Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2022 i BBC Music Magazine

One of the many pleasures of working on the BBC Music Magazine editorial desk is how, in the course of doing the job, one is constantly learning new facts and discovering pieces, or even composers in general, that have somehow escaped the attention. Even after more than 17 years here, the discoveries continue to come thick and fast – in the last couple of weeks alone, I have become smitten with Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D, Penderecki’s Winterreise (see p23) and, above all, the Suite for Chamber Orchestra by the ill-fated Schulhoff. When a composer dies in terrible circumstances, there’s always the temptation with hindsight to let that colour one’s perception of their life and music as a whole and paint them as a tragic figure from the outset. But…

Romanian reflections In response to your It’ll end in tears… feature (December), it is easier to make music more emotional when accompanied by words – a piece such as Violetta’s death scene in Verdi’s La traviata, always likely to bring tears to an audience, is much more than just the music. It is more difficult to achieve deep emotion from music on its own. Such a piece that I feel brings intense sadness is Enescu’s Second Romanian Rhapsody. This and his First Rhapsody were written while he was in Paris. They both conjure up a feeling of nostalgia as if the composer felt he might never see his native land again; but while the First looks back on happy memories, the Second has such an air of desolation in its…

24 … consecutive hours of drumming by BBC weatherman Owain Wyn Evans (pictured above), raising more than £3m for Children in Need 10,000,000 … dollars anonymously donated to the Handel and Haydn Society in honour of conductor Harry Christophers 10 … centimetres, the length of a miniature violin played by luthier Maria Sandner on Got Talent España 83 … percent of professional musicians in the UK say they are still unable to return to full-time work due to the pandemic…

In the run-up to Christmas, BBC Radio 3 and 4 had planned to broadcast a new radio version of Raymond Briggs’s The Snowman, narrated by Stephen Fry. A nice idea, but the plug was, alas, pulled when composer Howard Blake (left) took exception to the BBC Singers’ new choral version of his accompanying score. He is not the first composer to complain about others’ treatment of their music… Tchaikovsky was devastated by the tinkerings made to his Variations on a Rococo Theme by the work’s dedicatee, cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, who took out one variation and re-ordered others. He mourned to a friend: ‘Fitzenhagen’s been here. Look what he’s done with my composition!’. Decades later, Ravel was similarly miffed when, for a London performance, impresario Serge Diaghilev removed the wordless chorus…

A lfred Brendel tells an anecdote about switching on the radio midway through some piano recital, and thinking to himself: ‘My God, that player hasn’t got a clue’. Then came the inevitable announcement: ‘That was Alfred Brendel…’. At a somewhat less exalted level, we hacks often feel something similar if we stumble over our old articles. ‘Wow, I was naive/dense/just a kid,’ I find myself thinking. ‘I’ve learnt so much since then.’ But have I? This week I looked back over a column I wrote here just a year ago, when the editor asked me to identify ‘green shoots of recovery’ for a classical music world that was still lockdowned and, it seemed, almost knocked out. I wish I could say Mystic Morrison’s predictions have turned out to be spot…

Winterreise (‘Winter journey’) is a setting of 24 poems by Wilhelm Müller (left), which Schubert composed in two parts – the first 12 in February 1827, the second 12 in October of that year. After completing the first dozen, the composer, who knew he was dying from syphilis, played them to a group of friends, describing them as ‘a group of terrifying songs which I like more than anything I have done’ and breaking down in tears afterwards. The journey described over the 24 songs begins outside the house of a girl whom, back in May, our narrator had hoped to marry. With that hope now dashed, he writes ‘Gute Nacht’ (the name of the first song) on her gate before heading off through the snow. The twin subjects of rejected…

Director Robert Wise and choreographer Jerome Robbins were the first joint winners of the Best Director Oscar for their 1961 take on West Side Story. That was just one of ten Academy Awards the legendary film musical would win that night at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The original musical, by Robbins, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, broke new ground when it premiered on Broadway in 1957, but it was the big screen version that truly established this tragic love story as a worldwide favourite. In the 60 years that have passed since the film’s premiere, its status as a masterpiece has only become more deeply rooted. So it’s a brave artist who feels able to take on this musical giant and reimagine it for the 21st century.…

Mozart visited Brno, Korngold was born there. But one of the Czech city’s most heroic musical figures is Pavel Haas (pictured above), a highly original composer whose music defies categorisation. Embedded in the pavement outside hundreds of residences in Brno are brass plaques (‘stolpersteine’ or ‘stumbling blocks’) bearing the names of the mostly Jewish people who lived there before being transported to Nazi concentration camps. You can find Haas’s at Smetanova 630/28, detailing his birthdate, the year he was deported to Terezín, the Jewish ghetto 30 miles from Prague, and his death.…

William Primrose (viola) Despite an occasional slight untidiness along the way, William Primrose’s July 1946 recording, with Walton conducting the Philharmonia, remains a must-hear for its no-nonsense emotional clarity. Primrose’s unmistakably violinistic, rapier-like thrust (shades of Jascha Heifetz in the Violin Concerto) generates the greatest excitement, surfing the fulsome textures of the original scoring with a charismatic intensity that few other players can match. Primrose virtually defined for two decades how this work should sound. (Naxos 8.110316) James Ehnes (viola) Finest of all the violin virtuosos who stray occasionally into viola territory is James Ehnes. Those listeners who incline naturally towards the viola’s plangent chestiness may feel slightly short-changed here, yet Ehnes produces a uniquely smooth, immaculately focused sound throughout the range, his intonation is spotless, and he seamlessly negotiates…

Bliss The Lady of Shallott; Contrasts; Rout; March of Homage etc Ilona Domnich (soprano); BBC Concert Orchestra/Martin Yates Dutton Epoch CDLX 7387 (CD/SACD) 77:38 mins The biggest work here is The Lady of Shalott, the last and least well-known of Bliss’s ballet scores, in its first complete recording (a version conducted by the composer, taken from a 1968 broadcast, is slightly cut). It consists of a sequence of discrete short movements, all expertly written, taking in the mysterious, the pompous, the athletic and the romantic. The colourful scoring, together with some characteristic melodic and harmonic twists, go right back to the Colour Symphony of the 1920s. Whether it stands up as a whole without the visual element of the dance is another matter, although it’s hard to imagine a more…

Mozart Horn Concerto No. 2; Oboe Concerto; Clarinet Concerto; Sinfonia concertante; Serenade No. 10 ‘Gran Partita’ Olivier Stankiewicz (oboe), Andrew Marriner (clarinet), Timothy Jones (horn); London Symphony Orchestra/Jaime Martín LSO Live LSO 0855 (CD/SACD) 141:18 mins (2 discs) You would expect the principal woodwind players of a team in the London Symphony Orchestra’s league to perform at stellar technical level. Even more striking, and highly appealing besides, is the musical spirit that’s in evidence here throughout, and which suits Mozart’s music to near perfection. A sequence of alert and personable orchestral accompaniments under Jaime Martín (slightly reduced vibrato from the strings) underpins solo playing that reflects the different solo characters involved in, as it happens, three very different works. If the Second Horn Concerto gives Timothy Jones rather less fine…

Mozart Mitridate, re di Ponto Michael Spyres, Julie Fuchs, Sabine Devieilhe; Les Musiciens de Louvre/Marc Minkowski Erato 9029661757 150:31 mins (3 discs) How remarkable that a 14-year-old should have scored a hit with his fifth work for the stage, and in Milan too. However, Mozart is still learning his craft – although helped by a strongly dramatic libretto from Racine’s tragedy about Mitridate, an Asian potentate defeated by Rome, caught up in emotional and political tangles woven by his two sons Sifare and Farnace. The arias, often da capo, are sometimes in the florid style admired by an earlier generation, and when inspiration falters Mozart sends for the drums and marching. Yet already we can hear the composer’s remarkable gift for composing from ‘inside’ his characters. Sifare’s Act II aria…

Britten • Canteloube Britten: Quatre Chansons Françaises; Les illuminations; Canteloube: Chants d’Auvergne Mari Eriksmoen (soprano); Bergen Philharmonic/Edward Gardner Chandos CHSA 5289 (CD/SACD) 74:15 mins In Britten’s Les illuminations, the generally bell-like accuracy of Norwegian soprano Mari Eriksmoen’s singing is more than matched by the expressive truth of her interpretations. She is most beguiling when floating her voice weightlessly and with a serene joie de vivre in ‘Antique’, perfectly partnered by the lovely violin playing of the Bergen Philharmonic leader Melina Mandozzi. And the crisp precision with which Eriksmoen despatches her commentary on the grotesque ‘Parade’, rapid-fire low Gs included, is spellbinding. So why not five stars? Notwithstanding the Bergen orchestra’s excellent playing, Edward Gardner takes some liberties with Britten’s meticulous score. In ‘Interlude’, as in his previous recording of Les…

Inspired somewhat by love and death, the String Quartet No. 2 was written in 1827 when Mendelssohn was just 18 years old. He already had a number of fine chamber works under his belt and this very mature work shows just how far he had come. Beethoven’s death just months before played its part in the work’s genesis, not to mention an affair of the heart which also inspired his song, ‘Frage’. There is evidence of that song throughout this quartet, not to mention echoes of Beethoven’s late quartets, which apparently captivated Mendelssohn.…

Britten was still a student at the Royal College of Music in London when he started making a name for himself, most particularly for his choral variations A Boy Was Born. He was also developing as a promising pianist under the sympathetic tuition of Arthur Benjamin, and wrote a number of suites for that instrument including in 1934, when he was yet to reach his 21st birthday, his Holiday Diary. A set of four deft character pieces – ‘Early Morning Bathe’, ‘Sailing’, ‘Fun-Fair’ and ‘Night’ – they show the young composer’s playful engagement with music by Bartók, Stravinsky and his own teacher.…

January round-up Boasting immaculate production values from the Biddulph team and exemplary annotations from Tully Potter, Felix Salmond’s Complete Columbia Recordings, recorded 1926-30, sound as pristine here as it is possible to imagine. Salmond’s noble restraint (especially for the period), aristocratic poise and tonal allure show why he became such a revered and influential teacher. He was not a big personality player in the Feuermann or Piatigorsky mould (as witness his refreshingly inexplosive approach to the Beethoven A major and Grieg Sonatas), yet what strikes one most throughout the 25 shorter pieces here is Salmond’s gloriously in-depth, soulful cantabile. (Biddulph 8 5009-2) HHHH Calibrating intonation exactly between the clarinet and string instruments is notoriously difficult, yet in a delectable 2007 coupling of the Brahms and Mozart Clarinet Quintets from the…

Classical Crossroads – The Path Forward for Music in the 21st Century Leonard Slatkin Rowman & Littlefield 256pp (hb) £22.20 Now in his late 70s and – after a couple of heart scares – gradually winding down from a distinguished conducting career mainly on the US orchestral circuit, Leonard Slatkin offers us a mixture of reminiscences and practical suggestions drawn from his professional life. They are gathered into chapters under such headings as, ‘On Conducting’, ‘On Agents’, ‘On Soloists’, ‘On Media’, ‘On Audiences’ and so on. The writing is genial; much of the advice is commonsensical. But we are rather kept waiting for the hopeful vision of the musical future promised by the book’s subtitle. It never comes. The final third of the book comprises a sequence of blogs from…

JANUARY’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see Radio Times 1 SATURDAY 7-9am Breakfast 9-11.45am Record Review 11.45am-12.30pm Music Matters 12.30-1pm This Classical Life 1-3pm Inside Music 3-4pm Sound of Cinema 4-5pm Music Planet 5-6.30pm J to Z 6.30-10pm Opera on 3 from the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Wagner Tristan und Isolde. Stuart Skelton (Tristan), Nina Stemme (soprano), Franz-Josef Selig (King Mark), Josef Wagner (Kurwenal), Jamie Barton (Brangäne), Dominic Sedgwick (Melot), Linard Vrielink (Young Sailor/Shepherd), Ivan Thirion (Steersman), Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle 10pm-12 midnight New Year New Music Radio 3 presenters select their favourite pieces of contemporary music. Choices range from Anna Meredith′s electronic nocturne moonmoons to a Malian harp melody arranged by Toumani Diabate, via an arrangement of Abba’s ‘Lay All…

1. Which well-known symphony, premiered in April 1805, was originally called ‘Bonaparte’ by its composer? 2. In which operas do the following famous arias appear: a) ‘Casta Diva’; b) ‘When I am laid in earth’; c) ‘La donna è mobile’; d) ‘Porgi, amor’? 3. Whom did the German soprano Pauline de Ahna marry on 10 September 1894? 4. Composed in around 1570, Tallis’s Spem in alium is written for how many vocal parts? 5. Which year saw the premieres of Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (January), Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro (March), Debussy’s La Mer (October) and Richard Strauss’s Salomé (December)? 6. And in that same year, which composer was sacked from his post at the St Petersburg Conservatoire for supporting students who demanded reforms? 7. Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, Johannes Klais and Henry Willis are…

Daniel Jaffé Russian music expert ‘How did one of Russia’s greatest composers become known as a delusional madman? The answer, I think, is really rather shocking – but I hope it will restore to Scriabin some long-overdue respect.’ Page 36 Michael Beek Reviews editor, BBC Music ‘I’m a big fan of West Side Story and director Steven Spielberg, so it was a thrill to have those two passions come together on screen. Speaking to David Newman about his work on that legendary music was a joy.’ Page 44 Freya Parr Staff writer, BBC Music ‘With no glitzy website or glamorous PR team, Bibliotapes is one of the most hard-to-reach record labels. It made the chase for information all the more thrilling – and forced this millennial to pick up the…

Capital venture Edinburgh is to get a new concert hall. Plans have been approved for work to begin on the Dunard Centre, a 1,000-seat venue just off St Andrew Square in the city centre. Projected to cost around £75m and be complete by 2026, the hall will provide a home base for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and will be an important venue for the Edinburgh Festival. Welcome guest Anything Bergen can do (see p12), so can Bournemouth. Mark Wigglesworth has joined the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra as its principal guest conductor, beginning with immediate effect. Like Mark Elder, Wigglesworth is a former music director of English National Opera (albeit briefly) and comes with a wealth of experience and acclaim. His initial tenure is for a period of three years. Green recordings…

7th: The first officially recorded downhill skiing race takes place in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. Organised by Sir Arnold Lunn, the race is contested by 11 skiers, who have spent more than six hours climbing the mountain the previous day so that they can come down it at speed. First over the finishing line, in a time of 61 minutes, is Cecil Hopkinson, who is awarded the Roberts of Kandahar Challenge Cup. 13th: Rembrandt’s Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, better known as The Nightwatch, is attacked with a knife by an unemployed navy cook as it hangs in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. The 1642 painting survives relatively unscathed as the would-be vandal fails to cut through its varnish. 23rd: Eight years after winning the Nobel Prize…

Cellist Raphaela Gromes introduces favourite recordings from her own collection Klengel Cello Concertos Nos 1 & 4 Xenia Jankovic, Christoph Richter (cello); NDR Radiophilharmonie / Bjarte Engeset CPO 999 7142 This recording of Klengel’s Fourth Cello Concerto and his Double Concerto has been one of my favourites since my childhood. To me, Julius Klengel is one of the greatest Romantic composers and it is totally incomprehensible that he is almost forgotten today. I was so happy to be able to do the world premiere recording of his beautiful and thrilling Third Cello Concerto as part of a recent album. Servais Souvenir de Spa Wen-Sinn Yang (cello); Munich Radio Orchestra/Terje Mikkelsen CPO 777 5422 This marvellous recording was one of the reasons that made me want to study with Wen-Sinn Yang.…

Scriabin appears today a perfect example as to why listeners should not confuse a composer’s work with his biography. Once revered, then subsequently reviled both in his own country and abroad, his late Piano Sonatas – concise, intense and eerily atmospheric – are now recognised as extraordinary masterpieces ahead of their time. Yet, on the 150th anniversary of his birth, the man himself is regularly regarded today, even by several Scriabin aficionados, as an embarrassment. This is, above all, for his apparent delusion that he was the Messiah – a concept seemingly the more ludicrous given his effete, bourgeois appearance and the fact he stood little more than five foot tall. It does not help that by Russia’s pre-Revolutionary Julian calendar (which, by the 20th century, ran 13 days behind…

The work Walton’s Viola Concerto established at a stroke his unique creative voice. For several years he had tried distilling the dazzling stylistic range of his Façade (1921) into a convincing long-range structure. There are hints of what was to come in the Portsmouth Point overture and orchestral Siesta, as well as 1927’s Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra. Yet, as The Times remarked as part of a generally enthusiastic review of the latter, ‘Mr. Walton has not yet fully found his individuality’. In 1928, on a winter holiday in Amalfi, Italy, Walton began making provisional sketches for the Viola Concerto, but his heart wasn’t really in it. It was the conductor Thomas Beecham who had first suggested he write a concerto for British viola supremo, Lionel Tertis – although…

In the age of the LP, Georg Solti – along with Karajan in Berlin and Bernstein in New York City – played a huge part in the Mahler revival. And in big-band Haydn, as this set of Sir Georg Solti: The London Orchestral Recordings reminds us (Decca 485 1717; 36 CDs) – all 12 Haydn London Symphonies with the London Philharmonic Orchestra from the 1980s, with 101-103 duplicated from mono recordings. The Drum Roll Symphony is from the earliest sessions in the set, when Solti in 1949 met the Decca team that partnered him in so many recordings; it’s straight, no-nonsense Haydn. There’s more fizz and energy in the later sessions. That famous Solti drive renders the Mozart Piano Concertos with Alicia de Larrocha rather charmless; neither this nor the…

Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos 4 & 6, arr. by the composer after the Violin Concerto, Op. 61a Gianluca Cascioli (piano); Ensemble Resonanz/Riccardo Minasi Harmonia Mundi HMM 902422 76:47 mins As a pianist specialising in historically informed performance, Gianluca Cascioli has form. His Chopin recording for Decca was founded on his research into historical recordings, plus testimonies from pupils and teachers going back to the composer himself, and the results of that research made illuminating listening. For this new recording, Cascioli and his conductor Riccardo Minasi have chosen to depart from contemporary performance convention, using historical precedent as justification: first, in Beethoven’s day performance practices varied widely, with the composer noting down many variants to his Fourth Concerto as he encountered them; secondly, when he played it, he did so sehr…

Brian Faust Peter Hoare, David Soar, Allison Cook, William Morgan, Robert Hayward, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Simon Bailey, David Ireland, Katie Coventry, Nicholas Lester, Clare Presland, Claire Mitcher; Chorus & Orchestra of English National Opera/Martyn Brabbins Dutton Epoch 2CDLX 7385 (CD/SACD) 135:22 mins (2 discs) It remains an utterly remarkable fact that Havergal Brian, whose career began quite promisingly, managed to continue to produce so much music over the later decades when his output was totally neglected. One of five operas, Faust was written in 1955-56 and sets his own reduction of Goethe’s text in the original German. This recording represents its world premiere. In a prologue and two acts, the opera is a remarkable achievement. In terms of style, John Pickard is surely correct to identify in his programme note…

Mendelssohn String Quartets, Vol. 2: No. 2 in A minor, Op. 13; No. 3 in D, Op. 44/1; No. 4 in E minor, Op. 44/2 Doric String Quartet Chandos CHAN 20257-2 89:22 mins (2 discs) The works which bookend Mendelssohn’s numbered quartets are each related to a death – the A minor (the first he wrote, notwithstanding its being assigned ‘No. 2’ on publication) obliquely to Beethoven’s, and the F minor more directly to that of his sister Fanny. There’s a sense of violent loss in their first movements, and the Doric convey that even more effectively in the earlier quartet than they did in the F minor four years ago. The way the music erupts after the warmth of the major-key introduction comes with an electric charge, and tension…

LOUIS ANDRIESSEN, LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC, ESA-PEKKA SALONEN & NORA FISCHER The only one ‘Juxtaposing a slew of styles from motoric post-minimalism and nonchalant pop ditty to Viennese waltz, The only one is a vivid soundworld, among the final works of this brilliantly influential composer.’ – BBC Music Magazine ∗∗∗∗ CAROLINE SHAW, DAWN UPSHAW, GILBERT KALISH & S PERCUSSION Narrow Sea ‘Pulitzer Prize-winning Shaw continues to make waves with her imaginative and expressive works that glide effortlessly between genres. An exquisite disc, at once joyful and mesmeric.’ – BBC Music Magazine Choral & Song Choice ∗∗∗∗∗ JEREMY DENK & THE SAINT PAUL CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Mozart Piano Concertos ‘A recording not to be missed. Denk approaches everything with questing intelligence and energy. His probing liner notes make an already engrossing album more…

Asger Baden If the Music Stops They’ll Eat Him Up Asger Baden (piano, electronics) Neue Meister 0302077NM There’s a delicious ambiguity about this solo effort from the Danish composerpianist. It’s a rich and complex soundworld of piano, percussive effects, strings and synths but with an improvisational quality. Baden paints with sound, and the pictures are immersive and sometimes unsettling. (MB) HHH Bartók Violin Sonatas etc Franziska Pietsch (violin), Maki Hayashida (piano) Odradek ODRCD419 Pietsch and Hayashida are uncompromising in their approach to the pair of sonatas. The works’ jagged edges and silken curves are expertly navigated, while the shorter folk dances afford the listener several moments of unmitigated pleasure. (MB) HHHH Bowen • Coleridge-Taylor • Hinton Chamber Works Tippett Quartet et al Dutton Epoch CDLX7386 There’s a dazzling sheen to…

January round-up Following on from the current Jazz Choice, buried treasures are something of a theme this month. Composer Peter Wiegold’s unclassifiable ensemble Notes Inégales actually recorded the Miles Davis homage Envoi with trumpeter Torbjörn Hultmark in 2011, so presumably it’s now seeing some well-deserved daylight as a result of the group’s recent online EFG London Jazz Festival appearance. Based on short scores fleshed out with directed improvisation, comparing this work to John Zorn’s game pieces or the conductions of Butch Morris is to praise rather than to bury some fearlessly in-the-moment music that charts its own course across a wide emotional range under Wiegold’s assured guidance, with Hultmark excelling throughout. (Club Inégales CI002) HHHHH Newly signed to Blue Note, drummer/producer Makaya McCraven has been doing some digging of his…

Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST Email: music@classical-music.com Socialmedia: contactusonFacebookandTwitter Wild Cardus I enjoyed Andrew Green’s celebration of the double life of Neville Cardus in music and cricket (December). Occasionally Cardus could combine his interests, writing that in Sir Thomas Beecham’s conducting he ‘achieved the best square-cut since [Charlie] Macartney retired. But he should try to get nearer to the ball, and over it, while making his leg-glance.’ He had a sense of mischief, which could make him a difficult man at times, and occasionally his tricks would get him into trouble. On one occasion, he was due to report on a concert in Yorkshire and, as he often would, he drafted the review in advance based on his knowledge of the work and…

Elisabeth Brauss Pianist Born: Hanover, Germany Career highlight: Being in the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my musical life. It has offered me great opportunities and practical support. Musical hero: Conductor Carlos Kleiber is one of my greatest inspirations. Just by watching his performances, I feel I am becoming a better musician. Dream concert: The greatest moments on stage often happen when you least expect them. That said, it would be a dream to play Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos together with pianist Igor Levit under the baton of Teodor Currentzis. Benjamin Kruithof Cellis Born: Moestroff, Luxembourg Career highlight: Producing my debut album, Russian Mood, helped me grow as a musician because of the difficult programme I chose. Also,…

We reveal who’s recording what and where… The Pavel Haas Quartet recently teamed up with pianist Boris Giltburg and violist Pavel Nikl to record an album of music by Brahms. The musicians gathered in Prague in November for the recording sessions, which saw them perform the composer’s Quintet No. 2 in G major and Piano Quintet in F minor. Supraphon will release it in April. Just before that, in March, The Bach Choir will release an album entitled Bach Inspired. The recording project sees new commissions inspired by the St Matthew Passion’s chorales, from the composers James B Wilson, Gavin Higgins, Héloïse Werner, Charlotte Harding, Carmen Ho and Des Oliver. Sessions took place earlier this year, in small groups, at St John’s Smith Square in London. British composer Robert Saxton…

Modern technology should, in theory, help musicians be more in tune than ever; but, Tom Service argues, it may actually distort how we hear the music we perform It’s a phrase we use all the time, not least on Radio 3, where our drivetime show is literally called In Tune. But that begs the question; what does being ‘in tune’ really mean? It seems obvious: being out of tune as opposed to in tune is the contrast between Florence Foster Jenkins’s exquisitely appalling attempts to sing the Queen of the Night’s Act II aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute and the way any professional soprano sings the same aria, with those high Fs pinging gloriously in the right place. It’s the difference between the gleeful massacring of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony…

Jeremy Pound Acting editor Though it is always a pleasure – albeit rather a bleak one – to read about and listen to Schubert’s great song cycle Winterreise (see BBC Music Magazine Interview, p32), I’ve recently had my attention caught by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki’s 2007 horn concerto of the same name. In this instance, the journey described in the music is one into a dark forest as part of a hunt – remembered by the composer from when he was a youngster. Penderecki is superb at conjuring the unsettling atmosphere of the wood as experienced through a child’s perspective, but there are also thrills along the way as the music takes on an almost cinematic quality. Alice Pearson Cover CD editor Music has the power to blow your…

that we try to put the spotlight on a song from different angles As he prepares to make a new film of Winterreise, the German baritone tells Katy Hamilton why no performance of Schubert’s great song cycle can ever be considered definitive A s soon as he speaks, it is clear that Benjamin Appl has a madly overloaded schedule. Filming in Vienna, trips to Switzerland, teaching and concert tours… the weeks around our Zoom call are clearly jam-packed with activity, and although he’s enjoying a brief visit to his parents, the days are full of discussions and planning sessions as he prepares for his next big project: a new film of Schubert’s Winterreise for BBC 4. He pauses for a moment, smiling rather sheepishly, aware he’s getting ahead of himself.…

Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in January are: 3-7 January Errollyn Wallen 10-14 January Lully 17-21 January Liszt 24-28 January Marianna Martines 31 January – 4 February Elgar Erwin Schulhoff, born in Prague in 1894, was a close contemporary of Martin, a fellow Czech, and Milhaud and Poulenc in France. They were all working at the same time and wrote a considerable amount of music of similar quality. So why are these other names fairly well known, while Schulhoff isn’t? The sad truth is that he was silenced, dying in a Nazi prison camp in 1942, and subsequently unjustly forgotten by musical history. It was a similar story for his fellow Jewish Czech composers Viktor Ullmann, Hans Krása, Pavel Haas…

Lawrence Power (viola) BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Ilan Volkov Hyperion CDA 67587 The 30-odd available recordings of Walton’s Viola Concerto generally fall into one of two main camps: those who tend towards a more rounded, soulful, alto cello sonority, and those more inclined towards a leaner, brighter, violinistic quality. However, one player stands out as combining the best of all worlds: Lawrence Power. Technically, Power appears almost impervious to Walton’s not inconsiderable technical demands, delighting in those tricky sleight-of-hand manoeuvres that others find a shade taxing. Yet he also captures Walton’s cantabile espressivo with complete assuredness, tantalising the senses with a soaring intensity that time and again scores an emotional bullseye without ever becoming sentimental. Most importantly, Power possesses the ideal soundworld to convey Walton’s iridescent emotional complexities. This is music…

2021 is behind us and the clean slate of a new year positively tantalises. I’m not really one for resolutions, but if you’ve over-indulged in your favourite works and composers of late, then perhaps you might commit to branching out a little. This issue we’re awash with music to discover, from shiny new opera to lesser-known pieces by familiar names. Orchestral works by Florence Price and Sofia Gubaidulina meet piano works by Hélène de Montgeroult, not to mention chamber gems by British stalwarts Bax and Bantock. There’s also a disc of Mozart-inspired trumpet concertos, a dazzling Britten opera and notable appearances by the late Bernard Haitink, Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason and the effervescent Sabine Devielhe. Happy New Year! This month’s critics John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Terry Blain, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, Geo…

Mahler Symphony No. 6 Dusseldorf Symphony Orchestra/Ádám Fischer CAvi-music AVI 8553490 80:32 mins Every aspect of this colossal symphony finds its proper expression in the latest instalment of Ádám Fischer’s hugely impressive Dusseldorf Mahler cycle – which is not to say it’s in any way a middle-of-the-road performance. The outer movements’ march manias and the pounding Scherzo (here made the third movement) have plenty of drive, but Fischer knows exactly where to give them space and air. The view from above at the heart of the first movement is discreetly judged, with cowbells never too insistent, while the whole of the Andante movement is beautifully paced and lit from within; Fischer doesn’t make the mistake of so many conductors who take Mahler’s injunction ‘don’t drag’ as ‘speed up’ at the…

When Prokofiev first settled in Paris in 1923, the French capital was under the sway of Stravinsky and Les six. Prokofiev’s first Parisian success was the revised version of his Piano Concerto No. 2, which he himself performed in a concert conducted by Koussevitzky in 1924. Premiered in that same concert was Honegger’s Pacific 231, which provoked Prokofiev into writing his Second Symphony (1925). Declaring he would compose a work of ‘iron and steel’, Prokofiev based its structure on that of Beethoven’s last piano sonata – a sonata-form first movement followed by a set of variations on a theme.…

One of Saint-Saëns’s most familiar refrains, the Havanaise was composed in 1887 and was dedicated to the Cuban violinist Rafael Díaz Albertini. The pair shared a tour in the years prior and it’s then that Saint-Saëns came up with the main melody – apparently inspired by the rhythm of a crackling fire in a hotel room. Whether that’s true or not, the composer’s interest in music from other cultures, coupled with time spent with Albertini, will surely have ignited his imagination. The short work is based on the Cuban habañera dance rhythm and was originally written for violin and piano.…

JS Bach • Handel JS Bach: Cantata ‘Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut’, BWV 199; Cantata ‘Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen’, BWV 51 etc.; Handel: Brockes Passion, HWV 48 etc Sabine Devieilhe (soprano); Pygmalion/Raphaël Pichon Erato 9029667786 83:37 mins An initial glance sometimes tells us that this is the kind of programme which falters at the first hurdle. A potpourri of secular and sacred music with little in the way of an over-all concept. Here, though, is a thoughtful assembly of music depicting affliction and repentance on the one hand and joy and desire on the other. The recording finds Sabine Devieilhe on sparkling form. Bach and Handel do not always sit comfortably together, so it is all the more rewarding when they do. The focal points are two of Bach’s…

Bantock • Bax • HB Gardiner Bax: String Quartet in E; Bantock: In a Chinese Mirror; ET Davies: Eos Lais (The Nightingale); JD Davis: Summer’s Eve at Cookham Lock – Idyll, Op. 50; HB Gardiner: String Quartet in B flat Tippett Quartet Dutton Epoch CDLX7389 (CD/SACD) 79:48 mins Another joyous unearthing of British music from the Tippett Quartet. The most substantial work –at least, in terms of length – is Arnold Bax’s String Quartet in E, written when he was 20, an early fruit of his obsession with Ireland. Its middle movement, the only track that isn’t a premiere recording, was orchestrated to make his first tone poem, Cathleen-Ni-Houlihan. Of its outer movements the first is especially interesting: an exuberant, 14-minute piece that begins in Irish folk style in the…

JS Bach Bach on the Rauwolf Lute: Cello Suite No. 1; Suite in E, BWV 1006a; Violin Sonata in G minor, BWV 1001; Chaconne, BWV 1004; Violin Sonata No. 3 in C, BWV 1005 – excerpts etc. Jakob Lindberg (lute) BIS BIS-2552 (CD/SACD) 87:57 mins As well as the radiant ‘lute suite’ BWV 1006a (more familiar in the version for solo violin), this spellbinding recording features Jakob Lindberg’s own arrangements of works written for bowed strings. The Suite BWV 1007, originally for solo cello, is here transposed from G to C major and played so gracefully on the lute that it seems as if it were born on the instrument. The Suite’s all-pervasive dance rhythms sound wispy and supple, and the lacy embellishments of the Sarabande are particularly effective on…

Manchester Week We hand the airwaves over to our Salford production teams for a series of live daily lunchtime concerts from Stoller Hall and five evening concerts from the city’s top orchestras. 24-28 January Fire Shut Up In My Bones The Metropolitan Opera opened its 2021 season with Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up In My Bones, the first opera by a black composer to be staged in the company’s 138-year history. Starring Will Liverman and Angel Blue, the opera is based on the memoir of New York Times journalist Charles M Blow, following his upbringing in poverty-stricken Louisiana in the 1970s, where he endured sexual abuse to become a successful columnist and writer. Opera on 3: 8 January, 6.30pm Memories of Bernard Haitink Following the death of the revered Dutch…

TV CHOICE David Attenborough’s Wonder of Song Although this magazine is usually dedicated to the sounds of the concert hall or recording studio, this month we join David Attenborough to explore the music of the natural world. Attenborough will travel from the bird-filled forests of Australia to the depths of a humpback whale home in the South Pacific to hear the animal orchestras that fill our world with noise. He will meet the world’s top sound recordists to explore their archives of recordings made during his 95-year lifetime, with songs by lemurs, whales and lyrebirds. He will also hear which landscapes have now fallen silent, due to human’s influence. Birds are the singers we think we know the most about, but Attenborough will explain that everything that underpins what we…

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Jaime Martín had a stellar career as a flautist for over two decades before becoming principal conductor of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra in Sweden in 2013. Now music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and chief conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony in Dublin, in February he becomes Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor. Also active as a guest conductor, on 13 & 14 January he conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Cardiff and Swansea. My music-loving father took me to my first concert in my home town, Santander, when I was eight. Until that moment I didn’t care about music, but when the opening clarinet sounds of TCHAIKOVSKY’s Fifth Symphony started, I had tears in my eyes. I can’t explain why, but that’s what happened. After the…