viol consort has alighted on JS Bach’s mighty testament to strategic counterpoint: the Art of Fugue. Composed in open score with no performance indications, it’s a work, moreover, that invites combinations well beyond the Thomaskantor’s wildest imagining – an Everest scaled by string quartet to electronica, saxophone quartet to symphony orchestra. As an exhaustive study of the possibilities inherent in a single 12-note theme…

JS Bach Goldberg Variations Alexandra Papastefanou (piano) First Hand Records FHR110 79:29 mins The story that these variations were composed for the insomniac Count Keyserlingk’s harpsichordist Goldberg to play during his master’s sleepless nights may or may not be true, but it is a charming one. It is certain, however, that no melody of relatively modest pretensions was treated to such an inspired workout until Beethoven turned his attention to a waltz by Diabelli some 80 years later. Unsurprisingly, Bach’s approach is systematic with nine canons interspersing more virtuoso variations and the second half opens spectacularly with a crowd-pleasing French overture. Encompassing the expressive richness of the variations is a tall order for any player. From the outset, Alexandra Papastefanou takes a nuanced view, both poised and elegant. While the…

October round-up RVW from America revives some forgotten recordings of the early 1950s, with mixed sonic results. The Concerto for Two Pianos benefits from an expert performance by Whittemore and Lowe – one of the top duos at the time – placed rather too prominently against the Philadelphia Orchestra. In Flos Campi, the recording is distant and lacking in detail, marring another fine performance, especially from violist Francis Tursi and the chorus from Cornell University. They and their conductor Robert Hull feature on the remaining works: the Fantasia on the Old 104th, where John Hunt makes the best of the prolix piano part; and three folk song arrangements. (Albion ALBCD 048 ★★★ ) Sound quality isn’t an issue in Early Stereo Recordings – 4, First Hand Records’s latest trawl through…

What are active speakers? Essentially, they are speakers you may stream music directly to, thanks to their built-in powered amplifiers and wireless capabilities. In short, they offer high-resolution streaming and audiophile sound quality in a space-saving package. Aren’t they just stereo Bluetooth speakers? Most include Bluetooth streaming, but quality active speakers also offer inputs such as 3.5mm, RCA and optical – found either on the back of one ‘master’ speaker, or in a separate ‘hub’ which streams to the speakers – so you can connect a CD player, turntable etc. Do they sound good? With designs that include multiple amplifiers tuned specifically for each speaker driver, active speakers from leading brands such as KEF, Bowers & Wilkins plus brands you’ll find mentioned in the reviews above, can revolutionise your enjoyment…

Two years ago – though it seems a world away now – I had the pleasure of joining wine writer Oz Clarke and members of the Armonico Consort for a beer in a Gloucestershire pub. They were on a sponsored cycle ride from the Midlands to Dorset, stopping off to sing at various hostelries along the way, so popping over to visit them en route seemed too good an opportunity to miss. And now, I find I have another excuse to raise a glass to the Warwick-based ensemble, as it is celebrating its 20th birthday – a landmark that, as a look at our concert highlights on p106 will reveal, it shares with the Oxford Lieder Festival and The Sixteen’s Choral Pilgrimage tours. Over those 20 years, these three institutions…

Notes on a boat You can’t beat a nice floaty melody, they say, and London now boasts its first ever waterborne concert hall, with the launch of The Piano Boat this summer. Pootling gently up and down canals in the Colne Valley Regional Park just west of the capital, the melodious barge (above) hosts daily piano recitals to audiences of up to ten people – followed by brunch or tea. Organisers say that the venture has already proved a hit. The right strings After a four-year search, Vilde Frang has revealed that she has found her ideal violin. From now on, the Norwegian virtuoso will be working her magic on the ‘Rode’ Guarneri del Gesù, which has been loaned to her on a long-term basis. Previous violinists to have played…

Cras Piano Trio in C major Aleksandr Khramouchin (cello), Alain Jacquon (piano), Philippe Koch (violin) Timpani 1C1151 Jean Cras was a musician and a marine – I think maybe he was more famous for his military career. I was quite young when I discovered this piece and I immediately liked the spirit of it – happy, generous, loving and tender. There are also many characters in the music and a lot of folkloric influence. You feel as if you are in Ireland in the last movement, or in La Pampa, Argentina, in the third. Tan Dun Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Shanghai Symphony Orchestra/Tan Dun Sony Classical SK 89347 I met Tan Dun around ten years ago when I played his cello concerto, The Map. That meeting and…

Katya Apekisheva Pianist I love to experience music live, so one of my big moments this year was going to Glyndebourne in May. I went to hear Katya Kabanova by Janácek, probably one of my favourite composers. It was so emotional, the experience of being there in the theatre. Both my parents are repetiteurs in Moscow opera theatres. So we always had singers at home and opera’s something I’ve always loved listening to. Streaming was a novelty when the lockdowns started and it was a way of keeping music alive. Long term, I was less and less keen on watching them, but I did really enjoy seeing the Wigmore Hall streams. They were done so beautifully – the sound and picture quality was excellent, and somehow they managed to capture…

Covid has been a spur to ingenuity in the music world, as well as the cause of much despair and hardship. For one column, then, I want to celebrate our pandemic heroes: those who, despite everything, kept the show running in some form or other through sheer resolve and resourcefulness. You might say that after this traumatic hiatus we should be looking forward, not backwards. True, but the experience of the past 18 months should teach us something too. There were lessons painfully learnt during the pandemic – new avenues explored, new ways of reaching the public acquired by necessity – that should shape our thinking for years to come. One thing is obvious. Streaming concerts on the internet, and playing to live audiences, are now not either/ or alternatives.…

While there is plenty of music for piano four hands, the choice for those who wish to sit together on an organ stool is much more limited – a handful of works by the likes of Berwald, Wesley and Albrechtsberger aside, original pieces for organ four hands are few and far between. ‘The vast majority of what we hear are transcriptions,’ says composer Carlotta Ferrari (above), whose organ four hands works include Fantasia italo-russa, The Sinking Cathedral and Freakshow. ‘I wanted to add my own contribution with some dance-based pieces. When I was young, my idea was to keep the focus on spirituality and austerity; what I appreciate now is the beauty of cooperation and the expressive possibilities of two players on the same instrument.’ With organ manuals typically having…

1906 LIFE: He enters the St Petersburg Conservatory, where he studies composition with Lyadov and orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov, and befriends the young Prokofiev. TIMES: Finland, an autonomous principality of the Russian Empire, is the world’s second country to introduce universal suffrage. The following year, 19 women are elected to parliament. 1941 LIFE: He wins the Stalin Prize for his Symphony No. 21. He goes on to win the prize on four further occasions over the next decade, more than any other Soviet composer. TIMES: As horses struggle in Arctic conditions on the Karelian Front, three deer transportation units, each numbering 1,000 animals, are formed to assist the 14th Soviet Army against the invading Axis forces. 1881 LIFE: Nikolai Myaskovsky is born in the fortress town of Novo-Georgiyevsk (now Modlin, Poland),…

Pieter Wispelwey (cello) Channel Classics CCS SA 17102 Rostropovich’s legacy lives on not only in his recordings, but also in his detailed fingerings and editing of Britten’s score. When speaking about works written for him, he once said that he would be delighted if someone else played them an hour later. Clearly, he recognised this creative musical legacy, but was aware that to develop, it would need to accommodate new approaches – each score is a road map which a performer has to interpret. Wispelwey etches the contrapuntal lines with clarity yet with fantasy When teaching the Britten to his pupils, Rostropovich said they had to find the emotional core, as it was essential to feel the poetic nature behind the composition. He also laid great emphasis on finding compelling…

Camino Works by Falla, Satie, Mompou, José, Ravel and Poulenc Sean Shibe (guitar) Pentatone PTC 5186 870 56:20 mins Whether Sean Shibe would have made this album or its kind without going through what he describes as ‘a difficult and traumatic’ pandemic lockdown is, of course ,impossible to know. What is certain is that his response has yielded results that are as exquisite as they are insightful. Seeking ‘comfort and sustenance’, he has delved deep into parts of the guitar repertoire too easily associated with a sentimentality and showy flamboyance towards which he has felt ambivalent since boyhood. Camino emphatically eschews cliché, threading pathways between a range of familiar and lesser-known works, excerpts and transcriptions crisscrossing Spain and France from the 1880s to the 1960s. Six composers are lovingly represented…

Britten The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko Onyx ONYX 4238 (digital only) 17:24 mins Benjamin Britten was flying high in 1945: after the triumph of his first opera Peter Grimes that spring and summer, he then rapidly composed his Holy Sonnets of John Donne and his String Quartet No. 2 before writing The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra in December for an educational film. Its first concert performance was given by the (then) Liverpool Philharmonic under Malcolm Sargent in 1946, so it seems appropriate that Vasily Petrenko’s final recording of his 15-year stint as the RLPO’s music director should be of that same work. It is a piece that poses conductors two challenges: how to sustain longterm momentum through so many so many…

Sebastian Fagerlund Nomade*; Water Atlas *Nicolas Altstaedt (cello); Finnish Radio Symphony/ Hannu Lintu BIS BIS-2455 (CD/SACD) 58:34 mins Altstaedt gives a bravura performance that captures every nuance Finnish composer Sebastian Fagerlund’s music is a beguiling mix of the fiercely energetic and glitteringly intricate. His previous concertos have won wide acclaim, including the celebrated Darkness in Light (2012) for violin and orchestra, and his landmark bassoon concerto Mana (2016). Fagerlund’s cello concerto Nomade (2018) pulses with all the composer’s characteristic textural invention and shifts in energy, and this outstanding new recording features a dazzling performance from Nicolas Altstaedt and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. By turns fierce and fragile, Nomade is an abstract account of journeying which places the soloist as a ‘cellist-wanderer’ passing through different ‘landscapes, moods and events as…

Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra In many respects Simon Boccanegra is your typical Verdi opera, with a plotline that interweaves political tension and family drama. Its roots are in an 1843 play of the same name by the Spanish dramatist Antonio García Gutiérrez. Verdi had already struck gold with Gutiérrez, thanks to Il trovatore, but this opera would be a bumpier ride. Premiered in 1857 with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, it was a flop; so 24 years later Verdi went back to the drawing board with a new librettist, Arrigo Boito. Their 1881 version, with its grand choral passages, was a resounding success.…

Villa-Lobos Sonata fantasia No. 1 ‘Désespérance’; Sonata fantasia No. 2; Violin Sonata No. 3 Emmanuele Baldini (violin), Pablo Rossi (piano) Naxos 8.574310 53:39 mins Baldini’s phrases show a natural instinct for cantabile espressivo Villa-Lobos’s three violin sonatas (composed between 1912 and 1920) were all written before he went to study in Paris and discovered Stravinsky. At this relatively early stage in his career, he still earned his living principally as a gifted cellist, playing in orchestras, cafés, restaurants and cinemas accompanying the latest silent movies. All of which makes the expertise of the one-movement First Violin Sonata, composed when Villa-Lobos was 25 and subtitled Désespérance (‘Despair’), all the more striking. French music of La Belle Époque is the starting point, with some exquisite writing along the way, including a sequence…

Steffan Harpsichord Sonatas Mitzi Meyerson (harpsichord) Glossa GCD921810 78:49 mins Meyerson highlights Steffan’s delightful sense of humour A contemporary of Haydn, the Bohemian composer Joseph Anton Steffan (1726-97) fled his war-torn country to settle in Vienna in 1741 where he became the teacher of the future Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. He’s best known today for his songs but this disc reveals a fistful of sparkling keyboard works: there are hints of Haydn here, Scarlatti there, but Steffan’s style is ultimately original and distinctive. Having dusted off these forgotten scores for her swansong recording, Mitzi Meyerson makes for a persuasive advocate. She brings rhetoric and drama to the programmatic opening work, conjuring up the ebb and flow of a devotional procession. In the first movement of the B flat Sonata,…

October round-up American guitarist Julian Lage was a child prodigy who started playing at five, had a documentary film made about his life at eight and performed at a Grammy awards ceremony when he was 13. But his folksy, genre-crossing repertoire means he’s kept a fairly low profile as a jazz player across the years (he’s now 33). A new trio album for the iconic Blue Note imprint, called Squint, might change that, however. Recorded in Nashville in the shadow of lockdown, with Dave King on drums and Jorge Roeder on bass, Lage’s characteristic country blues feel frequently gives way to a more enquiring, sidelong, exploration. Also, Lage’s switch to a hollow-bodied guitar gives added jazz bounce to his sound. (Blue Note 00602435521510) ★★★★★ Saxophonist Julian Siegel took his inspiration…

Beethoven – A Life in Nine Pieces Laura Tunbridge Penguin 288pp (pb) £9.99 Some tomes about Beethoven exceed 1,000 pages. Yet Laura Tunbridge, professor of music at Oxford University, has boiled down some of the key biographical issues into chapters revolving around nine pieces of music. These provide focal points for specific angles and their discussion: for instance, heroism in the Eroica Symphony, spirit in the Missa solemnis, family in the Hammerklavier Sonata. The structure is part of a literary trend that circumvents our modern attention span (or lack of it), but she makes it work better than most, and uses it to cast truly fresh light upon this much-explored musical titan. As an example, the exploration of friendship via the Kreutzer Sonata encompasses, among other things, Vienna’s social hierarchy,…

Cumnock Tryst Cumnock, 30 September – 3 October Web: www.thecumnocktryst.com Self-effacingly, artistic director James MacMillan has scheduled none of his own music in this year’s East Ayrshire festival, but he joins saxophonist Christian Forshaw for a masterclass in improvisation. Pianists Steven Osborne and Paul Lewis smuggle Stravinsky into a delectable French duo confection, the Tenebrae choir ponders penitence, and the Hebrides Ensemble is backing Britten. London Philharmonic Orchestra Southbank Centre, London, 1 October Web: www.lpo.org.uk Having announced himself as the orchestra’s new principal conductor with Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage the week before, Edward Gardner turns to a neat pairing of Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps (coincidentally, also being performed by the LSO at the Barbican on 10 October) and Lutos¯awski’s Cello Concerto, with soloist Nicolas Altstaedt. Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique…

An Orkney Tapestry Orcadian composer Erland Cooper and violinist Daniel Pioro pay tribute to Stromness poet George Mackay Brown, who would have turned 100 this year. Their lyrical portrait will be paired with archive interviews and field recordings. Between the Ears: 10 October, 6.45pm Arnold: The Tortured Composer We explore the legacy of Malcolm Arnold through the lens of his mental health collapse in the 1970s. We speak to Arnold’s daughter Katherine, composer Joseph Horovitz and psychiatrist Veronica O’Keane about the man behind the illness – and why his music should be remembered. Sunday Feature: 17 October, 6.45pm Southbank Centre Residency Radio 3 returns to the Southbank for a weekend of live music. The LPO is joined by its new principal conductor Edward Gardner and cellist Nicolas Altstaedt in Lutos›awski’s…

Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contact us on Facebook and Twitter Mahlerian revelation Thank you for the cover CD of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 on your September issue. It is revolutionising my life. For years I’ve been trying to listen to and appreciate Mahler’s music, only without success. The music has always seemed larger than life, sprawlingly over-the-top, formless. Now, thanks to this performance by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Thomas Dausgaard, I think I’m at last learning how to listen to Mahler. A large sound, yes, but through this performance, handled with such humble delicacy, subtlety and a real understanding which is revelatory and infectious, I have found a way in, at last, to a soundworld…

Brandee Younger Harpist Born: Hempstead, NY Career highlight: Taking part in the Soundtrack of America concert series at the Shed in New York City, under the direction of Steve McQueen and Quincy Jones. It celebrated the impact of African-American music on today’s culture, and I performed with singers Moses Sumney and Kelsey Lu. Musical hero: Ravel, hands down. As a harpist, it’s probably not a surprise, but his harmonies are the most beautiful. His Introduction and Allegro in the harp repertoire is my favourite to perform and listen to. Dream concert: Stevie Wonder, Marsha Ambrosius, D’Angelo and I performing at the Hollywood Bowl! Blaž Šparovec Clarinettist Born: Ljubljana, Slovenia Career highlight: Playing Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto and winning first prize in the 2019 Carl Nielsen Competition in Odense, Denmark.…

Pianist Sarah Cahill has recorded a three-volume set called The Future is Female. The project sees her perform works by 70 women from around the world and from the 18th century to the present. Sessions took place at St Stephen’s Church in Belvedere, California, with Vol. 1 – ‘In Nature’ – to be released on the FHR label in March. Robert Levin is set to finish his ambitious Mozart project begun in 1993. The pianist set out to record all of the composer’s music for piano and orchestra with the Academy of Ancient Music, but the Decca series ended prematurely in 2000. AAM Records will finish the job, with recordings now under way and plans to release in 2023/24. Resonus Classics celebrates its tenth anniversary with a couple of…

Variations on a theme: it’s a phenomenon that accounts for the connectedness yet diversity of life-forms from plankton to pachyderms, each member of a species a unique variation on its thematic genetic sequence. In music, writing variations upon themes and ideas has been a constant in the range of techniques that composers, improvisers and performers have called upon for centuries. The variation principle itself has been interpreted in fantastically various ways. There are the bass lines of the tune La Folia, a musical idea that has run like a beautiful infection through centuries of music history, with variations upon its maddeningly irresistible harmonic progression by composers from Corelli to Max Richter, Salieri to Rachmaninov. There are the countless ways that a single composer like JS Bach used the variation principle…

John Peel Manorville, NY, US With the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, we made our first visit to Tanglewood. It was wonderful to see attendees spilling over onto the lawn outside the ‘Shed’. Adam Hickox (pictured above) started with Beethoven Leonore Overture No. 2 – appropriate, as it’s all about freeing prisoners – Kevin Fitzgerald conducted Haydn’s Symphony No. 3 and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Overture on Russian Themes, then Andris Nelsons led a sprightly Stravinsky Pulcinella Suite. The orchestra was composed entirely of young performers – none looked over 30 – who were clearly very happy to play in public again.…

“I was often told I must just compose or just sing, or I wouldn’t have a career” A whole cast of characters jostles inside the one person called Héloïse Werner. We need to meet them all if we are to get any understanding of this multi-faceted musician, a fast-rising star, both as solo performer and as a member of the Hermes Experiment, a unique line-up of harp, soprano voice, clarinet and double-bass (see p34), of which she is co-director. First there was the child growing up in Paris who started cello, aged four, in 1995: ‘I worked hard at it and thought that would be my future.’ Her French mother was a Baroque flautist – ‘there was always Bach in the house. She played the solos in all the Passions,…

Ravi Shankar’s Ghanashyam City of Birmingham Touring Opera, 1989 Shankar’s musical drama, expressed through mime and dance as well as singing, explores through its eponymous dancer the issue of drug abuse in the Indian community. Verdi’s Falstaff Royal Opera House, 1999 This production opened the newly restored Opera House and starred Bryn Terfel as the larger-than-life title character, supported by an acclaimed cast. Beethoven’s Fidelio Birmingham Opera Company, 2002 For this prison-set opera, audience as well as cast were herded within a tent and made to put black sacks over their heads before the start of Act II, only removing them when ordered to. Such immersive touches and the use of a wide range of nonprofessional locals in the cast set the template for future BOC productions. Wagner’s Tristan und…

Kodály: Children build enthusiasm and confidence as they learn to listen and sing in tune through singing songs and playing simple musical games, while also acquiring skills in tempo, rhythm, pitch and dynamics. British Kodály Academy: kodaly.org.uk Teneda: A piano-based system for learning perfect pitch: ‘parents who wish to train their child in this method must own a piano in excellent condition’. Rob Young at Prodigies, however, uses desk bells as the primary instrument. We Hear & Play: wehearandplay.com/whatis.htm Orff: Widely known for its use of singing and percussive instruments (pictured above), this method, which uses simple musical elements and also involves speech and dance, nurtures creativity through improvisation and rhythm. Orff UK: orff.org.uk Suzuki: A teacher-focused method involving intensive listening and playing. Suzuki believed that given proper training and…

For so solid a figure, Nikolai Myaskovsky offers surprising contradictions and paradoxes: consistent in his musical outlook but uneven in his output; an individual who nevertheless chimed well with the Soviet Union’s Socialist Realist demands from the 1930s onwards; a conservative with flashes of what might be called modernism throughout his creative life. His apparently prolific nature leaves him open to question: surely anyone who writes 27 symphonies can’t actually be that good? Yet within that canon there are stretches of first-rate music, and since he confined himself to only a few genres, Myaskovsky was free to perfect his own take on sonata and symphonic form. Russian in spirit when he wanted to be, he was essentially international, like his lifelong friend Prokofiev. Throughout his creative life, Myaskovsky was a…

The work Written in 1964, ’67 and ’71, Britten’s three Suites for Solo Cello, amongst the finest works for the instrument, owe their existence to one of the most charismatic and masterful cellists – Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1960, Rostropovich was performing the UK premiere of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto in London’s Royal Festival Hall, watched from a box by the Soviet composer himself. Seated next to Shostakovich was Britten, utterly mesmerised by the giant musical personality on stage. After the concert, Shostakovich told Rostropovich that his ribs were aching: ‘Every time Britten admired something in your playing, he would poke me in the ribs and say “isn’t that simply marvellous?” I am now suffering.’ Britten always wrote with specific performers in mind, and Rostropovich inspired him to write his Cello…

Mstislav Rostropovich (cello) Rostropovich’s first recording, a live performance in Russia, is generally quicker and less comfortable than his second version which, recorded by Decca at Snape Maltings in 1968, offers the stamp of the composer. Here you sense history in the making, and this has both more depth in terms of expression and also space. Inevitably, having lived with the Suite, it now seems completely under his skin. Rostropovich’s ‘Serenata’ is especially sizzling in dramatic impact and the Moto perpetuo a real tour de force. (Decca 421 8592) Noémi Boutin (cello) Boutin goes beyond the notes in this 2017 recording, bringing exquisite fantasy alongside stunning virtuosity to her interpretation. The opening ‘Canto Primo’ is arresting, and the dynamic choreography and emotional direction are persuasive. Her ‘Fuga’ is lucid, while…

Variety is the spice of life, and I like to think we offer something for all tastes. So if you’re feeling adventurous, you might like to take in modern cello concertos by Sebastian Fagerlund or orchestral works by Max Richter. If you want to stick to what you know, we’ve a fabulous Four Seasons, a cracking Carnival of the Animals and a glorious Goldberg Variations. Then if you like it old, but new to you, how about Haydn Baryton Trios, or harpsichord sonatas by Joseph Anton Steffan – this month’s Instrumental Choice? If you head to the Historical roundup, you’ll find recordings by the likes of Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman and Sviatoslav Richter. And finally, the Brief Notes reviews may be short, but some of the recordings are very sweet.…

Lully Ballet Royal de la Naissance de Vénus; plus extracts from ballets LWV 21, 43, 45 & 52 Deborah Cachet, Bénédicte Tauran, Ambroisine Bré; Chœur de Chambre de Namur; Les Talens Lyriques/ Christoph Rousset Aparté AP255 71:43 mins Christoph Rousset distils the character of each dance Before Lully invented French opera, ‘ballet royal’ was the court spectacle. Mixing Italian monody with French dances and choruses, royal ballets were designed for courtiers to admire stage stars and dance alongside them. Lully was a master of the form, as Christophe Rousset brilliantly illuminates in this world-premiere recording. Ballet de la Naissance de Vénus was a production beyond lavish, with 106 different roles, 96 performers and stage machines innumerable. A work of many hands (librettist, choreographer, mechanic), it featured not just Lully’s music…

Abrahám Ball at the Savoy Alison Kelly, Gerald Frantzen, Ryan Trent Oldham, Cynthia Fortune Gruel, Rose Guccione, Bridget Skaggs, Matt Dyson, Kurt Bender, Shawn Morgenlander, Gillian Hollis, Gretchen Adams; Folks Operetta/ Anthony Barrese Naxos 8.660503-04 139:15 mins (2 discs) Since 2006, the Chicago-based Folks Operetta has been reconstructing and producing works from the Viennese and German traditions, recently making a specialty of Jewish composers and librettists who either perished or were forced into exile during the Third Reich. One example is the Jewish-Hungarian Paul Abrahám (1892-1960), whose successful career was brought to an end when he was forced to leave first Germany, then Austria, then Hungary, surviving only due to his move to the United States, where he suffered – not surprisingly – from serious mental health issues before returning…

Cherubini • Kurpinski Cherubini: Requiem in C minor; Kurpinski: Te Deum Collegium Vocale 1704; Collegium 1704/Václav Luks Frederick Chopin Institute NIFCCD 073 69:00 mins Here’s a very fine period instrument recording of Cherubini’s Requiem. Conductor Václav Luks adopts a searching approach to the opening Kyrie, allowing the bassoons and violas to gnarl effectively through the sepulchral instrumental textures. The Dies Irae is raw and exciting, with sizzling strings and the drama of blaring brass and gong at the outset. The choir – at 20 members, chamber-sized – is supercharged, but has plenty of discipline too, with punchy attack and telling use of dynamic contouring in the Lacrimosa. Luks and his singers manage the work’s extended pianissimo end with easeful dignity, and overall their alert, incisive interpretation makes rival recordings seem…

Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas This set of seven short traditional Spanish songs was arranged by Falla in 1914. The advent of the First World War forced him to return to Madrid from Paris, where had been living for a few years. He dedicated it to Madame Ida Godebska, a popular salon host in his adopted city. Each song deals with aspects of love and finds roots in different regions of Spain. It was premiered at the inaugural concert of the Sociedad Nacional de Musica in Madrid in 1915.…

Nino Rota’s Nonetto Of all the Italian composer’s chamber works, the Nonetto is perhaps the most fulfilling. It is certainly the most representative of his skill in the medium – indeed it’s something of a ‘summing up’ of just about everything he’d brought to bear in his career to that point. That point being 1977, just a couple of years before his death. Rota’s five-movement work is meticulous, melodic and unrelenting, and it occupied him for the longest time. It was actually commissioned in the late 1950s by Czech Nonet, though the ensemble never got the opportunity to play it.…

Unlike his monumental First Sonata, aka the Concord Sonata , the American composer’s Third Piano Sonata is a stitch in time at under ten minutes in length. It was perhaps never really meant to see the light of day, given it was begun in the early 1900s and went unpublished until 1949 – just a few years before Ives’s death. He is said to have composed it as something of a joke, a means of winding up pretentious audience members. That idea is born out in the playful quirkiness of the three distinctive movements, one of which even quotes the chimes of Big Ben.…

JS Bach Goldberg Variations Samuele Telari (accordion) Delphian DCD34257  There’s no questioning the suitability of the two-manual accordion in taking on the Goldbergs, given the work’s two-manual harpsichord origins, and Telari sticks closely to Bach’s musical expression. It’s quite a feast of solo accordion, however, which might be best sampled in short sittings. (MB) ★★★ Beethoven Complete Works for Piano Four Hands Artur Pizarro, Rinaldo Zhok (piano) Odradek ODRCD 335  While no one would pretend that Beethoven’s music for piano four hands is the peak of his output, it is rarely dull. Artur Pizarro and Rinaldo Zhok are a fine partnership, bouncing ideas to and fro with zeal. (JP) ★★★★ Bizet • Ravel Symphony in C; Piano Concerto Northwest German Philharmonic et al Ars Produktion ARS 38323 (CD/SACD)  Two hugely…

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Born and brought up in London, Steve Rosenberg moved to Moscow in 1991 to teach English. He then entered journalism and held several posts in the Russian capital before being appointed the BBC Moscow correspondent in 2003 – a position he later returned to after four years as the BBC Berlin correspondent. A talented pianist, he has his own improvisatory style and performs musical tributes on radio, TV and on his Twitter feed, @BBCSteveR. We had a grand piano at our home in Chingford which I started learning to play when I was six or seven. I used to play duets with my mother, and hearing DVORÁK’s Slavonic Dances reminds me of the moment I realised playing music collectively was fun. I was encouraged to take up a second instrument…