Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2022 i BBC Music Magazine

Tel: +44 (0)117 300 8752 Email: music@classical-music.com Post: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol BS1 4ST SUBSCRIPTIONS & BACK ISSUES Tel: 03330 162 118 Web: buysubscriptions.com/contactus Post: BBC Music Magazine, PO Box 3320, 3 Queensbridge, Northampton Follow us on Twitter @musicmagazine Like us on Facebook facebook.com/classicalmagazine Find us online classical-music.com Subscribe to our podcast Subscribe today to BBC Music Magazine Save money on newsstand prices! See p10 for our fantastic offer…

See the CD booklet notes for full track details César Franck Symphony in D minor Le chasseur maudit* Artists BBC Symphony Orchestra *BBC National Orchestral of Wales Fabien Gabel (conductor) *Tadaaki Otaka (conductor) Track 4 (Le chasseur maudit) included by kind permission of Chandos Records www.chandos.net www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209342 To download the inlay details for our cover CDs each month, visit classical-music.com/issues To celebrate the 200th anniversary of César Franck’s birth, this month’s cover CD features two of his most celebrated orchestral works: the D minor Symphony and the symphonic poem Le chasseur maudit (‘The Accursed Huntsman’). Born in Liège in 1822, but based in France from 1844, Franck’s reputation until he turned 50 was built mainly on his remarkable skills as an organist, extemporiser and pedagogue, with only a handful of…

The history books are not short of great performers and composers whose burgeoning careers as musical prodigies were micromanaged at every degree by their parents. The father of Muzio Clementi, however, did exactly the opposite. When Muzio was 14, his father agreed to let Sir Peter Beckford, a wealthy Englishman visiting Italy, take his son away to his estate in Dorset. There, young Muzio would entertain Beckford’s family in return for a sponsored musical education, with Sir Peter later claiming to have ‘bought’ Clementi for a seven-year period. Those seven years, however dubiously arranged, were crucial in honing the spectacular keyboard technique which later brought Clementi face to face with another precociously talented musician – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In December 1781, Clementi, now aged 29, was visiting Vienna as part…

Jubilee String Quartet Tereza Privratska (violin): Recently I re-listened to Nigel Kennedy’s 1992 take on Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. I heard him playing it live in 2008 in Prague and I remember being fascinated but also overwhelmed – as a student, I almost couldn’t process all that was happening on stage. Now I can finally put words to it. This playing is just so fresh! It all makes so much sense and I feel refreshed by the broken convention – no prejudicial approach to music, yet respecting all that needs to be respected. Lorena Cantó Woltèche (viola): It is possibly due to my obsession with Mozart that I was initially attracted to the recording of his Sonatas for four hands, K521 & K497 by pianists Ferenc Rados and Kirill Gerstein, but ever since…

Thomas Adès As his ballet The Dante Project is released on Opus Arte, the British composer speaks to Steph Power about the all-consuming nature of creating – and breaking – musical rules It seems remarkable that career firsts are still possible for this composer, conductor and pianist extraordinaire. Born in 1971, he burst onto the scene as a youngster in the 1990s with audacious works including the chamber opera Powder Her Face (1995) and orchestra piece Asyla (1997), whose sheer facility and invention swiftly secured his recognition worldwide as one of the outstanding composers and musicians of our time. Since then, he has continued to reap widespread acclaim with a prodigious output and performances spanning intimate chamber venues to the New York Metropolitan Opera House. Yet, as our conversation unfolds…

Why did you want to bring Brahms and Dvořák together? I always found, especially in Germany and Austria, this poignant acknowledgement that Dvořák learned a lot from Brahms. Of course I agreed with this, but I also criticised it as being a bit of a cliché; the idea of Dvořák as being the minor master next to Brahms, as if only Brahms showed him how to do the symphony properly. At the same time I have to acknowledge that there are passages and formal structures in his symphonies – especially Nos 6 and 7 – which remind us of Brahms heavily. So it seemed like the most natural thing to do, to bring those two composers close to each other. Including the sets of Hungarian Dances is a nice touch……

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Gordon Getty Goodbye, Mr. Chips Nathan Granner, Marnie Breckenridge, Kevin Short, Lester Lynch; Young People’s Chorus of New York City; Barbary Coast Orchestra/Nicole Paiement Pentatone PTC 5187 026 (EP) 24:19 mins James Hilton’s 1934 novella about teacher Mr Chipping and his life at an all-boys British boarding school now finds new life as an opera. Goodbye, Mr. Chips was premiered as a filmed production in 2021 due to Covid restrictions and this EP offers highlights from the soundtrack. Tenor Nathan Granner charms as the title character, reflecting on loss in ‘Long Remembered’, where the Young People’s Chorus of New York City represent the students of Brookfield, his much-loved school. The story is told through flashbacks, including dalliances with one headmaster (‘Ralston’s Redemption’), sung by bass-baritone Kevin Short, through whom we…

John Luther Adams Sila: the Breath of the World The Crossing; Jack Quartet; University of Michigan Chamber Musicians; University of Michigan Percussion Ensemble Cantaloupe CA21177 57:05 mins John Luther Adams’s music is like nobody else’s. Meditative in mood yet urgent in message, his compositions conjure up the wonders of the natural world with mesmerising grace, while also drawing attention to the horrors of ecological collapse. Indeed, Adams has spent a substantial portion of his working life as a conservationist and so brings a clearsighted perspective to environmental matters, which in turn lends his creative voice terrific power. A stellar line-up of performers and a crystal clear recording Adams often writes works that are epic in scale. Scored for double symphony orchestra, his Pulitzerwinning Become Ocean offered a tumultuous meditation on…

JS Bach Partita No. 2; French Suite No. 5; Flute Partita; Cello Suite No. 1 (arr. bassoon) Bram van Sambeek (bassoon) BIS BIS-2637 (CD/SACD) 67:46 mins The multifarious world of Bach transcriptions is cause for rejoicing. The composer himself was an avid transcriber of his own works and Bram van Sambeek follows in this distinguished line. A celebrated classical musician and teacher, Sambeek also performs and records contemporary jazz and rock. This collection of arrangements for bassoon of keyboard, cello and flute suites is bold, occasionally challenging, but almost always engaging. Inevitably there are problems in crafting versions for a solo instrument from keyboard works as richly textured as the C minor Partita for harpsichord and the Fifth French Suite. For the Partita, Sambeek creates a version for eight bassoons,…

December round-up Giving the Screen Choice a run for its money is Cinema, Alexandre Tharaud’s musical love letter to film music. The pianist himself curated the programme, which is anything but run-of-themill, Tharaud celebrating the movie music which has moved him since childhood and notable score selections that place the piano front and centre. French film looms largest, and there are delightful discoveries to be made, such as Philippe Sarde’s Le choses de la vie, alongisde classic pieces by Michel Legrand, Georges Delerue and Francis Lai, not to mention wellchosen examples by John Williams, Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone and Justin Hurwitz. Magical. (Erato 5419718461) Morricone fans won’t want to miss Ennio, a documentary film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore which was recently released on Bluray. At 156 minutes, it leaves…

1. The Wedding March in C major is the best known moment from which composer’s 1842 incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream? 2. Which fellow composer wrote in 1879 about Brahms’s Violin Concerto that ‘His music is not warmed by true feelings, there is no poetry in it, though it has great pretension to depth’? 3. Which 17th-century literary character is the subject of a burlesque by Telemann, a tone poem by Richard Strauss and an opera by Massenet? 4. In 1625, composer Nicholas Lanier became the first person to be appointed to which post? 5. In how many of Puccini’s operas do the title characters fail to make it to the final curtain still alive? And can you name them? 6. Where did Leonard Bernstein conduct a…

As a student, I loved performing César Franck’s Violin Sonata. Sometimes tempestuous, sometimes ethereal, it is one of the more technically accessible great works of a string repertoire teeming with fiendishly difficult pieces – though pianists who take on the meaty keyboard part have rather more notes to contend with! This month marks 200 years since Franck’s birth, and despite his significant influence on an entire school of French composers, relatively few of his compositions are performed regularly today. A highly skilled organist, he is sometimes considered limited in his outlook, but as Roger Nichols explains on page 26, there is so much to admire in his melodic and colourful language – not least in his orchestral and chamber works. Elsewhere in the issue we celebrate the lives and works…

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 LETTER of the MONTH Do the eyes have it? I enjoyed the Grand Final of BBC Young Musician (see p12), but it did lead me to wonder whether the judges would have come to the same conclusion had they only listened to the performances and not watched. To what extent does the visual aspect influence one’s opinion? For a live audience and those watching on TV, it’s interesting to see how players interact with each other and communicate with the audience. But essentially music is about listening. A flautist playing the Ibert Concerto is never going to be as visually flamboyant as a percussionist athleticly managing a battery…

So we have a coronation coming up. Come on, let’s have a practice shout of ‘Vivat Rex Carolus!’ I shall leave it to others to speculate on which of our present crop of British composers gets the royal nod to produce a suitably happy and glorious anthem for the crowning, and whether King Charles III will be bold enough to pick the ‘other’ ‘I Was Glad’ (Purcell’s very jolly setting, rather than Parry’s pompous effort), or one of the three Handel Coronation Anthems that isn’t ‘Zadok the Priest’. A more interesting question is how Charles might support classical music during his reign. Look through history and you find a select bunch of monarchs who genuinely loved music, supported it, and were often skilled musicians themselves. Henry VIII, for instance, may…

It is one of the best-known pieces of English classical music, famous from its inclusion each year in the Last Night of the Proms. Set as a hymn by Sir Hubert Parry during World War I, the words of the poem ‘And did those feet in ancient time’ were written by William Blake over a century before during another war, that against Napoleon. Blake’s stanzas appearedaspartofthePrefacetohisepic work Milton: A Poem in Two Books in 1804 and, although not widely read during his lifetime, by the end of the Victorian era these stanzas appeared in various anthologies and collections. One such collection was that produced by the poet laureate Robert Bridges in 1915. The Spirit of Man was intended to improve the spirits of the nation during the conflict against Germany,…

Roger Nichols visits the works of the greatest composers in France as he travels through 150 years of one of the most turbulent and creative periods of French music – from the late Romantic to the Modern. Foreword by Jeremy Sams ISBN 978-0-9957574-7-9 Hardback £30.00 A pioneer in his day of modern cello playing, Boccherini’s life and works are explored in this absorbing new biography. As a renowned cellist, he introduced techniques that greatly heightened the cello’s range and depth of expression. Foreword by Steven Isserlis ISBN 978-0-9957574-6-2 Hardback £45.00 One of today’s most refined and sought-after accompanists, Helmut Deutsch gives fascinating insights into technique, repertoire, professional relationships and the special qualities required for his profession in these candid memoirs. ISBN 978-0-9957574-4-8 Paperback £18.95 Twenty-four composers whose choral music is…

Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in December are: 28 Nov – 2 Dec Chopin 5-9 December Franck 12-16 December Leokadiya Kashperova 19-23 December JS Bach 26-30 December One-hit wonders Reinhold Glière was one of those composers whose allegiance to tradition either courted controversy or, more often than not, neglect. Regarded as a great musical icon in his native Ukraine, his reputation elsewhere remains mixed. Detractors accuse him of being an epigone, writing music in the style of Tchaikovsky well into the 20th century. The American scholar Richard Taruskin went even further, describing him as ‘a doddering relic’. Such disparagements ignore some incontestable aspects of Glière’s achievement. A convincing melodist and a superb technician, writing extremely attractive music, he was also…

We’re all about the joie de vivre this month, it seems, as there’s a distinctly French flavour to the music and artists in the pages that follow. Renaud Capuçon plays Chevalier de Saint-Georges (Joseph Bologne) and Les Talens Lyriques and friends bring us a sumptuous Lully opera, while Théotime Langlois de Swarte plays music by the Francœur brothers (see Chamber Choice) and Marina Rebeka goes on a Voyage through French song. It doesn’t end there, for on the Books page we discover Beethoven’s French Piano, while Roger Nichols takes us From Berlioz to Boulez. Then, finally, pianist Alexandre Tharaud performs a love letter to French cinema (among other films) in my own Screen round-up. Amusez-vous! This month’s critics John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Michael Beek, Terry Blain, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, Geoff Brown,…

John Adams My Father Knew Charles Ives; Slonimsky’s Earbox; Tromba Lontana; Lollapalooza Tonhalle Zurich/Paavo Järvi Alpha Classics ALPHA 874 54:28 mins A snapshot of John Adams’s music over two decades: the earliest piece, Tromba Lontana (1985) has some of the minimalist purity of Shaker Loops from a few years previously. Over a chugging accompaniment, short melodic fragments are repeated by two trumpets, whose placing off-stage leads to a few lapses of ensemble and rhythmic tightness. That isn’t a problem in Lollapalooza (1995), which, over an ostinato based on the internal rhythm of its title, explores a fairly limited and slowly changing harmonic profile, despite its in-your-face energy. From the same year, Slonimsky’s Earbox is more characteristic of Adams’s later style, still repetitive, but with a greater variety of rhythm and texture.…

Eclipse Dvořák: Violin Concerto; Ginastera: Violin Concerto; Sarasate: Carmen Fantasy, Op. 25 Hilary Hahn (violin); Frankfurt Radio Symphony/Andrés Orozco-Estrada DG 486 2383 73:17 mins This is the first album Hilary Hahn has recorded since the pandemic struck, and there appears to have been a striking change in her playing. Whereas before one was above all conscious of her captivating reproduction of the notes themselves, now her focus appears to have shifted to what lies behind the notes. Phrases are more subtly lingered over, as though on occasion she can hardly bear to let them go. More space is allowed for the music to breathe naturally, and when the notes start flying, there is a greater sense of exultation in the excitement generated. The Dvořák Concerto is notoriously tricky to bring off…

Lully Acis et Galatée Cyril Auvity, Ambroisine Bré, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Deborah Cachet, Philippe Estèphe; Chœur de Namur; Les Talens Lyriques/Christophe Rousset Aparté AP269 111:00 mins (2 discs) Lully wrote his last and perhaps greatest opera in 1686 to impress the next King of France. The score is stuffed with ravishing laments, sublime divertissements and virtuosic orchestral parts. Unlike in Ovid’s myth, his characters mature over time: for instance Galatée, though first capricious, comes to agonise over her failure to protect her beloved Acis from being murdered by the jealous cyclops Polypheme. Rousset’s mesmerising conducting binds chorus to band in Lully’s most striking passages, such as the yelps of a terrified chorus or the blow that kills Acis. The principals are equally arresting. As Galatée, Ambroisine Bré’s constant probing of character…

Beethoven Piano Trios, Op. 1 Nos 1 & 2 Rautio Piano Trio Resonus RES 10305 60:36 mins Fortepiano renderings of Beethoven’s keyboard works are increasingly popular these days. This recording comes with a persuasive encomium to the instrument’s potential by its fortepianist, Jan Rautio, who blames his violinist Jane Gordon for infecting him with her love of period instruments, and for what they can do to reveal ‘hidden truths’ in Baroque music. But he was more than ready to be infected, having noticed how difficult it was to achieve good balance in a group dominated by a modern piano. ‘I wanted transparency without sounding feeble,’ he writes, ‘variety of tone without resorting to melodramatic undulations of volume; greater clarity of articulation.’ A fortepiano, he adds, makes light work of these…

Visions Messiaen: Visions de l’Amen; plus pieces by Birtwistle, Enescu and Knussen Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Tamara Stefanovich (piano) Pentatone PTC 5186 957 68:47 mins Visions de l’Amen is extraordinary among works for two pianos. It is not just that Messiaen’s dazzling traversal of everything from the moment of creation to a radiantly joyful afterlife is musically overwhelming. Visions marks the transformation of his piano writing on encountering Yvonne Loriod’s seemingly limitless capabilities, inspiring his duo writing in which the breathtaking virtuosity of Loriod’s part takes wing from the principal themes and harmonies unfolding in Messiaen’s part. Few, if any, duos are better equipped to take on this mantle than Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich. Aimard’s exceptionally close association with Messiaen and Loriod goes back to his youth when he studied with…

Another Year of Wonder Clemency Burton-Hill Headline Home 464pp (pb) £14.99 In March 2020, we turned to music like never before. Concert halls fell silent and we were forced to retreat into our headphones to find solace in music. Weeks earlier, Clemency Burton-Hill had suffered a catastrophic brain haemorrhage and was in a coma for 17 days. It was music, she says, that kept her going. Burton-Hill’s raison-d’être has always been to demystify classical music and bring it to a wider audience. This book – a sequel to 2017’s Year of Wonder – is another thoughtfully curated selection of music for each day of the year. The range is impressive, with high levels of representation of female and LGBTQ+ composers from around the world, spanning thousands of years of music-making.…

December round-up This month’s Jazz Choice is a reminder of how jazz would have become a very different animal without input from popular song, directly and as a source of instrumental standards. Both aspects are manifest on She Said, the latest album from the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, which celebrates women in jazz as composers and performers in its general line-up and guest list, which includes Norma Winstone, Nikki Iles and Laura Jurd. It’s not exactly faultless either technically (upper brass glare abounds) or artistically (‘God Bless the Child’ really doesn’t work as a jollified mambo), but there’s something here for everyone and, as ever, the band’s endless energy and enthusiasm in tackling often demanding charts propels both players and listeners through the proceedings. The album also succeeds in its…

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 379/Dec 2022, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA to arrive by 29 Nov 2022 (solution in Feb 2023 issue). Your name & address SEPTEMBER WINNER JM Holmes, Beaconsfield Immediate Media Company Limited, publisher of BBC Music Magazine, may contact you with details of our products and/or to undertake research. Please write ‘Do Not Contact’ if you prefer not to receive such information by post or phone. Please write your email address on your postcard if you prefer to receive such information by e-mail. ACROSS 1 American composer, just 100…

Roger Nichols Author, editor and critic ‘I thought I knew César Franck’s music quite well, but researching for my article made me feel militant on behalf of two works I didn’t know: why are Les Sept Paroles and Psyché not in the repertoire?’ Page 26 Jason Whittaker Author and journalist ‘I spent the last decade hunting down everything there is to know about the hymn Jerusalem, set to music by Sir Hubert Parry. In this article, I explore the history of Parry’s music and some of its many arrangements.’ Page 36 Kate Wakeling Writer and musicologist ‘It’s been a joy to delve into the workings of the Ivors. A particular highlight was having behind-the-scenes chats with winning composers about everything from red carpets to the nitty-gritty of writing a…

The sonic extremes of storms, whether physical or cosmic, have attracted composers through the centuries –and with good reason, says Tom Service Storm’s coming. Composers have been storm-chasers for centuries, from Baroque operas to hyper-Romantic tone-poems, from modernist orchestral tempests to storms in a symphonic concert hall. Composers from Vivaldi to Xenakis are fascinated with putting the most dangerous – and dangerously sound-saturated – weather events that we face as human beings on stage, pushing their musical imaginations to try to transcend the drama of a real-world thunder-storm. And, compared to artists in any other field, composers are lucky when it comes to making their musical storms, because their medium is the same as the weather: time. Visual artists have to fix their storm-depictions to a static image, writers can…

Onething I’ve realised,’ says Gavin Higgins, ‘is that hardly anyone understands what being ‘One a composer is like. When you’re a composer you know how much time, energy, effort and stress goes into making a piece, but most people haven’t got a clue what it’s all about – which is fine! But even people who’ve been commissioning for years sometimes say things which take my breath away and I think: “Oh God, they really have no idea what composers do.”’ Sponsored by PRS for Music, the annual Ivors Composer Awards are all about recognising just how much blood, sweat and tears go into creating a new piece of music. ‘Composers often stay behind the scenes,’ notes director of the awards Fran Matthews, ‘and our mission is to raise their profile.…

‘Frederic William Wile castigated Richard Strauss as the ‘most successful producer of sheer din the world has ever known’ In an impassioned speech delivered at the United Nations in 1958, the great cellist Pablo Casals proclaimed his belief in the universality of music. Music, he argued, was the one artistic form of expression that ‘transcends language, politics and national boundaries’. Such idealism, however, stands in stark contrast to what actually happened during the first half of the 20th century, when two world wars ruptured open exchange between music and musicians on opposing sides in these conflicts. In Britain, this process began with a vengeance in August 1914 when the country was dragged into a four year-long struggle with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Coincidentally, war had broken out at roughly…

The composer Born in Lydney, Gloucestershire, in 1892, Howells studied in his teens with the organist and composer Herbert Brewer at Gloucester Cathedral, where he struck up a close friendship with fellow composer Ivor Gurney. Prevented by poor health from serving in World War I, he continued his studies at the Royal College of Music, where he would remain on the staff for most of his life. During the Second World War, he served as organist at St John’s College, Cambridge, and the latter part of his life saw him devote his time increasingly to writing organ and choral music. Building a Library is broadcast on Radio 3 at 9.30am each Saturday as part of Record Review. A highlights podcast is available on BBC Sounds. The work How different might…

Brahms: Symphonies Nos 1 & 2; Dvořák Symphonies Nos 6 & 7 etc Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Jakub Hrůša Tudor TUD1741 108:31 (2 discs) & TUD1742 84:33 mins (2 discs) Jakub Hrůša and the Bamberger Symphoniker brought out their first release in this intriguing survey of Brahms and Dvořák symphonies some years ago to high critical acclaim. An equally impressive sequel followed some months later. Now, after a slight hiatus, we can at last enjoy the generously packaged completed cycle in outstanding sound. I have already commented upon the great advantage this particular series offers in enabling the listener to engage in a closer appreciation of the complex musical relationship that existed between these two formidable composers. Hearing Brahms’s Second and Dvořák’s Sixth side by side, for example, demonstrates a fascinating cross-fertilisation…

Berg Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6; Passacaglia (orch. A Davis); Violin Concerto*; Piano Sonata, Op. 1 (orch. A Davis) *James Ehnes (violin); BBC Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Davis Chandos CHSA 5270 (CD/SACD) 66:02 mins James Ehnes gives a hauntingly elegiac account of Berg’s Violin Concerto. This, the composer’s last work, was written in memory of the young daughter of Alma Mahler and the architect Walter Gropius, and Ehnes makes it sound like a requiem not only for Manon Gropius, but also for Berg himself. His mellow tone is ideally captured on the recording, as is his readiness to play the role of accompanist when the main melodic line lies in the orchestra. The Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6 were written at a time when Berg was already turning over in…

Berg • Brahms Berg: Violin Concerto ‘To the Memory of an Angel’; Brahms: Violin Concerto Christian Tetzlaff (violin); Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Robin Ticciati Ondine ODE 1410-2 71:08 mins In his booklet notes, the violinist Christian Tetzlaff points out that he has played these two central pillars of the concerto repertoire literally hundreds of times, and his intimate knowledge of every corner of the music certainly shows in his performances. His remarks on the autobiographical content of the Berg are fascinating, and although many of his points are well known to Berg scholars – the encoded references to the composer’s secret love for the sister of the writer Franz Werfel, the nostalgic recalling of an early affair with a Carinthian serving-girl, and so on – some details he provides there are new.…

Choral & Song Reviews Byrd Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets (1611): Come, woeful Orpheus; Retire, my soul; A feigned friend; Awake mine eyes; What is life, or worldly pleasure? etc The Sixteen/Harry Christophers; Fretwork CORO COR 16193 89:55 mins (2 discs) Byrd’s 1611 publication of works for between three and six voices was one of the last collections he issued. It has received little attention in the recording studios and should not be confused with his 1588 anthology of Psalmes, Sonnets and Songs which was uniformly for five voices. We have here a mixture of full choral anthems, verse anthems (sections for solo voice accompanied by viols, followed by others for full choir), consort songs (solo voice plus instruments) and vocal ensemble songs approaching the madrigal style. This provides excellent material…

Les frères Francœur Works by F, L and L-J Francœur; plus works by Anet, Durocher and Rebel Théotime Langlois de Swarte (violin), Justin Taylor (harpsichord) Alpha Classics ALPHA895 78:29 mins Plaudits to violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and his Le Consort colleague, harpsichordist Justin Taylor, and Alpha Classics for this truly commanding documentation of 18th-century French music. Les frères Francœur presents a family tree in sound, with music by brothers Louis and François Francœur and Louis’s son Louis-Joseph alongside works by compatriots Jean-Jacques-Baptiste Anet, François Rebel and Jean Durocher. Aided by authoritative booklet notes, the album takes us on an enchanting journey through repertoire which to many will be unfamiliar. Indeed, 21 of the album’s 31 tracks are world-premiere recordings. Under the Bourbon King Louis XV, the Paris Opéra or…

Alex Baranowski Portrait Angèle Dubeau (violin); La Pietà Analekta AN28750 Dubeau and La Pietà can be relied upon not only to deliver performances of sparkling beauty, but also to champion music by composers you may not have discovered. British composer Baranowski proves a worthy subject, Wiosna setting the tone for a transcendent album. (MB) Amanda Lee Falkenberg The Moons Symphony etc London Symphony Orchestra/Marin Alsop et al Signum Classics SIGCD730 This ambitious project is brought to life by a sizzling LSO and gutsy London Voices. The seven movements – each depicting a moon in our solar system – owe a significant debt to film composers John Williams, Howard Shore et al. But taken in the right spirit, this is musical painting on an infectiously grand scale. (CS) Foerster Symphony No.…

Part of a well-known British musical family, Mary Bevan enjoys acclaim as one of today’s most effortlessly versatile singers, equally at home in Baroque, Classical and contemporary repertoire. A consummate actor who has appeared on opera stages in roles ranging from Eurydice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice to the title role in Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Coraline. She and her sister Sophie, also a soprano, were both awarded the MBE in 2019. My father was director of music of Holy Redeemer Church in Chelsea, so I started singing in the choir at seven. I learnt to read music there, surrounded by family, and what a wonderful place to do that! We didn’t have a television at home so we either read, played in the garden or played music. My favourite after-school pastime…