Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2025 i BBC Music Magazine

There’s a rebellious streak running through our August issue – one to match that school’s out, holiday vibe of the balmy days of late summer. From leading artists such as Marin Alsop and Bob Chilcott confessing to a lifelong love of The Beatles, much to the dismay of their classical-loving parents (p44), to some of our most upstanding contributors admitting to a secret dislike for the most widely venerated composers in the classical canon (p38), we’re throwing caution to the wind and admitting that (occasionally) classical music is fallible and (sometimes) we might prefer other musical genres as the soundtrack to our lives. And that’s no bad thing. Despite their undeniable genius, even composers like Mendelssohn and Brahms had the odd off day. Similarly, a rounded love of music can…

2nd: Gunslinger Wild Bill Hickok is shot dead while playing poker at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota. Though Hickok usually plays with his back to the wall, on this occasion the only chair free is facing away from the door, so he doesn’t see his assassin, Jack McCall, coming. At the time, he is holding two black aces and two black eights, later known as the ‘dead man’s hand’. 10th: Playing for the Gentlemen of Marylebone Cricket Club against Kent in Canterbury, WG Grace scores 344 runs in an innings, the first ever triple century in first-class cricket and beating the previous record of 278, scored by William Ward in 1820. In a rich vein of form, Grace then goes on to score 318 not out for Gloucestershire…

I first met Benedetto Lupo before he became my teacher. He comes from Apulia, like me, and was the first person from Italy to win a prize at the Van Cliburn Competition, which fascinated me as a kid. He has always been a reference point for a generation of musicians in our region, and I remember driving for two to three hours with my parents to hear his concerts. When I was nine, I was kicked out of the conservatory where I was studying, which at that age was devastating, so my parents suggested asking Benedetto to at least listen to me and see what he thought. He didn’t normally work with children, but made an exception for me! It made a big difference to be working with such a…

Conductor Anja Bihlmaier selects works that have at their heart a burning desire for political freedom German conductor Anja Bihlmaier studied at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and later at the Mozarteum Salzburg, before holding posts at Staatsoper Hannover and Staatstheater Kassel. Since then, she has conducted ensembles ranging from the Bergen Philharmonic to the Seattle Symphony, and in September 2024 she became the BBC Philharmonic’s principal guest conductor. On 22 July, she leads the BBC Philharmonic in Berlioz, Strauss and Mark Simpson at the BBC Proms, and will make her LSO debut in March 2026. Bernd Alois Zimmermann Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu This crazy ballet – constructed as a patchwork of quotes from the music of other composers – is about a ruthless dictator determined to…

Nicola Benedetti has just released a recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Aurora Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Collon, recorded for Decca at the end of lockdown. She describes the artistic motivation: ‘We’re trying to present a lighter, effervescent interpretation of the concerto. I always feel the piece shows a different side of his personality: the improviser, the elegance, optimism and hopefulness in his music as well as the sheer prettiness and beauty.’ While her festival theme is about seeking truth, she’s not a fan of historically informed performances that attempt to do that too literally. ‘There is something small about that,’ she explains. ‘In history, as now, there have been a huge variety in styles of interpretation. Things were more localised and interpretations were taught person to person. To…

A significant legacy of Liszt’s concerts in the UK is the range of extended descriptions of his playing in the press. Here are extracts from a Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette review: ‘The mastery which Liszt exercises over the instrument is literally incredible. He appears to deal with the piano as if it were a living and intelligent creature – sometimes persuading, sometimes chiding, sometimes urging the music forward with greater and greater rapidity, as a horseman urges a fleet and spirited steed. ‘His fingers fly over the keyboard with a velocity which literally mocks the sight, and it is difficult not to believe that two or three persons are playing at once. Sometimes Liszt pauses, and toys with the keys, as if irresolute what tones of loveliness he shall…

‘I’m usually writing a three-minute song,’ Paul McCartney told Classic FM in 2006. ‘But a classical piece is like a novel: long and complex.’ Not that such a challenge has unduly daunted him – as a classical composer, McCartney has five such novels to his name. The spur for him to turn his mind to classical music came from close to home when, in 1990, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra suggested McCartney write something to celebrate its 150th anniversary. The result, written in collaboration with the conductor and composer Carl Davis, was the 100 minute-long semi-autobiographical Liverpool Oratorio for soloists, chorus and orchestra. In 1997 came another anniversary and another work: this time, Standing Stone, a symphonic work for orchestra and choir, composed to mark the centenary of EMI. And…

Actor, author, comedian, composer, pianist… Oscar Levant (1906-72) certainly had his fingers in a lot of pies. What was meant to be a one-off appearance as a panel guest on the 1940s US radio quiz Information Please turned into a regular role. Levant’s sharp tongue and quick wit won him many fans, and he took that and his talent as a pianist to Hollywood. He’d already played the part of a pianist on film (in 1929’s The Dance of Life, based on the Broadway play Burlesque, in which he also appeared), so was seemingly undaunted by the prospect of embracing life as a film star. That said, the roles he played in films like Rhythm on the River (1940) and Rhapsody in Blue (1945) were variations on himself and invariably utilised…

Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 4pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in August 2025 are: 28 July – 1 August Arvo Pärt 4-8 August Shostakovich 11-15 August Brahms 18-22 August Delius 26-29 August Scarlatti A narrow suburban road, framed on one side by a row of modestly proportioned terraced houses, and on the other by a railway line where trains trundled regularly to and from West Croydon Station. Puffs of steam wafted across the tracks, along with waves of stench from the livestock slaughterhouse and bone-boiling sheds in the vicinity. 67 Waddon New Road was not, perhaps, the most salubrious of addresses in the Greater London area (it was demolished in the 1970s). It was, however, a happy and productive boyhood home for the young Samuel…

Andrew Nethsingha (main conductor) The Choir of Westminster Abbey et al; Fanfare Trumpeters of the Royal Air Force, Coronation Orchestra Decca 552 8383 One explanation given for the lapses in choreography that marred the opening music at Edward VII’s Coronation was that his predecessor, Queen Victoria, had reigned for so long – from 1837-1901 – that none of the officials had any experience of organising such an event. The same applied in 2023, of course, as Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne exceeded her great-great-grandmother’s reign by six years, yet the official recording captures an immaculate performance of I Was Glad that would surely have gladdened Parry’s heart. Conductor Andrew Nethsingha had only been in post as organist and master of the choristers at Westminster Abbey for a…

Evensong – Notes from the Choir Timothy E Popple Quires and Places 268pp (pb) £11.99 What with its suplices and ruffs, magnifying the Lords, preces, Cantoris, Decani and all, the ritual of Choral Evensong in Britain’s cathedrals and college chapels is a quirky old beast, as author Timothy Popple aknowledges early on here. He then rather masterfully guides us through this arcane world, neatly weaving together three main narrative strands – the order of service, the liturgical year and the typical life of a chorister – to help explain Evensong’s strange terminology, outline its history and, above all, enthuse about the music. Part of his aim is to make us chuckle, but Popple also packs in an impressive amount of fact along the way, and even those of us from…

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Ariane Todes Writer and editor ‘There was a long queue of journalists waiting to interview Nicola Benedetti at the Edinburgh Festival press conference. Fortunately, I had the last slot, and she cut no corners in answering my questions!’ Page 24 Bob Chilcott Composer, conductor & singer ‘The Beatles’ music has been a soundtrack throughout my life, as a boy chorister, a singer and as an arranger and composer. Over 65 years, their influence on music across the board has been constant and timeless.’ Page 44 Clare Stevens Writer and editor ‘I never tire of singing Parry’s I Was Glad, and it was a particular pleasure to research the piece’s history while my current choir was preparing for a performance celebrating 900 years of Leominster Priory in Herefordshire.’ Page 60…

Charlotte Smith Editor Considering the very important work our cover star Nicola Benedetti does in education, it’s easy to forget what a fine violinist she is too. Putting together this month’s magazine inspired me to go back and watch her Proms performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the National Youth Orchestra in 2019. It’s a thoroughly accomplished and heartfelt account of this notoriously difficult behemoth – and she has the Proms crowd enraptured! Jeremy Pound Deputy editor A recent invitation to mark CRD’s 50th anniversary holds a special resonance, as this was the label for which, as a lad at New College, Oxford, I sang in what seemed like endless recordings of Tye, Tallis, Taverner and all. I loathed those sessions at the time – take after take, repeating the…

From an indicator of ongoing popularity to an unlikely dating service, the queue to buy tickets for the Proms is an institution we should cherish, says Tom Service I’m not saying anyone should be delighted to be 114,327th in line, but on the day that tickets went on general sale for the BBC Proms, my heart soared to see there was such a massive number ahead of me in the online ticket queue. And why? Because I knew that I and 114,326 others were part of an exponentially longer line of Proms fans that stretches back to the inaugural summer of 1895, a queue that would reach the moon and back 117 times if everyone was stacked on top of one another. Providing they kept their hats on, that is.…

The outpouring of admiration for The Beatles on page 44 of this issue prompted me to scour the archives of The Times for possibly the most famous (or infamous) newspaper article written about the Fab Four. Published in late December 1963, when ‘Beatlemania’ was at its zenith, the article was written by William Mann, then The Times’s chief music critic. Bill was far from being a stuffy old fogey. To be invited to lunch at his house was to be plied with all sorts of temptations: culinary, alcoholic and chemical. But he was undoubtedly a formidable authority on musical matters. So, when he declared, in his opening sentence, that ‘John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the talented young musicians from Liverpool’ were ‘the outstanding English composers of 1963’, a shock-wave must…

‘Everyone who plays or hears his compositions will sense their insignificance,’ wrote Mozart to his father about Clementi, adding that the Italian composer ‘is a charlatan, like all Italians. He has nothing to offer.’ Catty indeed, but Mozart was by no means alone in questioning the talents of his contemporaries. Take, for instance, Tchaikovsky on Brahms, a composer he regarded as ‘just some chaotic and utterly empty wasteland… It angers me that this conceited mediocrity is regarded as a genius.’ Poor old Brahms also suffered similar abuse from Liszt, who described the German’s music as ‘hygienic, but unexciting’, but at least he had an ally in Clara Schumann who described Liszt’s own music as ‘…just a meaningless noise. Not a single healthy idea any more.’ Brahms was also a victim…

Anna Clyne composer The Beatles are some of the great melodists. One of the things I love about them is that perfect blend of melody and harmony, but also lyrics. I sang ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ at school, so I’ve always had those lyrics in my head, and the first song I ever played on the piano was ‘Yesterday’. It’s the music of my childhood, so it has had a huge impact on my music listening and music making. I didn’t grow up in a house of classical music; it was bands like The Beatles that my parents played on their record player. I think the album that most speaks to me as a whole experience is Sgt. Pepper, which harnesses so many different styles of music and brings them together…

ARCHIVE CHOICE A very Blissful selection Fifty years after Arthur Bliss’s death these live BBC recordings are released for the first time Bliss – The Composer Conducts (A 50th Anniversary Tribute) Bliss: A Colour Symphony; Piano Concerto in B flat major* etc *John Ogdon (piano); London Symphony Orchestra/Arthur Bliss et al SOMM Recordings ARIADNE 5039-2 155:48 mins (2CD) Arthur Bliss died in 1975 at the age of 83 after a lifetime of composing and conducting, interrupted by war, and inspired by Holst and Vaughan Williams. Bliss was regarded as a modernist himself, but in the wake of the Second World War the new Master of the Queen’s Music was seen as old-fashioned in comparison with Walton and Britten – perhaps unfairly, as much of this inspired and superbly-crafted music demonstrates.…

LETTER of the MONTH The joys of live performance I had never read more warm-hearted praise for a musician than Tom Service’s appreciation of Nikolai Lugansky (Left-field Learning, June). Was this today’s equivalent of Horowitz, Richter and his teacher Tatiana Nikolayeva? I checked listings, saw he was about to appear with the Philharmonia in London, and there were just two tickets left, in the centre of the first row. Fate was calling. I bought them. The June issue also directed me to Yunchan Lim’s recording of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3, the piece to be played by Lugansky. I listened, admired the virtuosity, but was unmoved. In the Royal Festival Hall, though, sitting right by the Steinway, from the first notes struck by Lugansky my body and mind went into…

‘I am toying with the boldest of plans.’ With these words, in September 1850, Richard Wagner first articulated a grand idea which took a quarter of a century to come to full fruition: the building of a special opera house in which the work eventually known as Der Ring des Nibelungen could be mounted to the highest standard. Wagner was 37 at the time, and already thoroughly disaffected with the imperfections of theatrical life in the Germany of his period. Only a purpose-built venue, he argued, could possibly accommodate his new music drama (then a single opera entitled Siegfrieds Tod), and a certain whiff of the apocalyptic infuses Wagner’s outline proposal for the project. ‘I would erect a crude theatre of boards and beams, built to my specifications,’ he wrote.…

THIS MONTH Nicholas Cords Brooklyn Rider violist CONCERT HEAVEN Beethoven String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132 – ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’ Johnny Gandelsman (violin), Colin Jacobsen (violin), Nicholas Cords (viola), Eric Jacobsen (cello) Todaiji Temple, Japan (Oct 2005) We were just getting going and I’m not sure we even had a name yet. We were all part of the Silk Road Ensemble, which Yo-Yo Ma started, and that was the early playground of ideas for our quartet in many ways. We did a concert at Todaiji Temple, which is this amazing Buddhist temple in Nara, Japan – and it is home to the largest wooden Buddha in the world. We played the slow movement of Beethoven’s Op. 132 String Quartet, the ‘Heiliger Dankgesang’, which is literally the holy song of thanksgiving to…

‘I’v never been a particularly esoteric person,’ Nicola Benedetti tells me as we sit down to talk following the press e launch of her third Edinburgh Festival. And yet, as she explains the theme of this year’s edition, ‘The Truth We Seek’, I feel I could be speaking to one of my university philosophy lecturers – one of the better ones. Diving straight into existential and epistemological concepts, her sentences extend as she tries to encompass huge ideas while making sure she has preempted every logical possibility and counterargument. She doesn’t always finish every sub-clause, but her sense is clear, the meaning profound, and her own pursuit of intellectual truth unrelenting. To be fair, I may have provoked her with my first question. At coffee after the formal press launch,…

African roots Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s father was from Sierra Leone, and the influence of the composer’s African heritage can be felt in his music from an early stage. The Hiawatha trilogy, 24 Negro Melodies and Symphonic Variations on an African Air are among the numerous works which mine ethnic sources. Dvořák The Czech composer (below) was a key influence on Coleridge-Taylor, who admired his assimilation of Bohemian folk music into works such as the Slavonic Dances and of African-American elements into the New World Symphony, and loved the ‘open-air sound’ of Dvořák’s music, which can be heard in his own Violin Concerto. Melody A strong instinct for melody suffuses Coleridge-Taylor’s music, not least in his underappreciated songs, which mine a rich, late-Romantic idiom, at times recalling Richard Strauss. Hiawatha, too, is…

I Was Glad The composer Hubert Parry does not enjoy the same level of fame as his best-known music – of all the millions who can happily sing the hymns Jerusalem and Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, how many can name who wrote the tune? Born in 1848 into a wealthy family, he forged a career as both a composer and scholar, whose pupils at the Royal College of Music included Vaughan Williams, Holst and Butterworth. As well as the above hymns, the latter of which comes from his 1888 oratorio Judith, his other works include four symphonies, the opera Guinevere and, shortly before his death in 1918, the haunting Songs of Farewell. Building a Library is broadcast on Radio 3 at 3.30pm each Saturday as part of Record…

Welcome The wonder, and fragility, of the natural world remains one of the hottest topics in the news and on the street, so it’s no wonder that composers continue to respond to it as well. This month, Aboriginal Australian composer and vocalist Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s beautiful piece Earth recognises our unique place in the solar system (alongside Holst’s The Planets); Jake Runestad’s Earth Symphony muses on destruction, hope and humanity, while Jim Sutherland’s When Fish Begin to Crawl is a brilliantly evocative snapshot of nature’s ebb and flow. Beyond that, we’ve everything from Bach and Bax to Gilbert & Sullivan, and the winner of Channel 4’s The Piano, Brad Kella. And if you fancy a trip to more foreign climes, check out our World Music round-up! Michael Beek Reviews editor…

WORLD CHOICE Faroese slow (e)motion There are big feelings and a sense of gentle beauty in this evocation of the Faroe Islands Lea Kampmann Seinferð Lea Kampmann, Teitur Lassen et al Stunt Records STUCD24092 It seems fitting that the small archipelago of the Faroe Islands, set in the chilly North Atlantic between Iceland and Scotland and now notorious for the brutality of its indigenous whaling tradition, should instead become more widely known for the gentle brilliance and beauty of Seinferð (Slow Motion). It’s a superb half-hour masterpiece by Copenhagen-based singer/songwriter Lea Kampmann, and despite its brevity, her second recording has a gargantuan emotional pull. Her previous recording was with English lyrics; but the death of her grandmother prompted her to sing in the Faroese language, as a way of reclaiming…

Mahler and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra go hand in hand, the composer enjoying over a decade personally associated with the noble Amsterdam ensemble. His complete symphonies are presented in The Chief Conductors Edition (RCO 25003), a limited edition released to coincide with this year’s Mahler Festival where Klaus Mäkelä took his bow as chief conductor designate. Of course, it’s too early for the young Finn to be included here, but what a line-up of predecessors! The 15 discs take us from 1939 (Willem Mengelberg) to 2016 (Daniele Gatti). Riccardo Chailly and Bernard Haitink take the lion’s share of the live recordings, alongside cherishable turns from Mariss Jansons and Eduard van Beinum. All but two of these performances are on CD for the first time, along with a bonus 2006 Das…

THE QUIZ Pit your wits against the BBC Music Magazine team… 1. Who wrote his Symphony No. 1 in E flat while in London during a grand tour of Europe in 1764? 2. Which solo instrument portrays the title character in Berlioz’s Harold in Italy and much of the part of Sancho Panza in Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote? 3. The penitential Psalm 51 provides the words of which famous Lent choral work, first performed in the Sistine Chapel in c.1638? 4. Johann Christoph Denner is credited with the invention of which instrument in c1700? 5. As well as being the title character of an 1830 opera by Donizetti, the historical figure pictured above is also portrayed in the fifth song in a six-part concept album by Rick Wakeman (1972). Who…

Broadcaster A familiar voice in British homes thanks to decades on the radio and television, Tony Blackburn needs little introduction. Cutting his teeth aboard Radio Caroline, he went on to launch BBC Radio 1, switching millions of listeners on to soul music. These days he is a regular presence on Radio 2 and takes his ‘Sounds of the 60s Live’ show to venues across the UK until November. My mum and dad told me that I wanted to sit in front of our big radiogram and listen to music right from the word go. So I’ve always loved it and it has always been a part of my life. There wasn’t much to listen to when I was growing up in the late 1950s and early ’60s – we just…