Innholdsfortegnelse for Christmas 2024 i BBC Music Magazine

There’s a strong familial bond running through our Christmas issue this year – appropriate, given the festive season’s emphasis on family gatherings, be they merry and bright… or less so! For our cover stars, the Bevan Family Consort, the ties of family as expressed through music couldn’t be stronger. Though the group – including leading professional singers Mary and Sophie – features just 14 members, the entire clan of musically inclined siblings and cousins stretches to 56! And these are just the current generation – their predecessors, the Bevan Family Choir, began in the 1950s. On Page 24 Rebecca Franks speaks to four members of the Consort about the great fun that can be had when working with those ‘on a similar wavelength’. Young French piano superstar Alexandre Kantorow knows…

Many decades on, my most vivid memory of childhood Christmases doesn’t involve twinkling fairy-lights, turkey with all the trimmings or boozy uncles behaving badly – though all of that featured in our little London semi. No, what I recall most clearly is the magic moment, at about 7pm on Christmas Day, when a dozen neighbours would crowd into our living room and my dad would sit at the piano, a glass of Dubonnet perched precariously on top, and start playing song after song for everyone to join in. He never used sheet music and never had to stop to think what tune to play next. He had that gift, honed through years in dance bands and as a hotel pianist, of being able to recall hundreds of Jerome Kern, Richard…

‘Performing in the Paris Olympics opening ceremony was an incredible feeling,’ says Kantorow. ‘It was like being in a big theatrical play that we created together. At certain times every act in the ceremony was separate – a big group here, or one person there – but we also felt part of a bigger narrative. It’s a very liberating feeling when it’s no longer you on your own, and you just get immersed. ‘I felt nervous for the whole afternoon. We had to be there very early and there was an extremely long wait in the dressing room. But then, when we saw the ceremony begin on TV and understood what it was trying to achieve, it felt very exciting. And the fact that it was pouring with rain –…

Seiji Ozawa (conductor) Vienna Philharmonic Philips 454 4482 Deciding on Seiji Ozawa’s 1996 recording as a top choice has in one sense been self-evident: more straightforwardly fabulous orchestral playing can’t be heard on this planet. But then again, it’s also fair to ask: does the level of incandescent intensity achieved here by the Vienna Philharmonic truly suit the music itself? The great German and Austrian orchestras of Richard Strauss’s own time operated at a lower and mellower decibel level than they do today; and as a conductor, he himself liked to conjure a rounded and quite soft-grained overall sound, subtly shaded rather than highly coloured. That said, there is something unanswerable about this orchestra’s way of enthralling both ear and heart at once. Viennese horns have a distinct tone quality…

Christmas music is just the thing to warm the cockles as winter creeps in, not to mention the perfect antidote to the daily onslaught of crises and crackpots. So I invite you to partake in our festive round-up, where you’ll find a dose of magic and sparkle courtesy of college choirs, musical families and fabulous soloists. There’s a sense of place this issue, too, with musical accounts of an Irish winter (our Orchestral Choice), two album snapshots of music from North America and an emotional response to the war in Ukraine (our Choral & Song Choice). And then? We unbox a trio of Michael Tilson Thomas celebratory releases, a final bow from pianist Kathryn Stott with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the winning recital from this year’s Leeds International Piano Competition.…

Donnacha Dennehy Land of Winter Alarm Will Sound/Alan Pierson Nonesuch 7559789949 53:51 mins The Larne-born musicologist Bob Gilmore (1961-2015) once observed that Donnacha Dennehy (b1970) writes ‘music that deals with big issues, but has such an appealingly odd way of addressing them.’ Land of Winter (2022) is typically oblique while being utterly direct – and wonderfully subtle, with a palette that combines Dennehy’s keen poetic awareness of his Irish roots with his fine, spectral ear for the physical properties of sound, and love of pulsedriven post-minimalism. The land of the title is Ireland, seen through shivering, ancient Roman eyes: ‘Hibernia’, its cold seeming to penetrate every month of the year. Dennehy has professed a fascination with weather both literal and metaphorical, and here it’s the interplay of light and time…

Žibuoklė Martinaitytė Aletheia; Chant des Voyelles; Ululations; The Blue of Distance Latvian Radio Choir/Sigvards Kļava Ondine ODE-1447-2 59:39 mins These works go beyond words. This latest release from the superlative Latvian Radio Choir and conductor Sigvards Kļava explores the choral music of New York-based Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė. Specifically, it presents four unaccompanied works, written between 2010 and 2023, that dispense with text. Having spent her formative years under the oppression of Soviet rule, music’s ability to express what words cannot is paramount in Martinaitytė’s creative explorations of identity and place. Especially so for Aletheia (2022), written as Russia launched its attack on Ukraine. Its deep emotions elicit a wall of choral sound within which there is living movement, Martinaitytė connecting with ‘the truth that can only be expressed directly…

Cello – A Journey Through Silence to Sound Kate Kennedy Head of Zeus 468pp (hb) £30 Loss and the re-emergence of a cello voice defines this narrative. Kate Kennedy revisits the lives of four cellists, two of whom were victims of the Holocaust. Particularly poignant is her vivid portrayal of Pal Hermann – a Hungarian cellist on the cusp of international fame. She reconstructs his days in hiding and final transfer to the death camps with empathy. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch faced an equally traumatic journey in losing her own cello. Yet her prowess as a performer saved her life as she played in the Auschwitz orchestra. Alongside this we learn that Kennedy suffered from tendonitis at school, but that she continued her studies at the RCM and is now a professional…

Rebecca Franks Writer and editor ‘What a treat it was to sit down for a drink and chinwag with four members of the Bevan Family Consort and hear about the group’s new festive album, and why the talented cousins love singing in a choir together.’ Page 24 Ashutosh Khandekar Writer and critic ‘The poet Christina Rossetti lived for a time in Frome, the Somerset town I call home. So I was especially fascinated to discover the subversive Pre-Raphaelite inspiration behind the words of In The Bleak Midwinter.’ Page 38 Geoff Brown Writer and critic ‘Leroy Anderson’s orchestral miniatures were part of my childhood, but revisiting his output prompted a new appreciation of his wit, ingenuity and instrumentation. I also learned what exactly makes a typewriter go “ping”.’ Page 62…

THIS MONTH Jonas Kaufmann tenor CONCERT HEAVEN Verdi La traviata Jonas Kaufmann (tenor), Angela Gheorghiu (soprano) et al The Metropolitan Opera, New York (Feburary 2006) If I look back through my career, there have been moments where I really was overwhelmed by what had just happened. One, certainly, was my debut at The Met, because that radically changed my career. I’d already performed in many places, at La Scala and Covent Garden, but in 2006 I was finally at The Met, with Angela Gheorghiu in La traviata. I was obviously super nervous, because the house is so big, and I’m pretty sure that nobody in New York had heard the name Jonas Kaufmann before – even though I’d sung some parts at the Chicago Lyric Opera beforehand. And then I…

'What says family more than Christmas?’ asks Sophie Bevan, hamming up the line and making us all laugh. Gathered around a ‘What pub table in London in blazing summer sunshine that’s decidedly inappropriate for talking about a Christmas album are four Bevan cousins. Four, I should point out, of 56. All of whom are, in one way or another, musical. The Bevan family sprawls, dwarfing the von Trapps and Kanneh-Masons (see p30). And a handful of them have formed the Bevan Family Consort, which makes recordings and gives concerts, and this year releases a gorgeous Christmas album. It features family party pieces and festive favourites as well as the premiere recordings of a Palestrina mass, Imogen Holst’s The Virgin Unspotted and David Bevan Snr’s Lute-book Lullaby. ‘ACTUALLY, THE CHOIR is…

December 1906 was one of the hardest on record. Fierce blizzards swept Scotland, more than a foot of snow was reported in Norfolk and most of Britain lay under a deep blanket of white. When, on Christmas Eve, churches across the country were filled with the sound of a newly published carol by the 30-year-old Gustav Holst, the words of its opening verse must have resonated with congregations, many of whom had braved treacherous conditions to get there: ‘In the bleak midwinter/Frosty wind made moan/Earth stood hard as iron/Water like a stone…’ Churches across the country were filled with the sound of a new carol by Gustav Holst Holst had been commissioned to write three carols by his friend and mentor Ralph Vaugh Williams, co-editor of the English Hymnal, published…

In the blazing hot July of 1946, Captain Leroy Anderson, late of Military Intelligence at the Pentagon, was stripped to the waist, digging a trench at his Connecticut cottage, trying to locate some disused pipes. A jog-trot rhythm entered his head, suitable for horses’ hooves and sleigh bells. Once back inside, he sketched out some ideas, subsequently developed and polished over the course of a year. The end product was Sleigh Ride, an orchestral piece lasting under three minutes, premiered by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra in May 1948. This winter bonbon had no specific Christmas associations, but they gathered around it anyway as the piece speedily grew in popularity. The fame of Sleigh Ride was further boosted after its first recording in 1949 and the emergence in…

Slide Action are really pushing boundaries with this album… Absolutely. The trombone quartet is often seen as a bit of a pedestrian chamber music format – if it’s seen as a format at all – and there are lots that already exist comprised of the greatest orchestral players in the world. So we quickly realised that we needed a USP that was different, and the format just hasn’t developed since the 1960s. So we wanted to push the boundaries but also the capabilities of the sound you can make on the instrument. Do any of the new works push the limits of what is possible? Oh totally! Probably the most difficult is Alex Paxton’s piece, Hairy Pony Estampie; it’s just totally bonkers. Alex is an incredible trombone player, as well…

Sibelius Violin Concerto; Serenades; Humoresques etc James Ehnes (violin); Bergen Philharmonic/Edward Gardner Chandos CHSA 5267 79:17 mins Sibelius’s ultra-virtuosic Violin Concerto demands stellar qualities from its soloist. James Ehnes has them all, and then some – vast technical firepower, full-on richness of tone without technicolor gloss, phenomenal tuning and a likeable artistry that’s direct, unpretentious and instantly responsive to every musical situation. With all this on offer, it’s no surprise that the Concerto’s interplay of brilliance and introspection comes across so well. Following on from the first movement’s big solo cadenza, the way Ehnes captures the surge of the main theme’s reprise is memorable. In the Adagio slow movement he is warmly expressive without excess. And the finale’s near-outrageous difficulties are handled with dazzling precision. This release is then raised…

R Schumann Fantasiestücke, Op.73; Adagio und Allegro; Märchenerzählungen, Op. 132 etc Maxim Rysanov (viola), Julian Bliss (clarinet), Dasol Kim (piano) Onyx ONYX4245 57:26 mins Please don’t fall for the old chestnut that Robert Schumann’s late works were of inferior quality because he was mentally ill. Among Rysanov, Kim and Bliss’s achievements is to prove – if it is necessary – that these pieces can reach an emotional space subtler and even richer than the heady passion of Schumann’s early piano works. The Märchenerzählungen, Op. 132 for viola, clarinet and piano are positively heavenly and the group makes the best possible case for them. These rare pieces date from that crucial month of October 1853, when the Schumanns first met the young Brahms, and are thus contemporaneous with, for instance, the…

Robert Burns Arnot The Christmas Symphony Vienna Synchron Orchestra/Bernhard Voss Wiener Klassische WK96622 With sleigh bells, glockenspiel and soupy melodies galore, the American composer Robert Burns Arnot clearly likes a traditional Christmas. Nothing wrong with that – his symphony is quite charming, and at 16 minutes long, doesn’t outstay its welcome. Don’t, though, expect to be wowed by his originality or have your emotions pulled to the max. (JP) Erland Cooper Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence Daniel Pioro (violin) et al Mercury 6576069 The short version of this fascinating story is: Erland Cooper wrote this, recorded it, destroyed all but one tape and buried that in a secret location on Orkney, only promising to release it if anyone ever found it. Well thank goodness someone did, because…

THE 12 SHOWS OF CHRISTMAS Switching on the Sound of Christmas Radio 3 kicks off the festive season with an Advent adventure across the UK. Right across the day’s programming, nature reserves, islands, pubs and chapels throughout the four nations play host to live broadcasts celebrating some of our unique yuletide musical traditions.  Radio 3, 1 Dec, all day A Latin American Christmas Kate Molleson takes Composer of the Week on a festive armchair journey to five countries in Latin America, introducing us to composers and traditions spanning centuries and longitudes. From sumptuous Baroque choral music in Mexico to cool Brazilian bossa nova, Argentinian folk carols, Venezuelan guitar music and irresistible Puerto Rican salsa, there are plenty of treasures throughout the week to refresh your seasonal playlist. Radio 3, 9-13…

Inconsistent stars My query is a curmudgeonly one, so please forgive! It concerns the stars at the foot of the reviews. Quite often, the rating seems at odds with the preceding text, at least to me. A couple of examples from the latest (December) issue…: For Barenboim’s Franck/Fauré, the review reads ‘…it is wonderful that DG have captured Barenboim’s distinctive magisterial vision’. That reads to me as being worthy of five stars for Recording, but we have here just four. Then the review for Pappano’s Mendelssohn says ‘…the concrete-mud acoustic [of the Barbican] is inescapable’. Hmmm… so what’s with the five stars for Recording? Even if Jessica Duchen admires the engineers’ success here in making the best of a problematic acoustic, the quintuple-starred rating is surely inconsistent with her words.…

1st: Benjamin Britten conducts the world premiere of his Billy Budd at the Royal Opera House, with baritone Theodor Uppman in the title role, tenor Peter Pears as Captain Vere and bass Frederick Dalberg as the unlovable Claggart. Though the opera, based on a Herman Melville novel, is enthusiastically received by public and press alike, the composer later alters it from four acts to two. 11th: After 13 Major League seasons with the New York Yankees, including nine World Series wins, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio announces his retirement. ‘I was full of aches and pains and it had become a chore for me to play,’ he explains in an interview. ‘When baseball is no longer fun, it’s no longer a game. And so, I’ve played my last game of ball.’…

British soprano Susan Bullock selects the juiciest Wagner roles for singers to get their teeth into Susan Bullock has sung in opera houses all over the world. Attracted to roles of dramatic heft and complexity, she is closely associated with late-Romantic and 20th-century German repertoire, and has a particular affinity with the music of Richard Wagner: a marathon achievement was singing Brünnhilde in all the performances of The Ring at Covent Garden in the London Olympic year of 2012. Next summer she will play Cosima Wagner at the Longborough Festival in a new opera about the Wagner family by the Israeli-born composer Avner Dorman. Brünnhilde Brünnhilde has been part of my life for a long time but every time I sing this role, I find out new things about her.…

SOPRANOS Agnes: Singing in the local church choir and playing the flute in the village orchestra were how Agnes came to love music. She now works in music administration and performs as a jazz singer and flautist in hotels and bars in Vietnam, where she lives with her family. Daisy (above right): After being a professional chef for over a decade, Daisy took up singing in 2018 and recently graduated from the Royal Northern College of Music. She now has a busy concert and operatic career. ALTOS Lizzy: An excellent pianist and graduate in French from Bristol University, Lizzy worked as a secondary teacher and freelance singer. She now works for a FinTech company and sings with Chantage as well as depping on the church circuit. Tess (above left): Tess’s…

The figures don’t lie. While commercial recordings of Harold Darke’s In the Bleak Midwinter go way past the 100 mark, his other works all fail to muster more than single figures. Have a hunt around, however, and you’ll find a few gems. Start, perhaps, with O gladsome light for unaccompanied choir (1929). This short but lovely anthem traces a similar journey to Parry’s better known My soul, there is a country in moving from a hushed opening to blazing conclusion. An alumnus of the Royal College of Music, Darke was presumably familiar with the renowned teacher’s work, and in 1918 was one of 12 composers invited to contribute a movement to A Little Organ Book in Memory of Hubert Parry. That movement is included on organist Jonathan Rennert’s 1991 The…

Not quite a boxed set, more a book of memories with four CDs inserted in the back, Grace is a project designed to showcase the compositions MTT has written throughout his life: some of them public and glitzy like The Diary of Anne Frank, a melodrama for narrator and orchestra which premiered in 1970 with Audrey Hepburn. But more of them intimate, personal, freighted with autobiography. Largely vocal, their sound world tends to be lyrical, on the cusp of Broadway but with a sometimes spikily Mahlerian rigour that holds back from easy listening. There are settings of Walt Whitman featuring Thomas Hampson; of Emily Dickinson, handsomely sung by Renée Fleming; and of Rilke that come with unexpectedly up-tempo freshness. But maybe the most effective are cabaret-like songs to MTT’s own…

Structurally conservative Very inventive phrase by phrase, Anderson wasn’t a structural experimenter. Thematic material proceeds in simple chunks, with the ABA pattern the most common and ABAB the runner-up. This might be a hangover from his classical Harvard education, but it’s also the result of a simple desire for immediate communication with a wide audience. A popular touch Popular taste also governs the genres deployed by Anderson: waltzes, marches, a tango or two, some sentimental reveries. Older dance forms like the sarabande also appear. Most of the pieces usually occupy around three minutes – perfect for fitting onto one side of the mid-20th century’s shellac discs. Lively instrumentation Anderson initially found fame as an orchestral arranger, and his preference for bright, kaleidoscopic textures is equally clear in his original compositions.…

Controversial it may have been, but Richard Strauss’s 1905 opera Salome proved both successful and extremely lucrative – as the composer later noted in his diary, the royalties from it enabled him to build his lavish villa in Garmisch less than three years later. At the time of composing An Alpine Symphony in 1911, the precociously gifted son of a Munich Court Orchestra principal horn player had already climbed high enough to be able to stop and admire the view, but in fact was not yet at the halfway point in a very eventful career that would continue right until the final months before his death, aged 85, in 1949.…

Re:Build Ryan Latimer: C. Exigua; Laura Jurd: Swamped; Emily Hall: Close Palms; Alex Paxton: Hairy Pony Estampie; Joanna Ward: Playing Frisbee May 2022; plus works by Matthew Locke, Benny Vernon et al Slide Action NMC NMC D289 51:14 mins The future of brass ensemble playing is – as yet – a relatively untapped area for contemporary composers. Brass bands, 20th-century big bands and some orchestral playing have certainly made inroads, but the real development of this soundworld is surely yet to come. If any group is likely to move this on in leaps and bounds it is Slide Action. This album commissions composers and arrangers (including significant contributions from the group themselves) to harness the great harmonic, rhythmic and melodic timbres offered from a trombone quartet, and creators have gleefully…

Rihm Jakob Lenz Joachim Goltz (baritone) et al; Nationaltheater-Orchester Mannheim/Franck Ollu  Oehms OC 981 66:14 mins The German composer Wolfgang Rihm died in July at the age of 72. He was well known for his operas, of which Jakob Lenz (1979) was an early and notable example. The subject is the eponymous Baltic German Sturm und Drang poet and playwright (1751-92), an episode from whose sad life (he seems to have suffered from schizophrenia and eventually died homeless on a Moscow street) was turned into a novella by the early Romantic writer Georg Büchner. It’s his text which forms the basis of Michael Fröhling’s libretto. Lenz’s unrequited love for Friederike Brion, a former flame of his sometime friend Goethe, runs like a leitmotif through the score. The forces are small: three…

Yuletide Treats Works by Handel, Liszt, J Strauss I, J Strauss II and Tchaikovsky Duo Pleyel Linn Records CKD757 56:36 mins Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya and Richard Egarr name themselves after the 1848 Pleyel they own, as the four-hand entity Duo Pleyel. But the instrument on which they play here is a Chris Maene straight-strung concert grand, which allows for a particularly crystalline sound. And they are currently half way through a recording project on it of all Beethoven’s symphonies in his student Carl Czerny’s four-hand arrangement. That same Czerny also makes an appearance on this album. Duo Pleyel’s Yuletide offering is the latest in a long tradition of convivial Christmas music, but their programme is unusually recherché. It begins with three sections of Liszt’s Christmas Tree Suite, each of which has…

Param Vir Snatched by the Gods; Broken Strings Almeida Opera; London Sinfonietta/Markus Stenz Metier MEX77211 111:18 mins Magical storytelling for any time of year: Delhi-born, London-based composer Param Vir was commissioned by Hans Werner Henze to write two one-act operas for the 1992 Venice Biennale. Snatched by the Gods from Rabindranath Tagore’s narrative poem describes an emotional and physical pilgrimage to a Hindu festival, the tensions caused when a young widow joins them with her son, the storm that threatens their boat on the return journey and the terrible consequences of the communal panic that breaks out. Broken Strings is an ancient Buddhist legend of mythical creatures and profound moral lessons. An old, poor musician’s playing becomes ever more extraordinary as the strings of his instrument break one-by-one. Param Vir’s…

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Broadcaster, author A household name in the UK, Alan Titchmarsh has helped our gardens grow as one of TV’s most trusted horticulturalists. But his talents stretch far beyond his green fingers; he’s also a much-loved chat show and radio host, a bestselling author and, now, a lyricist. Jack Frost – A Winter Story is a new album, featuring his wintry words and sparkling music by Debbie Wiseman, out now on Silva Screen Records. I was an odd lad who liked classical music, and when all my friends were buying the Stones and the Beatles, I was buying Borodin and Beethoven. But I did buy ‘She Loves You’ and I was the first in our street to have it; we didn’t call it ‘street cred’ then, but I feel I bought…