Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2024 i BBC Music Magazine

LETTER of the MONTH In praise of Prog Rock A hearty thank you to Meurig Bowen on an educated and unbiased assessment of Progressive Rock (Harmonic progression, April). It’s so refreshing to read an article that is free of the ‘pompous hippies’ prejudice to be found in most post-punk pop music journalism. As someone of no musical education whatsoever, this is the music that provoked me to explore classical music proper, being left with the uncomfortable feeling that I was missing something important. I now enjoy a healthy appreciation of both. I would only take issue with Meurig’s relegation of Gentle Giant to the second division. This is a band that, with their exploration of Baroque chamber and vocal polyphony, is as fiercely creative as any – witness ‘On Reflection’…

THIS MONTH Golda Schultz soprano CONCERT HEAVEN Beethoven, Mahler and Sibelius with LA Phil/Gustavo Dudamel, Esa-Pekka Salonen & Zubin Mehta Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles (October 2019) This was actually a series of concerts, which was a weird situation to be in. It was the centenary celebration of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and they had three of their favourite music directors – so Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Gustavo Dudamel all came for the weekend. Zubin Mehta was conducting Mahler’s Second Symphony, Esa-Pekka Salonen was conducting Sibelius and one of his own pieces, and the final concert was Gustavo Dudamel conducting Beethoven’s Ninth and a new work that had been commissioned for him. I was originally asked to perform in two of the three concerts, but the soloist for…

‘I’m greatly adverse to fixed principles in art,’ Gustav Holst once warned a colleague. ‘I may do something quite different tomorrow.’ Which is exactly what the British composer did through much of his career, to the confusion of several of his admirers and close friends. Holst never took any universally acknowledged truth on trust, but persisted in finding things out for himself. Despite having no gift for foreign languages, he made a serious study of Sanskrit so he could read the original Rig Veda hymns and ancient Indian epics unmediated by someone else’s more or less accurate translation. And his first-hand experience of teaching at two girls’ schools, starting with James Allen’s Girls’ School in 1904, led to his extraordinary and inspiring dedication to women’s education. Like the man, likewise…

A black sedan pulls up to the security gate at the Fox Studio Lot. I lean out the window and give the guard my name. He instructs me to head to the Alfred Newman Scoring Stage. It’s 12 June 2024, and I am about to experience déjà vu in real time. More than 70 years have passed since I first set foot on the hallowed soundstage where so many musical memories were made. My father, Felix Slatkin, was concertmaster of the 20th Century Fox Studio Orchestra from the late 1930s until the early ’50s. Alfred Newman was head of the music department, responsible for composing and conducting most of the films during that golden era. I will never forget my very first LP – the soundtrack to the biblical epic…

Gabriela Ortiz Tell us about writing the concerto for María Dueñas… The LA Phil, Gustavo Dudamel and I were having conversations and they said, ‘What would you like to write?’ And I said, ‘Well I don’t have a violin concerto!’ It wasn’t in my repertoire, so it was definitely something that was on my list. Then they suggested I collaborate with María. I think at that time she was 19 years old; she was really impressive. I saw her playing Sibelius and I said, ‘I have to write a piece for her!’ She has a lot of energy and a lot of passion, and I think my music needs to have that. Revolución Diamantina was originally a ballet…? I always wanted to write a ballet, but I didn’t know what…

Beyond the Bassline – 500 Years of Black British Music Ed. Paul Bradshaw British Library 288pp (hb) £35 As custodians of the nation’s historic musical treasures – such as Handel’s autograph manuscripts of Zadok the Priest and postcards to Vaughan Williams from Maurice Ravel – the British Library (BL) occasionally provides access via exhibitions held in the bowels of its London building. One of the most curious artefacts at the 2021 Beethoven: Idealist. Innovator. Icon was a tuning fork that was gifted to violinist George Bridgetower (1779-1860), who gave the first performance of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata – with the composer at the piano. Bridgetower – and many others like him – have been wiped from history, and their stories begin the BL’s current (until 26 August) display Beyond the Bassline:…

THE QUIZ Go with the flow and answer this month’s tricky questions 1. ‘The 48’ is a nickname often given to which set of keyboard works by JS Bach? 2. Now marked by a museum, which street in London did Handel call home from 1723-59, and Jimi Hendrix from 1968-69? 3. Mozart’s String Quartet No. 14 in G major, K387 and Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 share which nickname? 4. Premiered in July 1976, Einstein on the Beach is an opera by which composer? 5. In 1899, the contralto pictured above gave the first ever performance of Elgar’s Sea Pictures, a piece composed with her voice in mind. Who is she? 6. Prince Siegfried and Princess Odette are the central characters of which Tchaikovsky ballet, premiered in 1877? 7. Violinist…

For most music enthusiasts, the name Gustav Holst is synonymous with his most famous composition, The Planets. A work of such colour and drama, this irresistible orchestral suite has all but eclipsed the great English composer’s remaining output. But, as Daniel Jaffé explains on page 24, Holst was far more than a one-hit wonder – and his distinctive compositional style arose from a wide range of influences, from Romantic idols like Strauss and Wagner to English folksong through his friendships with Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharp, to a keen interest in Rig Veda hymns. As we celebrate Holst’s 150th anniversary this month, we also pay tribute to his contribution to education – as music director at Morley College and as a pioneering women’s mentor at St Paul’s Girls’ School. One…

3rd: The 1904 Summer Olympics come to an end in St Louis, US. Originally planned for Chicago, the games were moved to Missouri when the organisers of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition announced plans for a rival sports event. American athletes dominate the six days of competition, winning 76 gold medals in total. Canada and Germany are second in the medals table, with four golds each. 3rd: Seven months into the Russo-Japanese War, Russia suffers a setback when its army is forced to retreat from Liaoyang in China. The retreat, which is reported as a tactical success by Russian generals, comes at the end of a nine-day battle for the strategically important city, costing thousands of lives on both sides. 9th: The Catch of the Season, a musical comedy by Seymour…

Pianist Alexandra Dariescu champions her top works for piano and orchestra by female composers Hailing from Iași in Romania, pianist Alexandra Dariescu studied at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music. In 2017, ‘The Nutcracker and I’, her multimedia performance for solo piano with live dance and digital animation, earned international acclaim, and she has subsequently used her platform to promote neglected works by female composers, achieving gender equality in her concert programming. In August, she releases a new album on Signum Classics juxtaposing piano concertos by Clara Schumann and Edvard Grieg. Nadia Boulanger Fantaisie Variée Nadia Boulanger was one of the most influential composers of all time. Not only did she teach Aaron Copland, Quincy Jones, Daniel Barenboim and Dinu Lipatti, but she was also the first woman to conduct…

Sharp grasped that there must be substantial numbers of folk songs out there, which would vanish as rural life withered on the vine Cecil Sharp. Practically a deity to folk performers. As legendary singer-guitarist Martin Carthy tells me, ‘We’d be absolutely lost without him’. However, this remarkable individual’s achievements as a collector of vast quantities of folk music at source were built on conventional classical music foundations. Sharp’s music-loving parents realised that his birth on 22 November 1859 (in London’s Camberwell area) had fallen on St Cecilia’s Day, named after the patron saint of music. Hence ‘Cecil’. His mother gave him early piano lessons, but things developed apace when Sharp boarded at Uppingham School, from 1869. Uppingham’s headmaster, the Revd Edward Thring, saw music as integral to school life, employing…

If anyone tells you classical music is stuffy, old and boring, then I invite you firstly to roll your eyes and then, secondly, pass them a copy of this month’s magazine. Just look at the fresh and thrilling sounds (not to mention talent) awaiting discovery and in need of celebration. I was bowled over by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz’s new album, so was delighted to give it the top spot – see opposite. Verve, vivacity, vision, virtuosity (all the v’s), Ortiz is exactly the kind of composer we need right now. Then there’s Britain’s very own Oliver Leith, who dazzles with his opera Last Days, while Americans Vijay Iyer and Kris Bowers flex their orchestral muscles to fine effect. Now add Caroline Shaw, Graham Fitkin, Lisa Ilean… the list just…

Bartók Prokofiev *Prokofiev: Symphony No. 6 **Bartók: String Quartet No. 3; Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin; The Cleveland Orchestra/Franz Welser-Möst Cleveland Orchestra *TCO0010-D/**TCO0011-D *41:52 mins/**33:37 mins (digital) Undoubtedly, the big news in the Cleveland Orchestra’s latest set of digital releases is Stanley Konopka’s resourceful and imaginative transcription for string orchestra of Bartók’s Third Quartet. I need hardly add that the results are stunning. As you’d expect, the Cleveland string section relishes the opportunity to bring a completely different sonic perspective to a relatively familiar work. But what really makes this arrangement so convincing is Konopka’s decision to follow the precedent set by Bartók in his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and reconceive the work for double string orchestra. This enables Konopka to create a much more varied texture, juxtaposing…

Pat Metheny MoonDial Pat Metheny (guitar) BMG/Modern Recordings 40999 64026849 A solo baritone guitar album? Good idea. The lower register of the instrument brings a sense of ensemble across melodies, chords and bass lines in a way that makes this set literally more than the sum of its parts. While this idea also defines Martin Taylor’s playing on the standard instrument, Pat Metheny engages with the baritone’s distinctive thrum with an astuteness that marries perfectly with his elegant voicings and thoughtful phrasing that’s somehow both logical and unpredictable. He ranges widely within the parameters set by the instrument, deploying everything from folky stuff and strummy stuff to soft blues licks worthy of Eric Clapton before ending the set with an aphoristic, signature-like miniature. The tracklisting deftly combines originals, borrowings and…

Hannah Nepilova Writer and editor ‘I loved my eye- and ear-opening chat with Alexandra Dariescu about her favourite piano works by female composers. Coming to some of these for the first time, I wondered what had taken me so long to discover them.’ Page 20 Daniel Jaffé Writer and editor ‘It all began at a tender age, hearing Holst’s A Choral Fantasia. Researching the man behind the music, I’ve found one of the very nicest and most principled among composers you could hope to meet.’ Page 24 Leonard Slatkin Conductor, composer, author ‘As the worlds of classical music and film continue to converge, I returned to my Hollywood roots and rediscovered what it was like to be on one of the greatest sound stages ever created. Join me on this…

Baritone Huw Montague Rendall on avoiding burnout Burnout is probably something you need to experience in order to avoid it in future. You need to recognise the signs ahead, in order to take evasive action. But here is what I’ve learned… One crucial thing in avoiding burnout is finding the best partners to work with. How do you know who these are? Trial and error, unfortunately. I have come close to burnout working with people who don’t know what they want to achieve, who use you as a kind of experiment, or who don’t listen to your opinions or questions. We make the best music with the people we trust and can be ourselves with. All of my close chamber music collaborators are extremely open, lovely people and we all…

Sonification allows us to listen to the sounds of the universe – and this wondrous music produces insights beyond our visual awareness, says Tom Service How can you travel to the stars, not by building a rocketship to Mars but instead… by listening? Thanks to the art of ‘sonification’, we’re all interstellar travellers. This is the tool that scientists and musicians use to translate the electromagnetic and radio waves of the universe into the range of human hearing – ‘sonifying’ ultra-high frequencies into sounds we can listen to. It’s thanks to sonification that we can hear the otherworldly revolutions of pulsars, the clicks and whoops of jaw-droppingly dense neutron stars, hundreds and thousands of light years away. Or there’s the skirling song that the ‘singing comet’ – otherwise known as…

For many young people it’s that time of year when big decisions must be made. You’ve just graduated. Congratulations. Now what, apart from paying off all that debt? Or maybe you’ve got your GCSE or A-level results. What’s the next step? Even in your mid-teens the options get closed off quickly, don’t they? Like the narrator in Robert Frost’s famous poem ‘The Road Not Taken’, you feel you are being forced to choose between paths that will take you in entirely different directions. You’re bright. You could do sciences and become a medic or an engineer. But you also love to sing or play the violin – and you’re good at it. You are already Grade VIII. Maybe you’ve made it into a top youth orchestra or choir. You’ve experienced…

‘These guys are so accomplished; they can see through you immediately. It’s a pretty scary time, but I’m relishing it’ As he steps up officially to become the London Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor, the Italian-British maestro speaks to Clive Paget about adapting to the pace of his dream role It’s a weekday afternoon in an empty Barbican Hall and Antonio Pappano is taking the London Symphony Orchestra through the slow movement of Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony. So why do I constantly get the feeling I’m at a live concert? Perhaps it’s because Pappano gives in rehearsal what he would in performance, coaxing and cajoling his players in his quest for the emotionally charged. Every physical twist and turn of arms and body exudes an intense connection with the music. As…

Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 4pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in September are: 2-6 September Bruckner 9-13 September Schoenberg 16-20 September Gustav Holst 23-27 September Gluck 30 Sept – 4 Oct Dorothy Howell ‘I’m not really a composer,’ Imogen Holst declared when she went on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs in 1972. Even when pressed, she gave the impression that she knew very little about music at all. She lamented that she was ‘really not very bright I’m afraid’, especially at school, and of her time at the newly formed Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts in World War II, when she travelled across the country promoting community music-making, she had little to say except that she had been one of a…

Herbert von Karajan (conductor) Karajan delivers a sumptuously Straussian account of the score, maximising passion and warmth in the Adagio love scene and ratcheting up the tension to almost breaking point at the moments of dramatic crisis. The Berlin Philharmonic responds with playing that is stunningly virtuosic and beautifully nuanced, with some wonderfully delicate, almost impressionistic chamber music textures near the opening. The 1974 recording doesn’t quite have the depth and dynamic range of more recent versions, but such limitations hardly matter given the excellence of the performance. (Deutsche Grammophon 423 1322) Pierre Boulez (conductor) In stark contrast to Karajan, Boulez’s approach – in 1992, the earlier of his two recordings – emphasises the radical elements of the composer’s thinking. His aim is to bring clarity to Schoenberg’s orchestral textures…

RECORDING OF THE MONTH A thrilling portrait of Gabriela Ortiz’s works Kate Wakeling is left spellbound by the LA Phil’s album of outstanding orchestral pieces by the visionary Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz Revolución Diamantina**; Altar de cuerda*; Kauyumari *María Dueñas (violin); **Los Angeles Master Chorale; Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel Platoon LAPHIL02 80:46 mins For Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz, composing requires two distinct types of brainwork. ‘When I write music,’ she says,‘ I am always swinging between the rational part, how we function mentally, and the irrational part, the instinct… the magic part.’ This twin approach is clearly heard in her complex, dazzling scores that are at once tautly constructed yet freewheeling in their imaginative reach. Weaving together Latin and Mexican sonorities and folklore to powerful effect, her music sounds like nobody…

Guy Braunstein Abbey Road Concerto; plus works by Delius & Vaughan Williams Guy Braunstein (violin); Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège/Alondra de la Parra Alpha Classics ALPHA1051 Arrangements of Beatles songs are presented as a violin ‘concerto’, loosely held together by a repeated interlude. Sadly, many arrangements sound a little like exercises, with testing double stops and chordal variations, but there’s joy to be had when the tunes, and Braunstein’s sweet tone, are allowed to speak for themselves. Plus, he’s a magnificent advocate for the Delius. (CS) Bruckner Ave Maria NDR Chor Hamburg et al/Hans-Christoph Rademann Carus CAR83530 Including the much-loved anthems Locus iste and Os justi, this survey of Bruckner choral works takes us from his teenage years to his final decade. In the early works especially, a lot of…

A farewell to remember This recording of Arthur Rubinstein’s final Polish concert captures a cherishable moment Arthur Rubinstein – Last Concert in Poland Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major ‘Emperor’; Chopin: Piano Concerto in F minor; Polonaise in A flat major Arthur Rubinstein (piano); Łodz Philharmonic Orchestra/Henryk Czyz NIFC NIFCCD155-156 82:29 mins (2CD) I’m going out on a limb with this one, I know, because it’s far from perfect, and I won’t be giving it 5 stars. But… Arthur Rubinstein’s Last Concert in Poland is something special, the 88-year-old pianist returning to his home city of Łodz in May 1975. There was a walkabout, the great pianist revisiting his birthplace – as a child he’d dreamed of making enough money to buy a shop and hand out…

SEPTEMBER’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see BBC Sounds and iPlayer 1 SUNDAY 6.30-9am Sunday Breakfast 9-12pm Sunday Morning 12-1pm Private Passions 1-1.30pm Between the Ears Mancini 1.30-3pm Music Map 3-5.30pm Proms Chamber 5 Aberdeen 5.30-6.30pm Jazz Record Review 6.30-7.30pm Early Music Show 7.30-10pm Prom 56. BBC Singers/Owain Park, Berlin Philharmonic/Kirill Petrenko 10-11.30pm Night Tracks 11.30pm-12.30am Unclassified 2 MONDAY 6.30-9.30am Breakfast 9.30am-1pm Essential Classics 1-4pm Prom 49 (rpt) 4-5pm Composer of the Week Bruckner 5-7pm In Tune 7-7.30pm Classical Mixtape 7.30-10pm Prom 57. BBC Concert Orchestra/Edwin Outwater 10-11.30pm Night Tracks 11.30pm-12.30am ‘Round Midnight 3 TUESDAY 6.30-9.30am Breakfast 9.30am-1pm Essential Classics 1-4pm Prom 50 (rpt) 4-5pm Composer of the Week Bruckner 5-7pm In Tune 7-10.15pm Prom 58. Jean-Baptiste Doulcet (piano), Orchestre de Paris/Klaus Mäkelä.…

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As a songwriter, the London-born Ayanna Witter-Johnson combines classical influences, dance rhythms and eclectic soul in her passionate personal songs about race and history, as heard on her latest EP Colour War. She presents a show on Scala Radio and will start her autumn tour in the Netherlands on 13 September, finishing with a performance on 19 October at Kings Place in London as part of ‘Classically Black’, a day of celebration in recognition of the contribution by Black and global majority musicians and composers in classical music. There was always music in our house growing up – my father is an actor/DJ and my mother is a teacher with a great musical ear and used to perform with the Ghanaian dance troupe Aguje. I started learning the piano at…