Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2024 i BBC Music Magazine

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Modest Mussorgsky composed his most famous work. Pictures at an Exhibition, a piano suite in ten movements, was based on an instantly captivating idea: through music, Mussorgsky would take his listeners on a tour of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann, an exhibition the Russian composer had seen himself that same year. Each movement would be based on a single work, with a recurring ‘Promenade’ theme to link the whole. Though initially dismissed as a ‘novelty’, Pictures became a popular showpiece for virtuoso pianists following its publication in 1931, and it’s testament to the composition’s continuing popularity that it has been given so many wonderful performances in its anniversary year. I was lucky enough to hear it in two separate orchestral arrangements: Ravel’s popular version at…

Discovering Bruckner I agree with Stephen Johnson in What’s Wrong with Bruckner? (October issue) – except that there is nothing wrong. Almost 60 years ago, the novelist Brigid Brophy told a student audience in Dublin that ‘we should stop worrying about things we can’t do anything about, such as nuclear power, and concentrate on the really important questions, like “Was Bruckner a great composer?”’ I had just about heard of Bruckner, but her remarks impelled me to go out and buy LPs of as many of his works that I could find and afford! A few years later, when I was working with the (now) National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, the pianist Veronica Jochum spoke to me in loving terms of the work of her father, conductor Eugen Jochum, and…

Pick a theme… and name your seven favourite examples Born in Rastatt, Germany, pianist Frank Dupree is a devotee of new music and has collaborated with contemporary composers such as Péter Eötvös and Wolfgang Rihm. He is also passionate about music that treads the boundary between classical and jazz – in addition to the piano, he plays jazz percussion, and has championed the music of Nikolai Kapustin, a composer who blends classical structures with jazz harmonies and rhythms. On 18 and 19 December he performs Kapustin’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican. George Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue/Piano Concerto in F Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue is the reason I fell in love with jazz. I played it for the first time when I was 13,…

Orchestrations of pre-existing solo piano works are not exactly rare. But what perhaps makes Ravel’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition stand out is how it breathed new life into a work that had been largely lying unnoticed – as Ravel’s work rapidly became a concert hall favourite, people also started to take a new interest in the piano original. Commissioned by the conductor Serge Koussevitsky for 10,000 francs (a considerable amount) and first performed in Paris on 19 October 1922, Ravel’s work shows the French composer’s mastery as an orchestrator at its most brilliantly imaginative. The details and character of each painting are cleverly picked out by meticulously chosen instrumentation – from the saxophone solo depicting the troubadour in ‘The Old Castle’ to the unsettling brass-only representation of…

Since becoming a mother, Francesca Dego has had to change the way she practises. No longer able to devote unlimited stretches of time to exercising her hands and fingers, she now packs much more into concentrated periods – and this newfound efficiency may be no bad thing. Here she shares some of her important learnings…: ‘A lot of what we do when we practise is in fact over-practising, to help our confidence level and to prove to ourselves on a daily basis that we can play our instrument. But we can certainly be more timeaware and less repetitive. ‘Generally, I think of practice time as almost a sacred space, my own time with the instrument. Of course, this solo time can sometimes be very difficult for our mental health, because…

1901 Improvements to the wax masters system make it possible for music to be recorded commercially. Tenor Enrico Caruso becomes one of the first recorded stars. 1948 Columbia Records introduces the long-play ‘LP’ record, enabling pieces – of a duration under 25 mins – to be heard without breaks. 1963 Philips unveils its new compact cassette tape and accompanying recorder at the Berlin Radio Show. Intended for dictation, it’s quickly taken up by the music industry. 1980 Herbert von Karajan conducts the Berlin Phil in Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony to test out the new compact disc (CD) format. 1982 Claudio Arrau’s 1979 Chopin recording is among the first commercial CD releases, alongside Herbie Hancock’s The Piano. 2005 YouTube, the first ever streaming platform, goes live. 2020 The Apollo Masters Corp,…

If, like me, you were glued to the screen in early 2015 as Hilary Mantel’s riveting Wolf Hall made its television debut, you’ll be delighted to know that the sequel series (The Mirror and the Light) is just around the corner. There were many reasons audiences were held in rapt attention, from subtle and brilliant performances by Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell and Damian Lewis as Henry VIII to the intimate, naturalistic atmosphere created by director Peter Kosminsky. And then there was the music, by composer Debbie Wiseman, which went to number one in the classical chart and even spawned a concert tour. ‘There is an ease of knowing how somebody works and how you can get inside what they want to do…’ Wiseman is back, along with Kosminsky, Rylance…

Orchestration Although Schmidt was strongly influenced by the orchestral virtuosity and versatility of late-Romantic composers such as Richard Strauss and Mahler, his approach to the orchestra has a very distinctive, almost organ-like sonority, particularly at the big climaxes – for example, in the Finale of his Second Symphony. Variations Like Max Reger (above), Schmidt was particularly adept at writing imaginative sets of variations. Perhaps the best example of his ingenuity in this respect occurs in the Allegretto middle movement of the Second Symphony, where he interlinks a set of slow variations with an extended scherzo, all the material being derived from an extremely simple opening melody. Counterpoint As with his great predecessor Bruckner, Schmidt builds up fantastic musical edifices through a great mastery of counterpoint which, despite occasionally featuring clashing…

Gabriel Fauré was a busy man. So much so, in fact, that composing largely had to take second place to his day jobs. Nonetheless, in between working long hours as choirmaster and then organist of La Madeleine church in Paris, where he served for 28 years from 1877, and then as head of the Paris Conservatoire, the Ariègeborn composer found time to produce works such as the Dolly Suite, Pelléas et Mélisande and, most famously, his Requiem mass. A charismatic figure who won the Croix de Guerre in the Franco-Prussian War, his later years were plagued by deafness. He died, aged 79, on 4 November 1924.…

What works so well about the combination of harp and voices? I think the sound of an upper voices choir is beautiful, and the harp complements it really nicely, because in order for it to complement the higher frequency sound of the upper voices it helps to have something a bit richer and lower. The harp provides that without overpowering it; even when it’s playing at its most fulsome and sonorous, it’s still within the same sort of box as the singers, which makes it easy to balance and really fun to perform. Tell us about the role of the charity Multitude of Voyces… They were set up a few years ago to publish the work of historically neglected composers, which invariably means music by women. They recently acquired the…

Brahms Piano Concertos*; Fantasies, Op. 116; Intermezzi, Op. 117 etc Igor Levit (piano); *Vienna Philharmonic/Christian Thielemann Sony Classical 19658897652 95:50 mins (2CD) You know you’re listening to the Vienna Philharmonic the moment the violins begin the D minor Concerto with such broad bowing on their fourth and fifth notes. All the creaminess of tone for which the orchestra is renowned is present in force in this hefty, traditional Brahms, in which conductor Christian Thielemann and pianist Igor Levit are very much on the same page. There’s no mucking about here, but plenty of character and detail, while the pianist matches the orchestra’s power and the conductor’s presence of mind. At the first movement recapitulation, that harmonic twist sounds as good as new. The slow movement’s theme implicitly set the words…

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 405/December 2024, PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA to arrive by 26 Nov 2024 (solution in Feb 2025 issue). ACROSS 1 Recording amongst yours once ransacked for some Respighi work (3,5,2,4) 9 Inconvenience from revenue limiting Highland music festival (9) 10 Singer Berberian adrift in yacht? (5) 11 Schubert piece baffles and deceives (7) 12 Marin Marais opera in a version of Ceylon? (7) 13 Provide fuel for simple piano piece? (10) 16 Book about old Irish singer (4) 18 I will attend concert – Lerner and Loewe musical…

Jessica Duchen Author and journalist ‘I’ve loved lifting the lid on Pictures at an Exhibition. Ignoring prejudice against representational music, Mussorgsky united the inspiratons of music and art. And in his compassionate, earthy realism, aren’t there hints of Tolstoy too?’ Page 24 Claire Jackson Journalist and critic ‘As the proud owner of cassette tape, gramophone, vinyl and CD players (and, very nearly, a pianola), I’m fascinated by recording formats – it was fun to dust off the collection while surveying its cultural impact.’ Page 44 Erik Levi Academic and writer ‘Revisiting the works of Franz Schmidt has been an absolute pleasure. There is little doubt in my mind that he is the last great representative of the Austro-German symphonic tradition stretching back to Haydn.’ Page 62…

One year on since the much-loved tree at Sycamore Gap on Hadrian’s Wall was felled by vandals, new green shoots have started to appear and plans for its replacement are under discussion. A musical tribute to the former landmark has also been paid by composer and Northumbrian pipes player Kathryn Tickell, who has written a short piece for pipes and organ called, quite simply, Sycamore Gap. ‘Sycamore Gap represented the region’s rich history, landscape and heritage, and everyone was shocked when it was suddenly no longer with us,’ says Tickell about her hauntingly beautiful lament, which can be found on all major streaming sites. ‘I hope that this piece of music will stimulate people’s memories of the tree and serve as a lasting tribute to a real Northumbrian icon.’…

Look at them up there, on the podium, on the concert platform, on record covers: the musicians that fill the pages of this magazine, Radio 3’s schedules and concert halls all over the world. They are musical superhumans who perform feats that we mortals cannot, for whom things that would make the rest of us quake in our boots are simply part of their jobs. Imagine having to go out there and play Busoni’s Piano Concerto or Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata with all the right notes in all the right places, night after night! They are musicians who come equipped not only with the technique to dash off these summits of the repertoire, but the confidence to know that they can do it – and do it better than they did…

Like Jaques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, I divide my life into seven ages. Unlike Jaques, I define those ages by the ways in which recorded music entered my life. The first age, back in the late 1950s, was when I became aware of my dad’s prized collection of 78rpm discs. As thick as dinner plates, they required you to leap from your chair every four minutes to turn the disc over or start the next one. Listening to Handel’s Messiah, my dad maintained, was a great way to keep fit. He had Malcolm Sargent’s recording on 19 separate 78s. You leapt up 38 times if you wanted a complete performance. And the other six ages? LPs arrived in our living room in the early 1960s, followed by 45rpms…

Had it not been for Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Viktor Hartmann’s name might have faded almost entirely into obscurity. Of the 400 pictures shown at the posthumous display that so inspired the composer, the whereabouts of only about 65 are known today, and the only significant public display of his work in the 20th century came in Leningrad in 1931, as part of an event marking the 50th anniversary of Mussorgky’s death. Five years Mussorgsky’s senior, Hartmann was born in St Petersburg in 1834. Showing precocious talent, he was educated first at his home city’s Imperial Academy of Mines, where he specialised in drawing unflattering caricatures of his teachers, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg. A spell of travel across Europe in the 1860s unleashed…

Eager-beaver violinists may claim that sitting next to the conductor puts them in the ideal position to learn the latter’s art, but Ben Gernon offers an alternative perspective. ‘The ideal thing about playing the tuba is that you spend a lot of your time listening and observing,’ he says. ‘You get such a good view from the back of the orchestra and you can always see everyone’s reactions to what the conductor says, so it’s like a really good lesson. ‘Although I come from the brass section myself, as a conductor I try to spread my attention evenly. What being a brass player did teach me, however, is all about breathing and that is something you can carry through to the whole orchestra. Plus, I also have a good idea…

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Nigel Short (conductor) Tenebrae, London Symphony Orchestra Chamber Ensemble LSO Live LSO0728 So, which of the two versions of Fauré’s Requiem – the 1893 ‘chamber’ or 1900 ‘symphonic’ – should you opt for? (You’ll struggle to find a recording of the 1888 five-movement original). As we know that Fauré’s 1900 souped-up orchestration was done at the behest of his publisher rather than off his own back, in this instance we shouldn’t assume – as is often the case – that a work’s final version was the composer’s preferred one. In fact, it is more likely to have been the other way round. For most of the 20th century, the 1900 version was the default choice and, from the likes of Ernest Ansermet in the 1950s to Colin Davis in 1985,…

Welcome Joy – A Celebration of Women’s Voices I Holst: Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow; G Holst: Two Eastern Pictures; Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda etc; Poston: An English Day-Book; plus works by Judith Weir, Hilary Campbell, Olivia Sparkhall, Gemma McGregor and Shruthi Rajasekar Louise Thomson (harp); Corvus Consort/Freddie Crowley Chandos CHSA 5350 82:21 mins Under its founder-director Freddie Crowley, Corvus Consort is always full of fresh thinking. Here we have a collection of works spanning a century up to the present day, composed for female voices and solo harp. Gustav Holst was a champion of this combination of forces, and three of his works provide a framework for ten compositions by women, introduced by his daughter Imogen Holst’s Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow, a setting of six Keats…

JS Bach Goldberg Variations (arr. O’Neill) Philharmonia Orchestra/Robin O’Neill BIS BIS-2658 73:45 mins During the 2020 Covid lockdown Robin O’Neill, bassoonist and conductor, sought solace in JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a work familiar to him through Glenn Gould’s idiosyncractic recordings. O’Neill’s arrangement is for an ensemble of mixed timbres; his liner notes describe ‘reclothing’ the music in his scoring for string orchestra, with solo flute, oboe, cor anglais and a pair of bassoons. Variations for the tutti ensemble are juxtaposed with those of a more concertante nature employing solo instruments. The Aria, for tutti ensemble, achieves a chamber-music like intimacy through the sharing of melodic lines. The First Variation has a pleasingly bucolic feel although rather moto perpetuo for O’Neill’s intended Polonaise guise. Variation 12 has a ‘Brandenburg’ character to…

The composer’s most famous opera features a libretto by Felice Romani and was based on Alexandre Soumet’s contemporary play Norma, ou L’infanticide. The two-act work went through a number of rewrites, but was finished in November 1831, ahead of its premiere at La Scala at the end of that December. It was in fact one of two operas Bellini negotiated with La Scala’s owners, Crivelli & Company; they also managed Venice’s La Fenice and agreed to the composer writing Beatrice di Tenda for the other house. Norma’s initial reception was cool, but it went on to take Europe by storm.…

Based on Old Testament texts, Mendelssohn’s oratorio about the prophet Elijah is scored for large forces. As a fan and champion of similar works by Handel and JS Bach, the composer looked to their models for inspiration. Elijah was premiered in August 1846 at Birmingham Town Hall following its commissioning by the Birmingham Festival the prior year. Initial work on the text was undertaken by Karl Klingemann, but that was discarded by Julius Schubring, who completed the work. Texts were concurrently created in both German and English, with the German premiere taking place in February 1848.…

That this string quartet exists at all is a wonder. Howells undertook the work in 1916, but it’s believed he left the manuscript on a train. He then managed to misplace his second attempt (around 1919/20), but thankfully parts of it were rediscovered. Whether we are hearing what Howells originally had in mind is unknown, but the work paints a typically vivid image of the hills and rivers that were of such inspiration to the composer. It would have been a particular comfort in 1916 when he was so far removed from the horrors of the war across the channel due to ill health.…

December round-up Shetlandborn Astrid Williamson’s tenth album Shetland Suite begins in the kind of reverent hush you might not expect from an archipelago that incorporates an island by the name of Yell. As well as singing in the Shetland dialect, Williamson plays everything; that includes electronics, keyboards, fiddle and percussion. The sense of place this music conveys is admirably powerful, so it’s a good deal cheaper and more environmentally friendly than shelling out on the airfare to pay a visit up there. (Incarnation Records INCACD2409) Continuing in a maritime theme, the Georgia Sea Island Singers were among the best known legends of African-American folk music presented at the complete Friends Of Old Time Music concert in April 1965, which also featured legendary bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell plus cane fife player…

December round-up Václav Neumann was chief conductor of the Czech Phil for 22 years, and in 1969 this was the first orchestra from behind the Iron Curtain to visit the Lucerne Festival. Neumann brought them back in the 1980s, and these Swiss Radio recordings are released for the first time. In Dvo?ák’s Eighth Symphony in 1988, Neumann is direct and unfussy, coaxing a lovely string sound, while the Czech Phil’s characterful winds are wonderful, the horn sound warmed with vibrato. From their 1984 visit, the darkness of Dvo?ák’s The Wild Dove is fully realised, and the Prelude to Smetana’s Libuše glows with national pride. (Audite AUD97832) A Peter Warlock Merry-Go-Down. It sounds like fun, and it is; an anthology from 1929 subtitled ‘A gallery of gorgeous drunkards through the ages’…

A New Philosophy of Opera Yuval Sharon Liveright 240pp (hb) £22 Site-specific opera productions suffered a recent PR wobble after Arts Council England (ACE) chief Darren Henley suggested funding should be redirected from ‘grand opera’ (in that particular case, ENO) towards these ‘grassroots’ projects. Such oversimplification hampers the development of opera, suggests Yuval Sharon in this treatise for the artform. Sharon, who once directed an opera that took place in individual travelling cars (someone pitch this to ACE), embraces the ‘use-lessness’ of opera, making a convincing argument in favour of opera for art’s sake, rather than – as is often the case in the UK – an educational exercise. As artistic director of Detroit Opera and creator of some successfully radical productions, Sharon is most compelling when writing from personal…

1. Whose Central Park in the Dark, composed in 1906, quotes the Washington Post March and the song ‘Hello! Ma Baby!’? 2. Sung by Florestan, ‘Gott! Welch’ Dunkel hier’ (God! What darkness here) is a key aria from which opera? 3. The British composer Harold Darke is best known for his 1909 setting of which Christmas carol? 4. In which 1918 opera does Luigi mistake the lighting of a match as the signal for a secret liaison with Giorgetta, with fatal consequences? 5. Distant Light is the name of a haunting concerto written for violinist Gidon Kremer by which composer in 1997? 6. In 1992, soprano Dawn Upshaw (above) enjoyed instant worldwide fame thanks to the best-selling premiere recording of which symphony? 7. The Aurora Orchestra was cofounded by which two…

Founder of Les Arts Florissants, the ensemble renowned for its creative reinvention of Baroque and Classical masterpieces, US harpsichordist, conductor and teacher William Christie celebrates his 80th birthday in December with a series of concerts and recordings. Bill & Friends, a selection of 17th- and 18th-century works performed by Christie and a new generation of stars, is out on Harmonia Mundi on 22 November. My mother and grandmother took me to the Buffalo Philharmonic to listen to HANDEL’s Messiah one Christmas when I was about ten, and I heard a harpsichord for the first time. It was one of those moments when time stood still – the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard. It was played by a friend of my mother’s, Squire Haskin, an eminent musician in the Buffalo…

The joy of musicals I was pleased to read your October cover feature on how opera gave birth to the world’s greatest stage shows. Musicals are an often neglected genre, yet contain music that is impressive in its own right. In the same issue, Richard Morrison highlighted that not all musicals succeed. Many years ago at The Barbican, I came across the Lost Musicals series produced by Ian Marshall Fisher – I went to the remaining shows that year, was hooked, and they became my annual treat until they ended in 2013. Performed as concert versions, they introduced me to lesser-known early works of familiar composers including Gershwin, and they also performed lesser-known works such as Fanny and Sweet Adeline. And through them, I came across Dress Circle, the only…

THIS MONTH Timothy Ridout violist CONCERT HEAVEN Berlioz Harold in Italy Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg/John Nelson Palais de la musique et des congrès, Strasbourg (October 2021) The whole experience of how a concert comes together – the lead up to it and everything else around it – is often more memorable than the time on stage, which just flashes by. I had a week with Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg doing Harold in Italy, with John Nelson conducting. And what made it such a great experience was we had quite a bit of time; it was being recorded as well. There were actually two concerts and then some patching, but it meant that during the rehearsal process we had the producer there and so it was a doubly well-assisted rehearsal experience…

To misquote Tolstoy, happy composers are all alike; every unhappy composer is unhappy in his or her own way. Among the latter, Tolstoy’s compatriot and contemporary Modest Mussorgsky would be a worthy subject for a great novel. Prodigiously gifted, with a style of ‘realism’ that makes a visceral impact, he enjoyed a brief, brilliant flowering, only to die raddled by alcoholism aged just 42. Mussorgsky’s only solo piano masterpiece, Pictures at an Exhibition, is a cycle in which ten ‘pictures’ are linked by ‘promenades’: a walk around a gallery in which we enter into the atmosphere of each image, along with the viewer’s response to it. It embodies everything most striking about the composer’s personal voice, including the qualities for which he has been most unfairly criticised. His mother, herself…

‘We’re shaped by every encounter – but should also open our ears and become our own teachers’ Francesca Dego has a knack of finding the musicality in works labelled glib and technically ‘showy’. For a long time, her name was inextricably linked to that of Paganini – a composer who instantly conjures visions of fiendishly difficult passagework for long-suffering violinists. As the youngest finalist – and a female one at that – at Genoa’s prestigious ‘Premio Paganini’ Competition in 2008, she was awarded the Enrico Costa Award, and with it, significant attention in her native Italy. A recording of the composer’s 24 Caprices inevitably followed, released on Deutsche Grammophon in October 2012 – but the project was not an easy one. ‘The association with Paganini has at times been despite…

Opera and fashion Though opera’s association with luxury has not always worked in its favour, high fashion can be an effective marketing tool. Armani styled a 1995 Così fan tutte at Covent Garden, while ENO paired up with Zandra Rhodes in 2007 for a zany Aida. In 1997, Opera Holland Park managed to get costumes from its production of Iris into Liberty’s windows. Bite-sized opera In 2004, Opera North put on a season called ‘Eight Little Greats’, entirely comprised of short operas paired in double bills. Ticket-buyers paid to come to one or both – a chance to try out canonical crowd-pleasers (Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci) or rarities (Zemlinsky’s The Dwarf). Royal Opera, ‘A World Stage’ Soprano Liping Zhang posed by the Jiayuguan Fort and bass-baritone Johan Reuter on a Greenland ice…

The main characters featured in Wolf Hall have been inspiration for musicians and composers for centuries. Cromwell himself was the subject of 16th-century ballads musing on his downfall – such songs were the newspapers of the day. It’s Henry VIII and his six wives, though, who have been treated to the most musical depictions. Donizetti’s 1830 opera Anna Bolena takes in the story of Henry’s ill-fated second wife (one of his four operas inspired by the Tudors), while Saint-Saëns’s 1883 opera Henry VIII focuses on the King’s plan to get rid of his first (Catherine of Aragon) in favour of Boleyn. In the following decade, Henry Irving’s 1892 play King Henry VIII also focused on the King’s first wife; Edward German composed the incidental music and his Three Dances from…

Although highly regarded in his native Austria as one of the last great composers of the late-Romantic era, Franz Schmidt’s substantial achievements have been recognised only fitfully elsewhere. There are various explanations for this neglect. His reluctance to self-promote his music as aggressively as some of his contemporaries doubtless counted against him, as perhaps did his failure to secure the imprimatur of influential performers who could have helped to make his works better-known abroad. But more uncomfortably, his long-term reputation has inevitably been tarnished by an ill-fated willingness, towards the end of his life, to allow his music to be appropriated by the Nazis. Deutsche Auferstehung’s mere existence did irreparable harm to Schmidt’s reputation In his final year, Schmidt regrettably accepted an official commission for a choral work entitled Deutsche…

Neville Marriner (conductor) Opting for the full orchestral 1900 score doesn’t mean that the performance has to sound grandiloquent, as Neville Marriner proves in this 1993 typically agile performance with his impeccably disciplined Academy of St Martin in the Fields team. And, of course, having larger forces means that when he does go full throttle, the results can be particularly thrilling. As for the baritone and soprano soloists, while some may find the great Thomas Allen a touch operatic for Fauré, Sylvia McNair’s otherworldly Pie Jesu is simply sublime. (Philips 446 0842) Philippe Herreweghe (conductor) Be careful here. This is not Herreweghe’s famous chamber version recording of 1988, but his later one, from 2003, with full orchestra. But not just any old full orchestra – the Champs-Elysées Orchestra, Paris’s use…

Cover versions of your favourite songs don’t always go down well. Though in classical music, when isn’t a new release a cover in one way or another? This month, a selection of artists take things a step further, with songs and arias by the likes of Vivaldi, Purcell and Handel performed by a jazz band (see Jakub Józef Orliński’s #LetsBaRock), solo cello takes on tunes by Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana (Giovanni Sollima’s Folk & Ba-Rock Cello) and Bach’s Goldbergs for string ensemble (courtesy of the Philharmonia Orchestra). Whether they’re a shock to the system, or an example of just how timeless these classics really are, is up for debate. And there’s plenty more to tantalise, including accordion concertos, a multi-piano ensemble, art song from Africa and at least two new…

Bellini Norma Marina Rebeka (soprano) et al; Orquesta y Coro del Teatro Real, Madrid/John Fiore Prima Classic PRIMA022 139:30 mins (3CD) Norma is only as good as its Norma. And the Latvian soprano Marina Rebeka has already brought the Met audience in New York to its knees – or rather their feet – as the Druid priestess. At full volume it’s a voice that could cut through sheets of steel – the occupying Romans have good reason to be very afraid of her. There’s another reason to welcome this studio recording. It’s a new edition of the score prepared by Roger Parker, who in an elegant essay in the accompanying booklet singles out changes to the opera we usually hear – transposing ‘Casta Diva’ from F to G major, opening…

Benevoli Missa Benevola I Fagiolini/Robert Hollingworth CORO COR16208 70:17 mins Featuring three world premiere recordings, I Fagiolini’s latest album showcases the variety, splendour and beauty of Roman Baroque music. Its centrepiece is the Missa Benevola by Orazio Benevoli, one of the most significant musicians in mid-17th century Rome. Newly edited by Robert Hollingworth, this Marian Mass exemplifies the ‘Colossal Baroque’ style in its lavish four-choir scoring. It’s a kaleidoscopic work in which sober ‘stile antico’ polyphony yields to luscious, chordal, multi-choir textures; to exuberant, melismatic solos and little breakout sections in dancing rhythms. Hollingworth and his musicians highlight the polychoral textures with quasi-orchestral instrumental colours whose varied timbres help differentiate the four choirs. The singing is fresh and vital, mostly straight-toned with fleeting touches of vibrato for expressive purposes; words…

Arnold • Horovitz • Stanford • Finzi Works for Clarinet and Piano Michael Collins (clarinet), Michael McHale (piano) BIS BIS-2097 66:37 mins Remove Brahms’s two clarinet sonatas from the repertoire and what big substantial chamber works for the instrument are left to give a recital ballast? Michael Collins’s British-slanted recital chooses to highlight Stanford’s sonata of 1911, the one item in the programme where each track lasts longer than five minutes. The rest of the listener’s time is spent with perky sonatinas and character pieces: jolly good listening, though perhaps not in a clump. So mellifluously written, Stanford’s sonata not only allows extra room for the composer’s inspiration to take wing. It also offers the album’s best demonstration of razor-sharp teamwork from Collins and Michael McHale, an Irish pianist perfectly…

JS Bach Preludes; Inventions; Sinfonias Mahan Esfahani (keyboards) Hyperion CDA68448 71:38 mins Mahan Esfahani never ceases to confound expectations. Having recorded many of the major works for his ongoing Bach series he might have been expected to add the ‘48’ or The Art of Fugue. In fact he turns to a clutch of didactic works with three sets of Kleine Präludien, (‘little’ only by the clock: two of them scarcely exceed 30 seconds), plus the 2-part Inventions and 3-part Sinfonias – works intended to lay firm foundations for any budding performer and composer, (his son Wilhelm Friedemann foremost beneficiary among them). Pedagogic in intent they might be, but they never sound it under Esfahani’s inquisitive fingers. And dividing the 50 plus tracks between clavichord and his sonorous harpsichord referencing Mietke,…

Sam Lee songdreaming Sam Lee (guitar, vocals), James Keay (piano) et al Cooking Vinyl Ltd COOKCD 915 East London’s neo-folk prodigy Sam Lee released this, his fourth studio album earlier this year, and just as on his previous album Old Wow (reviewed July 2020), he’s brilliantly accompanied by the pulsing chords of pianist James Keay, which track through the album with the rhythmic certainty of a musical heartbeat. Another returning collaborator is ‘indie’ rock producer Bernard Butler, who helps give things a modernist edge. Lee’s familiar concern for the natural world and the damage that we ungrateful children of Mother Nature do to it is an abiding theme – possibly symbolised by the thrilling trills of the UK-endangered Eurasian curlew that thread throug the song sequence in several places. Perhaps just…

NMC 35 Works by Birtwistle, Harvey, Edmund Finnis, Ben Nobuto, Errollyn Wallen et al Various Artists NMC DL3059 (digital) 240 mins It’s a birthday celebration, and we’re all invited. NMC Recordings was founded by composer Colin Matthews 35 years ago to fill a gap in the catalogue: music by living composers in Britain and Ireland. NMC stood for ‘New Music Cassettes’; they couldn’t have anticipated downloads and streaming, nor that they’d have over 300 albums, representing 550 composers across the stable of labels, and becoming an arts charity opening doors to younger composers. The first cassette in 1989 was Jonathan Harvey’s Bhakti, and the range is hugely impressive, from a Fanfare by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Birtwistle’s Mask of Orpheus, to younger talent like Tansy Davies and Rakhi Singh. Thirty-five tracks,…

DECEMBER’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 Advent Morning 9am-1pm The Sound of Christmas 3-4.30pm Advent Service 4.30-6pm A Gaelic Christmas 6-7.15pm Words and Music 7.15-8pm Sunday Feature 8-10pm Drama on 3 10-11.30pm Ultimate Calm 11.30pm-12.30am Unclassified 2 MONDAY 6.30-9.30am Breakfast 9.30am-1pm Essential Classics 1-2pm Live from Wigmore Hall 2-4pm Classical Live 4-5pm Composer of the Week Luise Adolpha Le Beau 5-7pm In Tune 7-7.30pm The Classical Mixtape 7.30-9.45pm Radio 3 In Concert from Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool. Anna Meredith Nautilus, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Walton Belshazzar’s Feast. Ning Feng (violin), Bryn Terfel (bass-baritone), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Adam Hickox 9.45-10pm The Essay 10-11.30pm Night Tracks 11.30pm-12.30am‘Round Midnight 3 TUESDAY 6.30-9.30am Breakfast 9.30am-1pm Essential Classics…

Get ready for an evening of gaiety and grandeur as BBC Two presents Glyndebourne’s first ever production of Franz Lehár’s popular operetta. Its story centres on the will-they-won’t-they relationship between Hanna, a wealthy widow in search of new love, and Danilo, a womanising aristocrat. In the lead roles, Lady of the House Danielle de Niese and Mexican baritone Germán Olvera ooze charisma – alongside excellent cameos from the likes of Thomas Allen and Soraya Mafi. Lehár’s opulent score is matched by sophisticated staging, adorned with chandeliers, grand staircases and more than a whiff of bygone Broadway glamour. Pour a glass of bubbly and settle in for a spectacle of pure escapism, fun and frolics – with double entendres aplenty. BBC Two and iPlayer, date TBC…