Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2023 i BBC Music Magazine

First, a confession… I have always been slightly wary of Wagner. As a devotee of Mozart’s sophisticated elegance, of the shadowy musings of Ravel, the cool modalism of Vaughan Williams and the barbed rhythms of Bartók, to me Wagner’s fevered Romanticism has seemed, to put it delicately, a little intense. Yet it’s impossible to deny the German composer’s vision, the persuasive power of his musical language and his colossal impact on his contemporaries and successors. I am reminded of a vivid musical experience – which occurred not in a concert hall, but in a cinema. Watching the 2011 Lars von Trier film Melancholia, an astonishing meditation on depression masquerading as apocalyptic cinema, I was swept up in the incredible soundtrack, comprised primarily of the Prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.…

Three to look out for… Eric Zuber Pianist Born: Baltimore, US Career highlight: Playing Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall has to be up there. Musical hero: Rachmaninov’s music touches my heart deeply, and I have always been moved by the passion and zeal that Bernstein displayed in his conducting. Dream concert: I’ve always dreamed of giving a solo recital at Wigmore Hall. With its history and the incredible artists that have performed there, it would be a true honour just to be on the stage. Maria Ioudenitch Violinist Born: Balashov, Russia Career highlight: Recording my first album with Warner Classics. I never expected it to be such an artistic process, and I’m grateful to have recorded some beautiful pieces close to my heart. They…

Baritone Jarrett Porter and soprano Joyce El-Khoury lead the cast for the worldpremiere recording of Tobias Picker’s opera Awakenings. Based on Oliver Sacks’s 1970s bestseller – later adapted into an acclaimed film – the opera receives its US East Coast premiere at the end of February courtesy of Odyssey Opera and Boston Modern Orchestra Project, after which cast and musicians head to the studio to record. It is scheduled for release in the summer. German violinist Kirill Troussov has embarked on a hotly anticipated cycle of live recordings in partnership with Orchid Classics. Three EP releases have so far been announced, the first being his Liszt Academy, Budapest recording of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the MÁV Symphony Orchestra and Gábor Takács-Nagy, out on 3 March. Recordings of Bruch’s Scottish…

The Sunrise from Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra: the most famous yet arguably the most deceptive opening to a piece of orchestral music of all time, proving that just as you can’t judge a book by its cover, neither can you judge a tone poem by how it starts. But what an opening it is, as cosmically rumbling Cs in the lowest reaches of the orchestra turn into a blazing fortissimo for the whole orchestra. It’s no surprise that Stanley Kubrick uses this apocalyptic darkness-to-supernova fanfare as an emblem of the unknowable cosmos in his film 2001, because that’s exactly what Strauss intended it to mean when he wrote it in 1896. It’s one of the most affirmatory climaxes in orchestal music, creating an awesome sublimity – the sort of…

Charlotte Smith Editor Given this month’s cover story, I’ve been immersed in Wagner for the past few weeks. As fascinating as listening to excerpts from The Ring has been, it has been the composer’s Siegfried Idyll – the sublime tone poem he dedicated to his wife Cosima following the birth of their son, and whose music he adapted for his third Ring opera Siegfried – which has captured my imagination. A particularly wonderful 1988 recording featuring the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karajan can be found on YouTube. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor For all the jollities of Christmas, for many choral music fans Lent is in fact the most magical time of the year – the period of penitence and fasting has inspired music of exceptional beauty and pathos.…

On his recital tour of Britain in the early 1840s, that same historic tour when in London he first coined the term ‘recitals’ for his public performances, Liszt made a detour to visit Lord Byron’s ancestral home, Newstead Abbey near Nottingham. His response, in letters to his lover Marie d’Agoult, was ecstatic. Byron had died some 25 years earlier, and throughout Europe his influence had remained colossal – for writers and opinion formers, for aspiring poets and painters, for general readers and not least for those who espoused a radical politics. Liszt had been reading Byron since his teens. One of the composer’s early biographers, in enumerating the multiple literary influences on his creative imagination, drew attention to ‘the strongest kinship he feels with Lord Byron, the poet, as Liszt…

In the wake of Les Noces, the Octet and Stravinsky’s short opera buffa Mavra, premiered in Paris in June 1922, the monthly magazine La Revue musicale began its December 1923 number with some 60 pages devoted to the composer. Jean Cocteau had been in touch with him for some years, and his two pages provoked, and still provoke, thought out of all keeping with their brevity: ‘Genius can’t be analysed any more than electricity. Either you have it or you don’t. Stravinsky has it… One needs to balance on the edge of the abyss. Almost all the tasteful artists fall into it. Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Weber, Gounod, Chabrier, and now Poulenc, lean over it but never fall. A deep root allows them to lean out a long way. Mavra exhibits an…

Ole Schmidt (conductor) London Symphony Orchestra Alto ALC2505 Two superb performances – Herbert Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony from 1989 and a brand-new release from the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Fabio Luisi – burnish Nielsen’s exhilarating score with their power and polish. But it’s the nearly 50-year-old performance by Ole Schmidt and the LSO that, in spite of its shortcomings, best captures Nielsen’s character studies with irrepressible vigour and humanity. Their pioneering complete symphony cycle was recorded between power cuts during the three-day week in London in 1974, giving the performances an urgency that more pampered recordings lack. The string sound is sometimes thin and ragged and the brass can be too prominent, but the overall impression is of an orchestra thrilled to be discovering this music with…

RECORDING OF THE MONTH This 1919 Les Noces was worth the wait The first ever recording of Stravinsky’s ballet in his preferred instrumentation is utterly compelling, says Daniel Jaffé Ravel • Stravinsky Ravel: Bolero (arr. Melchior); Stravinsky: Les Noces (1919 version, completed Verbey); Trad: Ne vesiolaïa… Ensemble Aedes; musicians of Les Siècles/Mathieu Romano Aparté AP 300 40:50 mins Of all his ballets, Stravinsky’s Les Noces – an evocation of Russian peasant wedding rituals – was the one he laboured over longest as he changed his mind several times about its instrumentation. Here, for the first time, is a recording of the entire balletcantata using the line-up Stravinsky favoured but reluctantly abandoned in 1919. Stravinsky had made at least two previous false starts. One of these, for 36 solo musicians including…

Arnold Commonwealth Christmas Overture; Clarinet Concerto No. 1; Philharmonic Concerto; Divertimento No. 2; The Padstow Lifeboat; Larch Trees Michael Collins (clarinet); BBC Philharmonic/Rumon Gamba Chandos CHAN 20152 68:50 mins Any album containing six short orchestral pieces by Malcolm Arnold should probably contain a health warning about the number of dangerous ingredients squeezed into the works’ small spaces. Covering a composition span ranging over 30 years, here are riotous fanfares, swaggering popular tunes and lurching mood changes, hurled together with high levels of instrumental virtuosity. The chief exception in this hyperactive carnival is Arnold’s early 1943 tone poem Larch Trees: eight and a half minutes of wintry ruminations mixing touches of Delius with the bleak Sibelius of Tapiola. Its diametric opposite would be the gaudily energetic and loosely stitched Commonwealth Christmas…

Mozart Violin Concertos Nos 3-5 Gottfried von der Goltz (violin); Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/Kristian Bezuidenhout (piano) Aparté AP299 71:20 mins If the mainstream 20th-century tendency was towards making Mozart sound smoother and tonally sophisticated, the last couple of decades on the contrary have witnessed a move towards bracing, playful interpretative freedoms and radical sonic profiling. Witness this stunning new release from Gottfried von der Goltz and his glorious Freiburg band, directed (with occasional gentle asides and flourishes) from the fortepiano by Kristian Bezuidenhout. Von der Goltz plays with his customary intonational purity, elegance of phrasing, lively articulation, enhanced left-hand clarity and interpretative buoyancy, re-invigorating Mozart’s sparkling invention with a beguiling inquisitiveness that creates the impression of someone freshly discovering the music’s special qualities. Above all, he plays with a disarming naturalness…

Beethoven • Schubert Beethoven: An die ferne Geliebte; Schubert: Schwanengesang Mark Padmore (tenor), Mitsuko Uchida (piano) Decca 485 3577 71:24 mins Two heartfelt performances of what is perhaps the first 19th-century lieder cycle and Schubert’s last, concocted posthumously by an opportunistic publisher. But there’s nothing remotely opportunistic about Mitsuko Uchida and Mark Padmore’s Schubert or Beethoven. Uchida knows that the emotional weight in An die ferne Geliebte is carried by the piano – listen to that almost quizzical final chord at the end of the first song hinting that the lovers will remain apart. Padmore is by turns ardent and resigned, an eloquent partner for Beethoven’s harmonically embroidered piano parts. Neither pianist nor soloist attempt to make a rounded cycle of Schwanengesang, though Uchida is right to remind us that…

Valentin Silvestrov The Messenger; Post Scriptum; Three Pieces; Piano Sonata No. 2; Hommage à J.S.B.; Epitaphium*; Five Pieces Daniel Rowland (violin), *Maja Bogdanović (cello), Borys Fedorov (piano) Challenge Classics CC 72939 82:09 mins Born in Kyiv, 1937, Valentin Silvestrov is currently – like Russian-Ukrainian pianist Borys Fedorov in Holland – a refugee, now based in Berlin. The solos and duos on this radiant release from Fedorov, Daniel Rowland (violin) and Maja Bogdanović (cello) are in themselves powerfully intimate, and are imbued with still greater intensity in light of the present suffering of his people. Composed between 1975 and 2009, the works stem from Silvestrov’s first repudiation of his early avant-gardism for a quietly searing, self-described ‘metaphorical’ combination of melody and transparent textures, punctuated by striking shifts in harmony and contrasting…

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Abel Cello Concertos Bruno Delepelaire (cello); Berliner Barock Solisten Hänssler Classic HC22022 Two Cello Concertos, and two previously unrecorded Sinfonie Concertanti, suggest that Carl Friedrich Abel has not received his due. For melodic ease and cheerful spirits, his Second Cello Concerto runs Haydn’s very close. Adagios are soulful; concertante works showcase soloists well. (SW) JS Bach Heavenly Bach – Arias and Cantatas Amanda Forsythe (soprano) et al; Apollo’s Fire Avie AV2547 This is a nicely paced recital, with a sacred cantata (BWV 51), a secular one (BWV 202) and the two soprano arias from the St John Passion. Forsythe is a terrific soloist – pure-voiced but not bland, characterful but never mannered in her delivery. (JP) Busch Chamber Works Sarastro Quartet et al CPO 555 2792 The Sarastros and flautist…

1. ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’ is the tenth and final movement of which 1874 piano work? 2. Who, on being given the score by Schumann, conducted the first ever performance of Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, ‘The Great C Major’, in Leipzig on 21 March 1839? 3. Where might you find a Great, a Swell and a Choir? 4. Prussia’s Frederick the Great (1712-86), whose court musicians included CPE Bach, was an accomplished performer on which instrument? 5. The Wombles’ 1974 song ‘Minuetto Allegretto’ celebrates Great Uncle Bulgaria’s boyhood during the life of which composer? 6. In 2010, the 80-year-old Czech violinist Josef Suk released a disc of Songs My Great-Grandfather Taught Me. Who was the great-grandfather? 7. Which opera’s title character a) kills her husband Arturo, precipitating a famous…

Terry Blain Journalist and critic ‘Several weeks spent thinking and writing about Wagner’s Ring cycle felt more like a treat than a work assignment. It’s an extraordinary masterpiece whose messages only seem more relevant as the years go by.’ Page 26 Paul Roberts Pianist, writer and lecturer ‘I started reading the works of Byron through performing Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage. Two chapters of my latest book, Reading Franz Liszt, are devoted to Liszt’s own discovery of this great poet.’ Page 44 Leah Broad Author and research fellow ‘Writing about Dorothy Howell has been such a joy. Not only did she write extraordinary music that deserves to be remembered, but she seems to have also been a delightful person! I’m excited to introduce readers to her.’ Page 60…

2 … years at the Southbank for Tania León (above), as the Cuban-American is named as the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s next composer in residence. 7,000 … pipes proudly on display in Katowice, as the Polish city’s recently built NOSPR Concert Hall unveils its new organ, one of the largest in Europe. 15 … more months as chief conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony for Kirill Karabits, ending a fine 15-year reign. 86,892 … pounds awarded to Scottish Opera by the Scottish Government, to assist with its Breathe Cycle II scheme supporting sufferers of Long Covid.…

In recent years International Women’s Day, on 8 March, has been marked by musical events celebrating female composers and performers. As an oldish, fogeyish white male – the type that’s ruled the classical music roost for centuries – I suppose I should live up to my caricature and dismiss the whole thing with a few supercilious barbs. Instead, I rejoice. In the 47 years that I have been a journalist, nothing has improved the classical music scene more than the advance of women. Simply put, the musical talent of half the population has been unshackled. And after a thousand years of overwhelming male dominance, the change has actually happened relatively quickly. When I began reviewing concerts in the mid-1970s there were virtually no women in London’s orchestras. There were almost…

In Washington DC’s National Air and Space Museum is a bright red Lockheed Vega 5B. Compact and sturdy, with a single front propellor and one-piece spruce wing, the plane was built for speed. Models like this were favoured by pilots seeking to set distance records during the 1920s and ’30s, and it was in this very plane that legendary adventurer and feminist icon Amelia Earhart set two world records in 1932 – flying alone across the Atlantic Ocean in 15 hours, becoming the first woman and only the second person in history to do so; and subsequently flying non-stop across the US, again the first time a woman had achieved the feat. These magnificent records made Earhart an instant worldwide sensation. Independent and adventurous since childhood, she knew on her…

Until 1468, when it became part of Scotland, Orkney had been ruled as part of the kingdom of Denmark and Norway. This change marked the end of a chapter that began in the eighth century, when the Vikings first arrived. This came some 4,000 years after a hunter gatherer on Papa Westray, one of the outlying islands, put the finishing touches to a house that today is the oldest of its kind still standing in northern Europe. The air in Orkney tastes of the past; you can almost feel time itself vibrating all around you.…

Herbert Blomstedt (conductor) If you can’t live with imperfections, choose the masterly performance of Herbert Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony, recorded in 1989. It’s never seat-of-the-pants exciting like Schmidt, but there are heady moments, such as the end of the first movement, when the whole orchestra hurls itself towards the precipice. Some unbuttoning of the brass would have been nice in the last movement – horns should not be wellbehaved! – but Blomstedt’s control of dynamics is admirable, the orchestral balance is superb and the recording quality second to none. (Decca 430 2802) Fabio Luisi (conductor) The Danish National Symphony Orchestra performs its countryman’s music with a special authenticity, and under Italian conductor Fabio Luisi in this new recording the playing is fabulous. The second movement is the highlight…

I rather like the viola and don’t understand why it has got such an amount of stick over the years. Is it all a joke, or is it really an acquired taste? I find its tone gorgeously earthy… As such I was delighted this month by Rosalind Ventris’s new album of works for viola by women composers past and present (our Instrumental Choice) and Timothy Ridout’s Bloch and Elgar concertos. As ever there’s a mix of the classic and eminently discoverable this issue. We’ve fine recordings of Beethoven quartets, Mozart masses and Haydn symphonies, and they’re nestled alongside contemporary works by the likes of Augusta Read Thomas and Valentyn Silvestrov and lesser-known items by composers of old that are given a much-needed dusting off. This month’s critics John Allison, Nicholas…

Haydn Haydn 2032, Vol. 13 – Horn Signal: Symphony No. 31 (‘Horn Signal’); Symphony No. 48 (‘Maria Theresia’); Symphony No. 59 (‘Fire’) Il Giardino Armonico/Giovanni Antonini Alpha Classics ALPHA692 80:18 mins Giovanni Antonini’s ongoing cycle of the complete Haydn symphonies is organised into themes, and this latest instalment takes its title from the ‘Horn Signal’ nickname of Symphony No. 31, with its prominent horn parts. The Symphony begins with a fanfare for all four players which returns at the close of the finale, making this an early instance of cyclic form. The slow movement is a serenade-like piece, with the horns joined by a solo violin; and the finale’s variations include one which again has some virtuoso horn writing. Haydn’s spectacular high-flying horn writing is, in fact, a feature of…

Dessau Lanzelot Emily Hindrichs, Máté Sólyom-Nagy; Opera Chorus of Deutschen Nationaltheaters; Staatskapelle Weimar/Dominik Beykirch Audite 23.448 129:21 mins (2 discs) Paul Dessau (1894-1979) conducted in various German opera houses before, as a Jew, being forced to emigrate in 1933, first to France, then the US where he wrote film scores. Returning in 1948 to the Soviet Occupation Zone, he was loyal to the political principles of East Germany, writing incidental music for Brecht and setting three of his plays as operas. Lanzelot (Berlin, 1969) presents an allegorical fairytale in which the eponymous hero challenges and eventually defeats the tyrannical monster. Its libretto, a heavy-handed attack on the GDR’s capitalist bogeymen (at one point the Dragon is described as half dinosaur, half captain of industry!), has little dramatic nuance but some…

Byrd The Golden Renaissance: Mass for Four Voices; Retire, My Soul, consider thine estate; Gaudeamus omnes in Domino; Assumpta est Maria; Tribue Domine etc Stile Antico Decca 485 3951 69:48 mins There will be many recordings of Byrd’s music in this 400th anniversary year of his death, but few will match the superb balance and poise of these performances from Stile Antico. Their selection focuses on his later collections, with works from his Gradualia (1605), Psalmes, Songs and Sonnets (1611) and his Mass settings of the 1590s. The title of the volume includes the word ‘Renaissance’ but Byrd’s music has little to do with the expressiveness and assertive individualism of the period. Instead much of his music is shaped by a background, slow moving ‘harmonic breathing’ which provides the engine…

JS Bach The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I Andreas Staier (harpsichord) Harmonia Mundi HMM902680.81109:13 mins (2 discs) Andreas Staier has already released a well-received recording of the second book of Bach’s 48, and his many fans will doubtless fall on this recording of Book I with delight. But I am having trouble with it. He’s undoubtedly a clever technician, but here his trademark hyperactivity precludes some essential qualities in the music, most notably the quality of beauty. And he rarely seems interested in making the harpsichord sing; he doesn’t do poetry. Moreover, he isn’t helped by the acoustic for this recording, which surrounds the instrument’s sound with a hot and stuffy echo. The little Prelude in G minor is one of the most exquisite pieces in the book, but Staier’s brusque…

March round-up This month’s Jazz Choice reminds us that jazz in general is constantly subject to re-invention. The fusion of jazz with orchestral music is one such area, now brilliantly added to by Soweto Kinch and the LSO on White Juju. The title knowingly turns exoticist notions of black arcana around and points them in the direction of contemporary British society, with arresting results. Kinch’s alto keens like a tormented soul, the orchestra takes on an aura of lurking menace and quasi-classical constructs collide with audio media snippets that sound positively chilling when deprived of their contextual camouflage. This live recording of a rapturously-received performance is currently available digitally with a vinyl version due in April. Unmissable. (LSO Live LSO5110) The Brother Moves On, a South African sextet signed to…

At the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, between the rule of Wilhelm Mengelberg and the modern recording era of Bernard Haitink, conductor Eduard van Beinum was the collaborative presence that guided the orchestra into its post-war future, establishing relationships with the Decca and Philips labels. Their complete recordings (Decca 485 1387; 43 CDs) reveal a fascinating and often under-appreciated voyage, from 78s of the Brahms St Anthony Variations in 1941 and other rarities new to CD, to the first DG recordings of Reger and Franck, then a 1946 London visit to record Beethoven and Berlioz for Decca. Van Beinum conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra as a late replacement, and the orchestra fell in love with this hard-working, disciplined but inspirational Dutchman, and began its own journey with him. Despite the period sound, you…

MARCH’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see Radio Times 1 WEDNESDAY 6.30-9am Breakfast 9am-12 noon Essential Classics 12 noon-1pm Composer of the Week Strozzi 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert 2-4pm Afternoon Concert 4-5pm Choral Evensong 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert from Bridgewater Hall. Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Dutilleux Le temps d’horloge, Birtwistle The triumph of time, Ravel Bolero. Elizabeth Atherton (soprano), BBC Philharmonic/Ludovic Morlot 10-10.45pm Free Thinking 10.45-11pm The Essay Shakespeare’s Sisters 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks 2 THURSDAY 6.30-9am Breakfast 9am-12 noon Essential Classics 12 noon-1pm Composer of the Week Strozzi 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert 2-5pm Afternoon Concert 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert from Waterfront Hall. Sibelius Symphony No. 7, Strauss Oboe Concerto, Brahms Symphony No. 2. Nicholas…

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My Nigerian paternal grandfather was a master musician at the court of the Igbo rulers, the Obi of Ika. Known as Okwa Ekpere, Grandfather performed traditional music on the Oja, an Igbo flute, for the king and for titled members of society. I grew up with my father singing Igbo traditional songs, and it was natural that later in my life I would want to discover more about African classical music. My father was a paediatrician in Romania – he came from Nigeria to study medicine and met my Romanian mother there. I went through the Romanian music school system and the Conservatoire in Bucharest before coming to Birmingham to do an MA. My musical influences were mainly Western classical until I started researching African classical music. Much of it…

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 Hidden passion Richard Morrison (Opinion, February) almost certainly also knows of Shostakovich’s hopeless passion for one of his students, the Azerbaijan-born composer Elmira Nazirova. The third movement of his Tenth Symphony is full of not only his own monogram DSCH (often used in his other works) but also Elmira’s name in the recurring horn call. What with her name in partly French notation (E-La-Mi-Re-A) and his in German, no wonder the affair was never to be. She kept the secret for 40 years. Richard Hollinshead, Wirral Elgar farewell I read Terry Williams’s Building a Library on Elgar’s First Symphony (February) with interest. It was in a letter to…

21st: Recorded by the country music singer Patti Page, Bob Merrill’s ‘(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?’ tops the Billboard Music Popularity Chart in the US and goes on to sell more than two million copies. Shortly afterwards, Lita Roza’s recording of the same song reaches No. 1 in the UK chart, making Roza the first female singer to enjoy the top spot in Britain. 23rd: The French Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy dies in Forcalquier, Provence, aged 75. Initially inspired by Matisse, Dufy’s best known works included depictions of open-air events such as Regatta at Cowes plus music-themed paintings like Homage to Claude Debussy and Red Orchestra. He was also an influential designer of textiles, furniture and stationery. 23rd: Stockhausen’s Schlagtrio for piano and six timpani receives its…

Conductor Alexander Shelley tells us why his parents, pianists Howard Shelley and Hilary Macnamara, shine bright How to choose a hero in a field so overflowing with brilliance? For me, the answer lies in a childhood replete with music, the five grand pianos strategically separated, roaring at one another across our North London home. A family’s synchronous practice lulling me to sleep: Rachmaninov upstairs, a splash of Liszt below. Saint-Saëns ushers the new day, some Moscheles for tea. Here, crouched in nappies on a piano stool, I would bash out my first notes. And between them, my mother and father – exceptional musicians both – did what mothers and fathers do: they spent blood, sweat, tears, humour and love instilling their values, sharing wisdom and the lessons learned. They were…

‘Monsieur Wagner has good moments, but awful quarters of an hour!’ Gioachino Rossini ‘I like Wagner’s music better than anybody’s. It is so loud one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says’ ‘Richard Wagner is the most violently controversial artist known to history’ Wilhelm Furtwängler ‘Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since’ Stephen Hawking ‘It does seem to me that nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to the untutored but to leave out the vocal parts’ Mark Twain ‘He is one of those musicians who can persuade even the unmusical to listen to music’ Thomas Mann ‘After the last notes of Götterdämmerung I felt as though I had been let out of prison’ Pyotr Tchaikovsky ‘Most…

Today, most major orchestras have a principal guest conductor – often chosen for tastes and skills that complement the interests of the chief conductor. But it’s relatively rare for a principal guest to make the leap into the top job, and in Birmingham it’s unprecedented. Still, more than one maestro has found that a CBSO principal guest position has a way of opening doors. The Estonian Neeme Järvi (CBSO principal guest in the 1980s) became one of the most prolific recording artists of the late 20th century, and his son Paavo followed him to Birmingham in the late 1990s. Mark Elder (CBSO principal guest conductor from 1992-95) was widely tipped to succeed Simon Rattle in Birmingham, but went on to have a comparably transformative effect on Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra. Edward…

Despite Earhart’s fame, her poetic aspirations were largely unknown until many years after her death. Daugherty uses two of Earhart’s poems as inspiration for Blue Electra. The first dates from 1928, before her first transatlantic flight as a passenger: Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace, The soul that knows it not, knows no release From little things; Knows not the livid loneliness of fear, Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear The sound of wings The second poem dates from 1921, as the young Earhart dreamed of taking to the skies as a pilot: Even the watchful, purple hills That hold the lake Could not see so well as I The stain of evening Creeping from its heart Nor round, yellow eyes of the hamlet…

Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in March are: 27 February – 3 March Strozzi 6-10 March Johanna Müller-Hermann 13-17 March Purcell 20-24 March Bizet 27-31 March Rachmaninov Dorothy Howell shot to fame on a sweltering September night in 1919. It was her first ever orchestral premiere, at no less an event than the London Proms. Under the baton of Sir Henry Wood, her symphonic poem Lamia was the success of the season. It was so phenomenally popular that a repeat performance had to be hastily scheduled, and the London press hounded Howell for photographs and interviews. This was, as Wood later wrote, ‘exceptional for a British composer’s work – for a woman, a triumph’. It’s easy to see why Lamia…

Why has this version of Les Noces been so difficult to realise before now? For Stravinsky it was too complicated to synchronise the live parts and the singers with the mechanical parts. It was a great deal then, and even now it’s not so easy to have a mechanical piano perfectly synched. I think, also, Stravinsky maybe struggled to find the instruments; he had to find a mechanical piano and also two cimbaloms and the harmonium. This is difficult, even now; of course we can find a harmonium, but finding one in good shape is not so simple. Is it tricky to do it with an historical pianola? There are some historical pianolas and I think Rex Lawson, the musicologist and musician, has the piano rolls, but these instruments are…

Bloch • Elgar Bloch: Suite for Viola and Orchestra; Elgar: Cello Concerto (arr. Tertis) Timothy Ridout (viola); BBC Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins Harmonia Mundi HMM902618 58:58 mins Elgar’s ‘Viola Concerto’ – a transcription by Lionel Tertis of the Cello Concerto to suit the viola’s octave-higher pitch – had the composer’s approval. He conducted its first performance in 1930, with Tertis as soloist. The English violist Timothy Ridout uses Tertis’s arrangement, with some tweaks of his own. Ridout’s account of the opening movement is full of richly rhapsodic playing, although the viola suggests more of a wistful musing than the deeper, elegiac contemplation possible on the cello. The tricky scherzo can easily lead to scrappiniess on the cello, and Ridout scores here with his brilliantly nimble fingerwork and precise note-separation. His slow…

Lully Psyché Ambroisine Bré, Deborah Cachet, Bénédicte Tauran, Cyril Auvity; Les Talens Lyriques/Christophe Rousset Château de Versailles CVS086 144:49 mins (2 discs) In celebration of their 30th anniversary, Les Talens Lyriques made this dazzling recording of Lully’s opera Psyché. Rarely performed or recorded, this unwieldy ‘tragédie-comique’ offers 18 dramatis personae moving through a baggy plot with at times disjointed movements – one even in Italian (!). ‘Comic’ action can seem cruel: Venus, jealous of mortal Psyché’s beauty, is ultimately thwarted when her son Cupid falls in love with Psyché rather than aiding Venus’s plot to destroy her. Yet the score is mostly ravishing, and is here the launchpad for stunning performances. Under harpsichordist-director Christophe Rousset, brisk instrumental movements are electrifying, laments wrenching and comic numbers hilarious. Rousset unerringly lands his…

Bartók • Brahms • Janáček Bartók: Violin Sonata No. 1; Brahms: Violin Sonata No. 3; Janáček: Violin Sonata Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Fazil Say (piano) Alpha Classics ALPHA885 72:18 mins In the conversation between Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Fazil Say that does duty for a programme note, they draw comparison between Janáček and Bartók’s intense interest in folksong. Still, it would be hard to find three more distinct violin sonatas composed within a few decades of each other. The finest performance here, by far, is of the Bartók sonata, one of the most demanding of his modernist works. The spontaneity which the performers speak about in their ‘conversation’ materialises in playing that is both forceful and expressive: the first movement’s magical central section is genuinely spine-tingling, and the Adagio provides a perfect…

Sola – Music for Viola by Women Composers Works by Bacewicz, Beamish, Feery, L Fuchs, I Holst, Lutyens, Maconchy and Musgrave Rosalind Ventris (viola) Delphian DCD 34292 64:40 mins This brilliantly niche recording, featuring 20th-and 21st-century music by female composers for solo viola, is one happy outcome of the pandemic. British violist Rosalind Ventris understandably found herself drawn to solo rapid repertoire during lockdown and spent hours tracking down less-known works for solo viola. As the project took shape, she was especially pleased to be placing the spotlight on her instrument: ‘given we spend so much time in the middle of a group, in the middle of the texture, it’s not every day that we hear the viola on its own.’ The result of Ventris’s curiosity and tenacity is this…

Various Artists Zzaj – Jazz from the 23rd Century Various Artists, incl. Ron Anderson, Martin Archer, Steve Beresford, Amanda Chaudhary, Anthony Coleman, Compaxident 1 (with Geoff Leigh), Amy Denio, Nick Didkovsky and Han-Earl Park, Tom Djll, Forrest Fang et al. Distributed by Discus Music (2-discs) This collection, the brainchild of producers/multi-instrumentalists Jerry King and Dave Newhouse, seamlessly integrates a who’s who and a ‘who they?’ of the jazz-at-a-push leftfield into a 34-track, twodisc/big download issue described thus on the press release: ‘a Collection of New Jazz, Fusion, Rock, Pop and Experimental Music that Explores the Questions: What is Jazz and where is it going?’ (sic). No pressure, then. The compilers apparently allowed the contributors to be inspired by jazz and/or to extrapolate from it, which is paradoxically entirely central to…

Beethoven’s Conversation Books, Vol. 4 Theodore Albrecht Boydell 376pp (hb) £45 With four volumes done and eight to go, this grand endeavour rolls on, opening up the minutiae of Beethoven’s everyday life to general scrutiny. This time the visitors include Friedrich Wieck (father of Clara Schumann) but the stage is dominated by Beethoven’s nephew Karl. We hardly hear Beethoven’s voice at all, but he’s always present as an irascible and commanding silence. Karl is now 17, and we get to peer into his troubled soul. He’s lodging with his uncle (whom he addresses significantly as ‘Father’), he’s desperate to be loved, and he’s filled with contrition when he gets drunk. But he’s also in charge of everything from Beethoven’s business affairs to his personal hygiene. He’s bothered by the composer’s…

March round-up Naxos has a special knack for spotting talents that have inexplicably passed other labels by, and in the case of cellist Maria Kliegel they really hit the ground running. To mark her seventieth birthday, she has selected 33 tracks from her vast catalogue that enshrine her formidable technical precision and (like her former mentor János Starker) her desire to recreate the atmosphere of a live concert in the recording studio, with long takes very much the order of the day. Highlights include the exuberant finale of Lalo’s A minor Sonata, the introspective Sarabande from Bach’s C minor Cello Suite and the doleful opening movement of Schnittke’s Cello Concerto (Naxos 8.578370-72). A second volume embracing The Lost Art of Jacob Lateiner focuses on two live recitals given in the…

Alan Davey, the controller of BBC Radio 3, picks out three great moments to tune into this March The Silent Musician In this three-part series, conductor Ben Gernon addresses that much posed question: what does a conductor actually do? From sound and balance to interpretation and philosophy, Ben leads us on a rich sonic tour through the conducting jungle. The Silent Musician, 5, 12 & 19 March, 11pm International Women’s Day To mark the day, our Lunchtime Concert appropriately features the all-female Ensemble Molière performing 17th-and 18th-century works by Mademoiselle Laurent, Mademoiselle Duval and Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre – plus the premiere of a BBC commission by Sarah Cattley. Lunchtime Concert, 8 March, 1-2pm Private Passions: Robert Powell Michael Berkeley’s guest is the actor Robert Powell, best known for…

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