Innholdsfortegnelse for Christmas 2022 i BBC Music Magazine

Christmas. Whether the word fills you with joy or horror will likely be connected in some way to musical memory. From Slade’s ear-splitting vocals to Rudolf’s red nose, the festive season is certainly responsible for cheesy crimes against melody – but there are also countless examples of classical brilliance, both sacred and secular. For Diana Damrau, Christmas holds picture-postcard recollections of a childhood in Bavaria, and it’s her wish to share that ‘exceptional feeling’ that has inspired her to record a double album, My Christmas, featuring ‘Blessed’ and ‘Festive’ fare – including two versions of her favourite, Silent Night. Well known for herbel canto performances, she is drawn post pandemic to simpler, less showy repertoire, focusing instead on giving ‘comfort’ and sharing ‘wonderful moments’, as she explains to Rebecca Franks…

‘I’m playing all the right notes… but not necessarily in the right order.’ ‘I’m This punchline, uttered by an affronted Eric Morecambe on the BBC’s Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show in 1971, made instant comedy history, and is still wheeled out today by those light-heartedly attempting to conceal their musical ineptitude. Morecambe’s straight man for the sketch was none other than the celebrated conductor André Previn, whose efforts to co-ordinate the start of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with would-be soloist Morecambe prove fruitless. Frustrated at the apparent insolence of ‘Mr Preview’, Morecambe pins the hapless celebrity aggressively by the lapels before delivering his famously self-justifying one-liner. The ‘Grieg Concerto sketch’ was not in fact an entirely new creation. It had first aired in a 1963 episode of the ITV series Two…

Organist and conductor Anna Lapwood shares three recordings well worth discovering Caroline Shaw Partita for 8 voices Roomful of Teeth New Amsterdam NWAM050 I came across this when I was hosting a show on local radio. I love the way she plays around with the idea of ‘when does the music start?’. As conductors we’re always nagging our choirs to think about the breath as part of the music, and so I love the fact that she’s actually written that into this piece; you start to hear the breath as being just as important as the musical note itself. Also, overtone singing is not something you would think of as being moving, but the way it’s achieved here always gives me goosebumps. Lutosławski Concerto for Orchestra Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Daniel Barenboim Elatus…

Pacifica Quartet Austin Hartman (violin): I have three boys, so finding a quiet moment to do my own listening is a premium. When I do, it’s very practical, so I enjoy absorbing the music of composers we have programmed. I was pleasantly surprised to find a short piece by Joseph Schwantner for violin, vocal quartet and glass harmonica. Called Daydreams, it’s inspired by a portrait of the composer’s young mother and grandparents. It’s beautiful and evocative. Mark Holloway (viola): I’m a big fan of jazz and am totally enamoured with Sarah Vaughan. There’s a 1957 album called Live at Mr Kelly’s, from a famous jazz club in Chicago. Vaughan sings from the heart with such joy and spontaneity, and I am in such admiration of her artistry. She has not…

Diana Damrau does not own a dog. Neither do I. So it’s a real surprise to both of us when the black bag on the floor begins barking. ‘Is that yours?’ the German soprano asks me, and I tell her it’s not. Bemused and amused, we cross the room to investigate. As interview icebreakers go, this is fairly unorthodox. Backstage at Wigmore Hall, where Damrau gave a recital the evening before, we’re for the moment canine detectives rather than preparing to talk about her new Christmas album. It turns out that inside the bag – which is, on closer inspection, a discreet carrier with mesh panels at either end – is a tiny dog. We laugh and debate what to do. Pieces of the puzzle start to fit into place.…

The composer Olivier Messiaen was an early starter. Born in Avignon, southern France, in 1908, by the age of 11 he had entered the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers included Dukas, Dupré and Widor. In 1931, he was appointed organist at Paris’s Église de la Saint-Trinité, a post that he would go on to hold for 60 years – a spell only interrupted when, serving as medical auxiliary in the Second World War, he was captured and imporisoned for a year in Stalag VIII-A. There, he composed his Quartet for the End of Time, scored for the instruments available to him. He died in 1992, aged 83. Building a Library is broadcast on Radio 3 at 9.30am each Saturday as part of Record Review. A highlights podcast is available on…

It wouldn’t be the Christmas issue without some festive recordings to lift the spirits. If you need some musical encouragement to get into the swing of the season, then you’ll find plenty of must-hear releases in our round-up of the very best. The magic and sparkle continue with even more yuletide offerings in Brief Notes, a live recording of James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio in the choral pages and some perfect present ideas on the Books page – the Royal Opera House children’s book looks ideal for any little stars (on-or off-stage) in the making. If you’re trying to escape Christmas, then we’ve the usual feast of great works and glittering artists in the following pages. Pour yourself something warming and find some musical comfort and joy. Michael Beek Reviews editor…

Debussy • Dukas • Roussel Debussy: Jeux; Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune; Dukas: Fanfare pour précéder La Péri; La Péri; Roussel: Bacchus et Ariane – Suite No. 2 Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Domingo Hindoyan Onyx ONYX 4224 68:15 mins In general these are honest, respectful performances. In Dukas’s ballet music La Péri, the complex details are never allowed to swamp the logical argument, and the same goes for the second suite from Roussel’s ballet Bacchus et Ariane. Indeed, in ‘Ariane’s dance’, more could have been made of the dynamic variations for the solo violin and wind instruments. Debussy’s faun is presented in a suitable atmosphere of ecstatic languor. One or two details are not quite as they should be (breaking Debussy’s phrasing in bars 13-14 is surely unnecessary?), but the…

Brahms • C Schumann Brahms: Double Concerto for Violin and Cello; C Schumann: Piano Trio* Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin), Pablo Ferrández (cello), *Lambert Orkis (piano); Czech Philharmonic/Manfred Honeck Sony Classical 19658741102 60:08 mins Taken from live concerts in Prague earlier this year, the Double Concerto opens with a bold statement from the orchestra, immediately contradicted by Pablo Ferrández’s wayward, stop-go cadenza. Brahms did ask for it to be played in the style of a recitative, but also marked it ‘always in time’. Anne-Sophie Mutter is better disciplined, but, as the movement continues, there’s still a lot of pulling the music around. The Andante can take more flexibility, which the soloists give, producing lovely intense sounds much of the time, although they sometimes veer into sentimentality with heavy vibrato – Mutter in…

CPE Bach Flute Sonatas – H505, 542.5, 551, 555 & 562 Manuel Granatiero (flute), Marco Ceccato (cello), Yu Yashima (harpsichord); Accademia Ottoboni Arcana A537 64:54 mins Only one of CPE Bach’s flute sonatas was published in his lifetime – the solo A minor, H562 – although some 17 are attributed to him, five of which are included on this recording from period instrument ensemble, Accademia Ottoboni. Each varies in its response – always idiosyncratic – to the fashionable mores of the time, to which Bach seemed wilfully resistant. His style, the ‘Empfindsamer Stil’, was all about an appeal to the emotions, an emotive stop-off en route between the Baroque and the Classical, captured here with evocative skill by cellist Marco Ceccato, flautist Manuel Granatiero and harpischordist Yu Yashima. The A…

The Beloved Vision – Music in the Romantic Age Stephen Walsh Faber & Faber 432pp (hb) £25 Stephen Walsh traces the first stirrings of musical Romanticism back to Haydn’s unruly Sturm und Drang phase of the late 1760s and early 1770s. But the real subject of his book is 19th- and early-20th-century music, from Beethoven and Schubert to Sibelius and Elgar. Walsh makes much of the lingering influence of Wagner (though Schoenberg’s lushly post-Wagnerian masterpiece Gurrelieder curiously fails to rate a mention), and he has an enviable ability to penetrate right to the heart of the matter in few words. His chapter on the driving forces that make Beethoven’s music so unique occupies no more than 15 pages, and there’s a similarly concise and astute article on the symbiosis between…

THE QUIZ Your 12 questions for the Twelve Days of Christmas… 1. Of what voice type were the singers Ian Partridge (b1938) and Peter Pears (1910-86)? 2. The treble solo ‘Oh, for the wings of a dove’ features in which anthem, composed in 1844? 3. In Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, ‘Hens and Roosters’ precede which animals? 4. Inspired by various Baroque composers, The Birds is an orchestral work written in 1928 by whom? 5. Which character in Das Rheingold forges the ring that becomes the subject of Wagner’s four-opera cycle? 6. Begun in 1783, The Cairo Goose is an incomplete opera by whom? 7. Which 1936 choral work includes the aria ‘Olim lacus colueram’ in which a swan bemoans its fate as it is roasted on a spit? 8.…

When I was a boy I served or sang in the choirs of three different London churches simultaneously. I loved being in the choir because I got paid. We got a shilling for the regular services, half a crown for weddings and five shillings for funerals! I think we got more for funerals because there was always an anthem and maybe a requiem mass, so more rehearsal time was required. I don’t think I was very good, but I think I wore the surplice and the ruff well. I love ENGLISH HYMNS, ancient and modern, and I still go to bed singing Dear Lord and Father of Mankind – that’s how I get myself to sleep every night. My parents loved GILBERT & SULLIVAN and took me to see all…

Rebecca Franks Journalist and critic ‘I can never resist a festive album by an opera star, so it was a joy to talk to Diana Damrau about her beautiful new recording which was inspired by the Christmas traditions and music of her childhood in Bavaria.’ Page 26 Nicholas Kenyon Former controller, BBC Radio 3 ‘Now that I’ve exchanged 14 years of managing the Barbican for a visiting scholar role at Pembroke College, Cambridge, I’ve been researching the part that the BBC played in creating enthusiasm for early music.’ Page 46 Clare Stevens Music journalist ‘My Christmas wouldn’t be complete without singing at least one carol by John Rutter, and I enjoyed immersing myself in his seasonal sound world as I researched this month’s feature on his music.’ Page 58…

We reveal who’s recording what and where… Pianist Anna Fedorova follows her recently acclaimed recording of Rachmaninov’s Second and Fourth Piano Concertos with a recording of his Piano Concerto No. 3. She has just stepped out of the studio in Switzerland, where she once again teamed up with conductor Modestas Pitrėnas and Sinfonieorchester St Gallen. Channel Classics is set to release it in the spring. The latest endeavour for John Wilson’s Sinfonia of London takes in the music of American composer Kenneth Fuchs. A two-volume cycle is in the works for Chandos, with sessions having taken place in London in July and more to come this winter. Volume One is set for release in the summer. Countertenor Randall Scotting and tenor Jorge Navarro Colorado have been at St Augustine’s in…

The magic that the French composer wove in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice gave his ten-minute orchestral masterpiece a life all of its own, says Tom Service Here’s a cautionary tale of how one composer’s self-critical brilliance meant he was subsumed by the uncontrollable magical chaos described in the fantastical poem his piece was based upon. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice turned Paul Dukas into a one-hit wonder, most famously as an accompaniment to an animated mouse and the wizard Yen Sid. (Spell that backwards: got it? Dis Ney, in the famous sequence in Disney’s film Fantasia.) The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an acme of magical orchestral imagination that releases a power that has bewitched audiences since 1897, and whose popularity has nearly totally eclipsed the rest of Dukas’s reputation. In releasing the spells of…

Charlotte Smith Editor Several high-profile instrumental competitions took place this month, all streamed live online. These included the Honens Piano Competition, whose $100,000 top prize went to Ukrainian Illia Ovcharenko. I am always in awe of the nerves of steel on display at these contests – especially considering today’s competitors have the pressure of not only the jury in the room but also a potential online audience of thousands. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor With the road outside our house being dug up for new fibre-optic broadband cables, there’s been only one way to go: headphones on and some very loud orchestral music. Favourites on my digger-drowning-out playlist have been Respighi’s Feste Romane – fighting gladiators, Roman buccinas and all – and Khachaturian’s Third Symphony, whose forces includes an organ and…

‘The sound of St John’s is more likely to be changed by the arrival of a new director than by the inclusion of girls’ About to take over as organist and master of choristers at Westminster Abbey, the conductor reflects on his 15 years at St John’s College, Cambridge with Paul Riley The autumn leaves are fiery red and deepest gold where the river sedately glides behind some of Cambridge’s most eye-catching colleges; and the punting stations are doing brisk business as the unseasonably warm October sunshine brings the tourists flocking. Over at St John’s, however, there’s another season preoccupying the director of music Andrew Nethsingha. While Christmas Eve’s Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s will forever be linked in the public imagination, St John’s fires the starting…

Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in November are: 5-9 December Franck 12-16 December Leokadiya Kashperova 19-23 December JS Bach 26-30 December One-hit wonders Rutter’s style Melody Rutter (above) describes himself as 50 per cent composer and 50 per cent songwriter. His gift for writing catchy and memorable tunes, says Sarah MacDonald, director of music at Selwyn College, Cambridge, ‘makes his music extremely popular with singers and audiences/congregations around the world’. Imagination He admits to being a musical magpie rather than a groundbreaking explorer. Yet the way he adorns a simple scale or arpeggio with counterpoint or harmony makes it fresh and unmistakably his own. Craftsmanship Rutter’s innate gifts are underpinned by a deep understanding of how music is put together,…

Beethoven Christus am Ölberge, Op. 85 Collegium Vocale Gent; Orchestre des Champs-Élysées/Philippe Herreweghe Phi LPH039 47:35 mins This is one of Beethoven’s least-performed works, and listening to it again after many years I’m not surprised. Indeed, checking out the rivals to this recording I was amazed to find that there are at least a dozen others, some of them with distinguished soloists. It was written in the middle of Beethoven’s career, when he realised that his hearing was irremediably deteriorating, and much of the music is anguished and even desperate. However, like some of Beethoven’s other anguished and despairing music, it has an element of contrivance. Listen to Florestan’s great aria in Fidelio and you hear how convincingly Beethoven could convey hopelessness, but in this work there is a kind…

Gál Piano Quartet in A major etc Gottlieb Wallisch (piano) et al CPO 555 276-2 A skittering Piano Quartet, a Piano Suite that deftly traverses the emotional spectrum from a decorous Minuet to a funereal Sarabande and an unashamedly neoclassical Piano Concertino. All remind us that Hans Gál (1890-1987) was an arresting voice in 20th-century music. (SW) Humperdinck The Blue Bird Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra et al Capriccio C5506 The festive fairytale by Maeterlinck for which Humperdinck wrote this incidental music is read here in German, so you may want to find a translation online. Or simply head to Disc 2, where the richly atmospheric orchestral score is presented by itself. (JP) Milhaud La création du monde; plus works by Koechlin, Ward and Elgar Philharmonie Zuidnederland Fuga Libera FUG803 A…

Christmas round-up The pianist Michel Petrucciani, who died of brittle bone disease in 1999 at 36, was a force of nature whose live shows were famously explosive events. Recorded in 1990 in Silkeborg Church, Solo in Denmark captures the diminutive Frenchman at the height of his powers. Across a programme of turbocharged standards and two originals (even the ballads burn with barely contained energy) Petrucciani comes over like a devilish duet at work. His propulsive but ornate takes on ‘Round Midnight’ and ‘Blue Monk’ are standouts; the closing 14-min medley of precisely splintered standards grips the ears and never lets go. (Storyville Records 1018495) The UK’s Andrew McCormack is a hard pianist to pin down. A member of Kyle Eastwood’s globetrotting quintet, he also runs his own groups, including the…

Applications are invited for the position of Professor of Music. Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597; today these lectures are presented in person in London, and live-streamed to a global audience, with recordings made available online. Gresham Professors are outstanding in their fields and superb communicators, able to connect with a diverse audience with a thirst for increased knowledge. The post is open to scholars and practitioners in any field of musicology, composition or performance. While all qualified candidates will be seriously considered, for the 2023-2026 appointment, the College particularly welcomes applications from those working outside the Western classical tradition (eg. World music, jazz, popular music, etc.). The 3-year appointment (start date 1 August 2023) requires the professor to present six lectures each academic year. Gresham…

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 Forward-looking Franck It was good on his bicentenary to have proper coverage of César Franck (December), a composer whom I’ve learned to admire more in recent years. However, he should not be claimed as the first to use a cor anglais in a symphony (On Your Cover CD page). Haydn comes to mind (in his ‘Philosopher’ Symphony) but Franck would probably not have been aware of it. But he surely knew the first three symphonies of Berlioz, composed in the 1830s – each has a cor anglais in at least one movement, and its melancholy aspect suits the tomb scene in Roméo et Juliette.…

Jordan Ashman percussionist Born Cambridge, UK Career highlight: Definitely the BBC Young Musician Grand Final 2022. The ability of the other competitors was so inspiring, but they were also lovely people who helped me to get through the whole nerve-wracking process. And the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, who accompanied me on stage, were incredible. They were so aware of how I was playing and gave me the freedom to play exactly how I wanted. Musical hero: The percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie – for her talent, and for how she established solo percussion playing as a well-known art form. Dream concert: To perform at the BBC Proms, either solo or with an orchestra. Derri Joseph Lewis composer Born: Berkshire, UK  Career highlight: It was a dream to collaborate with the National Youth…

You wouldn’t want to mess with Andris Nelsons. Standing comfortably north of six feet tall, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor recently reported on Twitter that he has achieved his black belt in karate (left). While doffing our caps in respect, we note that Nelsons is by no means the first leading musician to be able to look after him or herself in a fight… Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, cut a dash in 1760s Paris, not just as a composer and violinist but also as a fine swordsman, famously making his name by winning a duel against the esteemed fencing-master Alexandre Picard. More recently, musicians have learnt to defend themselves without weapons. These include the late French conductor Georges Prêtre, who was a skilled practitioner of both judo and…

Since Christmas is traditionally a time for telling ghost stories, I have been thinking about the extent to which ghosts dominate the classical music world. I don’t mean the sort of flitting-through-closed-doors ghosts that are said to haunt old halls and theatres, though there are enough tales around of spectral figures lurking backstage in places such as the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Nor do I mean operas famously featuring ghosts, such as Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and, of course, John Corigliano’s 1991 extravaganza The Ghosts of Versailles – in which the entire cast is dead from start to finish. No, I mean the ghosts in our heads. Uniquely among the art forms, classical music is enmeshed in the past. We are always recreating pieces written…

Donizetti Signor Gaetano: arias from Betly, L’elisir d’amore, Roberto Devereux, Don Pasquale etc Javier Camarena (tenor); Gli Originali/Riccardo Frizza Pentatone PTC 5186 886 76:03 mins Maria de Rudenz, Caterina Cornaro, Rosmonda d’Inghilterra… These works and others that feature on this disc were booed, withdrawn, or quietly shelved during Donizetti’s lifetime. Now Mexican tenor Javier Camarena has teamed with the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti – an extremely active Bergamo-based organisation dedicated to promoting its local hero – to prove that rarities can contain music that is still worth hearing. Camarena has sung bel canto roles at leading opera houses the world over and is noted for being only the third singer in 70 years to sing an encore mid-performance at the Met. It’s interesting, then, that he has largely avoided the pyrotechnic…

JS Bach Bach and Expression – Documentary and Organ Works (CD/DVD) Prelude and Fugue in G minor, BWV 535; Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 etc. Daniel Moult, Martin Schmeding (organ) Fugue State Films FSFDVD015 400 mins (2 DVDs) plus 150 mins (2 CDs) A big topic such as expression in JS Bach deserves the big treatment it receives in Will Fraser’s latest film, which starts with the organist Daniel Moult posing the complex yet simple-sounding question, ‘What is expression?’ Exploring how we might play Bach today, expressing ourselves while also being true to the composer’s identity, Moult and his fellow virtuoso Martin Schmeding prove themselves good communicators. Shaped as a chronological survey of Bach’s organ literature, the film (backed up by performances on DVD and CD) allows…

English National Opera Coliseum, London, 25 November – 10 December Web: eno.org It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Bedford Falls, but not everyone is sharing the festive spirit. Based on the 1946 film It’s a wonderful life, Jake Heggie’s eponymous opera receives its UK premiere in a production by Aletta Collins. Frederick Ballentine is the despairing banker, Danielle de Niese his guardian angel; Nicole Paiement conducts. Scottish Ensemble St Machar’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, 1 December Web: scottishensemble.co.uk The Scottish Ensemble resumes its seasonal Concerts by Candlelight series with guttering flames illuminating six venues from Aberdeen to Glasgow. An eclectic programme bookended by JS Bach and Thomas Adès confounds festive expectations with works by Pēteris Vasks, Maconchy and Lutoslawski. Temple Singers and Ensemble Hesperi Temple Church, London, 1 December…

THE 10 BEST FESTIVE PROGRAMMES Composer of the Week: JS Bach at Christmas All this week, Donald Macleod invites us to join Bach at five key Christmases during his lifetime. On Monday, Macleod finds Bach preparing for his very first Christmas in Leipzig, 1723. The following day, we look in on Bach as he spends Christmas 1717 in prison. Wednesday’s instalment takes us to Cöthen, 1721, where the composer is now overseeing musical entertainments at the Prince’s palace. On Thursday we’re back in Leipzig, in 1734, as a more jaded Bach sets out on his most ambitious Christmas project yet. Finally, Friday’s show returns to Leipzig in 1745, as the ageing composer produces a splendid final Christmas Cantata for the university scholars. Radio 3, 19-23 Dec, 12-1pm daily Matthew Bourne’s…