Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2025 i BBC Music Magazine

America is on our minds as we start this new year and bid fond farewell to a quarter-century. Our cover star is the vibrant US soprano Angel Blue, whose leading operatic roles on both sides of the Atlantic herald her arrival as one of the world’s top sopranos (p24). And on page 30 we meet Anthony McGill, principal clarinettist of the New York Philharmonic and a leading advocate for greater diversity in the classical world. As President Trump prepares to be sworn in for the second time on the frosty steps of Washington’s Capitol, Terry Blain looks back at the music performed during past presidential inaugurations – and what those works can tell us about the ambitions and priorities for that politician’s tenure (p52). Who could forget the inspiring sight…

Without getting too political – this is a family-friendly magazine, after all – I must confess that I am not terribly optimistic that 2025 will be a happy new year, especially for musicians. In fact, I fear it will be rather like a protracted visit to the dentist. It will be painful. We will undoubtedly come out of it poorer than we went in. And yet we will have to go through with it At least, in real life we will. In our imaginations, however, we can time-travel. So, here’s a question. If you could select any year out of the past 20 centuries to direct your personal Tardis towards, which would it be? A few rules first. Your decision should be based purely on musical considerations – not the…

Segregation and bigotry presented serious barriers to an operatic career in America for black singers during the 20th century. Angel Blue acknowledges that her own path to success has been made easier by a succession of trailblazing women. Contralto Marian Anderson led the way when she became the first black opera singer to perform at the Met 70 years ago, on 7 January 1955, in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. Anderson had earlier stepped into a political storm when the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from singing in Washington DC. The incident led to the famous Easter concert in 1939, when Anderson performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a mixed-race audience of around 75,000, broadcast to millions around the nation. Anderson’s defiance inspired a young…

When it comes to Mozart, there’s the music, the man… and the mystery. We’re not talking about the many myths that sprang up after his untimely death, but instead the tantalising mysteries of Mozart’s creative mind. Was he born a genius, or did he become one? How did he manage to compose over 600 pieces, many of which are outstanding in quality, in his 35 short years? And why did someone who could compose the masterful counterpoint of, say, the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony and capture the subtle nuance of human emotion in operas such as The Marriage of Figaro also write letters full of toilet humour and a six-voice canon titled Leck Mich Im Arsch (obvious even without translation)? With every year, decade and century that take us chronologically further away…

While many figures have shown a flair for both science and music, surely no-one in history can claim to have matched Russian composer and chemist Alexander Borodin when it comes to being an acclaimed master of both. Best known in scientific circles for his work on aldehydes, in 1862 Borodin followed post-doctoral studies in Heidelberg and Pisa with the appointment as chemistry professor at the Medical-Surgical Academy in Saint Petersburg, the city in which he also founded the School of Medicine for Women. His research as a chemist was influential both in his own time and beyond, his name later being handed down to posterity in a method called the Hunsdiecker-Borodin reaction. And then there were his activities as a musician, partly as one of the ‘Mighty Handful’ group of…

It’s a curiosity of American history that for over 150 years after the United States first declared itself an independent nation, it had no official national anthem. This was rectified in 1931, when the US Congress installed ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in that illustrious position. The anthem’s words are from a poem by Francis Scott Key (above), an attorney who witnessed a British naval bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore in 1814. Amid dramatic images of ‘bombs bursting in air’, Key’s poem stirringly celebrates the sight of the American flag still flying defiantly over the ramparts, symbolising ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’. His words were swiftly partnered to a tune already well-known in America – that of ‘The Anacreontic Song’, a comic parody sung at convivial…

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Composer, instrumentalist, singer, impresario and art dealer, Elisabetta de Gambarini was a defiantly independent musician, working successfully in the deeply patriarchal world of 18th-century London. Yet the career of this highly talented young woman was to end in tragedy after she endured domestic violence, estrangement and a scandalous diplomatic cover-up. Her life had begun with many advantages. Born in the capital in 1731 to wealthy, well-connected Italian parents, Gambarini grew up in Mayfair. Her father, Count Carlo Gambarini, was counsellor to Frederick I of Sweden and a noted collector of fine art. Her mother, Giovanna Stradiotti, was an opera singer, keyboard player and teacher, who encouraged her daughter’s exceptional talents, enlisting the composer Francesco Geminiani to become one of her teachers. As a composer, she was the first woman in…

Why did you pair this Brahms sonata with Schubert? Brahms’s First Sonata and Schubert’s ‘Wanderer Fantasy’ have at their heart a lieder theme in the slow movement, and the other movements are rhythmically connected, so I felt there were many musical ideas that link the pieces together. I also felt it was important to show that while Brahms has a very youthful approach, it’s still a ‘Classical’ sonata, and so even though the Schubert came before, it felt more advanced, musically. What challenges does the ‘Wanderer Fantasy’ pose? Oh there are big challenges, especially in technique – pieces like that are not written in a very natural way for the hands; it’s much less natural than Chopin, who understood the smooth accompaniments, the right-hand virtuosity and the positions of the…

Hasse Serpentes Ignei in Deserto Philippe Jaroussky, Jakub Józef Orliński, Bruno de Sá et al; Les Accents/Thibault Noally Erato 2173239904 87:10 mins Vocal stars align in this stunning world premiere. The most fashionable operatic composer of his day, Hasse was also maestro di cappella at Venice’s female orphanage the Ospedale degli Incurabili, whose popular concerts he furnished with vehicles like this c1734 Serpentes Ignei in Deserto (Fiery Serpents in the Desert). In the story, God sends the serpents among the Israelites, killing many of them, because they had grumbled ‘against God and against Moses’. We hear of this in single airs of contrasting affect assigned one each to secondary dramatis personae whom director Thibault Noally shrewdly matches to the strengths of his soloists. The sweet clarity of sopranist Bruno de…

D Scarlatti Harpsichord Sonatas (A Man of Genius) Francesco Corti (harpsichord)  Arcana A568 86:22 mins What a resplendent panoply of Iberian colour emerges from Scarlatti’s breathtakingly original and unfailingly varied harpsichord sonatas. They comprise a microcosm of so much character that we traditionally associate with Spanish music; and none of it is lost in this fine recording by the Italian virtuoso, Francesco Corti. While less than a handful of the 16 sonatas that he has chosen enjoy frequent currency, the remainder may be unfamiliar to all but the real connoisseurs. It has been perceptively observed that in his sonatas Scarlatti aimed at sounds distinct from their period, enriching them with an astonishingly wide expressive palette. Corti responds to their originality with playing that is unhurried, conversationally punctuated and which draws…

Composer Making history in 1996 as the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Original Score (for Emma), British composer Rachel Portman has enjoyed a long and fruitful career on the big screen and, more recently, in the concert hall. She begins 2025 with a new role mentoring aspiring young film composers from the Guildhall School, as part of an exciting new project with the London Symphony Orchestra. he first piece of music I think I loved was the Berceuse from the Dolly Suite by FAURÉ, which is a piano piece for two hands. It was the theme tune for the radio programme Listen with Mother and my mother used to have it on in the ironing room. She listened to Radio 3 all the time, so that was…

Stephen Johnson Author and composer ‘How does musical satire work? Can it ever truly bite? Words help identify the target, but when more is left to the imagination it can be even deadlier. And how safe are we, the listeners and coconspirators? This really set me thinking.’ Page 42 Stephen Pritchard Music journalist ‘Elisabetta de Gambarini’s life reads like a novel: she moved in high society, sang for Handel and was the first woman in England to publish her keyboard music. But she died young after a violent marriage and vile cover-up.’ Page 62 Amanda Holloway Music journalist ‘Picking a best Die schöne Müllerin is the surest way to lose friends, given that everyone’s favourite singer – tenor, baritone, countertenor or even contralto – has recorded this pinnacle of…

As this issue goes to press, Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral is due to re-open to the public, more than five years after the iconic building was gutted by fire. The opening words from the Archbishop of Paris in welcoming back worshippers are set to be ‘Awake oh organ, Let God’s praise be heard!’, which will be metaphorical music to the ears of those who are looking forward to hearing the cathedral’s Cavaillé-Coll instrument again at some point soon. Remarkably, the organ was relatively unscathed by the April 2019 inferno, though a clean-up of toxic lead monoxide dust in its 7,952 pipes has been required. Shortly before the fire, titular organist Olivier Latry displayed the great beast at its best with his recording Bach To The Future, which was then shortlisted…

THIS MONTH Sabine Devieilhe soprano CONCERT HEAVEN R Strauss Der Rosenkavalier Sabine Devieilhe (soprano) et al; Teatro alla Scala Orchestra/Kirill Petrenko La Scala, Milan (October 2024) This is a performance I did just a while ago at La Scala in Milan; I was singing Sophie in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. For this performance I had the best team I could ever dream of. My Octavian was Kate Lindsey, a beautiful person and artist – we became really close during the rehearsals and performances. My Marschallin was Krassimira Stoyanova, who I have known for quite a long time – she’s a monumental soprano, so I have the biggest admiration for her – and the maestro was Kirill Petrenko. We did seven shows with quite a lot of rehearsal, so we had time…

Mozart’s letters put his character into words, but what can his music itself tell us about his personality? For that, it’s perhaps best to ask those who perform it. For many, it boils down to his grasp of the human condition: its rich complexity and absurdity. Pianist Artur Schnabel’s quip that the solo piano music was ‘too easy for children, too difficult for adults’, fits with our image of Mozart’s character: one second, a serious composer, the next a playful child. Dualities are another theme. ‘Mozart is a mixture of humanity and divinity,’ pianist Imogen Cooper once told BBC Music. ‘It’s sort of god-like but it’s completely human in that there’s every emotion. There’s wit, humour, naughtiness, grief.’ ‘Mozart is constantly, restlessly changing the music’s character in the most unpredictable…

How old is musical satire? It’s impossible to say. We know about the Roman poet Juvenal’s Satires because they were written down and dutifully preserved by later generations. But it wasn’t until the later Middle Ages that anything like precise written notation began to define itself, and that was largely for church music, a medium with traditionally a low tolerance for mockery. It’s hard to believe that the more free-spirited kinds of performer didn’t indulge in a bit of parody or caricature from time to time, but if so, it went unrecorded – probably for good reason. One problem with musical satire is that, even when bolstered by words, music can be very slippery when it comes to spelling out ideas, events or persons. American MAGA zealots roar out Bruce…

After a lifetime’s singing, Dame Patricia Routledge knows a thing or two about the human voice, but still describes it as ‘a miracle’ – which may explain why she is honorary president of the Association of English Singers and Speakers, and why she sponsors annual performance prizes at conservatoires like the Royal Northern College and Royal Academy. She’s interested in the connection between speech and song, and says the latter helps the former – from the rhythmic sense an actor needs in comedy through to the breath control required for epic sentences in plays by Oscar Wilde. But something else that singing gives the spoken word is sensitivity to pitch. ‘With far too many people on TV and radio, everything is on one note. They drone. And they end phrases…

So prodigious was Schubert’s talent that, at the time of Die schöne Müllerin, the 26-year-old’s huge number of works already included masterpieces for performers ranging from solo voices and instruments to full orchestra. These included all but one of his symphonies, including the breezy Fifth and ‘Unfinished’ Eighth, and a wealth of highly polished quartets, piano sonatas and songs – though the likes of the ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet and Winterreise were still to come. While major opera success would elude him, his talent for writing for the voice was amply demonstrated elsewhere……

Brahms · Schubert Brahms: Piano Sonata No. 1 in C major, Op. 1; Schubert (Trans. Liszt): Song Transcriptions – Der Wanderer; Der Müller und der Bach; Frühlingsglaube; Die Stadt; Am Meer; Schubert: Fantasy in C major ‘Wanderer Fantasy’, D760 Alexandre Kantorow (piano) BIS BIS-2660 (CD/SACD) 72:44 mins We don’t know exactly which of his own pieces the 20-year-old Brahms played to the Schumanns the first time he visited them. There’s a good chance, however, that he included the C major Piano Sonata. It became his Op. 1 and may have been chosen for the purpose with their advice. As Alexandre Kantorow plays it, you can well imagine the astounded Robert stopping him and rushing to fetch Clara. Kantorow has already recorded the other two Brahms sonatas, but this is the…

John Luther Adams An Atlas of Deep Time South Dakota Symphony Orchestra/Delta David Gier Cantaloupe CA21199 41:57 mins An Atlas of Deep Time might just be John Luther Adams’s best work since his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Become Ocean of 2013. Like that piece, this latest orchestral epic takes our planet as its subject, listening and looking far beyond the small speck that humanity plays in its history. Across a sweeping 42-minute panorama, he explores the idea of deep time, of an Earth that is 4 billion, 570 million years old. By his maths, ‘the entire history of the human family is represented in the dying reverberations of the last 25 milliseconds of this music’ (a high, ethereal tapering off the violins). A humbling perspective, for sure, and one backed up by the…

Jeff Beal The Salvage Men; plus works by Barber, Daniel Nelson and Eric Whitacre Eric Ericson Chamber Choir/Fredrik Malmberg BIS BIS-2599 57:45 mins The Eric Ericson Chamber Choir are justly acclaimed as one of the world’s top choirs and this outstanding new release highlights their many strengths. Featuring four warmly accessible modern works, this is an album of terrific vitality which showcases the choir’s gorgeous breadth of timbre and precise sense of ensemble. Jeff Beal’s The Salvage Men (2014) explores themes of pain and transformation, and was composed after Beal found himself living with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Beal is best known for his film and TV scores, but this richly contemplative choral work finds him equally comfortable in the concert hall. The work opens with an affecting setting…

JANUARY’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see BBC Sounds and iPlayer 1 WEDNESDAY 6.30-9.30am Breakfast 9.30am-1pm Essential Classics 1-3pm Classical Live 3-4pm Choral Evensong 4-5pm Composer of the Week Franz Schubert 5-7pm Europe Special 7-7.30pm Classical Mixtape 7.30-9.45pm Radio 3 In Concert EBU Vienna 9.45-10pm The Essay 10-11.30pm Night Tracks 11.30pm-12.30am ‘Round Midnight 2 THURSDAY 6.30-9.30am Breakfast 9.30am-1pm Essential Classics 1-4pm Classical Live 4-5pm Composer of the Week Franz Schubert 5-7pm In Tune 7-7.30pm Classical Mixtape 7.30-9.45pm Radio 3 In Concert EBU Paris 9.45-10pm The Essay 10-11.30pm Night Tracks 11.30pm-12.30am ‘Round Midnight 3 FRIDAY 6.30-9.30am Breakfast 9.30am-1pm Essential Classics 1-4pm Classical Live 4-5pm Composer of the Week Franz Schubert 5-7pm In Tune 7-7.30pm Classical Mixtape 7.30-9.45pm Radio 3 In Concert EBU Budapest 9.45-10pm…

Magnificent Bevans I hugely enjoyed Rebecca Franks’s encounter with the Bevan Family Consort (Family album, Christmas issue). I quite understand it must have been a challenge to include so many notable singing members of the family, but there are two very distinguished Bevans of the previous generation who should not be forgotten. Mary’s and Sophie’s much-loved father David Bevan was born in 1951, and his sister Rachel in 1952 – they were two of the famous 14 children of Roger and Molly Bevan whom Rebecca mentioned, and members of the previous Bevan Family Choir. David was a very funny, self-effacing and greatly talented singer, organist and choirmaster, whom I met in Oxford and with whom I shared a flat in London. He became assistant and then acting master of music…

A celebratory gala to mark the 100th anniversary of Puccini’s death on 29 November fell horribly flat when, just five minutes before curtain up, the orchestral musicians of La Scala, Milan, went on strike. While management desperately tried to bring some fizz to the occasion in the form of liquid refreshment, a piano was wheeled onto stage and in-house répétiteur James Vaughan hastily recruited to accompany tenor Jonas Kaufmann (above) and sopranos Anna Netrebko and Mariangela Sicilia in arias from Tosca, Turandot and all. Pianist and starry singers alike were given a standing ovation by the audience, whose tickets are to be reimbursed by the opera house.…

4th: Billboard magazine publishes it first ever Hit Parade, a pop chart based on the best-selling records from the previous week. Ten records are listed on the inaugural chart, which is topped by jazz violinist Joe Venuti’s ‘Stop, Look and Listen’. 4th: At Twickenham, England beats New Zealand, the ‘All Blacks’, at rugby union for the first time, having suffered defeats in their two previous meetings. Two of England’s tries in a 13-0 scoreline are scored by debutant Prince Alexander Obolensky, a Saint Petersburg-born Oxford University undergraduate whose family had fled Russia in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. 17th: In an address to 18,000 National Socialist supporters at the Deutschland Hall in Berlin, minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels calls for Germany to reclaim the territories it lost…

There’s more to Paganini’s Caprices than technical hurdles, says María Dueñas about her top choices Hailing from Granada, the Spanish violinist María Dueñas shot to fame in 2021 when she won first prize and the audience prize at the Yehudi Menuhin Competition, aged 18. Since then, she has performed as a soloist with ensembles including the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Oslo Philharmonic, with BBC Radio 3 naming her a New Generation Artist from 2021-23. She has also signed to Deutsche Grammophon, and released her debut album in May 2023 featuring Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. In February 2025, she releases Paganini’s 24 Caprices, alongside works by Berlioz, Cervelló, Kreisler, Ortiz, Saint-Saëns, Sarasate and Wieniawski. Caprice No. 2 My favourite caprices are those in which the melodic line and…

Angel Blue is not the only beauty pageant veteran to offer musical performance as her ‘talent’ – that opportunity for contestants to showcase their artistic skills. While everything from performing a monologue to speed painting, hair dressing and ventriloquism have featured over the years, playing an instrument and singing are always popular choices. Most vocal performances are, of course, more American Idol than the Met. But in 2016, Miss America Betty Cantrell from Georgia wowed the crowd with her dramatic and accomplished rendition of ‘Tu? tu? piccolo iddio!’ from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. And Grace Stanke (left) from Wisconsin won the coveted 2023 title after playing Vivaldi on her violin. Then there was Kansas National Guardsman Theresa Vail, who in a 2012 qualifying competition for Miss Kansas took the unusual decision…

Key to McGill’s early education was the Merit School of Music, which offered Saturday classes free of charge to talented young musicians in Chicago. ‘From there the rest is history,’ he says. At Merit, McGill studied with David Tuttle, who introduced him to Larry Pauls, then principal clarinettist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. ‘The school also gave me a scholarship for summer camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, which is where my brother and I first fell in love with a community of musicians. It’s one of the reasons we’re musicians today.’ Today McGill is artistic director of the Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program that does the same for students aged 8-17 in New York. ‘Our mission is to change the face of classical music,’ he says. ‘We…

Take a seat in any serious amateur orchestra or chamber group, and it is quite likely that your neighbouring musician will be a scientist of some kind. Doctors seem to be particularly motivated in this regard, and a search on Google will reveal many an orchestra led and organised by medics. And at a more elevated level still, some of the greatest scientists of their era have also found themselves drawn to the world of quavers and barlines. ‘If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician,’ wrote Albert Einstein. ‘I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.’ But why this connection between two apparently disparate disciplines, of art and science? To get the answer, I…

Gay The Beggar’s Opera This 1728 work took aim both at the fad in London for Italian opera seria – The Beggar’s Opera mirrors its format exactly, but sets the action amid the criminal underworld – and also, in the character of Macheath, at prime minister Robert Walpole. Barton The Disappointment Andrew Barton’s 1767 ‘ballad opera’ was set to be the US’s first home-grown opera until its premiere in Philadelphia was cancelled at the last minute. Its cleverly delivered jibes at the rule of Britain’s George III may well have had something to do with that… Gilbert and Sullivan Iolanthe The political class is also made fun of in this 1882 operetta by the very masters of Victorian-era musical satire – the House of Lords, in particular, is portrayed as…

Haydn died in Vienna in 1809 – and today, it’s possible to pay his marble tomb a visit in the Bergkirche in Eisenstadt. That’s not always been the case, thanks to a macabre story. After his death, Haydn was buried in a cemetery in Vienna, but his skull was stolen from his grave by two men interested in phrenology. Even in 1820, when his body was moved to Eisenstadt, it was with a decoy skull, given by the thieves. Haydn’s head ended up in a glass case in Vienna’s Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, but in 1954 it was finally returned and reunited with his body in Eisenstadt.…

Christian Gerhaher (baritone) Gerold Huber (piano) Sony Classical 88985427402 What makes a perfect Die schöne Müllerin? It has to be more than a beautiful voice (a matter of taste, after all) and a well-matched pianist. An exceptional performance takes us through every twist of the miller lad’s emotional journey and leaves us changed. Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber, with their restrained, intimate performance, do just that. Gerhaher has taken masterclasses with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whose recordings of Schubert’s two song cycles remain a yardstick. Their voices are not similar but they share a scrupulous attention to the delivery of text and music – Gerhaher’s crisp rolled ‘rrr’ in ‘Morgen’ is a model of German diction. On this recording, Gerhaher inserts the missing Müller poems, his velvety, unemphatic speaking voice complementing the songs.…

Who would have thought we’d be hearing premiere recordings of unheard music by Mozart and Chopin? The discovery of long lost works by both composers within months of each other certainly made headlines, and Deutsche Grammophon were quick off the mark to record them. Both have been placed before our reviewers this issue, so read on to see if they are worthy revelations or whether, perhaps, they should have been left to gather dust. For those of you hungry for actual new music, there’s plenty to entice in the following pages, including a new opera by Kate Soper, choral works by Matthew Martin and Yves Castagnet, plus orchestral offerings by John Luther Adams and Christopher Tyler Nickel. Happy New Year! This month’s critics John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Terry Blain, Kate…

Liszt Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 2; Totentanz Yoav Levanon (piano); Luzerner Sinfonieorchester/Michael Sanderling Warner Classics 2173242397 64:46 mins Yoav Levanon goes all in with Liszt for his first concerto album, recorded as part of the 2024 KlavierFestival ‘Le piano symphonique’ in Lucerne. The 20-year-old Israeli-French pianist is one of the latest generation of pianists who can generate remarkable amounts of sound from a keyboard, and boy does he unleash demons in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto. Thunderous, grandioso chords, splendid double octaves, dramatic flourishes, a theatrical spirit and passionate melody means the first movement is over in a flash. A Beethovenian spirit lingers in the Quasi Adagio, which moves from hymn to nocturne to tempest. Levanon is all quicksilver in the third movement, with its precise silvery triangle, and he…

Block Piano Trio No. 2; String Quartet etc ARC Ensemble Chandos CHAN 20358 70:54 mins Born in 1899 into a prosperous Viennese Jewish family, Frederick Block was one of many hugely talented Austrian musicians whose careers suffered as a result of the Anschluss. A composition pupil of Hans Gál, he forged a growing reputation in his native country until being forced to emigrate to the United States in the late 1930s. Managing to scrape a meagre living in New York by making piano transcriptions of works by other composers, Block nonetheless continued to write prolific amounts of concert music before his premature death in 1945. In his excellent booklet notes, Simon Wynberg classifies Block as an unashamedly conservative composer whose outlook was out of step with the modernist aesthetic of…

JS Bach Arias, Cantatas (arr. Ólafsson) (Continuum) Víkingur Ólafsson (piano)  DG 4866251 (EP) Víkingur Ólafsson’s commitment to the works of Bach continues unabated in Continuum, six arrangements of the composer’s sacred pieces – four by the pianist himself. The sound is gently cushioned – yet these unadorned, even stark versions also reveal the beautiful scaffolding of Bach’s contrapuntal writing. It’s all very reverent and considered, and none the worse for it. (CS) Matt Cook Braveship Mirusia (soprano); Azra’s Orchestra Orchid Classics ORC100319 Braveship is supposedly a book and video game project, though neither seems yet to exist. Cook is credited with the ‘story’ here, too, though there’s no narration and no album booklet. There’s no denying that this is wonderfully tuneful symphonic music worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster of old,…

Ira Gershwin – A Life in Words Michael Owen Liveright 416pp (hb) £30 Just as the young George Gershwin discovered an exceptional musical gift, so his elder brother Ira developed a passion for words, in his case beginning with comics, local newspapers and magazines. He would go on to a brilliant career as a writer of popular song, producing numerous examples in collaboration with his brother. After George’s untimely death in 1937, Ira worked on further Broadway shows or musical films with the likes of Kurt Weill and Harold Arlen. An authority on both the Gershwins, Michael Owen here explores the trajectory of Ira’s career (1918-64) as one of the leading purveyors of words written for music; in later years Ira also proved a doughty guardian of his and his…

His signature handlebar may have sparked rumours of a royal disguise at the coronation of Charles III but that’s not all he’s known for. Karl Jenkins is today’s most performed living composer, thanks to genre-defying works such as Adiemus and The Armed Man. Made in honour of his 80th birthday last year, this documentary pays homage to his career, with stories and archive footage showing the diverse range of influences on his music, from the Methodist hymns of his South Wales childhood to his time in the band Soft Machine. Jenkins also goes on a journey to his grandfather’s town in Sweden, plus we hear his own reflections on a life in music, along with the voices of colleagues, fans and fellow musicians such as Bryn Terfel and Kiri Te…

THE QUIZ It’d be a crime not to tackle this month’s ten questions… 1. Which notorious real-life London killer brings Berg’s opera Lulu to a bloody end? 2. ‘March to the scaffold’ is the title of the fourth movement of which 1830 orchestral work? 3. Which composer murdered his wife and her lover after catching them in flagrante on 16 October 1590? 4. Who composed the following operas: a) Die tote Stadt (The Dead City; 1920); b) Death in Venice (1973); The death of Klinghoffer (1991)? 5. At which famous venue did the orchestral violinist Helen Hagnes Mintiks disappear during the interval of a performance on 23 July 1980, with her murdered body being disovered the next day? 6. Which instrument does detective Sherlock Holmes play to relax? 7. In…