Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i BBC Music Magazine

How were you first introduced to classical music? Listening to colleagues’ and friends’ tales of catching an intriguing hint of melody in a television advert; experiencing that first orchestral film soundtrack; or perhaps being handed a battered instrument through a school music programme, I am endlessly fascinated – and sometimes a little envious – that this wonderful world of Bach and Beethoven might be explored incrementally, through a series of rich revelations. Growing up with musicians as parents (both pianists, in case you’re interested) and in a household of lively chamber collaboration, I can’t remember there ever being a time when music was not at the centre of my life. I’ve no doubt the same is true for this month’s cover star, Isata Kanneh-Mason, sister of cellist Sheku and eldest…

Laura Serra Pianist Born: Mallorca, Spain Career highlight: I trained as a classical musician, but my wider interests led me to create my most personal project, a Catalan-speaking pop-electronic band called Alanaire. In 2021, I also recorded a classical album, Músiques d’Elles, exploring flute and piano repertoire by women composers. Musical heroes: I am inspired by classical artists such as Chopin, Ravel, Mélanie Bonis and Rachmaninov, and by current musicians such as Jacob Collier and the singer Maro. My current heroes are the US band Bon Iver. Dream concert: I would love to perform at the Royal Albert Hall in London, where I have attended many joyous concerts. Alexander Chance Countertenor Born: London, UK Career highlight: Singing Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the UK’s Covid lockdown ended…

The English Concert has embarked on an ambitious project to make all of Handel’s music available to listen to and view online. Handel for All is an online portal through which users can access newly filmed performances of (upon completion) over 600 works completely free. Samson, Armida Abbandonata and Saul are already available and the coming year sees recordings of Solomon, Ariodante and many more. British composer Debbie Wiseman celebrates her 60th birthday in May, and to mark the occasion she is conducting the CBSO in a programme of her music at the CBSO Centre. Works for the screen and a host of Royal occasions feature and will be recorded for an album entitled Signature, released on 30 June by Silva Screen Records. Violinist Emily Sun was recently announced as…

For many music-lovers, the year 1791 induces an outpouring of tearful empathy for the tragedy of 5 December, when Wolfgang Amadeus died at the age of 35. Shortly before his death, Mozart told his wife Constanze that he was writing his own Requiem. His unfinished Mass for the Dead proves his premonition, and the whole of his last year is defined by the melancholic halo of a composer engaged in a drawn-out acceptance of his own demise. It’s a seductive way of thinking about Mozart’s last year, but virtually none of the above is true. Neither are the fabulous fictions by everyone from Pushkin to Peter Shaffer in their plays and films: Salieri didn’t poison Mozart. Mozart did say that he felt he was writing his own Requiem, but that…

Charlotte Smith Editor At the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, there were arresting performances from Sheku Kanneh-Mason in Leo Brouwer’s Cello Sonata No. 2 and from soprano Anna Dennis. But I was particularly taken by Manchester Collective, whose inventive, self-arranged programme morphed from Bach’s A minor Violin Concerto into the Danish String Quartet’s arrangement of the Nordic folk tune ‘Old Reinlender from Sonndala’. Barefoot and smiling, their pleasure at performing was a joy. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor An invitation to join in a charity cycle ride in the heart of the Three Choirs region later this year has provided the perfect excuse to compile a playlist that reflects the area as seen through the eyes of composers who knew it well. So, there’s Elgar’s Enigma Variations, of course, plus works such…

I used to resist the term ‘role model’, because I think it felt like an assumption of perfection was being placed on me and it seemed such a weight to carry. Now, however, I think it’s important when you’re younger to see people who look like you doing something that you want to do, because we see ourselves in other people, and that makes us feel we can achieve things. I started seeing young Black children coming to my concerts, and they’d come up to me afterwards and say, ‘I started playing an instrument because of you’ and ‘I felt inspired to continue because of you.’ That’s the most wonderful feeling! Today I associate ‘role model’ with inspiring people to pursue music. But when I was younger, I would be…

It’s perhaps inevitable that a trailblazing, high-profile artist such as Lucia Lucas will be seen as a role model for fellow transgender singers. But the mantle is not necessarily an easy one to bear. ‘Just to be frank about it – I’m not trying to be a role model for transgender artists, because that’s too much pressure,’ she says. ‘I hope that I can be a positive influence. I hope that I can be a positive person. I hope that the way in which I act and live can help somebody – and if it does, that’s wonderful.’ She is, however, open to speaking to artists forging similar paths as her own. ‘My email address is public, and if people want to message me – especially people going through a…

On an early summer’s day in 1775, somewhere near Hammersmith, West London, highwaymen attacked a stagecoach and relieved the passengers inside of valuables. We know the details because (through the efforts of a privately hired ‘thief-taker’) the highwaymen were tracked down, tried and hanged. But it’s the passengers whose names stand out. Among them were three friends: the painter Thomas Gainsborough, and composers Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel. That this snapshot of history caught them travelling together was no accident, because they were often together – joined by a shared love of music that with Bach and Abel was professional but, in the case of Gainsborough, a deep-rooted amateur obsession. One of the great portrait painters of the 18th century, Gainsborough nonetheless complained of being ‘sick of Portraits’,…

There are several recurrent characteristics in Dutilleux’s music: symmetries, chorales, the use of unusual timbres and a variational approach to form are just a few examples. However, a particularly notable feature is the pizzicato bass line to be found in his chamber and orchestral work, its influence often spreading comme une rumeur throughout surrounding instrumental groups and textures. Angular in contour (though overall ascending or descending in direction) with a rhythmic shape built upon an increasing number of attacks per beat (eg 3, 4, 5) sometimes terminated by a longer value, this mobile ‘walking bass’ has been linked to Dutilleux’s professed love of jazz. Of course, earlier 20th-century composers such as Stravinsky or Berg, as well as Dutilleux’s contemporaries such as Ohana, Lutosławski or Boulez, used similar rhythmic features, though…

Mad machines Ligeti took glee in the idea of a machine that runs out of control and becomes chaotic. His music is full of wonky mechanisms, a good example being Piano Étude No. 1, where the irregular accents are at first co-ordinated between the hands but move entertainingly out of synch. Uneasy humour Ligeti’s humour can have an awkward pathos, as in the slow movement of the Piano Concerto where uncomfortably low piccolo and uncomfortably high bassoon share their woes. More often it’s sinister, as in Atmosphères where the music scampers up to a bat-like altitude, vanishes and reappears instantly in the double-basses. Micro-polyphony Ligeti was fascinated by musical textures which grow more and more complex until the ear cannot unravel them, but instead hears one glistening mass of sound.…

Born in Hanau, Germany, in 1895, Hindemith began his career as a string player, including as the violist of the Amar Quartet, which he founded in 1921 and with whom he toured extensively. Adaptable and considerably more imaginative as a composer than he is often given credit for, he wrote for a wide range of forces, from his Kammermusik series of chamber works of the 1920s to 11 operas for both adults and children, and concertos for a variety of instruments including the trautonium (a type of electronic synthesiser). He continued to compose right up to his death, aged 68, in 1963.…

This was your first Turandot; how did you find the experience? It’s very rare to have everything line up so perfectly and create something so special as this recording. I was just starting my divorce when we started, and my Mum had just died, so I think I poured all my emotions into the role. To be with such supportive artists like Jonas Kaufmann and Ermonela Jaho, who really supported me and lifted me up during that whole time – honestly, I can only think of one or two other periods of artistic creation in my career that have equalled that. And you had Antonio Pappano and these great musicians… There was great camaraderie between us all. I think I sang ‘In questa reggia’ nine times in a row, and…

Kalevi Aho Violin Concerto No. 2; Cello Concerto No. 2 Elina Vähälä (violin), Jonathan Roozeman (cello); Kymi Sinfonietta/Olari Elts BIS BIS-2466 (CD/SACD) 63:38 mins With getting on for 30 concertos under his belt, you might think that Finnish composer Kalevi Aho was turning them out by the yard, but there are no signs of notes being dashed off to order in these works from 2013 and 2015. The Violin Concerto (2015) is full of rhythmic energy in the first movement, alternating with more lyrical passages, and the style is a kaleidoscopic mix of tonal and modal writing, with memorable melodic shapes providing signposts, and varied orchestration adding colour. Elina Vähälä, for whom the work was written, brings virtuosity to the solo part, and intensity to the long-spun and wide-ranging line…

Rota Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat) Piotr Buszewski, Friedemann Jähnig, Ivan Oreš?anin; Graz Opera Chorus; Graz Philharmonic/Daniele Squeo Capriccio C5466 107:16 mins (2 discs) While the most recent Italian opera to find a regular place in the international repertoire is Turandot, a few post-Puccini works have made at least some impression. Best known for his huge and distinguished output of film music, Nino Rota (1911-79) is responsible for one of them. Based on a classic French farce (1851) by Eugène Labiche and Marc-Michel, Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat) was premiered at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo in 1955; in the intervening decades it has enjoyed many productions in Italy plus a handful elsewhere. It certainly deserves to. Though the plot…

JS Bach Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1014-23 Adrian Butterfield (violin), Silas Wollston (harpsichord) SOMM Recordings SOMMCD0664-2 60:45 mins (2 discs) Composed in the early 1720s, when he was director of music for Prince Leopold of Cöthen, Johann Sebastian Bach’s six sonatas for violin and harpsichord contain some of his most ravishingly lyrical music. His son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, considered them among his father’s finest works and enthused about their ‘singable manner’. While their trio-sonata texture can produce tricky figuration for the harpsichord, it gives the violin free melodic rein. A spectacular example is the first movement of the E major Sonata (BWV 1016) where the harpsichord’s gracefully embellished bass allows the violin to soar ecstatically in arching, ornamental lines. Likewise the Largo of the C minor Sonata (BWV…

Secret Pages Theorbo pieces by JH Kapsberger and Claudio Ambrosini Stefano Maiorana (theorbo) Arcana A541 59:17 mins This album creates an atmospheric soundscape evoking – with the faintest of brushstrokes – the hallucinatory beauty of Venice. The musical sequence interleaves 20 works by two composers with profound connections to La Serenissima: Johann Hieronymus Kapsberger (c1580-1651), who spent his formative years in the ‘serene republic’, and the Venetian Claudio Ambrosini (b1948). Exploiting the soft resonance of the theorbo, Kapsberger’s pieces are at once intimate and sonorous: improvisatory in spirit, they roam and ruminate and dance by turns. Each one flows like liquid into Ambrosini’s experimental soundworld, the starting point for which was imagining the ‘secret notebooks’ of Kapsberger – fictional pages of daringly exploratory music. From those imagined sketches, Ambrosini takes…

Beethoven • Schubert • Shostakovich String Quartets David Oistrakh Quartet Praga Digitals PRD 250 426 These three quartets (Beethoven Op. 18 No. 4, Shostakovich 3, Schubert 12 ‘Quartettsatz’) are all united by a prevailing tension and frequent outbursts of turbulence, well rendered by this Russian quartet with its nicely blended ensemble sound and some brisk tempos. (SW) Bruch • Tveitt Violin Works Ragnhild Hemsing (violin/hardanger), Bergen Phil Berlin Classics 0302757BC This atmospheric album combines Bruch’s much-loved Concerto with lesser-known Norwegian fare. Geirr Tveitt’s ‘3 Fjords’ Concerto is particularly fine, the delicate tone of the hardanger fiddle juxtaposed against a menacing Bergen Phil. But Hemsing is an equally persuasive violinist, with a surprisingly rich and muscular tone. (CS) Gesualdo Madrigali, Books 5 & 6 Les Arts Florissants/Paul Agnew Harmonia Mundi HAF8905311.12…

This month’s edition of BBC Four’s Inside Classical comes from Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall, and features the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Mark Wigglesworth (above). The programme includes two visionary works by English composers: Elgar’s Symphony No. 2 and Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending. Perhaps Vaughan Williams’s best-loved piece, the Lark was inspired by George Meredith’s poem of the same name, and features a violin part that soars above the orchestra. The Philharmonic’s leader Zoë Beyers takes on avian duties tonight. An interesting link with Elgar comes in the form of the Lark’s original dedicatee, violinist Marie Hall, who studied with Sir Edward from the age of ten. In four movements and typically clocking in at around 50 minutes, Elgar’s Second Symphony travels through foreboding, grief, violence and consolation. The whole piece…

Simon Callow CBE is one of Britain’s most popular and recognisable actors – appearing in films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and A Room with a View – and also a writer, broadcaster and theatre director. His lifelong love for classical music has seen him directing opera productions and appearing with various orchestras around the world as well as fronting documentaries and writing about composers and their work. He is one of the narrators in Sword in the Soul, a modern Passion by Francis Grier with words by Rowan Williams, out now on Orchid Classics. My grandmother, who had a wonderful contralto voice, owned an enormous collection of rather battered 78s which I grew up listening to. I discovered Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra’s recording of SIBELIUS’s Swan…

Jessica Duchen Journalist, critic and author ‘I first heard about Isata Kanneh-Mason when she was 10 years old. What a joy it is to see her now, striding coolly through stardom: a self-possessed young woman truly devoted to her art.’ Page 26 Michael White Critic, broadcaster and author ‘The reopening of Gainsborough’s House after major building works was an excuse to go and find out how his life divided between painting and music: profession v obsession, with the latter often taking charge.’ Page 42 Paul Riley Journalist and critic ‘Whether discovering Dutilleux in Dubrovnik or Britten in Bucharest, perusing the programmes of festivals intimate and artist-led to the great Leviathans is musical window-shopping par excellence. Roll on, summer!’ Page 54 Follow us on Twitter @musicmagazine Like us on Facebook facebook.com/classicalmagazine…

3 …out of four professional musicians in the UK have considered taking up a new job in the last year due to the cost-of-living crisis, reveals Encore Musicians. 7 …million dollars given to the Cleveland Orchestra by philanthropist Jane B Nord for education concerts for students. 8 …out of ten British schoolchildren say more could be done to get them into classical music, reveals a report by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. 24 …months working as assistant to Mark Elder for 24-year-old Euan Shields (above), winner of the Siemens Hallé International Conductors Competition.…

‘Mulattic sonata written for the mulatto Brischdauer, a complete lunatic and mulattic composer’. The inscription written on the autograph manuscript of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major undoubtedly ranks as one of the oddest in classical music history, using language that would be largely regarded as offensive today. The individual referred to in Beethoven’s jesting dedication was George Bridgetower, a mixed-race violinist born of West Indian and Polish parents. Aged 24 when he first met Beethoven, Bridgetower had enjoyed a precocious career during his early years in England. Arriving in Vienna in April 1803, he immediately started socialising and establishing musical connections. Beethoven first heard him play in a quartet evening at the home of violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh. The two hit it off immediately, the 32-year-old Beethoven no…

‘Dorset farmer to conduct music at King’s coronation!’ proclaimed the BBC website recently – a headine that has not gone down uniformly well, given that Sir John Eliot Gardiner is better known to most as one of today’s great Baroque performers. To be fair, Sir John Eliot does rear cows (left) and, what’s more, is not alone in spending a life divided between the farm and the world of music… When success at the opera house started to fill Verdi’s coffers, he brought himself a large patch of farmland in the village of Sant’Agata. This would soon become the site of his new Villa Verdi, but he also continued to cultivate much of the land, often involving himself personally in the running of his profitable farm. Another composer with a…

It probably didn’t occur to the composers at the time, but it’s quite convenient that William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes died in the same year, 1623. Their joint 400th anniversary gives us the chance to marvel at the breadth and depth of the English choral renaissance. Why? Because they were surely polar opposites – as personalities, as well as creative geniuses. Byrd was over 80 when he died (his birth date isn’t confirmed, but was around 1540). He was clearly as careful looking after himself as he was in surviving the religious turmoil of his times. Weelkes died at 47; not bad when all the evidence suggests he was a man who regularly partied till dawn and was possibly still drunk at choir practice the next morning. During his years…

Growing up in a large, musical family was great. There was no soundproofing in the house, so you just got used to practising with the sound of a violin or a cello in your ear! We often did family concerts, we played to each other, and we had a Sibelius computer so we composed pieces together. We also used to write plays and make films. I think having an environment where everyone was doing the same thing made us feel we weren’t alone. Today we’re all focused on forging our own paths, and everyone has a clear idea of where they want to go. I think we don’t want to be seen as one entity and never go past that. But we’re still very, very close, we still like playing…

Gainsborough’s House stands in the very centre of Sudbury, a town described in 1722 by Daniel Defoe as unremarkable ‘except for being very poor and very populous’, but agreeable enough today with its market square, handsome period houses and open meadows running down to the River Stour. Gainsborough was born there in 1727, the son of an almost-prosperous local businessman who fell badly into debt but survived with help from wealthier relatives – which explains how he managed to continue living in the substantial redbrick building that now bears the family name. It became a museum in 1961, but with limited resources until a £10m development, completed in November 2022, extended the exhibition space and transformed the site into what its director Mark Bills calls an ‘international centre for Thomas…

Welcome! It’s with great pleasure that we welcome you to this year’s summer festival guide! 2022 was the first season in three years to return to full-capacity events following the Covid-19 pandemic, and despite new financial pressures and straitened budgets, 2023 looks set to build even further on that sense of joy and exhilaration at live music-making. From an embarrassment of pianists in Chipping Campden to Puccini and Verdi in Bergen; from established American behemoths like Ravinia and Tanglewood to intimate chamber music in Townsville, Australia, music is celebrated in all its forms this year. And so, we look forward to this season’s festival offering with huge anticipation. Please do get in touch to share your own experiences over the wonderful months ahead. Charlotte Smith Editor Chipping Campden Festival Chipping…

The likes of Pulp, The Human League and Arctic Monkeys might fly the flag proudly for Sheffield in the pop world, but the city is also the birthplace of Dame Josephine Barstow, one of the UK’s most decorated opera sopranos. Barstow has performed around the world in everything from the Italian big hitters to contemporary works. These include the premieres of The Knot Garden and The Ice Break by Tippett, The Devils of Loudun by Penderecki and, more recently, Iain Bell’s Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel, for which she is due to reprise the role of Maud for Opera North.…

Paavo Järvi (conductor) Frankfurt Radio Symphony Naïve V5434 Although Hindemith remains arguably the most deeply unfashionable and grievously underrated of all 20th-century masters, his Mathis der Maler Symphony has maintained its place in the repertoire and boasts a sizeable stream of fine recordings. The high standards of performance were established from the very outset by the composer’s pioneering 1934 recording in which he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic. Over 20 years later, the same forces came together to record the work again for Deutsche Grammophon, a benchmark performance of great warmth and intensity captured in decent mono sound, although lacking perhaps the depth and clarity of engineering that would be found in more recent releases. Between the 1960s and ’90s, the Symphony became very much the province of leading American orchestras.…

Puccini Turandot Sondra Radvanovsky, Jonas Kaufmann, Ermonela Jaho, Michele Pertusi, Michael Spyres, Mattia Olivieri, Gregory Bonfatti, Siyabonga Maqungo; Orchestrae Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia/Antonio Pappano Warner Classics 5419740659 128:29 mins (2 discs) Big-budget studio recordings of standard repertoire operas for which there are multiple alternative offerings are now a rarity, the preserve of megawatt star casts. Warner Classics has assembled just such a line-up for its new Turandot, headed by Sondra Radvanovsky, Jonas Kaufmann and Ermonela Jaho. There is even some luxurious casting in the minor roles – Michael Spyres as the Emperor of China, no less – and to have Antonio Pappano at the helm, conducting the Santa Cecilia orchestra, rounds off a sumptuous package. The recording is distinctive in being the first to use Franco Alfano’s original…

WL Dawson • G Walker G Walker: Lyric for Strings; Folksongs for Orchestra; Lilacs for Voice and Orchestra*; WL Dawson: Negro Folk Symphony** *Nicole Cabell (soprano); Seattle Symphony/Asher Fisch, **Roderick Cox Seattle Symphony Media SSM 1027 58:01 mins George Walker (1922-2018) was once asked how he would feel were he to hear his music played in an elevator. His reply was telling: ‘I would be a little embarrassed because I would be the only one who would know it, probably.’ Like many Black composers, despite their achievements he and William L Dawson (1899-1900) are still only slowly gaining the wide audience they merit. This superb release from the Seattle Symphony reveals their contrasting yet complementary expressive eloquence. Both composers write from the heart of African-American experience, skilfully deploying spirituals and…

Beethoven • Ravel Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 2; Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Martha Argerich (piano); Israel Philharmonic Orchestra/Lahav Shani Avanti Classic AVA10662 51:54 mins Here we have a lustrous performance of Beethoven’s Op. 19, and a coruscating account of Ravel’s Concerto in G, whose genesis was typically off-beat. The composer had just begun composition of that work when a commission came through for a concerto for the war-wounded, one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Ravel’s response was to write both works simultaneously. ‘Composing two concertos at the same time,’ he told The Daily Telegraph, ‘was an interesting experience. The one I will play myself is a concerto in the truest sense of the word… written in the spirit of the concertos by Mozart and Saint-Saëns. I believe that the music for…

Berlioz Roméo et Juliet; Cléopâtre Joyce DiDonato (mezzo-soprano), Cyrille Dubois (tenor), Christopher Maltman (baritone); Coro Gulbenikan; Choeur de l’Opéra national du Rhin; Coro Gulbenkian; Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra/John Nelson Erato 5419748138 107:46 mins (2 discs) John Nelson has built a solid reputation as one of Berlioz’s leading advocates, with multi-award-winning recordings of many major compositions. This latest instalment consists of two works that demonstrate the composer’s extraordinary dramatic genius – though neither is an opera. The ‘dramatic symphony’ Roméo et Juliette (1839) involves three soloists and chorus but largely retells Shakespeare’s story in purely instrumental terms. The Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra – lynchpin of the Nelson series – offers confident, full-toned playing, with crisp and alert strings, characterful woodwind, subtle yet, where necessary, overwhelming brass, with the percussion, too, delivering exactly as…

Korngold String Quartets Nos 1-3 Tippett Quartet Naxos 8.574428 77:29 mins Korngold, at long last, is everywhere, and not before time. Here the Tippett Quartet have thrown everything they have – which is plenty – at his three string quartets. These works are excellent markers in the composer’s rollercoaster career. The first was from his mid twenties, premiered in 1923; the second arrived ten years later, while the Nazis were rising to power in Germany and completed just before he left Vienna for Hollywood; and the third, from 1945, was the first piece he composed after World War II, while winding down his film music commitments in Hollywood, where he and his family were in exile. The fervid, unpredictable whirl of Quartet No. 1 is overtaken by a hint of…

May round-up Hotel San Claudio is a forward-looking tribute to Pharoah Sanders from pianist and DJ Mark de Clive-Lowe. Unlike his 2022 septet celebration of Sanders’s compositions (Freedom), which was fronted by saxophonist Teodross Avery and soulful vocalist Dwight Trible, the clubby, nu-jazz sound here is provided by rising Blue Note vocalist/flautist Melanie Charles and electronic artist/drummer Shigeto. The trio creates an otherworldly, zero-gravity atmosphere for Charles’s driving vocalese and flute improvisation. It’s blissful music that would have brought a smile to Sanders’s usually sphinx-like countenance. (Soul Bank Music SBM 004CD When the Philharmonie de Paris asked Brad Mehldau to do a Beatles-only set in 2020, the pianist was a little apprehensive. But preparing for it turned out to be the perfect lockdown project. Mehldau says he chose some favourite…

1 MONDAY 6.30-9am Breakfast 9am-12pm Essential Classics CHOICE 12-1pm Composer of the Week Walton 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert 2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert 4.30-5pm New Gen Artists 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 7.30-10pm In Concert EBU 10-10.45pm Music Matters 10.45-11pm Essay Other Tudors 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks 2 TUESDAY 6.30-9am Breakfast 9am-12pm Essential Classics CHOICE 12-1pm Composer of the Week Walton 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert 2-5pm Afternoon Concert 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert from Wigmore Hall. Schubert Piano Sonatas D664, D840 & D845. Paul Lewis (piano) 10-10.45pm Free Thinking 10.45-11pm Essay Other Tudors 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks 3 WEDNESDAY 6.30-9am Breakfast 9am-12pm Essential Classics CHOICE 12-1pm Composer of the Week Walton 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…

1. Which composers named Charles wrote the following: a) Faust (1859); b) Central Park in the Dark (1906); c) The Blue Bird (1910)? 2. And who composed these works: a) L’incoronazione di Poppea (1643); b) Don Carlos (1867); c) Crown of India Suite (1912)? 3. Whose Festival Coronation March was written for the coronation of Tsar Alexander III of Russia in June 1883? 4. Dame Thea King (1925-2007) was a leading performer on which instrument? 5. Who gave the first performance of his own Carillon de Westminster for organ in November 1929? 6. At the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana in 1981, Kiri Te Kanawa (above) sang ‘Let The Bright Seraphim’, an aria from which oratorio? 7. In the Netflix drama The Crown, Charles informs Diana that which…

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 Singers shame No doubt you will have many letters bemoaning the terrible decision to axe the BBC Singers later this year. I pulled out my BBC Music Magazine CD from Volume III Number 1 (from 1994) which was a glorious 67 minutes called ‘A 70th Anniversary Celebration’, and listened again to some wonderful sounds. How cruel then to close this choir just before their centenary. It would have been an opportunity for some extra special performances and recordings, which we will now miss. Shame on you, BBC. Peter Draper, Malvern Philharmonic woe I found it rather ironic that this month’s cover disc [April] should feature the BBC Philharmonic,…

17th: A US patent is issued to Richard French and TJ Hawkins of New Jersey for their horse-drawn grain reaping machine. Believed to have consisted of a rotary set of scythes supported on a pair of wheels, it is the first of several such contraptions to be patented in the US over the next couple of decades. 18th: Britain ends the Treaty of Amiens and declares war on France, beginning the Napoleonic Wars. Signed in 1802 to end the French Revolutionary Wars, the treaty has led to an uneasy truce during which Napoleon has annexed Elba and Piedmont. Neither country has fully met the stipulations of the treaty, with France failing to evacuate Holland and Britain retaining its forces in Malta. 23rd: During a stay in St Petersburg, German violinist…

We all know and love his father Johann Sebastian, but for me Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is also a very important figure. He had a deep vision, and brought about a revolution in keyboard playing. CPE Bach was much better known than his father during his lifetime. He was key for Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, who were inspired by his ways of breaking the rules. Mozart famously said, ‘Bach is the father. We are the children.’ For me, CPE Bach was the first to explore music through the prism of the soul. During his lifetime, the dominant intellectual movement was the Enlightenment, which was concerned with science and reason, but Bach was more interested in music of the soul. He broke with forms and structures, and produced some very modern,…

Tippett Quartet John Mills (violin): My choice is from a collection of historical broadcasts by violinist Oscar Shumsky: the Grand Adage by Glazunov (arr. Zimbalist) and ‘Yesterdays’ from Roberta by Jerome Kern. Shumsky’s playing showcases a style that has all but disappeared. The height of style, charm and colour, his focussed but beautiful vibrato combines with a bow stroke that punctuates while creating a seamless line. The virtuosity goes without saying. Jeremy Isaac (violin): Listening is essential to good music-making and I love discovering all sorts of performances, old and new. One of my favourite LPs is the 1972 recording of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade by the London Philharmonic under Bernard Haitink. It is full of colour, energy and old-school character. Rodney Friend’s violin solos are exquisite, and his artistic licence a…

‘I’m fine playing men on stage – and my private life is my private life’ American baritone Lucia Lucas may not be the only transgender singer on today’s operatic stage, but she was among the very first to transition while maintaining what is an increasingly busy career. And she is certainly the most prominent: for some years she has been based in Germany, but her work involves major productions with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Lyric Opera of Chicago and London’s English National Opera. At these and other venues, audiences are by now used to seeing her play male roles on stage – including last autumn the Sacristan in Christof Loy’s production of Tosca at ENO, and at the beginning of 2023 Grech in David McVicar’s staging of Giordano’s…

With rehearsals for the coronation, choristers encountered some of the composers involved. Boys recall William Walton attending the Westminster Abbey Choir’s practice for his new coronation Te Deum. Dennis Whitehead has cause for remembering William Harris, the organist of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, who composed for the coronation Let My Prayer Come Up. ‘He was one of the sub-conductors during the service, relaying William McKie’s beat, and I was asked to turn the pages of music for him. A great honour!’ For many choristers, a highlight of the rehearsals was meeting Ralph Vaughan Williams, three of whose pieces were to adorn the coronation service. Graham Neal recalls, ‘We said to each other: “Vaughan Williams!… Vaughan Williams!!… I mean, crikey!”.’ Stanley Roocroft remembers: ‘My choirmaster at Blackburn Cathedral had told me,…

I still remember the electrifying thrill of hearing my first piece by Dutilleux, Métaboles. By turns austere and seductive, languid and exhilarating, this music plunges you into a vivid world of sound and feeling, and then a few minutes later transforms it into another, quite different sound world, and then another: each one stays with you long after the piece has blazed into silence. With this work, Dutilleux revealed a growing interest in the new orchestral soundscapes of the 1960s, particularly those of Lutosławski (pictured above), but strictly on his own terms, with a sensibility that seeks out and savours moments that are strange, uncanny, unfathomable, delirious. Dutilleux’s preoccupation with night and the stars then led to two vastly different worlds of feeling in Ainsi la nuit and Timbres, espace,…

Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in May are: 1-5 May Walton 8-12 May Pauline Viardot and her circle 15-19 May Tchaikovsky 22-26 May Ligeti 29 May – 2 June Domenico Scarlatti Trying to grasp the essence of György Ligeti is a futile exercise. He was by nature a maker of ironically distant, shape-shifting pieces, as private and ultimately ungraspable as the man himself. Like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland (one of his favourite books, which he yearned to turn into an opera), the music has no solidity, no essence. It’s a whirlwind of airy gestures, gauzy sounds, exaggeratedly drooping melodies and loud comic pratfalls. We are ushered into a glistening and somewhat sinister private world, but just as…

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 For a brief period, Paul Hindemith appeared to have the musical world at his feet. Internationally acclaimed during the early 1930s as a pedagogue and outstanding viola player, his position as the leading German composer of the younger generation seemed unassailable after securing prestigious commissions for new orchestral works from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic in 1930 and ’32. Alongside this breakthrough, he had cast off his earlier reputation as a musical iconoclast, modifying his creative outlook to embrace a more accessible style. Mathis der Maler Symphony was a success until the Nazis banned Hindemith’s music A comparison of the…

Leonard Bernstein (conductor) Nobody rivals the sheer theatricality of Bernstein’s approach to Hindemith’s final movement in this live account from 1989. The menacing string threnody at the opening conjures up an almost Mahlerian vision of the Apocalypse before plunging us headlong into the scariest ride through the gates of Hell. Though the dryish recording doesn’t give much bloom to the Israel Philharmonic’s woodwind and brass, there’s a palpably vivid sense of struggle between good and evil later in the movement, resolved in arguably the most heart-warming apotheosis of the Symphony on disc. (DG 429 4042) Claudio Abbado (conductor) In this 1995 recording, Abbado invests Hindemith’s ‘Concert of Angels’ with lyrical warmth and tenderness. Exquisite phrasing of the woodwind solos in the slow introduction is followed by radiant bursts of orchestral…

We seem to have an abundance of quality quartets this month, with a pair of appearances from the Piatti Quartet, some cracking Korngold from the Tippett Quartet (our Chamber Choice), marvellous Mozart from Quatuor Ébène and a heap of Haydn from the aptly named London Haydn Quartet. And there’s more, for we have both the Bozzini and Heath Quartets, not to mention the great Amadeus Quartet in our monthly ‘From the Archives’ round-up. If four is three too many for you, then there are star soloists this month, too, such as Martha Argerich (our Concerto Choice), Yuja Wang and Isabelle Faust, plus a bounty of great recordings from Benjamin Grosvenor, Charlie Siem and Jean Rondeau. This month’s critics John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Terry Blain, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, Garry Booth, Geoff Brown,…

Mahler Symphony No. 5 Orchestre symphonique de Montréal/Rafael Payare Pentatone PTC 5187 067 68:01 mins Hand on heart, it’s a long while since I’ve enjoyed a new Mahler Five as much as this. For a start, Rafael Payare clearly sees this teeming, almost over-rich score as a vibrant, purposeful whole. Yes, Mahler can perform the emotional equivalent of a handbrake turn, even a quantum jump, at times, but a really good performance can show how potentially baffling switches of texture and expression are all part of an evolving story, told with searing honesty – no smoothing out the cracks and wrinkles in the name of aesthetic propriety. The sudden switch from tragic collapse at the end of the second movement to oddly upbeat waltzing at the start of the Scherzo…

Desmarets Circé Véronique Gens, Caroline Mutel, Cécile Achille, Romain Bockler, Mathias Vidal, Nicolas Courjal; Les Nouveaux Caracteres/Sébastien d’Hérin Château de Versailles CVS085 155:16 mins (2 discs) This is the first full recording of a stage work by Henri Desmarets (1661-1741) –also known as Henry Desmarest. Once seen as Lully’s likely successor in the musical service of Louis XIV, Desmarets was exiled into obscurity after eloping with his noble employer’s teenage daughter. The crisp dances, vibrant choruses and luminous airs of his pre-exile opera Circé are beguiling, but the score is uneven. Dances unroll in succession with too few choruses to break them up. Characters acquire musical shape only in the second half. Partly to blame is the libretto, a version of Homer’s tale abounding in subplots and amourous stereotypes. While…

A Watchful Gaze Byrd: Tristitia et anxietas; Quomodo cantabimus; Civitas Sancti tui; Turn our captivity; Ne irascaris Domine etc plus works by Clemens, Tabakova, Van Wilder and De Monte The Sixteen/Harry Christophers CORO COR16195 73:09 mins The 400th anniversary of Byrd’s death was bound to intrude on The Sixteen’s ‘Choral Pilgrimage’ plans for 2023; and the result, as the choir currently criss-crosses the UK, is preserved on this thoughtfully programmed album. Some of Byrd’s greatest works are contextualised and illuminated, with two specially commissioned motets by Dobrinka Tabakova. Philip van Wilder’s dark-hued madrigal ‘O doux regards’ prefaces Byrd’s Ne irascaris Domine in which the burnished sonorities are plangently intensified; Philippe de Monte’s Super flumina Babylonis offers comfort to the recusant Byrd who replies setting later lines from the same psalm;…

JS Bach – Tears from Babylon Piano Transcriptions: Chorale Prelude, BWV 653 ‘An Wasserflüssen Babylon’; Organ Trio Sonata in C, BWV 529 etc Alexandra Papastefanou (piano) First Hand Records FHR 141 59:54 mins Alexandra Papastefanou’s much praised Bach projects have now led her in a new direction: transcriptions with a personal touch. Her aim has been to ‘experience on the piano the beauty of each piece… by trying to keep the hierarchy of the voices and the original architecture of the composition’. Drawing a distinction between transcription and arrangement (the latter being in her view the antithesis of transcription), she wants to ‘transmit the same thoughts and emotions of the music without changing the character and transparency of Bach’s writing, avoiding the addition of pompous pianistic sonorities and heavy, thick…

Pharoah Sanders Quartet Live at Fabrik Pharoah Sanders (saxophone), John Hick (piano), Curtis Lundy (bass), Idris Muhammad (drums) Jazzline Classics D77123 Pharoah Sanders, who died last year, had an extraordinary career arc. Starting out on the Californian blues scene, the tenorist came to prominence in the late ’60s as one of John Coltrane’s free-jazz apostles. After retreating in the ’70s, he re-emerged in the ’80s to garner a cult following for transcendental performances that often involved Tibetan bowls and bells. Then, shortly before he died, Promises, a collaboration with electronic minimalist Sam Shepherd and the London Symphony Orchestra thrust him into the limelight. This previously unreleased 1980 live recording from Hamburg broadcaster NDR finds the 40-year old on fierce yet approachable form. For the glorious 18-minute opener, ‘You Gotta Have…

Aaron Copland in Latin America – Music and Cultural Politics Carol A Hess Illinois 344pp (hb) £25.99 ‘Standing up for three hours and shaking hands with 80 people is not much fun’. Cultural diplomacy can, it seems, be decidedly tedious. Between 1941-63 Aaron Copland made four US government-sponsored trips to Latin America, and among the many high-profile lectures, broadcasts and concerts that he gave were a bevy of less stimulating assignments – listening to ‘god-awful’ recitals by local musicians, for instance, or glad-handing at joyless civic receptions. Carol Hess’s wide-ranging study tracks Copland’s travels as a cultural ambassador in countries such as Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Brazil and Cuba. He spoke Spanish, which helped, and vigorously promoted the music of Latin American composers (Chávez, Ginastera and Villa-Lobos among them) on returning…

May round-up Peter Rösel’s traversal of Rachmaninov’s concertos, recorded 1978-82 with Kurt Sanderling and the Berlin Sinfonie-Orchester, is particularly special in the First and Fourth concertos which open this newly remastered reissue. In these ultra-Romantic accounts, every phrase appears to be fully engaged and newly minted by both soloist and orchestra. Alas, a vital spark is missing in the more familiar No. 2 and the Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, both given sumptuous and expansive accounts but lacking in wit or vitality. (Berlin Classics 0302949BC) A set of four live concerto performances by Vladimir Ashkenazy – apparently taped off-air or surreptitiously in the hall – might have been of more interest if Urania had not presented them in transfers in which much of the sound’s substance has been leached.…

Just William May’s first Composer of the Week is William Walton – an apposite choice for coronation week, given that Walton penned music for our last two coronations. We travel from his beginnings in Oldham to his burgeoning reputation as a composer and subsequent flight to the Mediterranean. Composer of the Week, 1-5 May, 12pm Author, author In the latest of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s collaborations with great writers, Ian McEwan joins the orchestra for an evening of words and music. The author of Atonement and Chesil Beach will read from his works, with music to complement each passage. Drama on 3, 14 May, 7.30pm Magnetic north Radio 3’s In Concert comes live from Poole’s Lighthouse. The Bournemouth Symphony presents an evening of atmospheric music from northern lands, featuring Sibelius’s…

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 385/May 2023, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA to arrive by 16 May 2023 (solution in Aug 2023 issue). ACROSS 1 Rather crude, using only tenors in sound? (7) 5 Singer in garden has to fight with racket (7) 9 Not murder to play military instrument (5,4) 10 Spare player, perhaps, in short is very good (5) 11 Upset about cracking man’s old instrument (8) 12 I understand one is behind student composer from Hungary (6) 14 English bass in Broadway musical mostly good? Refuse to accept that (9)…