Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2022 i BBC Music Magazine

Michael Church Author, critic and editor ‘Leif Ove Andsnes has always been adept at publicity, but his stunts never betray his basic goal – publicising the music he loves. And as the years go by, he’s honing his musicianship to ever higher standards.’ Page 26 Clive Paget Arts writer, critic and editor ‘Semyon Bychkov is one of the most intellectually penetrating maestros around, both as a musical interpreter and as a man of ideas. Flying to Prague to talk to him about a lifetime with Mahler was a dream job.’ Page 48 Ivan Hewett Music critic, The Telegraph ‘Harrison Birtwistle was the most extraordinary creative artist and maybe the most extraordinary human being I’ve ever met. After spending an hour in his company the world looked different.’ Page 60…

Sometimes it takes a pressing deadline to set the creative juices flowing. By August 1914 Ravel had been working on a Piano Trio for four months, and had recently taken several weeks o for rest and relaxation. He was, seemingly, in no particular hurry to bring his new piece to completion. Then World War One happened. France immediately announced a general mobilisation of its forces, and Ravel was keen to be of service to his country. First, though, he thought the Piano Trio should be finished, not least because the idea of composing it had gestated for six years before he started. ‘I’ve written my trio, now all I need are the themes,’ he told a friend at one point. Suddenly, with French and German armies locked in combat, the…

Mahler Kindertotenlieder etc Janet Baker (mezzo-soprano) et al EMI Classics ASD 2338 I love the way Mahler pictures ideas of the texts in his music, and the way he expresses feelings and emotions. It’s the most theatrical German music I can think of. Most would think of Christa Ludwig as the interpreter for these pieces, but I love the colour of Janet Baker’s voice – there is iron and not only velvet. I studied some of these pieces when I was in Lausanne and that’s when I found her recordings. It was a shock, but I was inspired by her. Gouvy Requiem in E flat minor Chœur de la Schola de Vienne et al K617 K617046 Théodore Gouvy was a French composer and this recording is the only one that exists…

After Mahler’s death, guest conductors such as Bruno Walter were responsible for keeping his music on Czech Philharmonic programmes – until Václav Neumann became chief conductor in 1968. Over the next 22 years, the Czech maestro championed Mahler, his interpretations acquiring legendary status. Ivan Séquardt, an oboist in the orchestra since 1979, recalls: ‘Neumann didn’t care so much about details. What he wanted was the music’s deeper meaning. He was very careful to avoid Mahler sounding cheap or sentimental. He believed German orchestras didn’t understand this, and that when they played any spot that could sound cheap or sentimental, it would.’ ‘Neumann was gifted by God,’ declares Jaroslav Pondělíček, a violist in the orchestra since 1985. ‘What he cared for was atmosphere and he used many poetic metaphors. He believed…

1934 LIFE: Harrison Birtwistle is born on 15 July in Accrington, Lancashire. His mother, Madge, who runs a bakery with his father Fred, encourages him to take up the clarinet. TIMES: Within the space of just over three months, English composers Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst and Frederick Delius die, at the respective ages of 76, 59 and 72. 1952 LIFE: He wins a scholarship to the Royal Manchester College of Music where he and fellow students including Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr form The Manchester School. TIMES: On the death of her father, George VI, Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, returns to Britain from Kenya to become Queen Elizabeth II. 1995 LIFE: The televised premiere of his aggressive Panic for saxophone, percussion and orchestra at the Last Night of the…

Welcome There’s a vein of Stars and Stripes running through this month’s reviews section, with some truly great American composers, musicians and repertoire. Leading the way is a feast of Barber songs, curated by pianist Dylan Perez (see opposite), while the San Diego Symphony brings us Shostakovich and the Cleveland Orchestra weighs in with Richard Strauss. Boston’s Odyssey Opera presents a Saint-Saëns rarity and we’ve a new opera from New York composer Jonathan Berger. Beyond that there’s Rags by William Bolcom, choral works from John Cage and Samuel Adler, a bit of Steve Reich, a dose of John Williams and a little something to tingle the spine by the late, great George Crumb. Oh, and a trip to the movies in our Stage & Screen round-up. Michael Beek Reviews editor…

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Emma and Claude Debussy – The Biography of a Relationship Gillian Opstad Boydell Press 408pp (hb) £40 Gillian Opstad’s tireless research has here produced a genuine addition to Debussy studies, based on the substantial correspondence between the couple (though much of Emma Debussy’s side of this is not extant), plus copious contemporary documentation. The result should put an end to any residual sneering along the lines that Debussy and Emma Bardac – a gifted amateur singer, married to a rich banker – left their respective spouses in 1904 for reasons of associated glamour on her part, and access to a sumptuous lifestyle on his. In many ways what follows is a depressing read, dominated by appalling debt problems, Emma being repeatedly ‘ill’ (or indeed ill) with domestic and other worries,…

To truly understand the music of the great composers we must forge lifelong relationships with their works. This is certainly the view of two leading artists interviewed in our pages this month. The journeys of pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and conductor Semyon Bychkov into the worlds of Mozart and Mahler respectively began with transformational moments in their youths. Andsnes recalls performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto K466 in his debut with a professional orchestra at the age of 14, while Bychkov describes hearing Mahler’s Third Symphony for the first time at the age of 12. The attitudes of both men have shifted though periods of self-doubt, ambivalence, revelation and passionate advocacy, and each now approaches the music in deeply considered ways. On page 48 Bychkov discusses with Clive Paget his compulsion to…

Cliburn champion Yunchan Lim’s bank balance is now looking decidedly healthier after he won the 16th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Texas. The 18-year-old from South Korea won a first prize of $100,000 for his performances over the course of the competition, culminating in Beethoven’s and Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concertos in the final, for which he and five fellow pianists were joined by the Fort Worth Symphony under Marin Alsop. Dutch destiny Some admirable forward thinking from the Concertgebouw Orchestra, which has announced that Klaus Mäkelä is to be its new chief conductor… in 2027. While he counts down the days and hunts around for a 2027 year-planner in his local newsagent, the 26-year-old Finn will be filling some of the time by working with the Amsterdam…

Asako Ogawa is set to make her second recording for FHR in August. The Japanese harpsichordist heads to St Saviour’s in London to lay down an all-Handel programme, including the G major Chaconne and Six Great Sonatas. The album is scheduled for release early next year. Coming in September is a new recording of Rachmaninov’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos from Channel Classics. They have been recorded in Switzerland by Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova with Sinfonieorchester St Gallen under Modestas Pitrėnas. She aims to highlight how this pairing represents both ‘a farewell to the past’ and a ‘resurrection of the spirit, hope and light’ for the composer, who was forced to flee Russia in 1917. Also out in September is the debut album from Brazilian male soprano Bruno de Sá,…

Cadenzas present a complex challenge for performers, says Tom Service, but for those who dare to take the reins, the artistic rewards are wonderfully liberating They are some of the most revealing and thrilling yet under-appreciated phenomena in classical music: cadenzas, the solo moments that are so often the highlights of performances of concertos of the 18th and 19th centuries and beyond, in which composers from Mozart to Beethoven, from Haydn to Brahms, relinquish control and hand the soloist the musical ropes. These are places in which everything we hear should be created by the performer. The notes, the expression, how long the solo lasts: all of it is in the hands of the artist for their turn in the spotlight. And that means cadenzas are places that present a…

Charlotte Smith Editor I attended a performance by the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective at London’s Wigmore Hall in June, and included on the programme was Bridge’s highly charged single-movement Phantasie Piano Trio in C minor, performed by violinist Nathan Amaral, cellist Laura van der Heijden and pianist Tom Poster. I hadn’t heard the work in several years, and its power and passion in the Wigmore’s relatively modest space were deeply affecting. Definitely one to seek out on record over the next few weeks. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Reading Andrew Mellor’s excellent The Northern Silence – Journeys in Nordic Music and Culture has prompted me to make regular visits to Europe’s chilliest corner by way of my CD collection. One piece that captures the unique magic of the region is Sibelius’s The…

The composer’s face was pock-marked, and his self-description was ‘Mozart magnus, corpore parvus’ (great Mozart, small in stature). People often found his physical presence underwhelming: recalling his visit to a Mannheim theatre, the actor Wilhelm Backhaus said ‘I took him for a little journeyman tailor, and refused to let him in. “You will surely allow Kapellmeister Mozart to hear the rehearsal?”’ Yet the tenor Michael Kelly remembered him as ‘a remarkable small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair of which he was rather vain’. That vanity led him to sport ‘beautiful clothing, lace and watchchains’, and to appear on stage ‘with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat’ as he conducted the orchestra. His wife Constanze, sister of the celebrated singer Aloysia Lange, recalled,…

Royal Stockholm Philharmonic principal cellist Marie Macleod (above), who has worked with many outstanding conductors, is full of praise for the young chief conductor designate’s technique and rapport with the orchestra. After a handful of concerts, including the Nobel Prize Concert in December 2021, she says, ‘I’ve loved working with him. He used to be a dancer and that really comes across when he’s conducting. He feels very free… he shapes in an extremely clear way with his hands, so you understand how he wants to phrase and articulate. This also applies to his sense of timing – he manages to convey a great sense of trust, so it’s very easy to tell how he wants things to be timed. I don’t really know how he does it, but it’s…

The work Few chamber music works convey emotional turbulence with such graphic intensity as Alexander Zemlinsky’s String Quartet No. 2. Written between 1913 and 1915, this epic one-movement composition lays bare all the bitter disappointments he experienced on a personal and professional level after 1900. A doomed love affair with his composition pupil Alma Schindler, who left him to marry Gustav Mahler, had a particularly traumatic impact. But no less damaging was the decline in his fortunes as a composer. It is a highly volatile drama, yet Zemlinsky shows formidable control over its structure Following the award of the prestigious Beethoven Prize in 1897 and the considerable success enjoyed by his fairy-tale opera Es war einmal, premiered at the Vienna Opera in 1900, Zemlinsky was fully expecting to make further…

Barber The Complete Songs Mary Bevan (soprano), Jess Dandy (contralto), Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano), Julien Van Mellaerts (baritone), Nicky Spence (tenor), William Thomas (bass) et al; Dylan Perez (piano) Resonus RES10301 158:40 mins (2 discs) Deutsche Grammophon’s classic survey of Barber’s songs has ruled the catalogue for three decades, but its dominance may be over. This new Resonus collection not only includes 19 songs never recorded before, but uses ten different singers to DG’s two (Cheryl Studer and Thomas Hampson), adding valuable variety to the overall listening experience. And what an experience it is: even from the earliest opus numbers Barber’s songs ripple with acuity and emotional intelligence, with no hint of a young composer struggling to find his feet. Bass William Thomas’s plangent take on Op. 2’s ‘With rue my…

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Anne Dudley Crossing the Bar Anne Dudley (piano) et al Buffalo Music BUFFALCD1 The sound of a new piano inspired this collection of original pieces and folksong arrangements. Dudley’s talent for creating musical drama is in clear evidence and she creates some really lovely textures with the additional strings here and there. Evocative. (MB) ★★★ Alexis Ffrench Truth Alexis Ffrench (piano) et al Sony Classical 19439966602 Ffrench is becoming something of a force to be reckoned with, and this latest album once again showcases the composer-pianist’s ‘pop’ sensibilities and an innate gift for melody. This is glossy musicmaking from an artist whose high standards are clearly audible. (MB) ★★★★ Holmboe String Quartets, Vol. 2 Nightingale String Quartet Dacapo 6.220717 This second instalment of Holmboe (1909-96) quartets by fellow Danes the…

AUGUST’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see Radio Times Three to look out for Alan Davey, the controller of BBC Radio 3, picks out three great moments to tune into this August BBC Proms hit the road At Radio 3, we’re so excited to be taking the BBC Proms to audiences across the UK for the first time this year. Duo Cédric Tiberghien (piano) and Alina Ibragimova (violin) are in Bristol to kick off a month of Monday lunchtime treats with gems from Ysaÿe, Franck and Havergal Brian. Proms at Bristol: 1 August, 1pm Didgeridoo discoveries We’re also back at Edinburgh Festival, with live weekday broadcasts of their morning concerts (8–26 August). Not to be missed is the infectious Chineke! Chamber Ensemble, which…

Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST Email: music@classical-music.com Socialmedia: contactusonFacebookandTwitter LETTER of the MONTH Holmès is where the heart is I am sure I was not the only one to be bowled over by Augusta Holmès’s Roland Furieux – Symphony after Ariosto which was played on Radio 3’s Composer of the Week recently. I had never heard of the composer, let alone the symphony, and again I’m sure I’m not alone. Donald Macleod said that the symphony had been specially recorded by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for the programme – thank goodness, as it has introduced me to a most wonderful work. I searched for the composer’s WIN! £50 VOUCHER FOR PRESTO MUSIC Every month we will award the best letter with…

Josh Lovell Tenor Born: Victoria, Canada Career highlight: My debut at the Wiener Staatsoper, singing Lysander in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I will never forget the exhilaration I felt as I stepped on that stage for the opening night. Musical heroes: Canadian tenor Benjamin Butterfield was my voice teacher at the University of Victoria. To this day, he continues to be a great mentor, friend and inspiration, not only from his wonderful singing but also his sage advice. Dream concert: I have two: to be a soloist at the Wiener Opernball at the Wiener Staatsoper, as well as to be a soloist at the BBC Proms in Royal Albert Hall. Stephanie Tang Piano Born: Los Angeles, US Career highlight: I recently won the Guildhall Gold Medal, where I played…

A tree that may well have inspired Handel has been found alive and well in London. Experts from the Conservation Foundation suggest that a 340-year-old plane tree (pictured left), close to where Handel stayed in Barn Elms, may well have prompted the aria ‘Ombra mai fu’ which, in the opera Serse, is addressed to that very type of plant. Handel was by no means the only composer to be inspired by all things large and leafy… Sibelius, who lived in a woodland house, once remarked that ‘the trees speak to me’. The Trees, his Op. 75 suite for solo piano, celebrates, in turn, The Rowan, The Pine, The Aspen, The Birch and The Spruce. In 2019, Penderecki told BBC Music Magazine how he liked to go to the big trees…

I’ve had one of those France v Brazil moments. Both are great footballing nations and when they play each other I don’t mind who wins. But as the game goes on, I do start to mind that someone will lose. Can’t there be an eternal penalty shootout? Well, for France, substitute Philip Pullman; and for Brazil, Bobby Seagull. I admire them both. Who doesn’t? Pullman is a superb writer who has inspired children and adults into thinking about the deepest aspects of human existence. Seagull is a brilliant communicator who has given millions of people new confidence about ‘doing maths’. Both are civilising influences. You don’t want either publicly castigated. Yet they have disagreed, bizarrely, over the function of classical music – and Twitter has (as usual) turned a difference…

Freemasonry began in medieval Scotland with craftsmen who sought to preserve the secrets of their trade, and to help one another in adversity. Following the founding in 1717 of the Grand Lodge of England, similar lodges were established on the continent as the movement grew in reaction against political absolutism and religious intolerance. Mozart – like many intellectuals of his time – was passionately involved in Freemasonry’s Viennese form with its humanitarian and enlightened aspirations, summed up by its principles of equality, liberty, tolerance and fraternity. The craft Mozart joined was opposed to the Jesuits, as well as to pseudo-scientific fads such as Mesmerism (satirised in Così fan tutte). Mozart joined the Zur Wohltätigkeit (‘Beneficence’) lodge in 1784, and by the following year achieved the highest rank of Master Mason.…

A recently published history of the forgotten women of classical music set out to ‘glory in the songs and sonatas that they did write, rather than grieve for the operas and symphonies that they could not’. While those songs and sonatas are important, they do not present the whole story. For over the centuries, women have written symphonies. A good number, in fact. Just as the novel is a building block of Western literature, so is the symphony a fundamental part of Western orchestral music – and women have always been part of its history. Accounts of its development usually start with the ‘father of the symphony’, Haydn, before exploring how Beethoven revolutionised the form, then turning to the Romantic composers as they took it into transcendent territory. Despite the…

Leningrad. 1964. Darkness. A young boy waits with bated breath. Bit by bit, he’s enveloped in a swelling cocoon of D major. His hiding place is a secret, located behind the stage at Capella Hall, an 18th-century auditorium with excellent acoustics. The lad – he’s 12 – is bunking class. His name is Semyon Mayevich Bychkov, and by rights he should be next door at the Glinka Choir School. It’s not the first time he’s snuck off to hear the Leningrad Philharmonic rehearse, but this time he couldn’t have torn himself away if he’d wanted to. He’s hopelessly smitten. Walking the city a few hours later, the youngster sees a poster for a performance of Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony to be given that night. What he has just heard was…

‘At grad school [Yale School of Music], my teacher handed me a score of De Staat in Louis’s handwriting, which has the same rough edge as the pounding notes that filled the pages. Hearing it, I was shaken up by this remarkable, monolithic sound. It shared some things with American minimalism but there was grit in those beautiful, open sonorities unlike anything I’d ever heard. ‘Louis was gregarious, grounded and very fun. I spent a year in Amsterdam learning from him, but our relationship wasn’t formally teacher-student. He would invite all these young composers to the radical left-wing cafés along the canals, where everyone would gather to drink and smoke. What struck me most was how much he loved all the things he stood for, and how he would spend…

Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in August are: 1-5 August Monteverdi 8-12 August Grieg 15-19 August Ruth Gipps 22-26 August Felix Mendelssohn 29 August – 2 September Buxtehude When people want to praise a composer’s music they often say ‘it’s instantly recognisable’. But that is a back-handed compliment, since it’s a quality that’s actually not so hard to achieve. You just need to invent a few ‘tricks’ or mannerisms and repeat them endlessly. Harrison Birtwistle’s music is indeed instantly recognisable, but not because it’s always the same. In fact the variety of his music is extraordinary. There’s the muffled sadness of Nenia: The Death of Orpheus, where the three clarinets and piano move hesitantly in a perpetual twilight, tinged with…

How did this project take off? It was a lockdown idea, and it was my first time putting a project like this together. It took a while, getting the funding and learning about recording venues and all of that, so it was really a new experience for me. I wanted to learn how to do it all, as well as giving a platform to lots of young British singers, who needed a bit of work at that time, showcase their voices and this really fabulous repertoire. Tell us about your programme choices; did you want to match voices to songs? I know all the singers quite well, so I knew everybody’s voices. But I went through the texts and the range of the songs and tried to figure out who…

JAZZ CHOICE Folk-stylish standards Tigran Hamasyan brings integrity and his Armenian heritage to classic jazz numbers Tigran Hamasyan StandArt Tigran Hamasyan (piano), Joshua Redman, Mark Turner (saxophone), Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet), Matt Brewer (bass), Justin Brown (drums) Nonesuch 75597911466 The catalogue of jazz standards has long since become the music’s equivalent of Shakespearean drama, with similar pitfalls for the unwary: play it straight or modernise and re-interpret as you will, but don’t confuse art with artifice in the mistaken belief that listeners can’t tell the difference. More power, then, to Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan, whose early connections with his homeland’s folk music can still be heard in his distinctive style. This entirely excellent set majors on respected items from said tradition, entailing an expertly judged process of inspired rebuilding around the…

THE QUIZ It’s time to put your classical music knowledge to the test… 1. Composed from 1791-95, how are Haydn’s Symphonies Nos 93-104 collectively known? 2. ‘Ondine’, ‘Le Gibet’ and ‘Scarbo’ are the three movements of which tricky piano work from 1908? 3. Name the female opera characters who sent the following to an early grave: a) Baron Scarpia (1900); b) Lord Arturo Bucklaw (1835); c) Hagen (1876). 4. The 12-part Missa Et ecce terræ motus, known as the ‘Earthquake Mass’, is the work of which early-Renaissance French composer? 5. Described by Herbert von Karajan as ‘the greatest musical prodigy since the young Menuhin’, which violinist was just 14 when she recorded Mozart’s Third and Fifth Violin Concertos with him and the Berlin Philharmonic in 1978? 6. Clara Rockmore and…

Born in London, Nicolas Hodges sang in the choir of Christ Church, Oxford, before later studying at Cambridge University. He has forged a career as a pianist specialising in contemporary music and has commissioned concertos by composers including Thomas Adès, Elliott Carter, Gerald Barry and Harrison Birtwistle, who once described him as ‘like my Peter Pears’. He is currently based in Germany, where he is a professor of piano at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. Like most pianists, I began with Mozart, Clementi and Bach. Music changed dramatically for me when I first played DEBUSSY. I was encouraged to listen to Claudio Arrau’s recordings by my teacher, who was himself a pupil of Arrau. It had a dramatic effect on me. I knew the Walter Gieseking recordings and I never really liked…