Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i BBC Music Magazine

‘I need the great window of the stage – here I am at ease.’ Giacomo Puccini’s admission in a letter to a friend might very well have been spoken by Angela Gheorghiu, one of the world’s leading operatic talents, whose larger-than-life personality was always destined for stardom. And it’s no coincidence that Gheorghiu has become associated with Puccini’s great heroines throughout her 30-year career, from Tosca to Mimì to Butterfly. To mark a century since the composer’s death, however, she turns instead to recording his lesser-known songs – works, she tells Christopher Cook on page 26, that explore the range of human emotion with all the truth and power of his famous stage masterpieces. If art imitates life with cinematic intensity in the operas of Puccini, the life of Leonard…

Missing talents I nodded in accord while reading Tom Service’s ‘Finding Joy in the Present’ column (November issue). Concert music is not immune to economic adjudication, and as Service notes, ‘there’s less room for the new in the mausoleum of classical programming’ – Bach sells, Kaija Saariaho does not. People will flock to hear Beethoven and Vivaldi, and even Philip Glass and John Williams, but who, exactly, is Jennifer Higdon? To augment Service’s polemic, I would add that there are many lesser-known composers in the ‘mausoleum’ that music directors and promoters often ignore, such as Moritz Moszkowski, Gerald Finzi, and – since we do not want devotees of Mozart running for the exit during intermission – let’s add Antonio Salieri to the list. Across the pond, we have historically informed…

Ian Niederhoffer Conductor Born: New York, US Career highlights: Winning three prizes in the 2021 Khachaturian conducting competition in Yerevan, Armenia was life-changing. Performing with musicians who had just undergone such national tragedy [the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict] made me a true believer in music’s capacity to heal. Musical hero: Leonard Bernstein. He didn’t just make the audience listen, he taught them how to listen. Dream concert: Performing Britten’s War Requiem. I gravitate towards repertoire that intersects with historical memory, and this piece is a powerful example of music’s ability to make the past come alive. Lucy Colquhoun Pianist Born: London, UK Career highlights: Playing for baritone Thomas Allen. The extent of his experience and the artists with whom he worked closely must be almost totally unrivalled. Musical heroes: As a teenager…

Bristol Choral Society gathererd at Clifton College recently to record a new album celebrating 20th- and 21st-century British composers. Grace-Evangeline Mason and Judith Weir were on hand to oversee the choir’s takes on premieres of their works, A Memory of the Ocean (Mason) and Praise Him with Trumpets (Weir). The album, which also features works by Poston, Vaughan Williams, Holst and Cecilia McDowall, is scheduled for release in July on Delphian. Toronto Symphony Orchestra has announced a new partnership with Harmonia Mundi. It marks the label’s first association with a North American orchestra, and promises rich rewards. The first release will be Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, due on 2 February, followed eventually by Stravinsky’s Pulcinella and Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin, each paired with new works by Canadian composers Kelly-Marie Murphy and Emilie…

The miracle of JS Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier isn’t just that these 96 pieces – 48 preludes and fugues in two books of 24, a pair of pieces in all of the major and minor keys – are the ‘Old Testament’ in music, as Hans von Bülow called them. That biblical symbolism turns them into timeless embodiments of immortal musical brilliance that find their ultimate realisation not in any human-scale performance but as part of NASA’s Golden Record: Bach has been flying into the interstellar medium on board the Voyager spacecraft since 1977. So if they’re not testaments of cosmic musical law-making, what are the 48? They’re something more truly miraculous: a direct connection from our time to Bach’s, to the physicality of Bach’s fingers on the keyboard and the intimacy…

Charlotte Smith Editor Researching French horn repertoire for our forthcoming Podcast series led me to the wonderful playing of Yun Zeng, winner of the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition and the Berlin Philharmonic’s recently appointed principal horn. YouTube has a beautiful video of him performing the Andante from Glière’s Horn Concerto in the competition final – his rich, buttery sound soaring over the orchestral forces. No wonder he’s been snapped up by the Berlin ensemble! Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Quite how I managed to pull a muscle in my shoulder drying my hair is anyone’s guess, but suffice to say that days of discomfort and self-pity followed. To remind myself of the gentler side of all things follicular, I turned to Debussy’s The girl with the flaxen hair in Colin Matthews’s orchestral…

Only two, perhaps three, of Puccini’s songs can be counted as ‘public commissions’. Among them is ‘Inno a Roma’ (Hymn to Rome, above) which Angela Gheorghiu has recorded. ‘I know about that kind of song because in my country during the communist period we were obliged to sing songs composed for many different public occasions,’ she says. Commissioned in 1919 apparently to celebrate Italian victories in World War I, the hymn was to be sung by school children in the morning and then in the theatre in the evening. When Puccini disliked the original text, it was rewritten and the piece finished in March 1919. Puccini described the work to his wife Elvira as ‘a fine piece of rubbish’. The newspapers begged to differ: ‘an exceptional artistic event’, declared one.…

You’re just as likely to hear Bach’s Second Partita for Violin BWV 1004 – a virtuosic solo piece that is a cornerstone in the string repertoire – as a transcription as you are in its original form. Bach began the piece, part of his Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, shortly after his first wife died in 1720. Like the Goldberg Variations, the Chaconne develops a chorale-like theme using a sarabande rhythm and an ostinato bass; the latter becomes a feature, rather than a governing structure. What sounds limiting is an extraordinary exercise in creativity, with the overall effect more profound than the sum of its parts. The format – as with the passacaglia – lends itself to dignified, slowly developing dance music, the Baroque ballad at the disco. It…

As well as being a treat for the eyes, Maestro is a feast for the ears. Whether it’s on screen or pushing our emotional buttons on the soundtrack, there is a lot of music in the film, and much of it by Bernstein. But not all. Schumann’s Manfred Overture makes an early appearance in the New York Phil debut scene, and there’s a bit of Beethoven 8 later on, not to mention a snippet of ‘Sir Beelzebub’ from Walton’s Façade (performed by Carey Mulligan) and an emotionally intense Mahler 2 filmed with the LSO in Ely Cathedral. The film’s timeline takes in the composition of Bernstein’s Fancy Free, Candide, Mass and the ‘Kaddish’ Symphony, while the score features extracts from Anniversaries, Facsimile, On the Waterfront, West Side Story, ‘The Age…

On 29 August 1952, David Tudor sat down at the piano at the Maverick Concert Hall near Woodstock, New York, set a stopwatch running and quietly lifted the lid. He then performed nothing for precisely four minutes and 33 seconds. Or rather, he made no sound, only lifting and lowering the lid so as to signal the beginning and end of each movement. What the audience heard, then, was not the piano but the ambient sounds in the hall – of people shuffling, breathing, whispering – and the wind and the rain outside: far from being silent, the premiere of Cage’s 4’33” was full of noises, to be appreciated by anyone who cared to listen. Smacking of a chaotic rebellion, Cage’s work is one of the purest examples of minimal…

The work The sound of the horn is integral to the music of Richard Strauss. He more-or-less began his composing career with the First Horn Concerto, written for his father Franz in 1883, and signed off with the hear-trending horn solo in ‘Going to Sleep’ (Four Last Songs), completed over six decades later. Along the way, the horn is a constant presence in Strauss’s orchestrations, from his early tone poems Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel and Ein Heldenleben to his late operas Daphne and Capriccio. This devotion to the horn is matched by a deep understanding of the instrument’s character, qualities and technical challenges. Strauss’s horn-playing father exerted enormous influence over the composer’s early musical development and the lessons he learned stayed with him throughout his life. This included a love…

Dennis Brain (horn) Brain may not have been the first horn player to record this concerto but it was his rendition that established it in the repertoire. Captured shortly before his tragically early death in 1957 – with the Philharmonia conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch – this recording has largely stood the test of time despite its dated mono sound. Brain’s tone is less rich than Tuckwell’s but his playing exudes joie de vivre and the ‘sunny radiance’ that beguiled producer Walter Legge. Orchestra and soloist are at their best together in the concerto’s breathlessly scampering finale. (Warner Classics 747 8342) Marie-Luise Neunecker (horn) Fabulously recorded with the Bamberg Symphony under Ingo Metzmacher in 1996, Marie-Luise Neunecker offers the best modern performance of this concerto. Her sound is even bigger than…

And so begins another year. As such, my thoughts turn to what delights 2024 may bring us – of course, I have something of an idea already, but my lips are sealed. Suffice to say, I think it’s going to be another fruitful 12 months. As for January, there is something for everyone, and if the New Year has you in the mood for new music, look no further. There’s an oratorio from Philip Sawyers, a thrilling percussion crossover album from Ayanna Witter-Johnson, a cheeky little Tango from Richard Blackford and a whole set of commissions from the CBSO. In the top spots is a thrilling mix from Penderecki and Lutosławski to Brahms concertos, a Delibes Lakmé, glittering French song, Schumann chamber works and a bit of Granados on the…

Lutosławski Partita for Violin and Orchestra*; Concerto for Orchestra; Novelette *Christian Tetzlaff (violin); Finnish Radio Symphony/Nicholas Collon Ondine ODE 1444-2 60:17 mins The Concerto for Orchestra (1950-54) sealed Lutosławski’s arrival as a vital voice in postwar Europe – and it remains his most beloved work. Yet stylistically it represented an ending for the composer, who left behind ‘folk stuff’ to explore ideas more associated with the avant-garde. This compelling release from conductor Nicholas Collon and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra makes clear the evolutionary exuberance of Lutosławski’s creative development. Building on the Bartók- and Stravinsky-inspired cross-rhythms and neo-baroque structures of the Concerto, he hones its lithe motivic detailing in complex rigorous forms, embracing aleatoricism, while retaining a distinctive directness of expression. The Concerto veers from fairy lightness to roiling turbulence…

Puccini Tosca Melody Moore, Ştefan Pop, Lester Lynch; Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Carlo Montanaro Pentatone PTC 5187 055 (CD/SACD) 109:48 mins (2 discs) Pentatone has been on a roll lately with Puccini. In recent years it has given us a Fanciulla, a Butterfly and a Tabarro, all featuring the American singers Melody Moore and Lester Lynch, with a variety of tenors. On this occasion, the pair are joined by the Romanian tenor Ştefan Pop, who is a former Operalia winner. This new interpretation of a familiar work is noteworthy for two things. First, the close attention to the details of Puccini’s orchestral writing by conductor Carlo Montanaro and the Berlin musicians is captivating, the strings deliciously light and playful in the opening scene, the brass snarling and blazing in the Te Deum, the…

Forget This Night Works by Bacewicz, L Boulanger, Szymanowski Katharine Dain (soprano), Sam Armstrong (piano) 7 Mountain 7MNTN-046 70 mins This excellent duo’s last album was rightly praised for its thoughtful programming and elegant performances. Forget This Night is every bit as appealing in its repertoire and execution, with Dain and Armstrong bringing a terrific sense of light and shade to an expertly curated collection of French and Polish songs. At the heart of the album is Clairières dans le ciel (Clearings in the Sky), the only song cycle by Lili Boulanger. Her music shimmers with luscious harmonies, delicate textures and an intense sense of atmosphere, and this cycle, a study of romantic obsession from the ecstatic to the desolate, is among her finest work. The piece receives an exquisite…

JS Bach Cello Suites Nos 3 & 4 Sonia Wieder-Atherton (cello) Alpha Classics ALPHA1009 56:33 mins Bach’s six years as director of music at Prince Leopold’s court at Cöthen between 1717 and 1723 saw him produce some of the Baroque era’s finest instrumental music. In the case of the Suites for solo cello – along with the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin – these works remain at the heart of the repertoire three hundred years later. The outward form of the cello suites – with the familiar French dances each introduced by a Prélude – is conventional enough, but within these confines Bach explored a range of sonority demanding a technical expertise and expressive understanding that has challenged the finest soloists from all over the world for nearly a…

Music of Exile Michael Haas Yale 400pp (hb) £25 This hugely important book explores the vast array of musical talent from Central Europe that was forced into exile after Hitler came to power in 1933. Inevitably, much of its focus centres around the experience that émigré composers faced in the United States and in Great Britian. But Michael Haas casts his net much wider, highlighting the stories of those musicians who relocated to completely unexpected parts of the globe such as New Zealand, China and South America. Whether he is dealing with a relatively familiar composer, such as Kurt Weill or Erich Wolfgang Korngold, or someone, such as Richard Fuchs or Hans Winterberg who for the most part have been overlooked, Haas approaches each case study with fair-mindedness, insight and…

Nikolaus Harnoncourt Debut Mozart: Die Zauberflöte – Overture; Symphony in C major, K338; Oboe Concerto in C major, K314*; Symphony in D major ‘Haffner’ *Werner Herbers (oboe); Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam/Nikolaus Harnoncourt et al Belvedere BVE08071 185:29 mins (3 discs) When Nikolaus Harnoncourt died in 2016, among the tributes was a startling admission from the Salzburg Festival that Herbert von Karajan had insisted Harnoncourt didn’t appear there while Karajan was still alive. But Harnoncourt made his Salzburg debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra at ‘Mozart Week’ in 1980, and that’s the concert released here. There’s characteristic tautness and discipline in the Magic Flute Overture, Symphony No. 34 and Oboe Concerto, but you can tell the players are still feeling their way into Harnoncourt’s bracing period style, a tension that makes the ‘Haffner’ Symphony…

1. Name the 1896 symphonic poem by Richard Strauss inspired by a philosophical novel by Friedrich Nietzsche. 2. The philosopher Colline is a character in which much-loved opera, also dating from 1896? 3. Commissioned in 1931 by pianist Paul Wittgenstein, brother of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, what is distinctive about Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 4? 4. Which Greek philosopher described music as ‘a moral law’ which ‘gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination… and life to everything’? 5. In contrast, which German philosopher in his The Critique of Judgment (1790) dismissed instrumental music as the lowest of all artforms? 6. Which of Haydn’s symphonies is nicknamed ‘The Philosopher’? 7. A world-famous string quartet that started up in 1976 and retired last year was named…

Christopher Cook Writer, broadcaster & lecturer ‘Talking to Angela Gheorghiu about her new recording, I was struck by her capacity to surprise – with these often forgotten Puccini songs, of course, but also her hints about growing up in communist Romania.’ Page 26 Michael White Author, critic & broadcaster ‘To those of us who live down south, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra are a wonder more often heard through recordings that in the flesh. But their 50th anniversary offers a chance to catch up with them at a key point in their history.’ Page 52 Nick Shave Journalist and author ‘I recently found myself stopping mid-commute in a London Underground station to record the sounds of a rush hour. Writing about John Cage can have that kind of effect on you:…

100,000 …pounds estimated for the manuscript of Mahler’s ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!’, up for auction at Christies. 9 …in ten people want to broaden their musical horizons in 2024, says a survey by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. 5 …northern-based music graduates named by Manchester Camerata as the recipients of the ensemble’s inaugural Annual Training Fellowship programme. 644,000 …followers and 19.7m likes have led to organist Anna Lapwood (below) being officially named as one of TikTok’s Breakthrough Artists of 2023.…

The phrase ‘annus horribilis’ might easily have been invented to describe the string of spirit-weakening events that struck Gustav Mahler in the year 1907. First, his ten-year tenure as director of the Court Opera in Vienna ended, crippled by ongoing disputes with management and performers and by a virulently anti-Semitic campaign against him in the press. Then, in July, his four-year-old daughter Maria died of diphtheria. Shortly afterwards, Mahler was diagnosed with a heart defect, heaping further anxiety on both himself and his wife Alma. These hammer blows of fate might easily have felled the 47-year-old composer and conductor. But Mahler, a famously combative and dynamic individual, was by no means ready to capitulate. Anticipating his ouster from the Court Opera, on 21 June 1907 he had signed a lucrative…

I suspect that most people in the UK who make a living from classical music, or who simply love it, are glad to see the back of 2023. It was a year when things upon which you thought you could rely suddenly seemed far from certain. Things like opera being performed widely across the UK. Or the people in charge of dispensing public funding for culture showing some enthusiasm for serious artforms. Or well-regarded universities continuing to teach music as well as the other humanities and sciences. When you realise that there are powerful figures high up in politics and public institutions who would not agree with any of those propositions, you become scarily conscious of how precarious the future is for classical music. On top of all that, 2023…

Gheorghiu’s native Romania has provided us with a wealth of talented performers, composers and conductors. These include the Romanian-British pianist Alexandra Dariescu. Gheorghiu’s accompanist on her 2019 song album Plaisir d’Amour, Dariescu has also composed The Nutcracker and I, a modern staging of Tchaikovsky’s masterwork, featuring piano, ballet and animation. Next, another pianist: Radu Lupu (1945-2022), famed for his uniquely sensitive renditions of the music of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and others. A third great Romanian pianist was Dinu Lipatti (1917-50). An occasional composer as well, Lipatti was known for his perfectionism: he famously spent four years preparing for a performance of Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto. Another great multi-tasking Romanian was George Enescu (1881-1955). Enescu conducted, taught music and played the violin – but he is best known as a composer of…

From the aulos keeping rowers in sync on Ancient Greek triremes to crooners on cruise ships, there is a long history of music being performed on board boats. Perhaps the most famous floating performance of all took place on the River Thames on 17 July 1717 when, travelling on a barge from Westminster to Chelsea, George I enjoyed the premiere of Handel’s Water Music, played by around 50 musicians on another barge. A large flotilla of other boats joined in the spectacle… just as they did on the same river 295 years later. On this latter occasion – a very wet 3 June 2012 – it was Elizabeth II being entertained as she celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, courtesy of barge-borne performances by the Academy of Ancient Music and London Philharmonic…

Hajibeyov (1885-1948) is considered the first composer of Azerbaijani classical music and the creator of mugham opera. He wrote Leyli and Majnun in 1908, based on a Romeo and Juliet-type love story by 16th-century Azeri poet Fuzuli. It’s Donizetti-like in style, but includes tar and kamancha alongside the orchestral instruments. He wrote three more mugham operas based on Azeri and Persian poems, although only Leyli and Majnun and Asli and Kerem (1912) are regularly performed today. The latter is a love story between a Christian girl and a Muslim boy – it doesn’t end well. He also composed Azerbaijan’s national anthem, which was re-adopted after independence in 1991. The composer was born in Shusha in Nagorno-Karabakh, often dubbed the ‘conservatoire of the Caucasus’ because of the number of mugham singers…

Chance Using complex methodology, Cage found different ways to generate numbers that could be translated into his music and art. Whether using the I Ching, tossing coins or using a specially written computer program, his basic aim was always the same: to remove his intention from the work, so as to produce something that more closely resembles an act of nature. Avant-garde If ever a composer challenged and critiqued the aesthetic conventions of the time, it was John Cage. Notions of instrumentation, performance, composition, music itself: all were scrutinised and redefined. His influence is far-reaching – felt across movements from Neo-Dada to Fluxus to Conceptual art. Interdisciplinary Whether working in dance, music, painting, writing or printmaking, Cage moved across the arts, forming collaborations with artists such Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns…

When, in 1870, the six-year-old Richard Strauss wrote his first ever piece of music, the course of his life effectively fell into place. By the time he was 18, he already had over 100 works to his name. Over the following decades, Strauss’s music traversed characterful, vividly painted tone poems such as Till Eulenspiegel and Don Quixote to the fiery dissonance of the operas Salome and Elektra, and the wistful reflection of his final masterpiece the Four Last Songs. The German composer’s output was as varied as his life, which encompassed parallel careers as conductor and Salzburg Festival founder.…

How much time did you spend with the music before recording? I try to have the first rehearsals early on in the process so that we can plan accordingly. We also plan concerts prior to recordings so that also serves as a rehearsal. What are you looking for when thinking about new projects? There isn’t always a rational explanation. Often imagination and feelings are the things determining the choice – be it what music, what recording is appropriate for this time or what surprises or novelty it brings. What was Penderecki’s approach to choral writing? He had a magnificent knowledge of choir specifics and there is always room for imagination. I believe that his pieces open up major room for musical fantasy – I don’t believe this music sets any…

Mozart Mozart 1791 – Clarinet Concerto; Arias etc Pierre Génisson (clarinet); Karine Deshayes (mezzo-soprano); Concerto Köln/Jakob Lehmann Erato 5419773233 57:20 mins This is interesting, and sometimes much more than interesting – though it’s probably best to draw a veil over the grim Requiem adaptation for multi-racked clarinets and what sounds like a jumbo-sized electronic celesta. When Mozart heard clarinettist Anton Stadler, it was the vocal quality of his playing that impressed him as much as Stadler’s agility and virtuoso élan. Hearing arias from The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte arranged for clarinet, finely played by Pierre Génisson, is a reminder of how close to the human voice this instrument can come, to the point where it’s almost possible to forget the originals – almost, that is. Then, in…

Delibes Lakmé (DVD) Sabine Devieilhe, Frédéric Antoun, et al; Pygmalion/Raphaël Pichon; dir. Laurent Pelly (Paris, 2022) Naxos 2.110765 (DVD); NBD0177V (Blu-ray) 135 mins For many listeners Lakmé is no more than the sum of two of its parts, ‘The Flower Duet’ and ‘The Bell Song’. This thoughtful production, which began across several stages at the Opéra Comique, shames any who may have wrinkled their noses. Laurent Pelly transforms Delibes’s opera into an exploration of colonialism and cultural appropriation on a set that appears to feature artfully cut paper – origami perhaps – with stage hands in black, as in Kabuki. Hints of Butterfly here, as Pelly also references operatic Orientalism from The Pearl Fishers to Le Roi de Lahore. The colonisers are British barging into a sacred Hindu forest space where…

Benjamin Attahir • Debussy • Ravel Debussy: String Quartet in G minor; Benjamin Attahir: Al Asr; Ravel: String Quartet in F major Quatuor Arod Erato 5419775230 78:18 mins I find it hard to decide which I enjoyed more: the performances of the three works or the DVD providing background information about the players and their attitude to their task. The latter first. For those of us who’ve never been part of a professional quartet, the DVD made by the wonderful Bruno Monsaingeon is an eye-opener to the labour, sensitivity, intelligence, tact, humour, concentration and self-awareness required to keep everything alive and well. Before every gig, they all lie on the floor on their backs and meditate; and from time to time they have sessions with a psychotherapist – not just…

Granados Goyescas, Op. 11 Javier Perianes (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMM902626 64:56 mins With Goyescas, Granados hoped to help create a new form of Spanish art music, and the work did just that. Claire Fraysse’s liner note to this superb album helpfully expands the context, explaining how Goya’s paintings inspired the composer. The majos and majas were young people from working-class districts of late-18th-century Madrid, ‘whose principal attributes were their elegant garb, courteous manners, provocative charm, and romantic ardour’. When these modes and manners also became adopted by the upper classes, majismo became a marker for national identity. Granados’s palette ranges from the punteo guitar effect to echoes of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, and the styles he employs include the satirical tonadilla, the theatrical jacara and fandango dances and Valencian folk song.…

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Deep listening is required for Arvo Pärt – Essential Choral Works (Harmonia Mundi HMX2904087.90), a new four-disc celebration of the Estonian composer’s (mostly) sacred works. This feast for the ears is as much a celebration of Paul Hillier’s long association with the composer’s music, of which he has been an advocate since the early 1980s. Hillier conducts the Theatre of Voices in these intimate and detailed recordings, captured between 1996 and 2012 in the US, the UK, Denmark and Estonia. Crowning the set are Pärt’s major works for voices such as the Berliner Mass, Missa Syllabica and Stabat Mater, but there are many shorter gems to enrapture, including I Am the True Vine and two different takes on Solfeggio. Sacred works form part of Warner’s Otto Klemperer – Complete Recordings,…

Mysterious chorus I always enjoy your Music To My Ears feature and am intrigued to read of the listening choices of a variety of musicians and staff. Particularly intriguing in your Christmas issue was Michael Berkeley’s praise of the chorus in the recent Covent Garden production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. What chorus? Was he referring to the very brief shriek of the Nibelungen slaves as they scatter? Otherwise, it’s a long wait to hear the voices of the Gibichung vassals in Götterdämmerung, the Ring’s only true chorus. Nevertheless, who can fail to endorse all he says of how freelance singers and players enrich our culture? Paul Pascoe, Shrewsbury Colin calms down Patrick Hoyte (Letters, Christmas) feels the ‘accolade’ for the most demonstrative conductor should go to Leonard Bernstein. May I…

Royal standing Visitors heading to the Royal Albert Hall for a concert may want to add a few minutes to their schedule to allow time to admire two new additions to the building’s familiar exterior. In November, Charles III and Queen Camilla unveiled statues of Elizabeth II and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, which now proudly adorn the south porch. Crafted out of bronze by sculptor Poppy Field, they each stand at two metres tall. Oxford blues Performers and composers across the UK are among those to express dismay at the announcement by Oxford Brookes University that it is to close its music department. The decision, which the university says is due to ‘increasing financial challenges due to a range of external factors’ will mean that its final music degrees will…

13th: One hundred-and-seventy-one people are killed when fire breaks out at the Rhoads Opera House in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. Caused when a kerosene lamp used for stage lighting is knocked over, setting light to gases emitted from malfunctioning theatre equipment, the blaze is not taken seriously at first by many, with fatal consequences. 21st: The Sullivan Ordinance, a municipal law banning women from smoking at public venues, is passed in New York City. The next day, Katie Mulcahey is fined $5 for breaking the ordinance then arrested when she refuses to pay up. She will prove to be the only person charged under the law, which is vetoed two weeks later by mayor George B McClellan Jr. 23rd: American composer Edward MacDowell dies in New York City, aged 47. After beginning…

I first discovered Reynaldo Hahn’s music through the exquisite songs ‘A Chloris’ and ‘L’heure exquise’. These songs inspired me to research his other works. It’s been a joy to discover and work on these under-appreciated piano pieces with Alexandre Tharaud. ‘Le ruban dénoué’ (The Untied Ribbon) is a set of waltzes written for two pianos, which remains relatively undiscovered. The two waltzes that I selected from this for my new album are full of great contrasts, sultriness and vivacity, and I have enjoyed playing with the tender dialogues and conversational aspects that weave between the two pianos. Hahn’s collaborations and friendships with the great poets – including a romantic involvement with Marcel Proust – gave his writing great emotive strength. It was Proust’s very first love affair and, when it…

Andrew Armstrong Pianist I can’t get enough of the way the music and words speak to each other in Richard Strauss’s songs, sometimes at odds, sometimes complimentarily. In ‘Morgen’, it happens in such fabulous ways, with the piano and vocal line almost behaving as if they have nothing to do with each other, but they eventually line up and interweave just at the moment the words say, ‘We will be re-united.’ In my favourite recording, the comforting tenderness of baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is miraculous, and accompanist Gerald Moore is one of the greatest ever. When I was a little boy, we’d go on family trips and my parents would put on a lot of Ella Fitzgerald. I was determined to marry her, because of the perfection of her voice –…

‘While the world outside was dark, the place I could create through my guitar was as beautiful as I wanted it to be’ A man in a powdered-white curled wig takes his seat in the gilded room. He adjusts the frilled sleeves beneath a red velveteen jacket and begins to play. The first piece in the suite unfurls its contrapuntal fronds. Handel sits astride the backless chair, gently strumming and plucking his way through measured phrases. Or at least, he does in the imagination of Miloš Karadaglić, whose latest album, Baroque, is a compendium of works from that period, transcribed for the guitar. Although Handel lived in the same building that Jimi Hendrix would occupy centuries later – a connection celebrated through the recently opened Handel Hendrix House in London’s…

Maxim Emelyanychev made his conducting debut at the age of 12, directing an orchestra in his native Russia. It survives in film footage – he looks born to it. And with musician parents – his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer – he effectively was. As he says, ‘This was in my blood.’ Studies took him to the Moscow Conservatoire where he had ‘great teachers like [Gennady] Rozhdestvensky. But there were other teachers too – John Eliot Gardiner, Harnoncourt, Mackerras – from whom I learned much, though I never met them. You listen, it goes into your mind, it transforms you.’ And so it was that Emelyanychev found his way out of the grand Russian tradition into period performance, building experience with ensembles as a keyboard player. Keyboards still…

Barry Tuckwell (horn) London Symphony Orchestra/István Kertész Decca E460 2962 The catalogue is not short of recordings of Strauss’s Second Horn Concerto, which has proved a draw to many of the finest soloists of the late-20th and early-21st centuries, not to mention conductors including the likes of Herbert von Karajan, André Previn and Vladimir Ashkenazy. For those wishing to explore different versions, the choice is rich indeed. Two of those recordings were made by the late Australian horn virtuoso Barry Tuckwell, the first of which dates from 1966 and is still the finest account available. Tuckwell was at that time the principal horn of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) and he enjoys a palpable rapport with this ensemble, which is on fabulous form under the baton of the Hungarian conductor…

Recordings and books rated by expert critics Penderecki Sacred Choral Works Latvian Radio Choir/Sigvards Kļava Ondine ODE 1435-2 60:46 mins Sumptuous, passionate and uplifting, Penderecki’s sacred choral music spans his career. From the early avant-garde outbursts to the refreshed traditional sounds of his maturity, these expressions of often defiant piety are central to his output. Rarely, though, have they received such assured and lovingly committed performances as on this ravishing album from the Latvian Radio Choir and conductor Sigvards Kļava. The same performers’ recent collection of choral music by Cage rightly received numerous plaudits, but this new recording is, if anything, even more impressive. These utterly fearless unaccompanied singers bring precision to the most complex textures while retaining a palpable grasp of the music’s emotional heart, imbuing it with an…

Bacewicz Orchestral Works, Vol. 1: Symphonies Nos 3 & 4; Overture BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Sakari Oramo Chandos CHSA5316 (CD/SACD) 59:50 mins ‘Nervously jagged shreds of motifs, artificial dirt patches, stubbornly dissonant harmonies,’ was one early verdict on Bacewciz’s Symphony No. 3. It should be noted that this listener had an agenda – considering whether the Polish composer’s music fitted the demands of Soviet socialist realism, a test he thought the piece failed – but there’s a shred of truth in his description of the music. The nervy mood is certainly there – the end of the Drammatico first movement has the bitter edginess of Walton’s First Symphony, while the uneasy Finale is a sibling to Shostakovich. Seventy years later, we listen to Bacewicz with different ears, a different agenda. Her…

Brahms Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 2 Simon Trpčeski (piano); WDR Sinfonieorchester/Cristian Măcelaru Linn Records CKD732 95:15 mins (2 discs) You might think you don’t need another recording of the Brahms piano concertos. Well, you need this one. It is a splendid showcase, not just for the performers, but for the music: it has such a pleasing, expansive warmth and sense of relish. Apart from anything else, it sounds as if the performers are having the time of their lives. Simon Trpčeski’s playing has always had a touch of brilliance, which has ample chance to glitter, but he doesn’t stint on the requisite grandeur of sound. Granitey octaves often alternate with rounded legato; and his sense of rubato is superb, with a subtle holding-back at key moments, as in the…

Beethoven Missa Solemnis Lina Johnson (soprano), Olivia Vermeulen (mezzo-soprano), Martin Platz (tenor), Manuel Walser (bass); La Capella Nacional de Catalunya; Le Concert des Nations/Jordi Savall Alia Vox AVSA9956 75:15 mins Is the Missa Solemnis the greatest opera Beethoven never wrote? Theatrical through and through, there’s something positively Promethean about its quest to reconcile the divine and the human. And like JS Bach’s equally all-encompassing B minor Mass, it’s more a personal statement writ large than a practical contribution to the liturgical repertoire – even though Op. 123 started life as a work to mark the consecration of Beethoven’s patron and pupil Archduke Rudolf as Archbishop of Olomouc. Considering it his greatest work to date, Beethoven famously inscribed ‘from the heart – may it return – to the heart’ ahead of…

R Schumann Piano Quartet; Piano Quintet* Isabelle Faust (violin), *Anne Katharina Schreiber (violin), Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello), Antoine Tamestit (viola), Alexander Melnikov (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMM902695 54:42 mins Schumann composed his Piano Quintet and Piano Quartet in quick succession in the late autumn of 1842, a year in which he was preoccupied with chamber music. The quartet has always lived in the shadow of its more popular companion, but in many ways it’s a more subtle and original work. Its themes are more flexible and rhapsodic than the sometimes four-square ideas in the quintet, and they’re generally developed more inventively and less repetitively. The Scherzo is a highly original and seamless piece in which fragments invade the territory of both the contrasting trio sections. Only the somewhat sentimental slow movement disappoints,…

January round-up Jazz has almost always been a broad church and Get the Blessing have been contributing to it since 1999. Like many others during the pandemic, the band was forced into new working methods, and Pallett grew out of improvisations between bassist Jim Barr, trumpeter Pete Judge and saxophonist Jake McMurchie, recordings of which were sent to Clive Deamer to add the drum parts. The album that emerged has a foundation of cyclical riffs over which float beguiling ethereal melodies, with fine work from McMurchie. Somewhat unusually these days none of the tracks outstays its welcome: indeed, I think most of them could support more extended versions. (All Is Yes AIY 002) Tomos Williams’s Riot! Suite is prefaced by Eädyth Crawford’s hauntingly beautiful performance of the Welsh folk-tune ‘Aderyn…

January round-up Born in 1890, Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow was just 14 when she became the first foreign student at the St Petersburg Conservatory. She stepped back as a soloist in the late 1920s, celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic, but exhausted by relentless touring, and most of these recordings are from her early years. Despite the limitations of acoustic recording, it’s impossible not to be impressed by Parlow’s virtuosity, her sweet tone and fluid phrasing. The recordings date from 1909-1916, mostly miniatures, plus later broadcast recordings of the Mendelssohn Concerto and solo Bach. A Parlow collection that’s overdue. (Biddulph 85036-2) ★★★★ Marie Antoinette had a harp in her luggage when she arrived at the French court in 1770, and she made it fashionable at Versailles, inspiring a golden…

JANUARY’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see BBC Sounds and iPlayer 1 MONDAY 6.30-9am Breakfast 9am-10.15am Essential Classics CHOICE 10.15am-1pm New Year’s Concert from Vienna 1-2pm Composer of the Week Caroline Shaw 2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert 4.30-5pm New Gen Artists 5-6.15pm In Tune 6.15-8pm Radio 3 In Concert. 2023 BBC Proms: Prom 60 (rpt). Weill Threepenny Opera Suite, Adès Piano Concerto, Rachmaninov Symphony No. 3. Kirill Gerstein (piano), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra/Vladimir Jurowski 8-9.25pm New Generation Artists 9.25-10.45pm Radio 3 In Concert. 2023 BBC Proms: Proms at Perth (rpt). Haydn String Quartet in E flat major Op. 9 No. 2, Tippett Piano Sonata No. 2, Shostakovich Piano Quintet. Steven Osborne (piano), Heath Quartet CHOICE 10.45-11pm The Essay Secret Admirers 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks 2 TUESDAY…

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 394/January 2024, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA to arrive by 23 Jan 2024 (solution in Apr 2024 issue). ACROSS 1 Conflict to engage pseudonymous composer (7) 5 Holst movement or Mozart symphony? (7) 9 Something pulled out by performer making patrons go wild (5,4) 10 Prepared to shoot new staging of Dream? (5) 11 Initially we are testing every recorder on which Handel’s music was played? (5) 12 Listener around Italy getting one taboo item from Italian composer (5,4) 13 North-East retaining popular links when Britpop emerged? (8)…

Sol Gabetta is an award-winning soloist who plays with ensembles from the Berlin Philharmonic to the Hagen Quartet. She collaborates with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and tours with regular recital partner, pianist Bertrand Chamayou. The duo’s latest recording, of Mendelssohn works for cello and piano, is out on Sony Classical on 19 Jan. was born in Argentina to a Russian-French mother and an Argentinian father with Italian roots, who introduced us to music very early. When I was nine, my mother looked for a music school in Europe for me and my older brother, who plays the violin. I went to the Reina Sofia school in Madrid, where I became a student of Russian cellist Ivan Monighetti. While my father stayed in Argentina with my other two siblings, we flew back…