Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i BBC Music Magazine

Universal early music education is essential for a thriving classical music scene at all levels – and for personal and social development in numerous areas. Such an assertion ought to be self-evident, but for too long successive governments in numerous territories have ignored music in the state sector in favour of ‘more important’ core subjects such as maths and science. In this issue we explore the power of first-rate music tuition. Our cover star, the talented and charismatic cellist Abel Selaocoe, benefitted from several school programmes in his native South Africa before winning a scholarship to Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music. He’s now giving back in spades by staging energetic and inclusive concerts, guaranteed to inspire a new generation of performers. Read the interview on page 26. Buskaid, another…

Lecture notes Though not as flash as Taipei’s arts centre (left), Plymouth is also able to boast a new concert hall. Based at Plymouth University, the Levinsky Hall was formerly a lecture theatre until the university’s director of music Robert Taub spotted its potential for recitals and oversaw its reappointment. Taub himself (above) will be opening its first season with a piano recital of Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin on 15 October. Santander success Well played Jaeden Izik-Dzurko, who has won first prize at the Santander International Piano Competition. The Canadian’s success earns him a 30,000 euro (£25,000) cash prize plus a string of concert engagements and the opportunity to record an album on the Naxos label. The second and third prizes went to, respectively, China’s Xiaolu Zang and Marcel Tadokoro…

Violinist Julien Chauvin unearths some of his most treasured recordings JS Bach Sonata No. 2 in A minor, BWV 1003 Anner Bylsma (violoncello piccolo) DHM 778432 This is the A minor Sonata for violin, but in a transcription for piccolo cello. Anner Bylsma did it very long ago, and it’s an album which is not so well known. The Sonatas and Partitas for violin are great masterpieces, of course, but I’m not so convinced by them on the violin alone, because of the resonance of the instrument. When I listen to this, with the warm sound of the cello and the resonance of the bass, it’s like the piece has been revealed. Mozart Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K453 Concerto Köln/Andreas Staier (piano) Teldec 4509984126 I have been…

Marianne Beate Kielland Mezzo-sopran I have recently discovered Bernstein’s last major composition, which is for two singers and orchestra or piano, called Arias and Barcarolles. It’s a great discovery, but amazing I didn’t know it before. He composes music with so much meaning, describing many parts of life. And this piece has so many different styles: it crosses over to cabaret and almost jazz, as well as contemporary music and melodic tunes. I’ve been listening to a recording by baritone Christian Immler and mezzo Anna Stéphany, and they are just great. I listen to a lot of vocal music. There’s a Latvian Radio Choir recording of the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov called To Thee We Sing, and it’s so atmospheric. In a way it sounds as if it’s sent from…

The star flautist has developed techniques that, as well making her a dream for composers to work with, have made core repertoire a lot easier to master, as she tells Claire Jackson ‘I spent three days doing nothing but practising breathing. And now I never run out of air’ The waiter looks puzzled. It’s understandable – a woman blowing bubbles into a glass of mineral water is not something one usually encounters in an up-market London restaurant. ‘Can I get you anything?’ he asks politely. ‘Could we have another straw?’ I say. He obliges, bewildered, as I copy my dining companion, gently pushing air into the water with much concentration. ‘It’s like riding a bike; you know it can be done but initially it seems impossible,’ encourages Sharon Bezaly. The…

Before I started lessons on double bass with Sonja Bass at Buskaid in 2011, my life was in a downward spiral. Buskaid saved me. It was the best string teaching I’ve ever experienced. It was strict. Lessons were not just about the double bass, but about life. The orchestral training at Buskaid with Rosemary Nalden was fantastic. She wouldn’t let us get away with anything. Once we’d learnt a piece, we really knew it, every detail, and from memory. It was a big achievement for me to join the Johannesburg Philharmonic in 2017, but I knew there was more. Being selected recently to join the bass section of the newly formed Mzansi National Philharmonic Orchestra was incredible. For me, it represents really making it in the bass world. To be…

Since Thomas Edison first recorded the human voice on strips of tin foil back in 1878, many materials have been pressed into service to capture and preserve sound and music of all kinds. From the 1880s various wax compounds, metallic soap and early plastics were developed for cylinders which were played on phonographs revolving at a speedy 160 rpm. The first experimental records were made of vulcanised rubber and even chocolate (for children), but by the 1890s the favoured medium for the ‘78’ was shellac. Made from the excretions of the Lac bug found in Northeast India, plus a generous helping of powdered slate, the final product provided a surprisingly hard‑wearing surface. Although shellac records lasted until the 1960s, they were very brittle and crackly. In 1948, Columbia produced the…

If you would like to be a part of the next Education Guide please call Jenny Allan on 0117 300 8546 Email: jenny.allan@ourmedia.co.uk Revisiting teenage experiences of sitting instrumental or vocal grade exams must come pretty high up any register of anxiety dreams for adults who had music lessons as children but did not go on to study professionally. So many of us faced the ordeal of stumbling over scales, making silly mistakes in pieces we’d played perfectly at home or failing to identify the middle note of a chord before being released from the torture chamber by an unsmiling examiner who probably didn’t even raise their head from their marksheet. Unsmiling examiners are now rare, thankfully; even the most traditionally minded exam boards have recognised for some time that…

Solo piano Medtner (left) composed nearly 40 piano solo pieces called skazka, which have an abstract narrative quality. Most are in some variant of sonata form, while his 14 actual piano sonatas reciprocally share the skazka’s story-telling character, typified by his Sonata-Reminiscenza of 1919-20. Piano concertos The First and Third of the three Piano Concertos adopt monolithic, continuous variation forms; but his Second (1927), in three separate movements, is simpler to navigate. Its dramatic opening epitomises Medtner’s energetic rhythmic displacements. Chamber music Medtner’s Piano Quintet occupied him intermittently for decades and represents his artistic testament. The demanding piano part is complemented by string writing of rhythmic dynamism and lyrically flowing polyphony. Songs Several songs show Medtner’s varied richness, but Eight Songs, Op. 61, setting Russian and German poems, best reveals…

Paul Agnew (conductor) Sophie Karthäuser (soprano), Lucile Richardot (mezzo-soprano); Les Arts Florissants Harmonia Mundi HAF 8905358 If played straight, as it appears on the page, Vivaldi’s Gloria can easily confirm stubborn prejudices about the predictability of his music. Paul Agnew’s interpretation with Les Arts Florissants is anything but; rather, their recording, released only this summer, reveals fresh inflections and engenders musical and textual interest in each of the work’s movements, so much so that it restores a sense of wonder, even reverence, to the piece. The latter rises from the context that Les Arts Florissants have created for it, framing the Gloria as part of a ‘Great Venetian Mass’. The speculative reconstruction addresses the perennial question of what to put with Vivaldi’s Gloria: Agnew’s answer is to place it with…

Many of you may be reading this just before the Last Night of the Proms, so it’s perhaps fitting that we’ve a host of homegrown composers for whom to wave a flag this issue. We’ve everything from a Welsh-language opera from the Belfast-born Stephen McNeff to ballet music with a French title by Arthur Sullivan. Britten also goes French with Les Illuminations, but there’s thoroughly English music by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Frank Bridge, Howard Skempton, Ruth Gipps and Richard Arnell. And what could be more patriotic than some Coronation Anthems, even if they were written by a German-born composer? Beyond that, we’ve some fascinating wartime recordings in our Historical round-up, plus live recordings of Vaughan Williams, Mozart and Beethoven. This month’s critics John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Michael Beek, Terry Blain, Kate…

Phrases Works by Aperghis, Frances-Hoad, Leith, Mitchener, Muhly, Josephine Stephenson and Héloïse Werner Héloïse Werner (soprano), Daniel Shao (flute), Amy Harman (bassoon), Lawrence Power (violin, viola), Colin Alexander (cello), Calum Huggan (percussion), Laura Snowden (guitar) Delphian DCD34269 63:44 mins Héloïse Werner here puts together a series of contemporary and linguistically experimental solo and duo works, both her own and by others, accompanied in turn by her excellent regular instrumental partners. Werner’s voice flits between natural directness and operatic expression, endlessly flexible, theatrical or intimate, whether in Josephine Stephenson’s lovely ‘Comme l’espoir/you might all disappear’, accompanie d by Laura Snowden’s expressive guitar, or the more academic rigours of Georges Aperghis’s solo Récitations, of which Werner performs four here, with an ear for word play and humour. Similar, too, is Zoë Martlew…

The Captain’s Apprentice – Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Story of Folk Song Caroline Davison Chatto & Windus 56pp (hb) £18.99 Caroline Davison has a thing about The Captain’s Apprentice, the haunting folk song Vaughan Williams ‘collected’ from fisherman Duggie Carter at King’s Lynn in 1905. She goes so far as to claim that without this chance hearing, the composer’s subsequent composing history would have unfolded differently. Which is going a bit far; but to her immense credit Davison could hardly have done more to colour the song with significance in bringing any amount of historical and other background to bear. But therein lie difficulties – for this reader, anyway. Davison’s engaging prose style can’t quite offset the sense of information overload and a tendency towards digression, of not enough…

A peerless interpreter of Classical and Romantic repertoire, Imogen Cooper is an international soloist, distinguished accompanist and committed chamber musician. She’s performing in a Schubertiade at the London Piano Festival at Kings Place on 7 October, an evening of piano duets with Katya Apekisheva, Charles Owen and Dominic Degavino, all three of whom have been taught by Cooper in the past. At the age of three I was taken to Covent Garden to see VERDI’s Rigoletto, which was a slightly bloodthirsty choice for a three-yearold! I wasn’t scared but it did open dark rich vistas and above all there was this unbelievable music. One of the things I most remember was the aria ‘Caro nome’. I don’t know who sang it then (it was the early 1950s) but if I…

Claire Jackson Journalist and critic ‘I was thrilled when Sweden-based Sharon Bezaly agreed to travel to the UK to be interviewed in person – an impromptu masterclass on circular breathing with the finest flautist in the world is a career highlight!’ Page 32 Leon Bosch Double bassist and conductor ‘Buskaid is one of the most extraordinary and inspirational music education programmes in the world, and it was an absolute pleasure and privilege to discover the secrets to what really makes it tick.’ Page 36 Andrew Stewart Author and journalist ‘I fell in love with Vivaldi’s Gloria while in my early teens and found that the spark was still strong as I listened to two-dozen diverse interpretations of its memorable music almost half-a-century later.’ Page 72…

Klaudia Kudelko Pianist Born: Zamość, Poland Career highlight: My Carnegie Hall solo debut was an unforgettable experience. I will always remember the acoustics, the sound of silence in pauses and the incredible audience. I felt its rich history flowing from every direction, especially while playing Schumann. To play where many legendary musicians have performed was an honour. Musical hero: I look up to many artists, but if I had to pick, it would be Vladimir Horowitz. I am inspired by 20th-century pianists. The freedom in their musical expression and lyricism is unmatched. Dream concert: Performing Rachmaninov’s Second or Third Piano Concerto at the Hollywood Bowl with Gustavo Dudamel. Tom Fetherstonhaugh Conductor Born: London, UK Career highlight: The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra voting for me to be its assistant conductor, an exciting…

Turkish pianist Can Çakmur is on something of a roll when it comes to recordings. The winner of the 2018 Hamamatsu International Piano Competition has so far released three albums on BIS to critical acclaim, and a fourth is already on the way. Çakmur has recorded Schubert’s complete piano sonata cycle for the label, which will release the first part in November. The London Symphony Orchestra continues its journey through Bruckner’s symphonies. Hot on the heels of the September release of the Fourth is a recording of the mighty Symphony No. 7. Simon Rattle will conduct the work in concert at the Barbican on 18 September, with the live recording set to be made available by the LSO Live label sometime in 2023. A new label aims to raise the…

Space: it actually isn’t the final frontier. One way of telling the story of how music developed over the aeons is how musical cultures evolved in a symbiotic dance with the spaces in which musicians performed and sang and congregated, everywhere from churches to opera houses, outdoor arenas to recording studios. From plainchant to vocal polyphony to pop albums, music never exists in a vacuum – literally, since in an absolute vacuum, or in the near vacuum of outer space, sound waves simply aren’t perceptible. And particular species of sound waves are designed to function best in particular species of space – so much so that it’s hard to know which inspired which; the musical repertoires or the buildings made for their performance. There’s a reason that the sumptuous overlapping…

I’m so honoured that Yo-Yo Ma wanted to be part of Where Is Home: it’s not even about the type of musician, but the type of person. He’s able to fit into so many different communities, which is wonderfully inspiring. The collaboration came about through a celebration for Desmond Tutu’s 90th birthday. I was asked to give an offering of music, and I wanted to bring on board someone to impart a message of thanks. Yo-Yo Ma was the first person I thought of – I never thought I’d get a reply, but he was really keen to be involved! Our first conversation – via Zoom – was not about music, but instead about entering new cultural spaces; about how you humble yourself initially, then show that you are keen…

Flutes are generally made from silver – student instruments are silver-plated; advanced players progress to a solid-silver headjoint. Sharon Bezaly plays a bespoke 24-carat gold flute, built for her by Japanese flute-makers Muramatsu. While there is some debate about the impact materials can have on the sound quality – bore dimensions and embouchure cut clearly play a major part – Bezaly was adamant she wanted gold. ‘I find with platinum the sound is either forte or piano,’ she says; ‘I wanted a big, versatile voice.’ The flautist approached the Muramatsu team to commission the instrument and was told that gold would be too heavy for her. ‘I had a toddler at the time. I explained that I was lifting him all day with no problems, so a flute was nothing!’…

How do you prepare for a massive work like this? I sang about half of the fragments as a student, so I was familiar with the piece, but I actually sang the whole cycle for the first time with Isabelle in 2019. The best thing is to immerse yourself in Kafka first of all, both in these fragments and also his other literature – which I’ve loved for a long time. It just lends itself to an expressionistic way of performing with the voice and it’s not hard to get into that zone, to be honest, because the music is so intertwined with what the writer wanted to express. What’s the most challenging moment for you? There is a piece I decided I wanted to record last: ‘Nichts dergleichen’ (Nothing…

Mozart Violin Concertos, Vol. 2: K 207, 211 & 219 ‘Turkish’ Francesca Dego (violin); Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Roger Norrington Chandos CHAN 20263 67:55 mins When considering ‘old school’ versions of Mozart’s violin concertos, Henryk Szeryng’s 1960s set for Philips with the National Philharmonic and Alexander Gibson still strikes me as the benchmark recording. Yet listening to Francesca Dego, Roger Norrington and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra responding with micro-fine nuances of phrasing, articulation and dynamic to Mozart’s Salzburg style at its most sparkling and invigorating, takes this music to a whole new level. Dego’s finespun tone, exquisite timing and enchanting musical inquisitiveness, not to mention her delightfully spontaneous decorating of musical lines, combine to create an uplifting sense of the music being composed as it goes along. Once upon a…

Haydn String Quartets: in D minor, Op 42; in G, Op. 77 No. 1; in F, Op. 77 No. 2; in D minor, Op. 103 Takács Quartet Hyperion CDA68364 72:35 mins In 1799 Joseph Haydn embarked on a series of six string quartets commissioned by Prince Lobkowitz. The composer was in his late sixties, and becoming increasingly frail, and his remaining creative energy was mainly directed towards his second great oratorio, The Seasons, and the last three of the annual Masses he composed for Princess Esterházy. In the event, he managed to complete only two of Lobkowitz’s quartets plus, after a long delay, the middle movements of a further quartet issued as Op. 103. Touchingly, the quartet torso contained a reproduction of Haydn’s visiting-card – a quotation from his earlier…

Alfvén Symphony No. 2 etc Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Łukasz Borowicz CPO 555 3542 Alfven’s soundworld is largely late-Romantic, though there’s also oodles of Mendelssohn-like good humour in his lovely Second Symphony. The folky Swedish Rhapsody No. 3 may remind some of Grieg. (JP) Bartók • Eötvös • Ligeti • Veress Works for Solo Violin/Viola Nurit Stark (violin, viola) BIS BIS-2416 Israeli violinist Nurit Stark brings together works by four composers of the same pedagogical lineage. Her violin tone is pure, but never pale, admirably capturing the otherworldly eeriness of Bartok’s Solo Sonata. If her viola playing doesn’t quite reach that same charisma in the Ligeti, it’s a small criticism. (CS) Beethoven Complete Works for Cello and Piano Sung-Won Yang (cello), Enrico Pace (piano) Decca DD41229 Everything about this two-disc set screams…

Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contactuson Facebook and Twitter LETTER of the MONTH A twinkle in the eye I was reminded by Tom Service’s page (No laughing matter?) in your September issue that my first LP, bought with pocket money when I was just eleven years old, had me rolling with laughter. It was Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Tune. The pretentious, prolonged opening in the grandest Rachmaninov style suddenly stops and, after a strange hiatus, the pianist starts an unsure, hesitant ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ with one finger, followed by uncertain simple ornamentation before the orchestra reluctantly joins in. The Variations proceed at a rapid and reckless pace until we are back at the height of late Romanticism.…

9 …concerts in total, as the Danish city of Odense celebrated its most famous son with the first ever Carl Nielsen (above) Festival in late August. 22 …football players plus a ref, the subjects of Gods of the Game, a new opera commissioned by Sky Arts in anticipation of the FIFA World Cup. 250,000 …euros’ worth of missing 18th-century Gagliano violin, discovered by police in a raid on a flat in Berlin. 16 …strings are here to stay, as the Ivalas Quartet takes up its post as the new graduate resident string quartet at the Juilliard School in New York.…

'You can’t imagine how blissful I feel in the conviction that my time is not yet passed, and to work is still possible.’ Tchaikovsky’s comment to his nephew Vladimir ‘Bob’ Davydov in February 1893 captures the elation he experienced composing what would ultimately become his sixth and final symphony. It also hints at the diffculties that writing the new work had created. A first sketch was completed before he realised he had composed it ‘simply for the sake of composing something’, and the music had no interest. Deflated, he even began wondering if he should ‘go into retirement and start to live out my days quietly’. Fortunately, however, the programme Tchaikovsky had outlined for the new symphony still existed, and fermented in his imagination. ‘Second part love’, it read in…

As this issue goes to press, pianist AyseDeniz Gokcin will be limbering up her fingers and looking skywards, invited as she has been to give a recital that involves a Kawai grand being hoiked to the top of the 162m BA i360 Viewing Tower in Brighton (left). In fact, over the years, pianos and tall towers have enjoyed a largely happy relationship… Has anyone ever written a piano piece about a tall building? Indeed so. The American Dana Suesse, a composer who was taught by Nadia Boulanger and commissioned by the likes of bandleader Paul Whiteman, wrote a short Serenade to a Skyscraper in 1941 – you can find a film of her playing it on YouTube. Also famously employed by Whiteman was George Gershwin, whose Second Rhapsody for piano…

Here and elsewhere, I have written a lot about the inadequacies of England’s music education system. My grievance in a nutshell? Music is belittled in thousands of state schools as not a ‘serious’ subject, and so is marginalised in the curriculum and starved of resources. The refreshed National Plan for Music Education, published earlier this summer, is an admirably sane document, but it will produce no change until government ministers attend to those fundamental problems. Which is not to say that there’s no inspirational work going on in the state sector. Often in defiance of challenging economic and social circumstances, many state schools are nurturing wonderfully rich musical environments in which their pupils can discover and develop their nascent talents. In the past 12 months I’ve been lucky enough to…

I improvise every day. It’s great practice and becomes easier the more you do it. I spend ten minutes on what I call the ‘flower tree’, as it takes a little while to come together. A few minutes in I think, ‘I should really stop. It’s not quite what I want. It’s not quite there.’ Then four minutes in, I’m in a new zone, and I’m feeling, ‘Oh, this is a good place to be.’ Six minutes in, I’m above it all, stuff is really happening, and I’m determined not to stop. It’s like freeform writing: you wake up and just start writing things down, and you don’t stop because some bits aren’t good, or some are bizarre. Often classical music involves a lot of preparation for the performance to…

I am a poor Jew. How much grief I have experienced! I have seen the Baltic Sea, Forests and fields, The Volga, the Caucasus, the Ukraine — All that is like a paradise! At home however I am like in a desert — Everybody in our courtyard, All the cruel anti-Semites Shout at me: ‘A Jew! A Jew! A Yid!’ I am lonely In the human river. Russian original Я бедный еврей. Сколько горя Испытывал я! Я видел Балтийское море, Леса и поля, Поволжье, Кавказ, Украину — Всё это как рай! На родине ж я как в пустыне — Ведь все со двора, Все антисемиты жестокие Галдят надо мной: «Еврей! Еврей! Жид!». Одинокий я В речушке людской.…

‘Infinitely modest, delicate, shy … a sensitive, lofty soul, he was in truth “a man not of this world”, being in no way adapted to practical life.’ Thus Nikolai Medtner was recalled by his colleague Alexander Ossovsky. Like his older friend Rachmaninov, Medtner had a privileged upbringing and later suffered exile from Revolutionary Russia. But there the similarities mostly end. Medtner’s ancestry was part-German on both sides. The passion his father Karl had for Germanic culture resulted in his artistic education being shaped as much by Goethe and Beethoven as by Pushkin and Tchaikovsky. And then there was Nikolai’s older brother, Emil. The eldest of Karl’s five sons, Emil may have possessed the most powerful intellect of the Medtner brothers, and it was he who most strongly inherited their father’s…

The work Countless performances by choirs and an enormous crop of recordings testify to the enduring popularity of one of Antonio Vivaldi’s greatest hits. His Gloria in D major, RV589 is so deeply embedded in the choral repertory as to fall into the category of eternal fixtures, a billing that disguises its disappearance for almost two centuries after the composer’s death. This multi-movement setting of a key text from the Latin Mass was possibly written in 1713-17 – together with a now-lost Kyrie – for the residents of the Ospedale della Pietà, one of four charitable institutions for the orphaned and abandoned girls of Venice, many of whom had been fathered by philandering noblemen or Grand Tour visitors to the north Italian city-state. Vivaldi taught music to and composed for…

Schubert Symphony No. 8, ‘Unfinished’; Symphony No. 9 in C, ‘The Great’ Gewandhausorchester/Herbert Blomstedt DG 486 3045 87:02 mins (2-discs) These two discs hardly need reviewing: they contain perfect performances of two of the greatest symphonies ever written, recorded with extra directness and detail. Of course people are going to make a fuss about Herbert Blomstedt’s being 94 at the time of recording, perhaps the oldest conductor of anything ever. What matters is that there is no respect in which these masterpieces could be more completely realised. What is sometimes called the Seventh, also known as the ‘Unfinished’, is treated in its intensity as something of which one wouldn’t want a bar more – it makes you wish there were more unfinished symphonies: the balance of the two movements seems…

Kaleidoscope Songs and Arias by Gounod, Lehár, Massenet, Messager, Offenbach, O Straus, Weill et al Fatma Said (soprano); Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra/Sascha Goetzel Warner Classics 5419713921 64:51 mins Following Fatma Said’s triumphant first album El Nour was never going to be easy, but Kaleidoscope traces an equally original, loosely chronological journey through song, opera, operetta, zarzuela, tango, jazz, swing, musical theatre and pop in a self-described ‘montage’, ending with Whitney Houston’s 1987 chart-topping ‘I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)’. The first half leans heavily on dances from operas, accompanied by the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra. Pieces range from the familiar (Offenbach’s ‘Nuit d’amour’ with a well-matched Marianne Crebassa) to the obscure (Messager’s La fiancée en loterie, anyone?). The orchestra under Sascha Goetzel is sometimes too polite for this…

Romantic Piano Masters Music by Franck, Thalberg, Liszt, Chopin, Schubert Mariam Batsashvili (piano) Warner Classics 9029629061 67:19 mins In this glorious record, Mariam Batsashvili has matched a series of Liszt’s operatic ‘paraphrases’ with transcriptions from other composers; her purpose is to highlight their excellence, and also the contrasts between them. Such contrasts would have set the keynote, for example, in the celebrated piano duel between Liszt and Sigismond Thalberg in the Paris salon of Countess Cristina Belgiojoso in 1837. And as this young Georgian pianist points out, pitting Liszt’s transcription of extracts from two scenes in Gounod’s Faust against Thalberg’s Caprice on arias from Bellini’s La sonnambula does show up how differing in their approaches the two virtuosos were. Thalberg’s has moments of magnificence, but its pianistic effects are conventional;…

Roger Thomas takes in unusual duo combos and shows that age is but a number Wadada Leo Smith The Emerald Duets Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet, piano), Pheeroan akLaff (drums), Andrew Cyrille (drums), Han Bennink (drums and percussion), Jack DeJohnette (drums, piano, Fender Rhodes) TUM BOX 006 (5-discs) Big recording projects like this are relatively rare, so it’s pleasing to be able to draw attention to this five-disc celebration of Wadada’s 80th birthday last December. Like the late Cecil Taylor, he has an affinity for drummers and has made a point of making duo recordings with them, those gathered together here are from sessions in 2014, ’19 and ’20. The apparent gulf between the sonic attributes of the instruments involved is fascinating rather than distracting, allowing everything that might have happened…

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 377/Oct 2022, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA to arrive by 4 Oct 2022 (solution in Xmas 2022 issue). ACROSS 1/26 Tremendous case I set out for piece by 2 (8,2,5) 5 Judge assessment of sound first in sort of bug (6) 10 Keyboard instrument in case found in church aisle finally (7) 11 Remove errors from sources in every decade, including everything from Ravel? (4,3) 12 Hate alto and bass getting in front of brass instrument? Not entirely (5) 13/14 Work by 2 bad in mono, unfortunately, including…