Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i BBC Music Magazine

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Marin Alsop is looking a little tired. So am I. I’ve been pursuing her since May when she was in London to give a masterclass (sic) for female conductors at the Royal Festival Hall (it was riveting), to make her debut with the Philharmonia (their Shostakovich Fifth Symphony brought the house down), and to spend a weekend recording Australian composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg’s The Moons Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) at St Luke’s – a wildly ambitious, highly cinematic, 45-minute, seven-movement piece that portrays different moons in the solar system, ending with our own. Signum Records will release the fruits of that intense weekend of recording in October – the month of Alsop’s 66th birthday. OTHER THAN A FEW brief snatches of conversation over lunchtime sandwiches, there was…

Los Angeles Philharmonic Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, 6-9 October Web: www.laphil.com Whether nurturing the Pan-American Music Initiative or conducting four concert performances of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, music director Gustavo Dudamel is all over a season that celebrates John Adams’s 75th birthday and, in February, Rachmaninov’s complete piano concertos. There’s Mahler in triplicate, launched in October by Dudamel, who pairs Symphony No. 1 with Gabriela Ortiz’s new violin concerto. Apollo’s Fire Shaker Heights, Akron, Bay Village, 8-15 October Web: www.apollosfire.org Thirtieth anniversary celebrations done and dusted, Jeanette Sorrell’s period instrument group promises ‘sparks of joy in a fragmented world’. There should be sparks aplenty in the first Ohio offering: Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. A ‘Baroque Bistro’ ushers in the new year, ‘Exiles’ tackles the Jewish and African diasporas,…

Piatigorsky wrote to Hindemith in 1940, ‘I believe your concerto is the greatest and most brilliant ever written so far.’ Its totally idiomatic cello writing and supreme control of motivic texture and structure is complemented by its clear orchestration and expressive neo-classicism. Walton used the theme of the Concerto’s second movement for his Variations on a Theme by Hindemith. (Johannes Moser (cello); Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern/Christoph Poppen Hänssler HAEN93276) In Rautavaara’s second cello concerto, Towards the Horizon (2009), continuous mystic cello melodies soar over piquantly expressive orchestral harmonies. Divinely scrunchy doublestops open the work and return at the close, as the cello’s last utterances climb way beyond the fingerboard, towards an ethereal close. (Truls Mørk (cello); Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra/John Storgårds Ondine ODE 11782) A perfumed shimmering impressionism graces the…

Bruckner Symphony No. 4 (1878-81) – plus alternative Allegro moderato (1878); Andante quasi Allegretto (1878); Scherzo (1874, rev 1876); Finale (1881 unabridged) London Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle LSO Live LSO 0875 126:37 mins (2 discs) Bruckner has now become so popular that it is possible for the London Symphony Orchestra to publish two accounts of his Fourth Symphony, which can only be bought as a pair, with the consequent increase in price. I must say straightaway that the first disc’s worth of music contains the finest account of the Fourth Symphony I have ever heard, thanks to the extreme simplicity of the approach. With Bruckner it is tempting, with his endless rallentandos and portentous moving towards even sub-climaxes, to accelerate or slam on the brakes. Rattle has none of that (unusual…

This month: Butcher Brown You could stick a ‘jazz’ label on Butcher Brown, but the five-piece collective are likely to have peeled it off by the time you next hear from them. Downbeat magazine described their 2014 debut, All Purpose Music, as ‘groove buoyed and genre subversive’. Their newest, Butcher Brown Presents Triple Trey featuring Tennishu and R4ND4ZZO BIGB4ND, is a spectacular fusion of classic big band sounds and hiphop. A seemingly improbable pairing, it makes perfect sense for a group that grew up in Richmond, Virginia, US. ‘There’s a tradition of big bands in Richmond. They’re always present. But they’ve developed a modern sound, with traditional instrumentation,’ says producer/instrumentalist DJ Harrison. ‘Like Miles Davis, what we put into our music represents the current times’ What started as a passion project…

Your recital in Leeds on 22 November ranges from Vaughan Williams to the present day. How did you put it together? It is based around Robert Louis Stevenson and his travels. He was a Scot, and James MacMillan’s Three Scottish Songs are very much part of the folk song repertoire. There are also three folk songs by Grainger – he was from Australia, which was one of the places that Stevenson travelled to in and around the South Pacific. He also spent a lot of time in France, hence the inclusion of three Duparc songs. And Vaughan Williams’s Songs of Travel sets Stevenson’s own words. Plus, there’s a new work by Cheryl Frances-Hoad? Cheryl’s Small Journeys sets words by Adam Strickson, who has written about walks around his home town of Slaithwaite…

Alan Davey to depart from Radio 3 The controller will step down from his role next March Alan Davey has announced that he is to step down as controller of BBC Radio 3 next March. After eight years in the highprofile post, he says that he now wishes to concentrate on his academic activities and on work to support arts and music organisations. ‘Choosing when to move on is always tricky,’ he says, ‘but now is the time for me to hand over the role to someone else. They will inherit, to borrow a phrase, on a bad day the best job in Britain, and on a good day the best job in the world.’ Formerly chief executive of Arts Council England, the Stockton-born Davey joined Radio 3 in January…

This month: EUGENE DRUCKER Violinist, Emerson String Quartet OUR FINEST MOMENT Beethoven String Quartet No. 13 in B flat major, Op. 130 – Cavatina Emerson String Quartet DG 449 5052 (1996) We had a slight disagreement the day we recorded this. I wanted to begin with one of the other inner movements of this monumental work. Essentially, I wanted to warm up in my role as first violin with something easier than the Cavatina. My colleagues were worried that if we got into another movement, we might not record the Cavatina until after lunch and would either be too tired to play our absolute best or else exhibit signs of the dreaded ‘after-lunch’ syndrome of slow vibrato and uninspired phrasing while digesting our food. So I yielded, and we began…

In October 1976, the tenor Peter Pears was in Canada to perform music by Benjamin Britten, his partner of 37 years. Midway through a newspaper interview, the phone rang. The news from Suffolk was bad: Britten, just 62 but with a failing heart, was fading quickly. As it was, he would be dead before Christmas. ‘The festival is secure, thank God. The big push now is to get the study centre at Aldeburgh properly established,’ Pears told the reporter after hanging up. It was, he said, ‘Ben’s greatest wish’. Known today as the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme (BPYAP), the ‘study centre’ started life in 1972, when nine singers were invited to Snape Maltings to take part in a masterclass given by Pears alongside his teacher Lucie Manen. The following 50…

New Zealand Opera Mayfair Theatre, Dunedin, New Zealand, 12, 13 October Web: www.nzopera.com Given its world premiere last May, Kenneth Young’s The Strangest of Angels gets a second outing in October as part of the Dunedin Arts Festival. But it’s not the only new work in New Zealand Opera’s armoury this season. December brings Ihitai ‘Avei’a – Star Navigator by Tim Finn (of Crowded House fame). Verdi’s Macbeth, meanwhile, stalks Wellington and Christchurch; and on 27 October Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja gives a recital in Auckland. Israel Philharmonic Orchestra  The Lowy Concert Hall, Tel Aviv, Israel, 10-15 October Web: www.ipo.co.il Pianists Martha Argerich and András Schiff plus violinists Vilde Frang and Gil Shaham are among the high-profile soloists as the Israel Philharmonic’s 86th season spices things up with Ravel’s opera L’heure…

The work ‘You know I failed my composition exam at Oxford University,’ laughed William Walton when he appeared on Desert Island Discs in 1982. But Walton had the last laugh, penning one of the most glorious cello concertos of the 20th century. He had already composed a Violin Concerto for Jascha Heifetz in 1939, and his friend the Russian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky was not about to be left out, requesting that he write him a concerto too. Walton famously replied, ‘I am a professional composer. I write anything for anybody if they pay me. Naturally, I write much better if I am paid in American dollars.’ A bewitching melody incants wistfully over a pulsating vibraphone and harp at the start According to the memoirs of Walton’s wife Susana, he was…

Mozart Complete Piano Sonatas Robert Levin (fortepiano)  ECM ECM 2710-16 377:11 mins (7 discs) Robert Levin, fortepianist, professor emeritus at Harvard and much more besides, is one of few people who have ever been granted access to play Mozart’s own fortepiano in Salzburg. Thought to have been made by the Walter firm around 1782, this was the instrument on which Mozart would have created and performed most of his Viennese-period piano music. Despite its age, it sounds in splendid shape, having been lovingly maintained by the Mozarteum Foundation. Levin draws from it a silvery, open, singing treble, a characterfully woody tenor register, a chunky bass and, besides great clarity, a pearly contrast when using the knee-operated felt damper. You might think the instrument’s modest size and sound would restrict expression,…

Origins Bartók: Romanian Folk Dances; Hungarian Folksongs from Csìk; Maxwell Davies: Farewell to Stromness; Debussy: Syrinx; Parker: Ornithology; Piazzolla: Histoire du Tango – Café 1930 etc Stravinsky: Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet (arr. recorder); Chanson Russe; Traditional: She moved through the fair etc Lucie Horsch (recorders); Fuse Ensemble et al Decca 485 3192 62:23 mins Since the 16th century, recorder players have tailored music originally written for other media, and in so doing, have been able to demonstrate the versatility of their instrument. Decca’s signing of the young Dutch player Lucie Horsch recalls aspects of Michala Petri’s relationship with Philips between 1979 and 1987. Recorded in the celebrated studios of Hilversum’s Muziekcentrum, Origins, Horsch’s third Decca release, is a sonic manifestation of the subsequent transformations of the recorder’s status. Horsch…

Where is Home (Hae Ke Kae) Works by JS Bach, GB Platti and Abel Selaocoe Abel Selaocoe (cello, vocals) and guests incl. Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Elizabeth Kenny (theorbo)  Warner Classics 9029622433 55:18 mins Sincegraduating in2018fromtheRoyalNorthern College of Music, following studies in his native South Africa, Abel Selaocoe has been hugely in-demand. Few cellists can boast playing at WOMAD, the London Jazz Festival and filling the Queen Elizabeth Hall. No wonder Yo-Yo Ma guests on one track: Selaocoe embodies Ma’s vision of a truly multicultural musical future. Cellist, singer, composer and collaborator, Selaocoe inhabits a captivating sphere of spontaneous, mercurial creativity. Where is Home explores the African traditions and Western Baroque music that have shaped him. Most moving is the evocation of his mother singing a counter melody as he practised…

THIS MONTH: PREMIUM ACTIVE NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONES IDEAL CHOICE FOR TRAVELLING Technics EAH-A800 £299 With grown-up looks, premium materials, hi-res-loving Bluetooth 5.2 and a neat, folding design, these headphones are a treat. And with a 50hr battery life, they should appeal to anyone who travels, or simply forgets to charge their gadgets. Sonically, Technics’s 40mm dynamic drivers do a superb job. The control app offers plenty of settings – there’s 100 stages of Active Noise Cancellation available, and you can play at being a sound engineer all day with the EQ settings. There’s even Alexa and Siri voice control built-in. But its noise cancelling, although good, is outclassed by Sony (see below). Technics.com BEST FOR NOISE CANCELLING Sony WH-1000XM5 £379 This boasts the best ANC I’ve experienced. Dead quiet when in…

Grand cru tenor Laurence Kilsby enjoyed a bubbly moment in early September as he was named as the winner of the Wigmore Hall/Bollinger International Song Competition. The 24-year-old British tenor is no stranger to competition success, although he was a few inches shorter the last time he hit the headlines: in 2009, he was a treble at Tewkesbury Abbey when he won the title of BBC Radio 2 Young Chorister of the Year. Brilliant in Banff Also enjoying life at the top are the Isidore String Quartet, who have won the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition (BISQC) in Canada. The American foursome enjoyed victory at the end of an event that saw nine quartets from around the world perform in four different programmes across seven days. The Norwegian/Swedish quartet…

A move to Dubai in 2007 saw British-born Joanna Marsh found both the Dubai Opera Festival Chorus and ChoirFest Middle East, while establishing herself as a much-admired composer of choral music and song. The United Strings of Europe and Gandini Juggling premiere her Another Eden at Kings Place on 28 October. I had quite a good background for writing choral music. I was an organist and I’ve worked with choirs, so it’s comfortable and familiar. But I like it because when I find a text that I want to set, I really enjoy the feeling of the theatricality of that. I think of texts much more as something that’s to be expressed. Judith Bingham became a very important mentor for me. We had a strong friendship and I’d send her my…

‘Riding under fire and rockets is a very interesting experience, but I do not wish it on anyone.’ So Yurii Chekan of the Kyiv Conservatory wrote to me earlier this year, recalling his fraught experience of escaping under Russian fire from his home in Vorzel, a small village outside Bucha. Having been trapped in their basement for a week, he and his family had made several attempts to escape: ‘It was very dangerous. We drove about 5km from home three times and came back three times. Fortunately, my sonin-law, who works in the Ukrainian army, told me about a safe path, and we finally came out of this hell. We are all alive, and this is the most important thing. I lost my library, all my notes, my sketches, but…

UK The Marian Consort Little Missenden Church, Amersham, 9 October Web: www.marianconsort.co.uk Currently touring a subversive Tudor programme bookended by settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah by Tallis and Osbert Parsley, the Marian Consort includes Byrd’s pointed ‘Why do I use my paper, ink and pen?’. At the end of the month, music that inspired JS Bach comes under the spotlight. Welsh National Opera Venue Cymru, Llandudno, 15 October Web: www.wno.org.uk Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) preaches ‘enlightenment’ next spring, and across autumn Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair holds court with Puccini’s La bohème. But autumn also revives Will Todd’s Migrations. A multilayered exploration ranging from the migration of birds to the fate of migrants down the centuries, it was premiered in the summer, and after Llandudno visits Plymouth, Birmingham…

Flying into Friedman Memorial Airport, the gateway to Sun Valley, is a truly dazzling experience. The Bald and Dollar Rockies slowly rise up to dominate the skyline – and if you’re lucky enough to be touching down during a summer sunset, the pink- and orange-hued sky above the sparsely populated pinecovered landscape is a wonder to behold. Sun Valley is a resort city in Blaine County, Idaho – and the name used colloquially for the larger surrounding region, including the neighbouring town of Ketchum and the Wood River Valley area, encompassing Hailey and Bellevue. It is largely famous as a skiing destination during the winter months: the slopes of ‘Baldy’ and Dollar provide the perfect combination of uninterrupted verticals for expert sportsmen and gentler inclines for beginners, all bathed in…

Handel Amadigi di Gaula Tim Mead, Mary Bevan, Anna Dennis, Hilary Summers, Patrick Terry; Early Opera Company/Christian Curnyn Chandos CHSA 0406(2) (CD/SACD) 157:16 mins (2 discs) Handel took a less-is-more approach to his Amadigi di Gaula. Christian Curnyn’s answering restraint reveals the stark solos, shimmering textures, ringing silences and stunning one-to-a-part counterpoint of music that fairly bursts with its composer’s early genius. Written in 1715 to indulge King George I’s French taste, Amadigi is Handel’s three-act Italian opera version of a five-act 1699 tragédie lyrique. Its action revolves around jealous sorceress Melissa’s failure to wrest Amadigi from his beloved Oriana, a story which moved Handel to write starkly contrasting numbers, including nine slow laments and some of the most sensual wind solos of his career. Curnyn casts the work’s voice,…

Aside from his duties in Philadelphia, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin has been making beautiful music with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Beethoven – The Symphonies (DG 486 3050) is the third of their composer-focused recording projects, as recorded in Baden-Baden in the summer of 2021. Such a full account by musicians of this calibre is obviously welcome, but this take is notable as it’s the first complete recording of the works based on their new Urtext edition. The Ninth is especially notable as it features a reconstructed contrabassoon part, discovered during extensive research by the Beethoven Archive in Bonn. Speaking of high-calibre, if you’re a JS Bach fan you won’t want to to miss Isabelle Faust plays Bach (Harmonia Mundi HMX290403240). The eight-disc collection of Violin Concertos, Sonatas, Partitas and more…

Joshua Redman Quartet LongGone Joshua Redman (tenor saxophone), Brad Mehldau (piano), Christian McBride (bass), Brian Blade (drums)  Nonesuch Records 75597910032 When the Joshua Redman Quartet made its debut in 1994 with MoodSwing, the 20-something year olds were not your stereotypical Generation Xers. Far from sounding disaffected like many of their peers, the group’s polished post-bop projected an urbane confidence. In the intervening years (the band was together for just 18 months), its members have all forayed into more challenging contemporary territory. But, reuniting for LongGone, the years fall away as the timeless music they make together falls back into place. Redman still leads from the front, providing six straightahead original numbers for his sidemen to revel in. His playing on the title track has the sweet, restrained feel of a…

Music at Tresanton Methodist Chapel, St Mawes, 4-6 November Web: musicattresanton.co.uk Beethoven spearheads this year’s festival in the handsomely refurbished chapel. Pianist and artistic director Noam Greenberg anchors four concerts and four cellists in a survey of the complete cello sonatas – Adrian Brendel wraps the series up with Op. 102, set alongside music by Adès, Liszt and Frescobaldi. Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Barbican, London, 4, 5 November Web: barbican.org.uk After a six-year gap, the Amsterdam ensemble returns for a residency under conductor Daniel Harding. The first concert pairs Brahms’s Violin Concerto – with Leonidas Kavakos as soloist – with Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony. The following night, Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 takes centre stage. Orchestra of Welsh National Opera St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 4 November Web: stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk With Janáček’s The Excursions of…