Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2022 i BBC Music Magazine

If I had to sum up Nicky Spence in one word, it would surely be ‘versatile’. In the last year the ebullient Scottish tenor has taken on roles as demanding as Siegmund in The Valkyrie and Laca in Jenůfa – and will shortly be seen on the Royal Opera House stage as Saint-Saëns’s Samson. But such core classical roles only tell half the story, as Spence began his career as a crossover star after being offered the ‘golden ticket’ of a five-album million-pound recording contract while still an impoverished student at London’s Guildhall. Two albums in and he realised such a life wasn’t for him. His subsequent bold decision to return to his studies has paid off in spades, as he’s now emerged as the tenor of choice for a…

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Verbal remedy With the thrills of Wordle, the daily verbal brainteaser, currently taking the internet by storm, the music world has spotted a bandwagon and, predictably enough, jumped straight on it. Cue Byrdle which, named after the Tudor composer, takes the same format as Wordle – namely try to identify a five-letter word in as few guesses as possible – but always has a choral music-related term as its answer. Fair to say that word games are enjoying a bit of a Renaissance… Plucky winner Sean Shibe has been named as the first guitarist to win the Leonard Bernstein Award. Decided by a panel of judges that includes two of the composer and conductor’s children, Jamie Bernstein Thomas and Alexander Bernstein, the award includes a prize of 10,000 euros and…

Harpsichordist and conductor Masaaki Suzuki introduces his favourite recordings Rossi Toccata No. 7 in D Ton Koopman (harpsichord) Harlekijn 2441 502 Before I went to Amsterdam to study with Ton Koopman, my harpsichord teacher in Japan introduced me to this recording. It’s one of Koopman’s very first, and it was so impressive for me that I immediately made up my mind to go to him to study. Rossi was completely unknown to me, and this Toccata is a very interesting piece with a lot of chromaticism. It’s typical of the style of the Italian early Baroque toccata; it is completely free, there is no format at all and it’s full of unexpected moments. Sweelinck Psalm 150 Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam/Harry van der Kamp Glossa GCD922407 I am very interested in music…

Martin James Bartlett Pianist Something that always turns up when I put my music on shuffle is Shura Cherkassky’s recording of Schulz-Evler’s Concert Arabesques on themes by Johann Strauss ‘The Beautiful Blue Danube’. It was one of the first classical piano recordings I ever heard, and it transformed my perception of the piano as a box of hammers to this glittering, capricious and witty thing – imagine all the beauty and excitement from the Vienna New Year’s Day concert condensed into one piano piece. I don’t always listen to piano music, though. One piece I often return to is Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony. There’s a recording conducted by Charles Munch, when he had just started his tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which still feels fresh after all these…

‘I started to notice the huge difference yoga made to my clarinet playing. My breathing got much better’ The Belgian clarinettist’s love of yoga is the inspiration for a new album of Mozart and Henderickx, recorded just days before the birth of her son, as she tells Kate Wakeling ‘There’s this huge cliché that people think you just sit on a mat, say “om” and forget about everything, but a huge part of yoga is actually about life force,’ explains the clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe. Life force is certainly not something this dynamic musician is short of. A sought-after concerto soloist and former BBC New Generation Artist, Van Wauwe also runs two acclaimed chamber ensembles and is the recipient of numerous accolades, including the prestigious Opus Klassik Award for best…

A major railway enthusiast from boyhood, Antonín Dvorák spent much of his adult life in Prague’s Franz Jozef I central station. There, he would chat to drivers about the latest locomotive technology and make extensive notes. Following a crisis of confidence in the early 1870s, Russian composer Mily Balakirev took up a job as a clerk on the Warsaw line of the Central Railway Company to make ends meet and withdrew himself almost entirely from music for a couple of years. Remarkably, Herbert Howells’s 1919 carol anthem A Spotless Rose was inspired by trains. ‘I sat down and wrote [it] after idly watching some shunting from the window of a cottage which overlooked the Midland Railway,’ he described. Pity the poor passenger who, in October 1880, went to light a…

Soprano raptures Unsurprisingly for a composer married to a fine soprano singer, Strauss’s operas favour that voice above others: the roles of the Feldmarschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella, and the Countess in Capriccio are regarded as classics. With exceptions, Strauss wrote less appreciatively for the expressive qualities of male voices. Classical backdrop Contrary to his self-styled image as a Bavarian bourgeois, Strauss was widely read, with a parallel knowledge of theatre and painting. Several of his operas draw on mythological Greek stories. Mozart re-imagined While Wagner’s example lay behind Strauss’s big-scale masterpieces, his last years produced a group instrumental works inspired by Mozart (above) – two Wind Sonatinas (evoking Mozart’s Wind Serenades), a superlative Second Horn Concerto, an Oboe Concerto, and the Duett-Concertino for clarinet, bassoon and strings. Last thoughts…

Mathieu Romano (conductor) Ensemble Aedes Aparté AP 201 Figure humaine makes enormous demands on the stamina, technique and musicianship of any choir, which may explain why it’s performed less often than Poulenc’s Gloria or Stabat mater. Of the dozen-plus recordings currently available, the majority feature nearer 40 rather than the 200 singers Poulenc envisaged. Two French choirs and two British choirs stand out for their impressive technique and emotional impact, and of the four, Ensemble Aedes, directed by Mathieu Romano, go straight to the heart with their gutsy performance. The young French soloists do for choral works what the Il Giardino Armonico ensemble did for instrumental classics – namely, deliver them with fresh, uninhibited tone. They may be raw and approximate at times, but Poulenc wanted citizens on the barricades,…

Kalevi Aho Double Concerto for cor anglais, harp and orchestra; Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano and chamber orchestra Dimitri Mestdag (cor anglais), Anneleen Lenaerts (harp); Storioni Trio; Antwerp Symphony Orchestra/Olari Elts BIS BIS-2426 (CD/SACD) 59:11 mins Finn Kalevi Aho (b1949) has composed an astonishing number of concertos since his first, for violin, in 1981. The current total is some 37 across a vast range of instruments, including six double concertos. Of these, the 2014 Double Concerto for cor anglais, harp and orchestra is recorded here alongside the – so far – sole Triple Concerto, for violin, cello, piano and orchestra (2018). The works are markedly different in character, yet both exhibit an underlying enigmatic quality against which an array of moods and textures are explored through an ever-changing post-tonal…

Sibelius Works for Violin and Piano: Pieces, Opp. 78, 81, 115 & 116; Danses champêtres, Op. 106; Andante cantabile Fenella Humphreys (violin), Joseph Tong (piano) Resonus RES 10294 67:32 mins Sibelius’s urbane streak, plus the need to supplement earnings in difficult times, had him producing numerous smaller works that he liked to call ‘sandwiches’, to sell mostly to local publishers in his native Finland. He was an accomplished violinist, good enough to have performed the Mendelssohn Concerto in his student years, and always a touch regretful that his early ambitions as a soloist hadn’t worked out. Fenella Humphreys’s selection of his violin and piano music includes one item, an Andante cantabile in G major, from the young composer’s copious chamber-music output (his cello-playing brother and pianist sister were near-prodigies like…

Daniel Jaffé dusts off archive recordings by master conductors and great soloists March round-up The landmark recording of Beethoven’s complete symphonies by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Chamber Orchestra of Europewas the first by a modern orchestra to follow ‘authentic’ performance practices. Here, on CD for the first time, are several of their live recordings, including polished and light-footed accounts of Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh. The real draw of this 4-CD set, though, are the Haydn and Mozartdiscs. Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 is full of charm and, in the finale, dazzling virtuosity, qualities matched by the equally excellent Posthorn Serenade. Their Haydn also has bags of character and affection – and, in the Military Symphony, ferocious menace. Their Brahms Four is well-detailed in terms of instrumental colour, but is rather short…

1. Which Italian composer is often referred to by the nickname ‘The Red Priest’? 2. Who in 1844 was inspired during a holiday on the Med to write the overture La tour de Nice, later changing the title to Le corsaire? 3. Who made musical history in 1955 when, as Ulrica in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, she became the first Black soloist to appear at the Metropolitan Opera in New York? 4. Name the cities that the following symphonies are named or nicknamed after: a) Haydn No. 92; b) Mozart No. 36; c) Vaughan Williams No. 2; d) Shostakovich No. 7? 5. The conductors Fritz Reiner, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy and Ferenc Fricsay were all born in which city? 6. What links composer Andrzej Panufnik, ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev,…

Composer, actor and director New York-born Lin-Manuel Miranda captured the musical theatre world’s attention when he arrived on Broadway at the age of just 28 with his show In the Heights, exploring gentrification in the Dominican American neighbourhood of Washington Heights and starring Miranda in the lead role. It was his 2015 rap musical Hamilton about the American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton which skyrocketed Miranda to success, now with 11 Tonys and a Pulitzer to its name. Miranda recently made his directorial debut, bringing Rent creator Jonathan Larson’s musical tick, tick… BOOM! to the big screen. In my seventh-grade music class, we had to pick a composer to write a biography of. I picked HECTOR BERLIOZ, because I assumed from the name ‘Hector’ that he would be Latino. I ended…

Richard Morrison Chief culture writer, The Times ‘Interviewing Nicky Spence is fun because he is the Oscar Wilde of tenors: never short of a witty quip. But the likeable Scot also has plenty of serious things to say about his career choices, both good and bad.’ Page 26 Julia Winterson Music lecturer and author ‘Writing about railways and music meant combining two of my favourite subjects. My interest in trains stems from childhood holidays at Pool-in-Wharfedale station, where my grandfather was the station master.’ Page 38 Clare Stevens Writer and editor ‘Classical music was the soundtrack to my teenage years in 1970s Belfast; participation was often difficult, but some inspirational experiences and visits from famous performers nurtured my enthusiasm.’ Page 48…

Hugh Cutting Countertenor Born: Oxford, England Career highlight: The concert I did for SoundVoice UK exploring vocal loss in conditions like Parkinson’s and Motor Neurone Disease. More recently, winning First Prize at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards. Musical hero: I admire Iestyn Davies and Tim Mead for their tone and consistency, Alice Coote for her flair and dramatic immersion and James Gilchrist and Michael Chance for being singers who perform with their hearts above all else. Dream concert: Singing Britten’s Abraham and Isaac with my brother Guy or a chamber opera by Piers Kennedy in an epic cathedral. Amalie Stalheim Cellist Born: Bergen, Norway Career highlight: Performing Schubert’s Death and the Maiden with Janine Jansen at her festival in the Netherlands. Our communication on stage was so intense, it felt almost…

We reveal who’s recording what and where… Sony Classical recently announced its exclusive signing of Eldbjørg Hemsing. The Norwegian violinist already released a single (‘Winter Meditation’) at the end of last year to coincide with a performance at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert. Her first full album for Sony is scheduled for Autumn. Speaking of debuts, Samoan tenor Pene Pati has recorded his first album for Warner Classics, following much-lauded performances on the opera stage in Europe. Titled, simply, Pene Pati, it features showstoppers and rarer gems by Gounod, Rossini, Verdi, Donizetti, Meyerbeer and Benjamin Godard. The album will be released on 25 March. Earthy Records is a new label initiative from innovative duo The Living Earth Show (aka Andy Meyerson and Travis Andrews). The label offers comprehensive artistic support…

They originally heralded an on-stage drama, but ultimately they inspired purely orchestral narratives. It’s high time to revive the overture, says Tom Service No concert used to be complete without their scintillation of sound and story, and yet today, they find themselves in musical stables reserved for clapped-out warhorses, the final staging post before orchestral oblivion: what happened to overtures? Why don’t we hear Reznicek’s Donna Diana or Johann Strauss’s Fledermaus or Kabalevsky’s Colas Breugnon any more? The art of overture composition starts in the opera houses of the 17th century. Claudio Monteverdi’s overture for L’Orfeo is a brief and brassy fanfare that says: ‘Pay attention! Listen to this!’ Throughout the rest of the 17th century and into the 18th, the operatic overture became a more extended warm-up for the…

Charlotte Smith Editor While attempting to list my favourite string quartet ensembles for an online piece (more difficult than you might imagine) I happened across some fabulous interpretations of Schubert’s (right) Death and the Maiden. From the smooth polish of the Alban Berg to the altogether more emphatic sound of the Amadeus, this one piece proved a brilliant template to compare the interpretative quirks of groups from the past 100 years – and, crucially, to withstand repeat listening by dint of its textural complexity. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor The first few weeks of 2022 have seen me binge listening to Mozart’s Piano Concertos. I’ve had them with me everywhere and anywhere – at my desk, in the kitchen, relaxing with a late-evening whisky – and have been enjoying a range…

Janácček The Diary of One Who Disappeared Hyperion CDA 68282 Nicky Spence fully inhabits the drama of this unusual song cycle, with pianist Julius Drake and mezzo Václava Housková his sultry seductress. As You Like It: Shakespeare Songs Resonus RES 10116 This selection of Shakespeare songs by a range of composers from Schubert to Tippett provides a fine showcase for Spence’s versatility. Paradis sur Terre: A French Songbook Chandos CHAN 10893 Spence performs songs by Debussy and lesser-known song cycles by Lili Boulanger, Caplet and Chaminade, with pianist Malcolm Martineau. Buxton Orr Songs Delphian DCD 34175 For this collection of songs closer to Spence’s Scottish roots, his nimble and characterful singing is accompanied by pianist Iain Burnside. Hoddinott Landscapes: song cycles and folksongs Naxos 8.571360 In these characterful songs, Spence’s…

Annelien Van Wauwe is not the first musician to extol the benefits of yoga. Most famously, violinist Yehudi Menuhin took to the ancient Indian discipline upon visiting the country in 1952 at the age of 36, where he first met the sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar. At the time Menuhin was suffering from severe muscular tension, but his first lesson with BKS lyengar led to a lifelong dedication to the practice – and to lyengar’s introduction to students, including cellist Jacqueline du Pré, in the UK, France and Switzerland. While in India on that 1952 trip, Menuhin dined with the prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and demonstrated his newly acquired yoga skills by standing on his head. Various composers have also felt an affinity with the practice and its mystical associations, including…

When Handel’s Old Testament oratorio Esther had its first public performance in 1732, the soloists – largely Italian and including stars like the castrato Senesino – so mangled the English text that one commentator observed ‘it might as well have been Hebrew’. This proved a curiously prophetic observation. Some years later the libretto was indeed adapted into Hebrew, with someone else’s music substituting for that of Handel. The result then disappeared into the void that can be music history, yet it has been reconstructed from assorted manuscripts found in unlikely places, and gets a long-delayed UK premiere this month – in Hebrew – when Andrew Griffiths conducts HGO, the north London company once known as Hampstead Garden Opera. Called The Salvation of Israel by the Hands of Esther, the score…

Stalag VIIA Outside the Polish town of Zgorzelec is the site of the German prisoner of war camp Stalag VIIA where with three fellow prisoners Messiaen premiered his Quartet for the End of Time on 15 January 1941. The camp was used by the Polish army until the 1970s. The site of the Theatre Barracks where the quartet was premiered is now marked with a sculpture. In 2015 the Meetingpoint Music Messiaen was opened where the Quartet is performed every 15 January. ‘I see it as an alternative New Year’s concert,’ says the founder Frank Seibel, ‘a 45-minute meditative moment to consider activities in the new year.’…

Handel Enchantresses: arias from Lotario, Rinaldo, Alcina, Giulio Cesare in Egitto etc; Concerto Grosso No. 4 in A minor, Op. 6 – excerpts etc. Sandrine Piau (soprano); Les Paladins/Jerome Correas Alpha Classics ALPHA 765 72:08 mins In this dazzling album, Sandrine Piau crowns her legacy as a Baroque prima donna. Here Piau mines her intimate knowledge of the material to bring startling originality to Handel’s sorceress-heroine arias. You may recognise a title, but much of the music will be new, as her informed additions subvert the original melodies and unleash a ferocious vocalism. Piau’s happy waywardness is matched by Les Paladins, whose director Jérôme Correas is a longstanding musical partner of hers. Piau chose her numbers to probe the feelings of what she calls ‘powerful, often wounded women’, whose ability…

Michael Church selects recordings from the past and instruments to discover Lumba Tamala Muziekpublique 14 68:37 mins Ethnographic recordings were once a thriving sector of the CD market. But they didn’t chime happily with the world-music boom, which required Third World musicians to adjust their style to European and American tastes. Based in Brussels, Muziekpublique is an organisation dedicated to promoting music from every part of the world, and in particular the music found in its own multicultural back yard. Some of its recordings are made by immigrants from across the Mediterranean – that’s how new fusions are emerging – but Lumba (Mande for ‘big day’) reflects African talent already happily settled in Europe. Singer-songwriter Mola Sylla and kora-player Bao Sissoko hail from Senegal, with Belgian violinist Wouter Vandenabeele completing…

The Art of Appreciation – Music and Middlebrow Culture in Modern Britain Kate Guthrie California Press 295 pp (hb) £50.83 In interwar and post-War Britain, classical music was enjoyed by sizeable audiences drawn from all classes. This informative new book analyses how the music-appreciation movement used recordings, broadcasts, books, lectures and performances to engage a wide public. Walford Davies taught adults how to listen more intently in a long-running interwar radio series. Robert Mayer’s concerts for children had reached 130,000 young people by 1939. Wilfred Mellers’s pioneering evening classes in post-War Birmingham offered an exhaustive education in early music. Music-appreciation evangelists lobbied successfully for more music in schools. Aimed primarily at academic readers, this book is more critique than celebration. The case studies are fascinating, but the general reader may…

The first correct solution of our crossword picked at random will win a copy of The Oxford Companion to Music. A runner-up will win Who Knew? Answers to Questions about Classical Music (see oup.co.uk). Send answers to: BBC Music Magazine, Crossword 370/Mar 2022, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA to arrive by 17 Mar 2022 (solution in June 2022 issue). ACROSS 1 Allegretto, say, one very quiet, swamped by US city (5) 4 Rock guitarist now and then playing, involving small band, ultimately (9) 9 Owner of pipes returned for a sleep (3) 10 Solver after he solves tricky ‘Beatles hit’ (3,5,3) 11 Poles with question about a stage work by 23 (8) 13 Those against accepting choreographer’s initial capers (6) 14 Piano lot used when playing closing piece (8)…

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 Double delight I have had the good fortune and privilege to hear both Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Benjamin Appl (see BBC Music Magazine Interview, January) perform Schubert’s Winterreise – the former with Daniel Barenboim at the Southbank, 1969; the latter with James Baillieu in Kendal, 2017. Due to where I was living, I heard Fischer-Dieskau five times, beginning with national service in West Berlin in 1955/1956, when I saw him as Posa in Verdi’s Don Carlos (apparently his first major role in opera a few years earlier) and the Count in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (both sung in German). Then we were living in Coventry in 1962 and…

10 … years of Glyndebourne’s wind turbine (above) to be celebrated with a batch of new environmental projects at the Sussex opera house. 1,000,000 … dollars in Tesla shares donated by conductor Zubin Mehta to Florence’s Teatro del Maggio Musicale. 53 … prints by the inimitable musician, humourist and artist Gerard Hoffnung, recently made available for sale by art dealers King & McGaw. 1,200 … singers from across the globe, plus one organist, coming together for an online performance of Mahler’s ‘Symphony of a Thousand’.…

Hard as it is to imagine, there was a time when JS Bach’s St Matthew Passion was virtually unknown outside Leipzig, where it was first performed in 1727. Sporadic performances continued at the city’s Thomaskirche, where Bach had been music director, after his death in 1750. But the broader world knew nothing of what we nowadays view as one of the supreme choral pieces. Until, that is, a precocious youth named Felix Mendelssohn was given a copy of the St Matthew Passion by his grandmother nearly 100 years later. Mendelssohn was 15 at the time (1824), and already the composer of 12 dashing String Symphonies. But his encounter with the Matthew Passion, one biographer wrote, was ‘revelatory’, and became ‘a cornerstone of his musical faith’. Could he get a performance…

On 5 March, Handel’s (pictured left) Messiah is set to be given a new visual twist when the famous oratorio will be performed by the Paragon Singers in a dramatised production at St Swithin’s Church in Bath. Directed by Tom Guthrie, it is by no means the first great choral work to be acted out on stage… Though Handel’s oratorios were initially intended to be performed as concert works, a number have been adapted very successfully as opera productions. Perhaps the most noteworthy of these was Glyndebourne’s Theodora in 1996 which, directed by Peter Sellars and with Lorraine Hunt excelling as Irene, is still talked about in revered tones. Sellars has good form in this territory. Another of his triumphs was 2010’s semi-staged JS Bach St Matthew Passion, performed by…

Great institutions sometimes have strange beginnings. Take the Royal Academy of Music, Britain’s oldest conservatoire, celebrating its 200th birthday this year. Three unlikely men were responsible for its genesis. Two were military commanders who played the violin for recreation and were clearly perturbed by the lack of training for British musicians. One was the Duke of Wellington, no less. Seven years after he had ‘thrashed Bonaparte’ (in WS Gilbert’s immortal words), he rallied his rich friends to support the new Academy. The other was John Fane, Earl of Westmorland, another soldier-turned-politician, who fancied himself as a composer. It was the third Academy founder, however, who has intrigued music historians the most. Nicolas-Charles Bochsa was a French harpist and composer who had fled Paris five years earlier to avoid being imprisoned…

In being a mentor on Sky Arts’s Anyone Can Sing, Nicky Spence follows in a long tradition of well-known musicians who have appeared on TV to provide expertise to those learning pretty much from scratch. Back in 1995, for instance, soprano Lesley Garrett (above) pitched in to help on BBC One’s Jobs for the Girls when Birds of a Feather actresses Pauline Quirke and Linda Robson were tasked with singing ‘Rule, Britannia!’ at an open-air concert. Rather more serious in ambition were two series of The Choir (BBC Two; 2006-08), in which conductor Gareth Malone worked with schoolchildren with little or no musical background and, in a few months, trained them to sing in largescale concerts. Two further The Choir series with adults, Unsung Town and Military Wives, soon followed.…

When the Stockton & Darlington Railway opened in 1825, it was the first steam-powered railway to carry passengers. Since then there has been no shortage of music connected with trains and railways: orchestral pieces and popular songs describing railway journeys; those that celebrate the opening of a new line; worksongs and blues outlining the hardship of building the railroads; even the first instance of sampled music using railway sounds as its source. The shriek of the whistle and the clattering track rhythms are so easily recognisable and adaptable So what is the appeal that has attracted so many musicians? Is it the relationship with time where the train moving through the landscape speaks of the physical and metaphorical power of the railway to connect people and places? Or is it…

A comfortable retirement, free of work and with acres of leisure time available. Something we all aspire to, right? Not quite, it seems, especially if you happen to be a classical musician. Composers have a particularly difficult time packing away their manuscript paper. Rossini and Verdi both tried but failed, the latter returning in his 70s to write Otello and Falstaff. Performers can also find it hard to step away from the ‘garish lights’ (Dickens’s coinage) of the concert platform, and it’s not rare to see sprightly young 70- or 80-somethings stepping onto the stage. Some press on even further, still working enthusiastically into their 90s – such as pianist Ruth Slenczynska who, at 97, has just recorded a new album for Deccca. Here, then, are 15 of Slenczynska’s fellow…

Richard Strauss composed 15 operas – a sequence comprising one of the great glories of 20th-century music. Yet outside the German-speaking musical world, the focus remains on the small number of works regarded as ‘essential Strauss’ – Salome, Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier (and to some extent the smaller-scale Ariadne auf Naxos). These were written around midway in Strauss’s life, before or during the First World War – as was their big-scale successor Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow), a symbolism-loaded fairy tale distantly derived from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, containing some wondrous music, and less of a rarity today in the world’s big opera houses. But that leaves another ten works in the sequence. What of them? The focus remains on a small number of works regarded…

Philip Glass has just celebrated his 85th birthday and the American composer shows no sign of slowing down. Nor does composer John Williams, for that matter; he just turned 90. We tip our hats to the former with a trio of reviews, including that of his 14th Symphony, while the latter features in a new box set of recordings with the Boston Pops. We’ve also a stunning recording of songs by Kaija Saariaho (who turns 70 later this year), our top choice in Choral and Song on p78, and a new opera from Joseph Phibbs (still a bright young thing at 48). Beyond that we’ve everything from Byrd to Beethoven, the usual Books and Brief Notes, plus round-ups of cherishable archive recordings and some inspiring World music. This month’s critics…

Shostakovich Symphony No. 7 London Symphony Orchestra/Gianandrea Noseda LSO Live LSO 0859 (CD/SACD) 75:00 mins Recorded in remarkably vivid sound at the Barbican in December 2019, this is an exceptionally fine performance. Gianandrea Noseda brings a tremendous sense of strength and purpose to the opening, and the ensuing lyrical episode evokes a real sense of nostalgia before this pastoral idyll is shattered by the emergence of the invasion theme. Starting at a barely audible treble pianissimo, Noseda builds up this section with phenomenal control of tempo and orchestral timbre so that when the extra brass instruments enter the fray at the change of key, the effect is absolutely terrifying The LSO’s principal wind players excel in their many solos, in particular the mournful bassoon lament near the end of the…

Kaija Saariaho Preludi-Tunnustus-Postludi; Leino Songs; Du gick, flög; Il Pleut; Saarikoski Songs Anu Komsi (soprano), Pia Värri (piano) ColoraMaestro CM 01 52:36 mins Even without Kaija Saariaho’s clear and unassuming programme notes, it would be evident from this breathtaking album that poetry and the soprano voice have been central to her composing life – and that soprano Anu Komsi has been a significant collaborator, here joined by her own longterm artistic partner, pianist Pia Värri. From the miniature student triptych Preludi-Tunnustus-Postludi (1980), via Du gick, flög (1982) and Il Pleut (1986) to the Leino Songs (2000-07) and world premiere recording of the Saarikoski Songs (2013-20), it’s a compelling collection spanning Swedish, French and Finnish poems – and painting a vivid portrait of a consummate art-song composer. Anu Komsi’s vocal and…

JS Bach Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin Leonidas Kavakos (violin) Sony 19439903132 137:56 mins (2 discs) Although no mention is made of it in the booklet, the first surprise awaiting the listener is that Leonidas Kavakos plays at something like ‘authentic’ pitch (roughly a semitone lower than modern norms). Those with pitch sensitivity can hardly miss it, as Kavakos elects to open with (traditionally) the most tonally brilliant work in the set, the E major Partita, which therefore emerges less ear-ringingly direct than usual. It also sounds as though Kavakos is using gut, as opposed to metal or steel-wound strings, resulting in a more mellow, slightly grainier soundworld. Additionally, he positively relishes the natural sound of open strings, exchanging the timbre-beautifying obsessions of post-Romantic fingerings, with all their ingenious…

Maxence Cyrin Melancholy Island Maxence Cyrin (piano) Warner Classics 9029646252 This is my first time hearing Cyrin, whose piano covers of pop tracks have become a favourite of soundtrack curators in recent years. This collection of mostly original piano works is introspective, occasionally derivative and sometimes rather beautiful. (MB) Philip Glass A Common Time etc Chase Spruill (violin) Orange Mountain OMM0158 This is the second full album Chase Spruill has dedicated to Philip Glass, including a premiere. It’s all performed on solo violin – which makes for a highly exposed acoustic, calling for a cleaner edit. (FP) Peñaolsa • Victoria Marian Music from Spain – Choral Works Peñalosa Ensemble CPO 555 398-2 Though one-to-apart performances of these Spanish Renaissance works bring both clarity and personality, they also highlight occasional moments…

András Schiff and Quatuor Mosaïques Wigmore Hall, London, 28 February – 4 March Web: wigmore-hall.org.uk Haydn is an underrated composer, reckons pianist András Schiff, who puts his stamina on the line to spearhead a five-concert Haydnfest that explores the piano sonatas and trios, string quartets (Opp. 20 and 76) and the English Canzonettas – the latter shared between soprano Louise Alder and tenor Kieran Carrel. Britten Sinfonia Milton Court, London, 4 March Web: brittensinfonia.com Later in the month, Britten Sinfonia returns to Milton Court with tenor Ian Bostridge and conductor James MacMillan for a folk-inspired programme. But first, under Jonathan Bloxham, the urban experience links Brett Dean’s Pastoral Symphony, Steve Reich’s New York-indebted City Life and the premiere of a new piece by Dobrinka Tabakova. New Generations Artists’ Weekend Britten…