Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i BBC Music Magazine

From its opening clarinet glissando to its sweeping love theme, Rhapsody in Blue is one of the most recognisable and frequently performed of all American concert works. Yet according to legend, the piece may never have seen the light of day. George Gershwin, it seems, had cursory discussions about a commission for bandleader Paul Whiteman’s ‘Experiment in Modern Music’, but when his brother Ira saw a note in the newspaper advertising said concert for 12 February 1924 – in just five weeks’ time – George realised the commission was far more solid than he had previously understood. The resulting work was premiered as planned, but with Gershwin performing the piano part from memory, as there hadn’t been time to produce a solo score. On page 30 Mervyn Cooke explores 100…

Tiffany Poon Pianist Born: Hong Kong Career highlight: Pentatone releasing my debut album Diaries: Schumann; playing to a sold-out palace at Dresden Musikfestspiele; and Deutsche Welle filming a documentary about my journey with music. Musical hero: Pianist Vladimir Horowitz, for his ability to speak directly to your heart; and my musician friends, for their enthusiasm in promoting culture and education beyond the stage. And birds! Dream concert: My parents have sacrificed a lot for my piano career. I’d love to play at the BBC Proms with them in the audience. Michael Mofidian Bass-baritone Born: Glasgow, UK Career highlight: Returning to Covent Garden to sing Colline in Puccini’s La bohème felt very significant. I’m lucky enough to be doing it again there this season. Musical heroes: Samuel Ramey, Nicolai Ghiaurov and…

The music of George Lloyd (1913-98) has found a new home with the Lyrita Nimbus Archive. In an exclusive agreement with The George Lloyd Society, Lyrita Nimbus will make sure the British composer’s printed scores and recorded legacy (including 12 symphonies) are available for years to come. Lloyd conducted all of his own recordings, which will be released physically and digitally in 2024/25. Rachel Podger was at London’s St Anne and St Agnes Church recently to record a new album of violin music inspired by the resurgence of the arts in England after the Restoration in 1660. She teamed up with regular performing partners Brecon Baroque for the sessions, which also featured Elizabeth Kenny on theorbo, to record works by Lawes, Jenkins, Locke and Purcell. Channel Classics will release the…

No city has been sounded and celebrated by composers and musicians as thrillingly as New York and, in particular, Manhattan – a place where 800 languages are spoken, and even more musical genres are currently being played, remade and born. The hum that Manhattan makes has been calculated to vibrate at an infrasonic, body-shakingly low B flat, the sum total of billions of interactions between electronic signals, traffic noise, construction, wind, weather and the ceaseless currents of human-made music and conversation. Pieces about New York have been made by the most imaginative of the ‘weirdos’ who move there and who visit it – that’s the Illinois-born Laurie Anderson’s affectionate collective term for the creative immigrants, like her, who flock to the city to etch new chapters in its story of…

Charlotte Smith Editor Returning for the first time in five-and-a-half years to my hometown of Adelaide gave me the chance to attend the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at St Peter’s Cathedral on Christmas Eve. The 130-year-old cathedral choir, these days comprising male and female voices, was on fine form in carols by Tavener, Bob Chilcott and Iain Farrington – and the organ, with its 32ft double open diapason pipes, had no trouble filling every corner of the cavernous building. Magnificent! Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Writing about music connected with boats recently acquainted me with pieces that might well have otherwise floated past me. These included Glazunov’s Stenka Razin, a symphonic poem based on the ‘Song of the Volga Boatmen’. After setting out its familiar theme in the brass…

Among the many, many recordings of Rhapsody in Blue available, the majority feature the work in Grofé’s symphony orchestra arrangement. For the jazz band original, however, try pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s 2009 recording with members of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop (Decca 478 2189). Why, though, settle for just one piano? Sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque have recorded the work both in an opulent version for two pianos and orchestra with the Cleveland Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly (Decca 466 4242) and by themselves in an arrangement for piano duet (Philips 400 0222). Going further are the Gershwin Piano Quartet in André Desponds’s arrangement for, yes, four pianos (Jecklin JD720-2), while the piano is dispensed with entirely in a version for organ and brass band, recorded by Wolfgang Sieber and…

‘Upper berth – lower berth. That’s the difference between talent and genius,’ muttered George Gershwin to his friend Oscar Levant as he settled down for the night in the more comfortable lower bunk. The two musicians were on the sleeper from New York to Pittsburgh, where Gershwin was due to perform his Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F. The conductor Bill Daly had been held up in New York, and Levant was to help out by playing the solos while Gershwin rehearsed the orchestra. If Oscar Levant was no genius on the level of Gershwin, he was nothing if not multi-talented. Pianist, composer, actor, writer, radio show host – he managed all those careers throughout his life. As a Gershwin player he was second only to the composer himself,…

Composer-lyricist team George and Ira Gershwin worked together for much of their careers, writing Broadway scores, popular songs and, with DuBose Heyward, 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. Some decades later, another set of brothers arrived in Hollywood: Robert and Richard Sherman became staff songwriters for Walt Disney Studios, producing hit soundtracks including Mary Poppins (1964) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). While not regular collaborators, Andrew and Julian Lloyd Webber have sometimes combined forces, notably in 1978 with Variations, Andrew’s piece based on the theme from Paganini’s 24th Caprice, performed by his cellist brother (both pictured above). Julian also recorded Lloyd Webber Plays Lloyd Webber, a 1989 album of arrangements of Andrew’s musical theatre. Musically, brotherhood has been contemplated in the abstract in Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, and more literally in The…

What is it about violin virtuosos and fencing? Like his fellow bow-wielder, the Guadaloupian Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, half-a-century later, Giuseppe Tartini was an avid and reportedly skilled swordsman. And like Bologne he was a composer, the cut and thrust of whose music moved that great man of musical letters Dr Charles Burney to describe him as ‘one of the few original geniuses of our century’. Having arrived in Padua just months after Tartini’s death in 1770, Burney made a beeline for the composer’s last resting place with all the purposefulness ‘of a pilgrim at Mecca’. Corelli, he noted, had been the young Tartini’s guiding star but, Burney contended, ‘Tartini had surpassed that composer in the fertility and originality of his inventions’. Any difficulties of execution were the result…

John Shirley-Quirk (bass-baritone) The classic recording for many years was EMI’s 1968 version with John Shirley-Quirk, the Choir of King’s College Cambridge and the English Chamber Orchestra under David Willcocks. Shirley-Quirk’s style, which to today’s ears may sound old-fashioned, bass-heavy and slightly ponderous, nevertheless has a touching nobility, and the King’s choristers find the contrasts in tone, from rapt brilliance to quiet mystery. The recording captures every detail of the woodwind and smooth strings in the rich acoustic of King’s College Chapel. (Warner Classics 680 5132) Brian Rayner Cook (baritone) Among other versions with orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia under Richard Hickox deliver a thrilling, propulsive Antiphon, but the unimpressive baritone Stephen Roberts rules out that recording. Just as exciting, and with a more committed soloist in Brian Rayner Cook, is…

With the nominees revealed for the BBC Music Magazine Awards (see p26), I can’t help but get ahead of myself and wonder what might be considered from this year’s reviews. We’re only onto our second issue of the year, but there are already some strong releases that we’ll surely be talking about when the time comes. Our Recording of the Month (see over) is one such example, as Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Reto Bieri and Polina Leschenko get together and just have a great time making music. Their joy in Take 3 is infectious. We’ve composers to discover, too, with orchestral works by Helvi Leiviskä (1902-82) and concertos by Grete von Zieritz (1899-2001). Plus the hills are still very much alive with The Sound of Music in our round-up of Screen highlights.…

CPE Bach The Hamburg Symphonies Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century/Alexander Janiczek (violin) Glossa GCD921134 65:43 mins According to one observer who heard a run-through of the ‘Hamburg Symphonies’ before they were despatched to their dedicatee Baron van Swieten, ‘the original and adventurous trajectory of ideas was heard with delight’. Encouraged by the Baron to be bold and unconstrained by practicalities CPE Bach obliged, producing music that exuberantly ambushes expectations with harmonic daring, dramatic unexpected interruptions and an elevated sensitivity to the expressive possibilities of contrast – both dynamic and rhetorical. Directing from the violin, Alexander Janiczek galvanises a robust and full-bodied string sound, further enhanced by a conspicuously warm and spacious recording. His characteristic precision and panache inform the irrepressible first movement of the B flat Symphony, which nonetheless coyly…

Cavalli Il Xerse Carlo Vistoli, Ekaterina Protsenko et al; Baroque Orchestra Modo Antiquo/Federico Maria Sardelli Naxos 8.660536-37 152:56 mins (2 discs) Cavalli’s Il Xerse is something of a landmark opera. Composed mid-career in 1655, it was chosen (in a revised form, with additional music by Lully) to celebrate the marriage of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain in 1660. Its libretto, by Nicolò Minato, was later set by Handel. Unfortunately, I’m afraid this is no landmark recording. The performance comes from the 2022 Valle d’Itria Festival in Martina Franca, which saw the opera’s prologue cut and several scenes removed. The production was staged in the town’s restored 1930s cinema, and sound engineers have done little to remove audience and on-stage noise. Worse, the singers’ annoying hand claps (ordered by…

Circus Dinogad Works by Byrd, Dowland, Purcell, Ravel, Jean-Luc Ponty et al Mike Fentross (theorbo), Maarten Ornstein (clarinet), Hilary Summers (contralto); Dudok Quartet Amsterdam Zefir ZEF9701 46:33 mins Since its launch in 2022, the madcap, genre-bending ensemble Circus Dinogad has taken its audiences on a series of quirky and highly entertaining musical adventures, led by the Welsh contralto Hilary Summers. Their latest recording is an exuberant mish-mash of musical miniatures that defies definition, taking the listener from village-green revelries to smoky jazz clubs, from courtly entertainment to giddy end-of-pier frolicking. Summers runs the gamut of her unconventional but highly expressive three-octave range. In her haunting, unaccompanied opening ballad, ‘I will give my love an apple’, she is a countertenor, sexless and aethereal; later, she blooms into a gorgeously sensuous high…

There’s a disarming beauty to Reger’s Clarinet Quintet, which he composed in 1915/16. Its distinctly mellow qualities may be attributed to the new-found peacefulness the composer embraced after he moved to leafy Jena, in Germany, following the breakdown he suffered in 1914. Though he had thought about writing such a quintet as early as 1912, the resulting work of some four years later is likely rather different to what he might have created had he not changed his busy lifestyle. It was to be his very last completed work, submitted for publication ten days before his death.…

February round-up Music is at the heart of Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, the critically acclaimed portrait of Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre. As such, the soundtrack album is positively jam-packed and as colourful as Bernstein’s story. Dominated by superb new recordings by the LSO, under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, it is Bernstein’s own music which is front and centre, alongside snippets of Beethoven, Schumann and Mahler, among other things. The album is a real snapshot of the film, arranged in sequences of music and dialogue; the latter element might annoy some, but it’s a great keepsake. (DG 486 5466) ★★★★★ James Newton Howard has enjoyed a decades-long career on screen, scoring everything from Pretty Woman to The Hunger Games. Night After Night focuses on a very specific slice of the American’s varied…

Alkan Character Pieces etc Mark Viner (piano) Piano Classics PCL10275 Don’t be misled by the quirkiness of the album’s title or the brevity of the pieces in it – there’s a lot more here than mere fripperies and frivolity. Works such the headlong-rushing  Le chemin de fer are miniature masterpieces of musical picture painting, played with great flair and no little virtuosity by the admirable Mark Viner. (JP) ★★★★ JS Bach Plucked Bach II Alon Sariel (mandolin) Pentatone PTC 5187 109 Bach’s Toccata and Fugue on the mandolin? It’s surprising how well this translates in the capable hands of Alon Sariel, whose second album of self-penned arrangements also features selections from the well-known Violin Sonatas and Partitas. In place of scale and bombast there’s nuance and precision – and a…

Rinaldo Alessandrini is one of today’s greatest Monteverdians – indeed, the composer’s music has occupied the conductor and his ensemble Concerto Italiano for some 40 years. The Complete Madrigals (Naïve OP7547) is perhaps their crowning glory, the culmination of a recording cycle that began in 1993. The 11 discs are a trove of vocal treasures, conductor and choir digging deep in their exploration of Monteverdi’s world. The first disc is in fact brand new, the ensemble having only recorded books one and nine for the first time in 2020/21. The rest are critically acclaimed, and it is wonderful to have this important recorded venture collected in one box at last. Twelve hours of magical Monteverdi. The music of Mozart dominates András Schiff – Complete Decca Recordings (Decca 485 4493), though…

1. Which symphonic poem was inspired by a visit to Cornwall by composer Arnold Bax and pianist Harriet Cohen in summer 1917? 2. Conducted by its German composer, the premiere of which biblical oratorio was given at Birmingham Town Hall on 26 August 1846? 3. Who pitched up unannounced at the house of Robert and Clara Schumann on 30 September 1853, and subsequently made himself at home? 4. Which is closer to Earth: Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 or Haydn’s Symphony No. 43? 5. What happened for the first time at New York’s Metropolitan Opera on 13 January 1976, 93 years after the company was founded? 6. The title character of operas by Charpentier, Cherubini (as seen above) and Milhaud, among others, who takes revenge on her former lover by poisoning…

Hailing from the Wirral, Linton Stephens studied first at the Royal Northern College of Music and then at the Hochschule für Musik, Liszt Academie in Weimar, Germany. Today, he enjoys a multi-stranded career combining the role of performer – as sub-principal bassoon of Chineke! Orchestra and artistic associate of the Multi-Story Orchestra – with that of broadcaster, hosting Classical Fix, the friendly, musically omnivorous podcast on BBC Radio 3, and also regularly presenting Radio 3 in Concert. He also works as a consultant on the subject of diversity and inclusion within the arts. My dad is from Jamaica and BOB MARLEY AND THE WAILERS was always on the car radio. Driving across the Pennines from our home in the Wirral to see my dad’s family in Sheffield, my six brothers…

Mervyn Cooke Professor of music ‘It’s been revelatory to discover, 100 years on, just how controversial Rhapsody in Blue was when it was first performed. George Gershwin and Paul Whiteman certainly put the jazz cat amongst the symphonic pigeons!’ Page 30 Jessica Duchen Journalist, critic and author ‘In the past decade there’s been an explosion of awareness about female conductors… or has there? I asked some of the most influential names whether change is more than skin deep – and their answers may surprise you.’ Page 48 Amanda Holloway Music journalist ‘After a lifetime in choirs, it was a delight to be introduced to a Vaughan Williams work I’d never sung. Nothing will displace his Sea Symphony in my heart, but Five Mystical Songs, written shortly afterwards, is a little…

91 …years old but, despite what he may have said previously, there are no plans to retire just yet, reveals composer John Williams (pictured above). 7 …Vienna New Year’s Day concerts in total for Riccardo Muti, named as the conductor for the 2025 event. 1 …opera only at 2024’s Nevill Holt Opera, as it rebrands to become Nevill Holt Festival, a multi-arts event. 5 …more years as chief conductor at the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra for Jakub Hrůša, with the popular Czech signing a contract extension till 2029.…

Aled Jones, whose singing voice has adorned many a wedding and funeral, is now in a position to take on the spoken part as well after qualifying as a celebrant. A year of intense study at the The Academy of Modern Celebrancy means that the treble-turned-baritone (left) can join the list of famous musicians officially allowed to lead people through their brightest and darkest occasions… Among the well-known figures from the Renaissance era who combined the roles of musician and priest were the Spanish composers Victoria and Guerrero, followed shortly after by the Italian Allegri, of Miserere fame. Surely the most famous composer-priest, however, was Allegri’s compatriot Vivaldi – ordained in 1703 at the age of 25, the Four Seasons composer would go on to flourish under the nickname of…

‘How trite and feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! … Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive!’ Such was the verdict of the New York Tribune on Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, in a scathing review of the premiere in February 1924. Yet Gershwin’s piece is today considered to be a pioneering example of symphonic jazz and, with the passage of time, it becomes ever harder to recapture just how provocative and controversial the idea seemed at the time. Gershwin would soon be no stranger to tetchy reviews. Four years later, the New York Telegram dismissed his An American in Paris as ‘nauseous claptrap, so dull, patchy, thin, vulgar,…

String Theory Fascinated early on by the science of music, Tartini approached the violin with an inquisitive ear that experimented with the thickness of strings, acoustical phenomena such as the Tartini Tone and the development of the bow to facilitate an enhanced ‘singing’ style of playing. Tartini Tone Tartini discovered that two notes played simultaneously and perfectly tuned would give rise to the sounding of a third. The phenomenon had already been detected in Germany when Tartini made his discovery in 1714, but he more fully understood its significance and incorporated it into his teaching. Also sometimes called the ‘third tone’ or ‘combination tone’. Cyphers Although Tartini produced no operas, he was susceptible to the power of words to stimulate his imagination. To movements thus inspired, he often inscribed quotations…

Though the 38-year-old Vaughan Williams had only completed one of his nine symphonies at the time of writing his Five Mystical Songs – and with the likes of The Lark Ascending also yet to come – he had hardly been sitting idle up to that point. Studies with Stanford at the Royal College of Music in London had set in motion a career that, as well as composing, saw him collecting folk music, editing The English Hymnal and launching the Leith Hill Musical Festival. After further studies with Ravel in France, the premieres of his Sea Symphony and Tallis Fantasia in 1910 gave notice of the glories to come.…

Do you start with the concept, or the people? It’s always about the people. Earlier in my life it was all about what I do and then with whom, but now it’s the opposite. If you have the right partners everything becomes a story, something that starts to change your mindset or enrich your life. Anything goes, actually, even a small joke; and you will hear it I hope in the very small pieces by Poulenc. Tell us about playing with Reto and Polina I love the clarinet playing and brain of Reto Bieri! He’s a clarinettist, thinker and philospher and always in my life, no matter where I am. Polina Leschenko is a wizard, an absolutely mysterious personality, I would say. We never know how she does it, we’re…

Dvořák Violin Concerto in A minor; Romance in F minor etc Mikhail Pochekin (violin); Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra/Daniel Raiskin Hänssler Classic HC23057 50:03 mins Despite the violin being Antonín Dvořák’s first instrument, his complete works for violin and orchestra amount to no more than three scores all written in the 1870s, before he became an international celebrity. But they are all worth treasuring. The earliest is the Romance in F minor dating from 1873, two years after Dvořák gave up his orchestra post at Prague’s Provisional Theatre to concentrate on composition. The title suggests the inspiration of Beethoven’s two Romances for violin and orchestra, but the theme is very much Dvořák’s, recycled from his own String Quartet in F minor. He was never one to lose sight of a good idea…

Donizetti La Favorite (DVD/Blu-ray) Annalisa Stroppa, Javier Camarena et al; Orchestra Donizetti Opera/Riccardo Frizza; dir. Valentina Carrasco (Bergamo, 2022) Dynamic DVD: 57992; Blu-ray: 37992 190 mins Bravo the Teatro Donizetti! La Favorite not La Favorita. At last, the four-act Grand Opera that Bergamo’s most illustrious musical son wrote for the Paris Opéra in 1840 and not the somewhat haphazard Italian version that singers have kept alive. With the ballet too and cuts restored in a relatively new critical edition. The dark history of Léonor, mistress of King Alphonse of Castile, in love with Fernand who has abandoned his monastery for her and found glory on the battlefield against the Moors makes psychological sense now. Sombre sense, played out in the pit by the new role Donizetti finds for the cellos…

Brahms • Francisco Coll • Korngold Piano Trios Trio Isimsiz Rubicon RCD1107 77:02 mins This impressive recording comes from an ensemble that is reaching its maturity in a superb way. Violinist Pablo Hernán Benedí, cellist Edvard Pogossian and pianist Erdem Mısırlıoğlu, who formed their ensemble around 14 years ago at the Guildhall School in London, have been rising slowly but steadily to prominence through some of the most perspicacious young artist programmes around, notably the Young Classical Artists Trust and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. Here they push the boat out with a programme that includes, alongside Brahms’s ever-popular Trio No. 2, the sole Piano Trio by Korngold (who, quite incredibly, wrote it aged 12) and a new work they have commissioned from the Spanish composer Francisco Coll. There’s an excellent finesse…

JS Bach The Art of Fugue Christophe Rousset (harpischord) Aparté AP313 83:00 mins Ever since his death in 1750, Bach’s contrapuntal masterpiece has enjoyed – and perhaps suffered, too – speculation, hypothesis, fantasy, legend and romance. We should not be surprised since Bach did indeed invite questions which, in all probability, will never be answered. Though he left no specific instrumental requirements for performing The Art of Fugue, it is nowadays widely accepted that he conceived it for keyboard. Bach died during the process of engraving, leaving us in the dark over his final intentions. A taste for alternative instrumentation has comfortably held its own since Wolfgang Graeser’s large, orchestral edition of 1926. For his new recording, harpsichordist Christophe Rousset understandably favours his own instrument, in this instance one built…

And Did Those Feet – Six British Jazz Composers Duncan Heining Jazz in Britain 320pp (pb) £19.99 At one point during this journey through the work of six prime movers in British jazz the author mercifully dismisses the old canard about how ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’. No-one ever offers the rejoinder that many choreographers would surely be more than happy to create a dance about architecture; furthermore, to partially borrow this as a metaphor, the composers featured here – Mike Garrick, Gibbs and Westbrook, John Mayer, Barry Guy and Keith Tippett – are in a sense architects (Guy literally so during his pre-career), having constructed their own distinctive musical edifices within the music’s fascinating landscape. Duncan Heining juggles the conflicting demands of accuracy, detail, comparison, contrast,…

February round-up Bernard Haitink and Bruckner, a combination so well known and admired; do we really need a fifth account of the Eighth Symphony? I’m not arguing after hearing this performance with the Bavarian RSO, and one of the most remarkable things is how little has changed from Haitink’s first recording with the Concertgebouw in 1981. But as well as the fluency, the certainty of line and length, the balance of the huge Finale, there’s such energy and beauty in the playing, and the icing on the cake is a live performance of Bruckner’s Te Deum, with a fine solo team and unstoppable propulsion. (BR Klassik 900212) ★★★★★ So much of the magic of Tchaikovsky’s ballets is to be found in the enchanting colour and imagination of his glorious orchestrations…

FEBRUARY’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see BBC Sounds and iPlayer 1 THURSDAY 6.30-9am Breakfast 9am-12pm Essential Classics 12-1pm Composer of the Week Stravinsky 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert 2-5pm Afternoon Concert 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert live from Barbican. Helen Grime Near Midnight, Strauss Oboe Concerto, Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6. Tom Blomfield (oboe), BBC Symphony/Nicholas Carter 10-10.45pm Free Thinking 10.45-11pm The Essay 11-11.30pm Night Tracks Mix 11.30pm-12.30am Unclassified with Elizabeth Alker 2 FRIDAY 6.30-9am Breakfast 9am-12pm Essential Classics 12-1pm Composer of the Week Stravinsky 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert 2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert 4.30-5pm The Listening Service 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert from Queen Elizabeth Hall. Higdon SkyLine from City Scape, Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side…

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Wartime song I thoroughly enjoyed Andrew Green’s investigation of the possible inspirations of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending (January issue), but balked slightly at his assertion that ‘the interruption of the First World War surely prevented Philip Napier Miles from visiting Italy’. In the First World War, Italy was allied with the Entente Powers (France, the UK, Russia, Japan and – after 1917 – the US), rather than the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottomans). It would therefore have been fairly easy for Miles to move back and forth between the UK and Italy then, and thus not necessarily have to cram the writing of Sword Song into a few months in early 1919. He could perhaps have worked on it throughout the conflict. Joseph Nicholas, Tottenham Highbrow…

Arabian arias Saudi Arabia is set to get its first ever opera house. As the country sets its sights on hosting Expo 2030 in six years’ time, the new Royal Diriyah Opera House will occupy a 45,000 square metre plot in Riyadh, the capital city. Norwegian architects Snøhetta have been appointed to design the state-of-the-art building which, we are told, ‘will be infused with elements inspired by the traditional Najdi architectural style’ that defines the area. Moving on… Closer to home, the announcement that English National Opera is to relocate to Manchester has been met with a mixed reception. While Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, has expressed his delight that ‘one of the most exciting cultural institutions in the UK’ is coming to his city, others have expressed their…

I was 12 years old when I joined the Adolf Fredrik Girls’ Choir in Stockholm, which Bosse Johansson led with a very special philosophy. He looked on us as individual personalities, each of whom had a big impact on the sound of the choir. He made us feel very important. Bo ‘Bosse’ Johansson (1943-2016) was a music pedagogue and choir conductor. He founded the Adolf Fredrik Choir in 1972 and led it for 40 years. It has achieved a worldwide reputation for its special sound and creative programming, and has visited many countries around the world. Bosse had some unconventional but effective methods. For our warm-up exercises we would often look not at the conductor, but at each other. We were always encouraged to find the ‘carrot of the phrase’.…

Bridget Cunningham Harpsichordist At a concert I attended at Queen Elizabeth Hall on Remembrance Day, musicians from the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra gave a spirited performance of Beethoven’s Septet, Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in B flat and music by Elliott Carter. This was on the same day that hundreds of thousands of people marched through London calling for a peaceful resolution to the Israel-Gaza conflict, and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra presents a strong message that music is unifying. It was very special. It was great to see female conductors opening and closing the BBC Proms last summer. A Proms regular, I try and get to as many as I can. With my Baroque hat on, I particularly enjoyed the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, led by the Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto. He performed Vivaldi’s…

It all seemed so simple, so obvious, so fair. For decades, the lion’s share of the UK’s classical music funding, public and private, went to London. ‘Of course!’ said some. London is a world capital. It competes with Paris and Berlin for cultural tourists. It has a huge population. And it supports two opera houses and a dozen professional orchestras. ‘Nonsense!’ said others. People in the regions pay their taxes. They have every right to expect that money to be redistributed fairly so that it supports music across the country. For a long time those arguments went unanswered. But then along came a government – the current one – that saw the advantage of redistributing subsidy to the regions as part of a bigger policy called ‘levelling up’. Decrees to…

Robert von Bahr (left) welcomes plaudits and prizes. But he feels one of his label’s most significant contributions to the recording business has escaped attention. It arose following Neeme Järvi’s arrival as chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in 1982. Von Bahr wanted to record with them but was unwilling to pay the heavy upfront fees dictated by union rules. After a year of negotiations, he brokered a deal with the Swedish Musicians’ Union: the Gothenburg Symphony would record for no advance fee while its musicians would receive holiday time equal to hours spent recording. ‘The players said they’d leave the union if they said no,’ recalls von Bahr. ‘They accepted it and it worked well. Everyone was happy – even the union. This principle spread to the Stockholm…

The audience begins to clap, gradually gathering speed in time with the pianists on stage. Willed on by the percussive accelerando, the duo zips through Zorba’s Dance, a piece by Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis that evokes ouzo-soaked taverns and hot summer nights. The dark-haired pianists, virtually identical in sunglasses and denim shorts, finish their own arrangement of Greece’s popular musical export with a flourish. As the sun makes a lengthy retreat behind the tree-lined stage, musicians invite young audience members to try out some instruments. A child delights at blowing a clarinet mouthpiece, another tentatively presses piano keys. These guests have come from one of the refugee camps that remain on Lesbos, the Turkey-adjacent island that unwittingly became the centre of the 2015 migrant crisis. A short while later, the…

What you might not expect to find between the B&Q and Aldi on your way out of Stroud is the workspace and private gallery of the famously infamous artist Damien Hirst (above). Science Studios are home to his larger-scale projects, sat alongside the smaller Formaldehyde Building, which provides a controlled environment for working with chemicals, including those Hirst used for creating dead animal sculptures. Ten minutes down the road is Pangolin Editions, where many of Hirst’s bronze work and sculptures are cast – as well as works by Antony Gormley and other top British artists.…

Roderick Williams (baritone) London Choral Sinfonia/Michael Waldron Orchid Classics ORC100200 In nominating my top choice, it may seem perverse to snub the lush orchestral versions of Five Mystical Songs, particularly since the first performance featured a huge festival choir and the London Symphony Orchestra. But Vaughan Williams himself recognised that the songs could be just as effective with smaller forces, and his version for baritone, piano and string orchestra – recorded here for the first time on the Orchid Classic label – amply testifies to that. Conductor Michael Waldron’s outstanding recording with Roderick Williams as soloist alongside the London Choral Sinfonia combines the intimacy of lieder with the variety of tone available to mixed strings and, in this case, a very resonant piano, played by James Orford. The poised pianissimo…

Recordings and books rated by expert critics Take 3 Works by Bartók, Poulenc, Schoenfield, Nichifor Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin), Reto Bieri (clarinet), Polina Leschenko (piano) Alpha Classics ALPHA772 66:41 mins What with Patricia Kopatchinskaja reaching out to a lost homeland, Polina Leschenko nostalgically dreaming of heritage tomatoes and Reto Bieri finding himself drawn to ‘the road less travelled’, the musicians’ prefatory liner note musings for this head-turning album are bathed in whimsy. Not exclusively so the playing, however, which can affectionately embrace the whimsical to the manner born, but equally bristles with spellbinding virtuosity, compelling insight and crests a lifeforce carrying all before it. Take 3 might be built around substantial trios by Bartók and Paul Schoenfield; but other configurations apply, notably in a reading of the Poulenc Clarinet Sonata that…

N Berg Symphonies Nos 4 & 5 Norrköping Symphony Orchestra/Ari Rasilainen CPO 777665-2 63:48 mins You couldn’t accuse the CPO label of hurrying its cycle of early-20th-century symphonies by Sweden’s Natanael Berg, possibly the only composer to serve as a vet at his country’s royal stables. The first volume appeared in 2009 and the second in 2010, but we’ve had to wait a full 13 years for Ari Rasilainen and his Norrköping forces to reach the climax. At least we go out with a big bang: the 40-minute ‘Trilogia delle passioni’ is in his most grandiose, quasi-Straussian vein, with heavy brass artillery, heaving chromatic harmonies and a philosophical narrative describing the process from human suffering to final spiritual redemption. If 1924 seems a bit late to be mounting a gargantuan…

Grieg • R Schumann Piano Concertos in A minor Elisabeth Leonskaja (piano); Lucerne Symphony Orchestra/Michael Sanderling Warner Classics 5419783783 63:17 mins Elisabeth Leonskaja’s live performances of the Schumann and Grieg piano concertos have been cause for wonder. The rolling movement over the keyboard in the Schumann and a far from note-perfect Grieg with the Estonian Festival Orchestra in Parnu still only went to prove the mistake of replacing her at the BBC Proms later that summer with Khatia Buniatishvili, a brilliant but wayward pianist with none of the same grip on the dance music. Here it’s obvious which is the deeper work because of the chamber music Leonskaja makes with the excellent woodwind soloists of Michael Sanderling’s Lucerne Symphony Orchestra in Schumann’s first movement. The Intermezzo is a true dialogue…

JS Bach Cantatas, BWV 56 & 82 Christoph Prégardien (tenor); Le Concert Lorrain/Stephan Schultz Etcetera KTC1704 53:28 mins Bach was inspired by the virtuosity of his musicians during his time at as Cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Between 1725 and 1727, one singer in particular, the bass Johann Christoph Lipsius, was a focus of his creative attentions, with his two virtuoso solo cantatas for bass dating from this time, together with the St Matthew Passion and its substantial sections written for bass. Christoph Prégardien, an elegant lieder singer and a distinguished Bach Evangelist, makes the switch here from his usual high lyric tenor to bass-baritone. This shift in tessitura, but not in timbre, feels uncomfortable. In ‘Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen’, the singing is missing the darker colouring…

Bliss • H Ferguson • Robin Holloway Chamber Music – H Ferguson: Octet; Bliss: Clarinet Quintet; Robin Holloway: Serenade in C Wigmore Soloists BIS BIS-2547 (CD/SACD) 74:09 mins The Wigmore Soloists’ three previous albums have focused on mainstream repertoire, but this new release probes lesser-known territory. Belfast-born Howard Ferguson wrote just 20 works, and his music gradually fell out of favour after he stopped composing in 1958. The Wigmore Soloists’ outstanding performance of Ferguson’s 1933 Octet makes you wonder why. Scored for the same instruments as Schubert’s, its opening movement is restless, the putative late-Romantic idiom constantly challenged by jagged, almost Mahlerian interjections. With violinist Isabelle van Keulen and clarinettist Michael Collins spearheading the players, it’s unsurprising that the performance as a whole is something of a revelation. Collins leads…

Shadows of my Ancestors Prokofiev: 10 Pieces from Romeo and Juliet; Dilorom Saidaminova: The Walls of Ancient Bukhara; Ravel: Gaspard de la Nuit Behzod Abduraimov (piano) Alpha Classics ALPHA1028 73:42 mins Behzod Abduraimov, who began his meteoric career by winning the London International Piano Competition in 2009 at the age of 18, seems to prefer touring the US to playing in Britain, so this album is the closest British audiences are likely to get to him at present. And this time, rather than allowing his excellence in Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Rachmaninov to shine out, he keeps his main focus on byways. He’s not the only Uzbek on the international circuit – others include Yefim Bronfman and Stanislav Ioudenitch – but he’s fiercely proud of his alma mater in Tashkent,…

Kabalevsky ● Shostakovich Kabalevsky: Colas Breugnon, Overture; Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Constantin Silvestri ICA Classics ICAC5176 (1961) 68 mins When Romanian conductor Constantin Silvestri defected to Britain in 1961, he was tired of dealing with politics behind the Iron Curtain and the challenges of working with prestigious European orchestras. He wanted a stable environment where the value was time not money; and he found it with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Silvestri’s exacting demands and meticulous preparation raised the BSO’s reputation to new heights, with a series of excellent recordings. There were many BBC broadcasts, and Silvestri kept his own archive of hundreds of recordings, which his widow gave to the orchestra after his death in 1969, aged only 55. This is one of the earliest, Shostakovich’s Symphony No.…

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 395/February 2024, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA to arrive by 20 Feb 2024 (solution in May 2024 issue). *These clues are linked by an event in February 1924 ACROSS 1 * The composer (6.8) 9 Sadly for music, not entirely more social when performing (9) 10 French conductor to a great extent holding note (5) 11 Roman greeting Beethoven’s response to lost penny as mean (7) 12 Perform with right chap, opening in Tchaikovsky – such as Sleeping Beauty? (7) 14 Wagner and Strauss specialist more popular currently?…