THE JOY OF VAUGHAN WILLIAMS GIUSEPPE TARTINI

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How Gershwin’s jazz- recordings
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Also in this issue…

Magdalena KoŽená on
her finest recordings
Who are music’s most
talented siblings?
Oscar Levant Women conductors: how
The versatile Gershwin pianist far have we really come?
Richard Morrison
Why levelling up isn’t working
100 reviews by the
Linton Stephens
world’s finest critics
Recordings & books – see p70
The music that changed him
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according to legend, the piece
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Gershwin performing the piano part from memory, as
there hadn’t been time to produce a solo score. On page 30
Subscribe to our podcast Mervyn Cooke explores 100 years of this fascinating jazz-
infused work and its enduring popularity.
Composer George and lyricist Ira were one of Broadway’s
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Charlotte Smith Editor

THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS

Mervyn Cooke Jessica Duchen Amanda Holloway

Professor of music
‘It’s been revelatory to discover,
100 years on, just how controversial
Rhapsody in Blue was when it was
first performed. George Gershwin
and Paul Whiteman certainly put the jazz cat
amongst the symphonic pigeons!’ Page 30
Journalist, critic and author
‘In the past decade there’s been
an explosion of awareness about
female conductors… or has there?
I asked some of the most influential
names whether change is more than skin deep –
and their answers may surprise you.’ Page 48
Music journalist
‘After a lifetime in choirs, it was
a delight to be introduced to a
Vaughan Williams work I’d never
sung. Nothing will displace his Sea
Symphony in my heart, but Five Mystical Songs,
written shortly afterwards, is a little gem.’ Page 66

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 3

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Contents
FEBRUARY 2024
See p100

FEATURES
26 Awards 2024 nominations
We invite you to vote on the finest recordings of last
year, as shortlisted by BBC Music’s expert reviewers
30 Cover: Rhapsody in Blue
Mervyn Cooke tells how, 100 years ago, Gershwin
brought together the worlds of jazz and classical in a
revolutionary work that would take the world by storm
40 He’s got rhythm
As a performer of Gershwin, the multi-talented pianist
Oscar Levant had very few peers, reveals Misha Donat
44 Keep it in the family
Claire Jackson looks at musical siblings, from the
Mozarts and Mendelssohns to today’s top performers
48 Closing the gap
Jessica Duchen assesses the state of play with regards to
the number of female conductors on the world’s stages

EVERY MONTH
8 Letters
12 The Full Score
The latest news and interviews from the music world 30 Rhapsody
in Blue
25 Richard Morrison
36 The BBC Music Magazine Interview
Robert von Bahr, founder of BIS Records, talks to
Andrew Stewart as the Swedish label turns 50 years old Art editor Dav Ludford
COVER: GETTY THIS PAGE: GETTY, CATHERINE ASHMORE, MARCO BORGGREVE, NIKOLAJ LUND

60 Musical Destinations
Freya Parr enjoys a cutting-edge festival in Stroud
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62 Composer of the Month £74 (Rest of World) ABC Reg No. 3122
EDITORIAL
The devilishly talented Giuseppe Tartini, by Paul Riley Plus the composer who would be a
66 Building a Library nightmare to have as a sibling (see p44)
Editor Charlotte Smith
We explore Vaughan Williams’s Five Mystical Songs Robert Schumann
Deputy editor Jeremy Pound
100 Radio & TV Benjamin Britten
Reviews editor Michael Beek
104 Crossword and Quiz Ludwig van Beethoven
106 Music that Changed Me Multi-platform content producer
Steve Wright
Bassoonist and radio presenter Linton Stephens Richard Wagner
Cover CD editor Alice Pearson
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February reviews
Your guide to the best new recordings and books
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 Letters

Have your say…

Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST
Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contact us on Facebook and Twitter

L ET T ER Wartime song Speaking out

of the I thoroughly enjoyed Andrew
MONTH Worth a listen:
Nareh Arghamanyan Green’s investigation of
is a lyrical pianist the possible inspirations of
Vaughan Williams’s The Lark
Ascending (January issue),
but balked slightly at his
assertion that ‘the interruption
of the First World War surely
prevented Philip Napier Miles
from visiting Italy’. In the
First World War, Italy was
allied with the Entente Powers
(France, the UK, Russia, Japan
and – after 1917 – the US),
rather than the Central Powers
(Germany, Austria-Hungary,
Bulgaria and the Ottomans).
It would therefore have been
fairly easy for Miles to move
Why avoiding is to be avoided back and forth between the
Stop telling people which music to avoid! Each month, your UK and Italy then, and thus
Building a Library feature focuses on a piece, and you select not necessarily have to cram
four great recordings and then identify ‘one to avoid’. In the writing of Sword Song into
December, it was the Khachaturian Piano Concerto, long a few months in early 1919. He
a personal favourite. I have the recommended recording could perhaps have worked on
by Xiayin Wang and agree with reviewer Claire Jackson’s it throughout the conflict.
exaltations of ‘clarity, colour and oodles of flair’. I also have Joseph Nicholas, Tottenham
the recording by Nareh Arghamanyan – which Claire tells
people to avoid – and find Highbrow eyebrows
WIN! £50 VOUCHER her interpretation both To Patrick Hoyte (Letters,
FOR PRESTO MUSIC insightful and sensitive. Christmas), who was distracted
She is a particularly lyrical by Leonard Bernstein and his
Every month we will award pianist with fabulous antics while conducting, could
the best letter with a £50 technique. While we can I recommend that he watch a
voucher for Presto Music,
disagree on which is the DVD of Lenny conducting the
the UK’s leading e-commerce
site for classical and jazz better recording, to tell Vienna Philharmonic in the
recordings, printed music, people to avoid listening to finale of Haydn’s Symphony
music books and musical an artist’s rendition of this No. 88? He is quite motionless
instruments. Please note: the or any other piece of music and seems to be conducting
editor reserves the right to
MARCO BORGGREVE, GETTY
Richard Morrison’s Opinion
(Christmas issue) that today’s
musicians ‘shouldn’t be
afraid to take on political
causes’ is only partly true.
Given the recent voices of
Marin Alsop, Simon Rattle
and Nicola Benedetti to
name a few, many others
have voiced concerns over
funding of music in schools,
let alone its educational and
health benefits to everyone.
Admittedly, more protests
occur with popular music and
on social media, but today’s
artists do protest wherever they
can. Today, there are many in
the business that just survive
from year on year with the
threat of cuts and constant
erosion of all music services
– the limited few survivors
who could speak risk their
livelihoods also due to the
threat of cuts. Perhaps Richard
Morrison and his journalist
colleagues should have spoken
much louder and much sooner
and then we might possibly be
in a better place, but we must
live in hope.
Paul Chaundy, Cardiff
Chopped up CDs
I have been a subscriber to
BBC Music Magazine for 30
years. The offer in 1993 was for
12 issues at £39, so you have

shorten letters for publication.

seems anathema to the
purpose of your publication.
Jeffrey Baliban,
Bronxville, NY, US
with his eyebrows. The
performance sparkles. With
his sense of fun, Haydn would
undoubtedly have loved it.
Neil Sinyard, Saxby All Saints
done well to keep the costs
down below inflation. What
has been less good has been
the drift towards trivialising
the CD. It is magical to listen to

8 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

the annual carol service from
King’s, for example, but what
I think most people value in
a CD is something you can
play repeatedly – your annual
carols CD doesn’t even get
played once in my house! What
has happened to amazing CDs
like Amanda Roocroft singing
the luscious Chausson Poème
de l’amour et de la mer at the
1999 Proms? That type of CD
is fabulous – I can’t count the
number of times I have played
and enjoyed it. Yet now I see
we are descending into a CD
(January) which chops up five
masterpieces and gives a single
movement from each. Mozart’s
‘Prague’ Symphony is one of
the greatest of all symphonies. I
can’t describe the pain it causes
me to think of only playing a
single movement. (I have made
a bet with my wife that you
won’t have the courage to print
this letter! Prove me wrong!)
Nicholas Goulder, via email
The editor replies:
We have received a number
of similar letters about our
January cover CD featuring
only single movements and
not whole works. Please rest
assured that it was a one-
off – intended to celebrate
the 50th anniversary of the
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
with various performances
from across the years – and
that normal service resumes
this month. And we hope your
wife enjoys her winnings from
your bet…!
A festive cure
It is my habit to leave listening
to the BBC Music Magazine
Christmas cover CD until
Christmas Eve. This year, the
BBC Singers with conductor
Owain Park and pianist
Richard Pearce were superb,
with a wonderful selection
traditional and modern. I will
be dipping into it throughout
The eyes have it:
Bernstein is a model
of restraint in Haydn
2024 for its inspired singing
and piano playing. Your
pages have, of recent times,
resounded with anger at
proposed and actual cuts to
the music output of the BBC.
A copy of this CD should be
sent to each school in the land
next Christmas sponsored by
the BBC management and all
MPs and Lords, with a note
explaining that this country
produces some of the finest
musicians in the world who
should be fully supported. It
might also even be prescribed
by the NHS to help reduce the
costs of prescribing pills when
inspiring music can soothe and
gladden the troubled soul at
minimal cost…
Peter Ibbett, Godmanchester
Welcome discovery
I came across a Naxos
compilation CD over the
festive holidays, with two
striking pieces for cello and
orchestra composed by
Balys Dvarionas (1904-72), a
Lithuanian composer I hadn’t
heard of before. By the Lake and
Introduction and Rondino for
cello and orchestra are both
in the Romantic style but, just
like works by contemporaries
Rachmaninov and Rodrigo,
they don’t sound out of date.
Maybe you could do a feature
on Dvarionas in one of your
future issues?
Rory Stephens, Galway, Ireland
The editor replies:
We are always delighted to
learn of readers’ composer
discoveries, such as this.
Though we can’t always
promise a feature, becoming
acquainted with their music is
one of the privileges of the job.
The spirit of radio
Considering that the BBC’s
core activity is broadcasting, it
seems very strange to me that
Chris Haslam’s Audio column
gives only very occasional
mention of ways to get the best
sound from radio. So it was a
pleasant, and frankly overdue,
surprise to see the mention
of the Wiim Pro Plus in your
Christmas issue. Recordings
are wonderful, but somewhat
analogous to fossil records of
performances; Radio 3, on the
other hand, broadcasts much
live music as it happens, to live
audiences. More details would
be helpful about gear that will
receive BBC Sounds at highest
quality and connect to home
hi-fi. And there’s so much good
stuff broadcast on the internet
from abroad too.
Edwin Baker, Farnham
Remembering Boris
I have been reading your article
on Boris Ord (Christmas issue)
with delight. I was a tenor in
Cambridge University Music
Society under him from 1952-
54. In the Autumn of ’52 we
worked on Stanford’s Requiem,
which we then performed in
the BBC Maida Vale Studios
under Malcolm Sargent and
the BBC Symphony Orchestra
– Friday night for the Home
Service and Saturday night
for the Third Programme. I
was seated in the choir stalls
in King’s College Chapel for
the performance of Bach’s St
John Passion that you mention,
and Peter Pears was singing
right opposite me. There
were names, too, I shall never
forget – Millicent Silver,
harpsichord (such a wonderful
name for that instrument)
and Ambrose Gauntlett,
cello continuo. I was also in
the stage chorus of Dennis
Arundell’s 1954 production of
Vaughan Williams’s Pilgrim’s
Progress. There were seven
performances in Cambridge
Town Hall and before the
matinée on the Wednesday
Boris fell and damaged his
right shoulder. He conducted
the first act with his left arm, as
white as a sheet, his right arm
in a sling, while Cambridge was
scoured for the one conductor
who could take his place with
no knowledge of the score. The
performances were electric
anyway but the feeling of
support, first for Boris and then
for our new conductor (whose
name I have never known – it
would be interesting if any of
your readers knows) increased
it a hundredfold.
Antony Corfe, via email
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 9
 Thefullscore
Our pick of the month’s news, views and interviews

Dame Judith Weir celebrates New Year with honour

MBEs for Anna Lapwood and Margaret Fingerhut among other notable awards

Rightly honoured:
pianist Margaret Fingerhut
receives an MBE; (right) Dame
Judith Weir; (below right)
Sir Alexander McCall Smith

Judith Weir has been made a Dame
Commander of the Order of the British
Empire (DBE) in the New Year Honours
list, a fitting end to a year in which the
Scottish composer’s music has enjoyed
an unprecedentedly high profile. In May,
Dame Judith’s three-minute orchestral
overture Brighter Visions Shine Afar was
one of 12 new works performed at the
Coronation of Charles III, seven months
after she wrote the psalm setting Like As
The Hart for the funeral of Elizabeth II.
2024 will see her retire as Master of the
King’s Music after ten successful years in
post, during which time she has blogged
regularly and candidly about matters
relating to classical music in the UK.
ANDY TYLER, GETTY
Westminster Abbey, is also honoured –
in his case by being named a Lieutenant
of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO).
There are OBEs, meanwhile, for soprano
Carolyn Sampson, harpsichordist and
conductor Laurence Cummings and
‘I’ve always aspired to be
a musician who does not
merely entertain people’
James Ainscough, former CEO of the
charity Help Musicians; while MBEs go to
organist and conductor Anna Lapwood,
whose filmed performances have become
familiar to hundreds of thousands of
in Ukraine. ‘I’ve always aspired to be a
musician who does not merely entertain
people,’ Fingerhut told Classic FM, ‘but
one that can make a real difference to
communities in need through the power
of music. I look forward to building on my
recent work raising money for refugees and
am deeply touched that my efforts have
been recognised.’
Other high-profile honorees with
a melodic bent include Jilly Cooper,
author of novels including the classical
music-themed Appassionata and Score!,
who is made a Dame. And there is also a
knighthood for Alexander McCall Smith,
best known as the author of The No. 1
Ladies’ Detective Agency series of novels but

Fellow composer Paul Mealor, whose fans on TikTok, and pianist Margaret also a keen bassoonist and co-founder of
Coronation Kyrie was memorably sung Fingerhut, who has worked tirelessly Edinburgh’s The Really Terrible Orchestra
by Bryn Terfel during the service at to raise funds for emergency vehicles and Botswana’s first opera training centre.

12 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


Colston no more as Beacon beckons Bristol concert-goers
After a five-year closure for a major
refurbishment, Bristol Beacon re-opened
its doors in style at the end of 2023. A
couple of weeks after the Paraorchestra had
headlined the venue’s Trip the Light Fantastic
opening concert at the end of November, the
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and
conductor Kirill Karabits (above) pitched up
to kick the classical music season into action
THE MONTH IN NUMBERS
91
…years old but, despite what he may
have said previously, there are no plans
to retire just yet, reveals composer
John Williams (pictured above) .
Thefullscore
Shining a light: SoundBites
Kirill Karabits and the
Bournemouth Symphony
return to Bristol Beacon Saudi spectacle:
how the Royal Diriyah
Opera House will look
Arabian arias
Saudi Arabia is set to get its first ever opera
house. As the country sets its sights on
hosting Expo 2030 in six years’ time, the
new Royal Diriyah Opera House will occupy
a 45,000 square metre plot in Riyadh, the
capital city. Norwegian architects Snøhetta
have been appointed to design the state-of-
with works by Mark-Anthony Turnage, the-art building which, we are told, ‘will
Shostakovich, Beethoven and Stravinsky. be infused with elements inspired by the
Formerly called Colston Hall, the 1,800-seat traditional Najdi architectural style’ that
venue last welcomed visitors in 2018 before defines the area.
what should have been a two-year, £48m
revamp. However, significant structural Moving on…
issues, plus Covid, saw both the timeframe Closer to home, the announcement that
and costs increase considerably – the latter English National Opera is to relocate to
reaching a final total of around £132m. Manchester has been met with a mixed
reception. While Andy Burnham, mayor
of Greater Manchester, has expressed his
delight that ‘one of the most exciting cultural
institutions in the UK’ is coming to his city,
others have expressed their concern about
both the viability of the move and the future
of the company’s orchestral players and
7
…Vienna New Year’s Day concerts in
singers. See Comment, p25.
…and moving Don
Donald Runnicles has been named as
total for Riccardo Muti, named as the the next chief conductor of the Dresden
conductor for the 2025 event. Philharmonic. The 69-year-old Scot, whose
glowing CV includes the posts of chief
conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony
1
…opera only at 2024’s Nevill Holt Opera,
Orchestra and music director of San
Francisco Opera, is already a familiar figure
in Germany, having led Deutsche Oper
Berlin with distinction as music director
as it rebrands to become Nevill Holt since 2009.
Festival, a multi-arts event.
Austen allegro
A new book out this spring is set to explore
5 the musical world of Jane Austen. Researched
GETTY, GIULIA SPADAFORA, BINYAN
and written by Australian academic Gillian
Dooley, She played and sang will look into
…more years as chief conductor at the the 19th-century author’s various musical
Bamberg Symphony Orchestra for Jakub friendships and connections and how her
Hrůša, with the popular Czech signing a love of music shaped the characters in her
contract extension till 2029. books, plus all manner of other truths not yet
universally acknowledged.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 13
Thefullscore
RisingStars TIMEPIECE This month in history
Three to look out for…
Tiffany Poon Pianist
Born: Hong Kong Northern exposure:
Career highlight: NY Phil music director Lorin
Pentatone releasing my Maazel arrives in Pyongyang;
debut album Diaries: (right) the performance in the
Grand Theatre, applauded by
Schumann; playing to a senior North Korean officials
sold-out palace at Dresden
Musikfestspiele; and
Deutsche Welle filming a
documentary about my journey with music.
Musical hero: Pianist Vladimir Horowitz,
for his ability to speak directly to your
heart; and my musician friends, for their
enthusiasm in promoting culture and
education beyond the stage. And birds!
Dream concert: My parents have sacrificed a
lot for my piano career. I’d love to play at the
BBC Proms with them in the audience.

Michael Mofidian Bass-baritone

Born: Glasgow, UK
Career highlight:
Returning to Covent
Garden to sing Colline in
Puccini’s La bohème felt
very significant. I’m lucky
enough to be doing it
again there this season.
Musical heroes: Samuel Ramey, Nicolai
Ghiaurov and (especially) Cesare Siepi –
three very different bass voices, each blessed
with great musicianship and star charisma.
And tenor Jon Vickers: the epitome of a
singing actor, which we all must aspire to be.
Dream concert: Mahler’s Rückert Lieder,
paired with a new work by George
FEBRUARY 2008
Benjamin, featuring something for me to
sing! Benjamin’s Written on Skin was one
of the moments that inspired me to pursue
this career.
NY Philharmonic seizes an
Anastasia Kobekina Cellist
Born:
unlikely Korea opportunity
Yekaterinburg, Russia

Career highlight: It’s
always hard to pick just
one. However, playing
Dvořák’s Cello Concerto
with the Tonhalle
Orchestra and Paavo Järvi
at the opening night of the Dvořák Festival
in Prague felt truly special. Both the venue
and my musical partners were perfect
matches for this masterpiece.
Musical heroes: Violinist Patricia
Kopatchinskaja and violinist/conductor/
composer Pekka Kuusisto – for their fearless
and true music-making, and their ability
to create, not merely recreate.
Dream concert: I would love to play
something with Jonny Greenwood – or
something written by him. I’m such a fan
of his music in all its forms.
W
hen an agreed ceasefire
ended the Korean War
in July 1953, a full and
final peace settlement between North
and South Korea was envisaged. It
never happened. Instead, for the next
half-century, the fragile armistice was
constantly threatened by the ramping-
up of military armament levels and the
gradual intrusion of nuclear weapons
into the equation. When, in October
2006, North Korea conducted its first
nuclear test, prospects for a resolution of
the North-South conflict seemed more
remote than ever.
And yet behind the scenes a series
of covert orchestral manoeuvres was
happening. ‘We have just very recently
received an inquiry about the possibility
of the New York Philharmonic
performing in Pyongyang,’ announced
a spokesman for the orchestra in
August 2007. The communication,
though routed through an ‘independent
representative’, came from the North
Korean Ministry of Culture. ‘We
will explore the possibility of this as
we would any other invitation,’ the
spokesman dryly noted.
It was, in many ways, an
extraordinary development. For
decades, the US had staunchly taken
the South’s side in the ongoing Korean
conflict, and no American cultural

14 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


organisation had ever visited the North.
But significant advances had been
made in limiting North Korea’s nuclear
activity, in exchange for fuel and
economic assistance. Now the North
was extending an olive branch of sorts
to its long-time enemy, ostensibly in
partial reciprocation.
Zarin Mehta, the New York
Philharmonic’s president, was quick to
scent the possibilities of the moment.
‘It would be kind of extraordinary
for us to play there,’ he commented.
‘If this venture helps in furthering
what’s been going on in the last couple
GETTY, JOHANNA BERGHORN, REMY HOLWICK, MARIE FADY
of weeks in terms of the normalising
of relationships, that would become a
wonderful thing for the world.’
A mere three months later, the North
Korea concert actually happened, as
an extra date on the NY Phil’s pre-
planned tour of Taiwan and China.
The venue was the 2,500-seat East
Pyongyang Grand Theatre in the
nation’s capital where, on 26 February
2008, an audience of ‘men in dark
suits’ and ‘women in colorful high-
waisted dresses’ gathered to watch the
Philharmonic play, with ‘all of them,’
the New York Times reported, ‘wearing
pins with the likeness of Kim Il Sung,
the nation’s founder’.
On the podium was Lorin Maazel,
the orchestra’s music director, who
began by conducting the national
anthems of both North Korea and the
United States. The Prelude to Act III
of Wagner’s Lohengrin, Dvořák’s
‘New World’ Symphony No. 9 and
Gershwin’s An American in Paris were
the main works on the programme. But
in a country where Western classical
music was widely unfamiliar, it was
the Philharmonic’s performance of
‘Arirang’, a popular Korean folk song,
North Korea was extending
an olive branch of sorts to
its long-time enemy
which made the biggest emotional
impression, drawing tears from
members of the audience and orchestra.
Not all onlookers welcomed the
NY Phil’s visit. British critic Norman
Lebrecht derided it as ‘somewhere along
the scale of morally inappropriate and
aesthetically offensive’, while in the
Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout
dismissed the entire venture as ‘little
more than participating in a puppet
show whose purpose is to lend
legitimacy to a despicable regime’.
Historically speaking, it is undeniable
the Pyongyang concert made no
appreciable difference to the hard-
nosed Realpolitik which continues
to dominate relations between North
Korea and the wider world today. But,
for that fleeting moment in February
2008, it was possible for those present in
the hall, and millions more watching the
live broadcast, to glimpse an alternative,
conflict-free reality of mutual
understanding. It was ‘an incredible joy
and sadness and connection like I’ve
never seen,’ said NY Phil bass player Jon
Deak. ‘They really opened their hearts
to us.’ Terry Blain
Thefullscore
Spin cycle: the Singapore Flyer starts turning
Also in February 2008…
2nd: Nicolas Sarkozy marries Carla Bruni
privately in Paris. The romance has been a
whirlwind one, the wedding coming just three
months after the first meeting between the
French president, who has been married twice
before, and the singer and former model,
daughter of concert pianist Marisa Borini and
composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi.
11th: Two-and-a-half years after construction
began, the Singapore Flyer starts to turn, its
height of 165m making it the tallest operating
Ferris wheel in the world. Costing $8,888
(c£2,000) each, the first rides are sold to
corporate customers before the wheel is
opened to the general public on Valentine’s
Day, and formally opened in the presence of
prime minister Lee Hsien Loong in April.
13th: The world record price at auction for a
musical instrument is smashed when a 1741
Guarneri del Gesù violin is sold to Russian
businessman Maxim Viktorov. Neither he nor
Sotheby’s state the exact sum, but reveal it
to be well in excess of the $3.54m paid for
Stradivari’s ‘The Hammer’ in 2006. Formerly
owned by composer and violinist Henri
Vieuxtemps, the instrument was demonstrated
by Chloë Hanslip before the auction.
17th: At a meeting of its national assembly,
Kosovo declares its independence from
Serbia. The proclamation is immediately
disputed by the Serbian government, nor is
it universally recognised internationally, with
Russian president Vladimir Putin describing
its acceptance by some nations as ‘a terrible
precedent, which will de facto blow apart the
whole system of international relations’.
19th: After more than 48 years in power,
Fidel Castro announces his retirement as
president of Cuba on the grounds of poor
health, stating in a letter that ‘it would betray
my conscience to take up a responsibility that
requires mobility and total devotion, that I am
not in a physical condition to offer’. Cuba’s
national assembly elects his brother Raúl as
the new president.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 15
 Julia
Bullock

Santtu-
Matias
Rouvali Alice
Sara Ott

London season highlights

Santtu conducts Tchaikovsky

Mahler & Berlioz & Mozart with the
With singer Julia Bullock Jussen Brothers
Thursday 1 February, Thursday 21 March, 7.30pm
7.30pm
Bruce Liu plays
History’s Rachmaninov
Persistent Voice Sunday 7 April, 3pm
Julia Bullock’s
multi-media project, Daniil Trifonov
with new music by plays Brahms
Cassie Kinoshi Thursday 2 May, 7.30pm
Friday 2 February, 6pm
Brahms &
Scheherazade, Beethoven with
& Dessner with Isabelle Faust
Alice Sara Ott Sunday 2 June, 7.30pm
Thursday 15 February,
7.30pm

Beethoven Tickets from £10

& Bruch with Nicola philharmonia.co.uk
Benedetti 0800 652 6717
Thursday 14 March, 7.30pm
 Thefullscore
MEET THE COMPOSER
Julie Cooper
Material benefit:
‘I am a very
textural writer’

Slammer slammed as Mahler ends with a bang

Picture the scene. An air of
rapt concentration enthrals the
Musikhuset as Denmark’s Aarhus
Symphony Orchestra reaches that
miraculous moment of near-
stillness in the final bars of Mahler’s
Ninth Symphony… only for one
concert-goer to spoil the magic
by getting up, leaving and letting
the door slam behind him. Clot.
The action was later described as
‘barbaric’ by miffed artistic director
Jesper Norden, but was it, perhaps,
some sort of artistic statement?
Just as Mahler was indicating the
imminence of death in one way, was
the audience member simply doing
it in another? Might the composer
who said a symphony should
‘embrace everything’ even have
approved? OK, we are probably
getting a little too fanciful here…

The British composer and pianist’s varied career has ranged from
song-writing to composing music for the screen, stage and radio. Her
2022 album Continuum received high praise, while Oculus, her new
DÉJÀ VU release on Signum Classics, features the likes of violinist Clio Gould,
pianist Rebeca Omordia and Cooper’s own Oculus Ensemble.
History just keeps on repeating itself…
When I was at senior school I things. Ascensio was the first track
Aled Jones, whose singing voice has
won the BBC’s Nationwide Carol I wrote for it; I wanted to write for
adorned many a wedding and funeral,
Competition. I wrote a Christmas pianist Rebeca Omordia, because
is now in a position to take on the
pop song and we recorded it in we became friends on social
spoken part as well after qualifying
London. It was the recording media after we both had new
as a celebrant. A year of intense
session that was a massive turning albums out at the same time and
study at the The Academy of Modern
point for me. I was going to do really wanted to work together.
Celebrancy means that the treble-
art, but I went back to my parents The track Venus in Sunlight
turned-baritone (left) can join the list of
and told them I wanted to do Grey happened because I knew
famous musicians officially allowed to
music, despite all the applications conductor Jessica Cottis had
lead people through their brightest and
already having gone in. colour synaesthesia. I was
darkest occasions…
I started as a keyboard player looking at the painting The Birth
Among the well-known figures from the Renaissance era who in the theatre. Then I got asked of Venus as a possible inspiration
combined the roles of musician and priest were the Spanish to do a score for a production of and asked Jessica what she saw
composers Victoria and Guerrero, followed shortly after by Under Milk Wood, and got quite in the key; she said, ‘a very bright
the Italian Allegri, of Miserere fame. Surely the most famous a few theatre commissions from white, but with streaks of grey,
composer-priest, however, was Allegri’s compatriot Vivaldi – that. I was really lucky to then get like sunlight’. The titling of the
ordained in 1703 at the age of 25, the Four Seasons composer a commission to write a version album really evolved out of that;
would go on to flourish under the nickname of ‘The Red Priest’. of The Four Seasons for Evelyn poor Jessica got bombarded, but
Liszt was in his mid-50s when he was ordained in 1865, though Glennie, with a huge percussion it was so fascinating, because her
in his case the four minor orders he received allowed him to assist section. We were both very much colour descriptions were so vivid.
GETTY, NICK RUTTER ILLUSTRATION: JONTY CLARK

the celebrant rather than conduct ceremonies himself. Heading starting out in our careers.
into more recent times, in 1998 Ronald Corp, composer and I’ve always written music
founding conductor of the New London Orchestra, was ordained specifically for the people I hear
as a deacon, as, in 2005, was Bruce Russell, former baritone are going to play it. It’s about the
with the King’s Singers. That same year also saw the ordination of people I am working with and the
Richard Coles who, as well as being a skilful classical pianist, had feeling you create when you make
in the 1980s enjoyed a number of top ten UK hits as the keyboard music together.
player of The Communards. A high-profile career in the dog collar Oculus is a celebration of the
and on TV and radio would soon follow. arts. The album celebrates people,
art, dance, poetry, light, many
Melody has always been an
important part of my writing.
I loved Ennio Morricone when
I was young – he was one of the
great melodists, along with John
Williams. It’s what affected me
most when listening to music. I’m
a very textural writer as well; it’s
about creating atmosphere with
groups of instruments.

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 17

Thefullscore
StudioSecrets

Two-hander: Adam Golka records a pair for FHR

We reveal who’s recording

what and where...
The music of George Lloyd (1913-98) has
found a new home with the Lyrita Nimbus
Archive. In an exclusive agreement with The
George Lloyd Society, Lyrita Nimbus will
make sure the British composer’s printed
scores and recorded legacy (including 12
symphonies) are available for years to come.
Lloyd conducted all of his own recordings,
which will be released physically and
digitally in 2024/25.
Rachel Podger was at London’s St Anne
and St Agnes Church recently to record
a new album of violin music inspired by
the resurgence of the arts in England after
the Restoration in 1660. She teamed up
with regular performing partners Brecon
Baroque for the sessions, which also featured
Elizabeth Kenny on theorbo, to record
works by Lawes, Jenkins, Locke and Purcell.
REWIND
Great artists talk about their past recordings
Channel Classics will release the album,
called The Muses Restor’d, in the Spring.
Bridge Records has finally completed its This month: 0$*'$/(1$.2½(1d Mezzo-soprano
epic mission to record the complete works
of George Crumb. Coming in early March,
some 42 years after the first recording in the
MY FINEST MOMENT Andrea for the first time just a few weeks
series, the label presents the world-premiere Handel Arias before, at the harpsichord. Then I went
recording of Crumb’s penultimate work, Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano); to this amazing mountain location with
Kronos-Kryptos (Time Secret), alongside a Venice Baroque Orchestra/Andrea Marcon a beautiful hall, and we were basically
1955 cello sonata and 1983’s Processional for Archiv Produktion 477 6717 (2007) exploring while
solo piano. It’s a huge achievement for the This recording of Handel’s arias from recording. What
label which was founded in 1981, the year it
launched its Complete Crumb Edition.
different operas was a beautful first was surprisingly
Adam Golka was in the studio for FHR meeting with this orchestra and this beautiful was
in December recording a pair of albums. conductor, with whom I now have a that we somehow
The American pianist took to the keyboard long-term partnership. Andrea and I understood each
at the Concert Hall of Kulturstiftung in we were both DG artists and in those other from the first
Marienmünster, Germany for Chopin days the company liked to put its artists moment, musically and personally.
sans Chopin, an album exploring Chopin’s
JULIA WESELY, TINA AXELSSON

influence on piano music, and another
bringing together music by Brahms and the
premiere recording of Jan Swafford’s Music
Like Steel and Like Fire. FHR will release the
recordings in late 2024 and early ’25.
together for various projects. I was a
little bit worried at the beginning that
we hadn’t done any concerts, we didn’t
know each other and we were going
to go straight into a recording. I met
I think it was one of the strongest
recordings, maybe just because it was
done in the moment, without thinking.
I enjoyed performing all of the arias,
but of course there are some highlights

18 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


Baroque’s the best:
Magdalena Kožená’s
2007 album of Handel
arias is very special to her
like Rinaldo’s ‘Lascia Ch’io Pianga’,
which is one of the most famous and
beautiful. I think it’s about the emotional
side of it, though; meeting them in
Toblach and recording this piece. It’s
something very special for me.
MY FONDEST MEMORY
Monteverdi Scherzi Musicale etc
Magdalena Kožená (mezzo-soprano);
La Cetra/Andrea Marcon
Archiv Produktion 479 4595 (2016)
I have done three Baroque recordings
with Andrea; there was Handel, then
Vivaldi and then Monteverdi. Each of
these recordings belongs to one of my
children, because
with each one I had
a baby with me. So
the Handel was my
first son, the Vivaldi
my second and the
Monteverdi was
my daughter. It wasn’t really planned,
but it always happened that the kids
were a few months old; so I always tell
them they each have a recording with
Andrea Marcon. So it’s memories of
breastfeeding at these venues and special
memories of having these little creatures
being present at the recordings.
We recorded the Monteverdi close
to Basel in a little church, and I invited
Anna Prohaska to sing some duets
with me. Sometimes recording can be
stressful, but this was in the countryside,
a beautiful church – though I remember
it was not very good weather because
it was November! But it was a great
atmosphere, very relaxed and in those
days we had enough time – no record
company has the money now to pay for
an extra day off in the middle so you can
go for a walk and rest your voice. So this
one belongs to the good old days. It was
just a lovely experience.
I’D LIKE ANOTHER GO AT…
Schumann Frauenliebe und Leben
Magdalena Kožená (mezzo); L’udovít
Marcinger (piano) Sinfonietta (1995)
This was my very first recording and I
don’t even know if it’s available anymore.
I recorded it in the Czech Republic for a
little local label; I was so crazy choosing
Frauenliebe und Leben by Schumann. In
a way it is actually quite cute, because
the first four songs are very naïve; it’s
this young lady fantasising about her
ideal husband and how she’s going to
be devoted to him. So the first half of
the cycle is written
for a very young
woman, but it’s the
life of the woman
in eight songs, and
so the life goes very
quickly – she has a
child, is abandoned by the man and there
is the death. So I think the second half of
the cycle is for somebody who has more
experience than a young girl and it might
be a nice parallel, therefore, to record this
as my first and then, eventually, as one of
my last recordings. Let’s not say last!
I was 21 or 22 when I recorded it, but
how would I do it later in my career?
Not that I am terribly disappointed with
this recording; it’s not that bad, but my
German wasn’t good, for example. So in
terms of language it might be improved.
It’s a very important cycle for mezzos and
I would like to revisit it.
Magdalena Kožená appears in Handel’s
Alcina, out on 2 Feb on Pentatone
Thefullscore
A great ‘Bosse’: Johansson was an inspiration
MyHero
Soprano Johanna
Wallroth praises her
former choirmaster
Bo ‘Bosse’ Johansson
I was 12 years old when I joined the Adolf
Fredrik Girls’ Choir in Stockholm, which
Bosse Johansson led with a very special
philosophy. He looked on us as individual
personalities, each of whom had a big
impact on the sound of the choir. He made
us feel very important.
Bo ‘Bosse’ Johansson (1943-2016) was
a music pedagogue and choir conductor.
He founded the Adolf Fredrik Choir in 1972
and led it for 40 years. It has achieved a
worldwide reputation for its special sound
and creative programming, and has visited
many countries around the world.
Bosse had some unconventional but
effective methods. For our warm-up
exercises we would often look not at the
conductor, but at each other. We were
always encouraged to find the ‘carrot of the
phrase’. We were listened to: our thoughts
on how to make music mattered.
There were moments with the choir
where I felt something very special and
exciting – something that I had never
experienced before. It lit a fire in me, and
I’m not sure that I would have become a
singer without those intense experiences.
My years in the choir were also a great
antidote for the insecurities that young
girls can feel. Our self-esteem grew, and
we were encouraged to feel good about
ourselves. We would work and shape the
music, and give it so much character that,
when we performed, it felt like a release
when Bosse took a step aside and let us
continue without him.
I thank him for helping me discover the
love of making music with others!
Johanna Wallroth performs in Giulio
Cesare at Glyndebourne, 12 and 19 July
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 19
Thefullscore
THE LISTENING SERVICE

Start spreading the music…

From the modernist visions
of Varèse to the minimalism
of Glass and Reich, Tom
Service celebrates the rich
soundscape of New York,
the city that never sleeps

ILLUSTRATION: MARIA CORTE MAIDAGAN

N
o city has been sounded and
celebrated by composers and
musicians as thrillingly as New
York and, in particular, Manhattan – a
place where 800 languages are spoken,
and even more musical genres are
currently being played, remade and
born. The hum that Manhattan makes
has been calculated to vibrate at an
infrasonic, body-shakingly low B flat,
the sum total of billions of interactions
between electronic signals, traffic noise,
construction, wind, weather and the
ceaseless currents of human-made
music and conversation.
Pieces about New York have been
made by the most imaginative of the
‘weirdos’ who move there and who if you know where to tune in to them. of Greenwich Village; experimental
visit it – that’s the Illinois-born Laurie Not just a manicured oasis of well- explosions from jazz to minimalism to
Anderson’s affectionate collective kempt oxygenation, Central Park is also the classical avant-garde, that then take
term for the creative immigrants, like a place where the half-billion year-old over the uptown temples of culture,
her, who flock to the city to etch new rocks that prop up all those skyscrapers from Carnegie Hall to Lincoln Center.
chapters in its story of sound. After he rupture and burst through the parkland. John Zorn and Meredith Monk, James
arrived in New York in 1915, France’s These are stones that sing in the music Reese Europe and Steve Reich have all
Varèse dreamt of Americas past, present made seismic impacts on New York’s
and future in his piece Amériques for Manhattan’s hum has been musical life that cross those boundaries
an orchestra the likes of which had and that catalyse new musical creativity.
never been heard before, with no fewer calculated to vibrate at That creativity flies upwards as well:
than 13 percussionists playing sirens DQLQIUDVRQLFORZ%ĠDW past the lofts where Philip Glass and
and boat whistles – music made in the Laurie Anderson play and rehearse
heat of his love-affair with the utopian before time that Charles Ives composes and create, flying past the summits
modernity of the city. At the other end at the start of his 1906 orchestral vision, of the skyscrapers where superheroes
of the century, Britain’s Thomas Adès Central Park in the Dark. like Batman and Superman and their
wrote his America – A Prophecy for the Yet it’s the messy, chaotic, sometimes soundtracks soar, radiating out into the
New York Phil in 1999, a millennial harmonious but often dissonant world. Sooner or later, New York’s music
vision of Manhattan reclaimed by the relationships between New York’s becomes the world’s music.
forces of nature that surround it, the musical scenes that defines its energy:
dystopian end of empire. scenes that start out as literal and Tom Service explores how
You can see and hear the relics of a metaphorical undergrounds, under music works in The Listening
deeper, pre-human time in Manhattan, the streets, downtown in the clubs Service on Sundays at 5pm

20 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

 FAREWELL TO…

Male delivery:
Mildred Miller was known
for her ‘trouser roles’

Mildred Miller Born 1924 Mezzo-soprano

Born Mildred Müller, Miller is fondly remembered for a glittering
338 performances at New York’s Metropolitan Opera where she first
appeared in 1951 as Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.
Such ‘trouser roles’ would come to define her operatic career, which
began professionally in 1946 when she made her debut in the US
premiere of Britten’s Peter Grimes at Tanglewood (conducted by
Leonard Bernstein). Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Miller enjoyed formative
studies there and at the New England Conservatory. A spell of study
in Italy, thanks to a scholarship, was followed by two years in her
ancestral city with the Stuttgart Opera. That tenure was a springboard
for appearances in Vienna, Edinburgh and at Glyndebourne. Miller
founded the Opera Theatre of Pittsburgh in 1978.

Zita Carno Born 1935 Pianist

Carno (born Zita Carnovsky) played piano and harpsichord for the Los
Angeles Philharmonic from 1979-2000. While in LA, she was a much
admired soloist and chamber performer, appearing regulary with
the Philharmonic New Music Group. Born in New York City, Carno
studied at the Manhattan School of Music and remained in the area
during her formative years as a professional performer. Prior to her
move to LA, she worked with the Martha Graham Dance Company,
appeared with the New York Philharmonic and played regularly with
the New Jersey and Omaha Symphony orchestras, among others. Away
from music, Carno was heavily into baseball, which she researched and
wrote about extensively.

Ron Nelson Born 1929 Composer

An accomplished and versatile composer, Nelson will perhaps be best
remembered for his 1993 Passacaglia (Homage on B-A-C-H) which
won a slew of major US windband prizes. Born in Illinois, he did the
majority of his formal studies at Rochester’s Eastman School of Music,
topped off by a scholarship in the 1950s to Paris’s Ecole Normale de
Musique. Though admired for his compositional gifts, Nelson’s legacy
as a teacher may perhaps outshine it. He joined the music faculty at
Brown University in 1956 and remained a much-loved and highly
respected presence there until 1993.

Also remembered…
British clarinettist, conductor and teacher Charles Hine (born 1951),
GET T Y

was the former musical director of the British Clarinet Ensemble.

Thefullscore
Seasoned performer:
Pekka Kuusisto
brought folk to Vivaldi
at the BBC Proms
Music to my ears
What the classical world has been listening to this month
Bridget Cunningham
Harpsichordist
At a concert I
attended at Queen
Elizabeth Hall on
Remembrance Day,
musicians from the
West-Eastern
Divan Orchestra gave a spirited
performance of Beethoven’s Septet,
Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in
B flat and music by Elliott Carter.
This was on the same day that
hundreds of thousands of people
marched through London calling
for a peaceful resolution to the
Israel-Gaza conflict, and the West-
Eastern Divan Orchestra presents
a strong message that music is
unifying. It was very special.
It was great to see female
conductors opening and closing
the BBC Proms last summer. A
Proms regular, I try and get to as
many as I can. With my Baroque
22 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
music, their lives, motivations and
passions. It’s amazing to listen to
music that I might otherwise have
missed out on, though I would
love more programmes dedicated
to unsung Baroque heroes such as
Hasse or Roseingrave.
And also…
I enjoy visiting art exhibitions
– you can gain inspiration from
magnificent works of art and
there’s so much to learn and see. I
suppose in London we’re spoiled
for choice. I’ve been going to The
National Portrait Gallery since
it has been re-opened, just to
reacquaint myself. If I’m in the
area I’ll dart in and see one room
or one thing, but if I have more
time I will spend longer. Visual art
just makes me feel better.
Bridget Cunnigham’s recording of
Roseingrave Harpsichord Suites is
out on Signum Classics in March
Alon Sariel
Lutenist and mandolin player
I love the opening of
JS Bach’s Cantata
BWV 29 ‘Wir
danken dir, Gott,
wir danken dir’, as
performed live by
the Netherlands Bach Society
CRITIC’S CHOICE hat on, I particularly enjoyed the (NBS). This festive prelude is
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie known in the version for violin,
Jessica Duchen
Bremen, led by the Finnish from the third Partita. However, it
When I saw the ballet
The Dante Project
violinist Pekka Kuusisto. also exists in a version for lute,
recently at the Royal He performed Vivaldi’s Four naturally more filigree and
Opera House, Thomas Seasons, adding folk elements intimate. Here, the NBS gives us a
Adès’s dazzling and and improvisations, which was beautiful rendition on the organ,
poetic score left me exquisite. He also performed Birds with a large ensemble sound
almost giddy with joy.
It’s in three acts, based including trumpets and timpani.
on The Divine Comedy: I love Mendelssohn’s I like to think of Felix
Mendelssohn as the Mozart of
PHORGLFĠRZWKH
‘Inferno’ includes some
delicious reworkings the 19th century. I love his melodic
H[SUHVVLYHVWULQJ
of Liszt, who also drew
flow, the expressive string writing
on ideas from Dante;
and the drama, especially in
‘Purgatorio’ is based on
historical chants from ZULWLQJDQGWKHGUDPD his symphonic works. There’s a
the Ades Synagogue fabulous BBC Proms performance
in Jerusalem; finally, of Paradise by Andrea Tarrodi, of his ‘Scottish’ Symphony
the radiant ‘Paradiso’
spirals up into the
which was magical. with the Orchestra of the Age
heavens in a kind of I’m a fan of Radio 3’s Composer of Enlightenment under Roger
musical infinity chain. of the Week programmes! They Norrington – complete with tempo
Astonishing stuff. include such a wide selection of nuances and period performance
composers, from Schubert to Scott techniques like portato. I’m a huge
Joplin, and take you on a detailed fan of the Proms and once had the
and often chronological journey to pleasure of performing there with
discover the real musicians, their the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

‘Wind of Change’ by The
Scorpions used to be incredibly
popular when I was a child. Even
today, it instantly takes me back
three decades. It was a new era
which began with the fall of the
Berlin Wall, and it gave hope to a
whole generation. We need more
of such songs. That guitar solo is
pretty amazing too…
And also…
I’m a passionate world traveller,
which suits my profession so well.
When I’m invited to play in an
exotic little town, I often try to
take another day or two after the
concert and just enjoy being a
tourist. I particularly like hikes or
long walks: these are usually the
moments when new creative ideas
pop up in my mind.
Alon Sariel’s ‘Plucked Bach II’ is out
on Pentatone on 26 January
Belle Chen Pianist and composer
I listen to Japanese
composer Ryuichi
Sakamoto’s music a
lot. He is my hero, in
a way, because right
from when he
worked with the Yellow Magic
Orchestra in the early days until
his death last year, the diversity of
his output was incredible. It was
also artistically completely non-
compromising. In his solo debut
album Long Knives, I love how he is
so bold with his textures and how
he puts together the natural and
organic with the mechanical and
artificial.
I also really enjoy listening to
jazz pianists these days, because I
love how the energy is translated
through their recordings. I heard
Tigran Hamasyan play through
his album StandArt with his trio
at the Barbican in 2022 and they
didn’t disappoint. I listen to the
album a lot, partly to learn from
what they are doing in terms of
communication – in the sense of
Artful jazzer: pianist Tigran Hamasyan
Thefullscore
CRITIC’S CHOICE groove, how the time changes and
how the complexity of harmonies
can evoke certain emotions.
Promises, the 2021 album by
Floating Points with saxophonist
Pharoah Sanders and the LSO,
is very calm, very spacious and
something I find very easy to lose
myself in. It provides a safe pocket
of space for me just to think about
George Hall life. It’s a long, single piece with
The BBC Symphony a thread that runs through it,
Orchestra’s concert
but it also fluctuates and I find
programmes are often
imaginative. I recently my breathing changing with it.
caught its Barbican There are some beautiful, lush
concert which featured string arrangements, and there’s
a UK premiere – something very ethereal about it.
Swedish composer
Tebogo Monnakgotla’s
And also…
entrancingly scored I love going for really long walks,
violin concerto Globe not least when I’m back at home
Skimmer Surfing the in Brisbane, Australia. About
Somali Jet (Johan 40 minutes’ drive from where
Dalene the expressive
soloist) – and Nielsen’s
I live, you enter this beautiful,
An Imaginary Journey ancient sub-tropical rainforest
to the Faroe Islands. – the scenery is quite different
The main event, from London! My most recent
though, was Sibelius’s walk was to a place called Mount
Symphonies Nos 6 and
7, which Sakari Oramo Tamborine, where the sound is just
(above) conducted a blanket of crickets. It’s incredible,
without a break, in and you can almost not hear
interpretations whose yourself. And when it rains in the
flawlessly balanced
forest, the sound of the raindrops
textures and visionary
sense of structure on the canopy is also amazing.
proved utterly Belle Chen’s new album ‘Ravel in
persuasive. the Forest’ is released this month

Our Choices The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites

BÅRD GUNDERSEN, VICTORIA CADISCH, BEN EALOVEGA, FRIEDHARD NEUMANN/DOROTA SZCZEPANSKA, GETTY

Charlotte Smith Editor
Returning for the first time in five-and-a-half
years to my hometown of Adelaide gave me the
chance to attend the Festival of Nine Lessons
and Carols at St Peter’s Cathedral on Christmas
Eve. The 130-year-old cathedral choir, these days
comprising male and female voices, was on fine
form in carols by Tavener, Bob Chilcott and Iain
Farrington – and the organ, with its 32ft double
open diapason pipes, had no trouble filling every
corner of the cavernous building. Magnificent!
Jeremy Pound Deputy editor
Writing about music connected with boats
recently acquainted me with pieces that might
well have otherwise floated past me. These
included Glazunov’s Stenka Razin, a symphonic
poem based on the ‘Song of the Volga Boatmen’.
After setting out its familiar theme in the brass
and woodwind, Glazunov then explores it over
15 lushly orchestrated, exquisitely atmospheric
minutes, with shimmering strings,
rippling harps and all.
Michael Beek
Reviews editor
I enjoyed attending the re-opening
night of Bristol Beacon, the city’s
flagship concert hall. Five years
and over £100m later and it’s
scarcely recognisable, but utterly
gorgeous. The celebratory concert
was a local affair, with Charles Hazlewood and
the Paraorchestra (based in Bristol) performing
an immersive set called ‘Trip the Light Fantastic’,
which was rhythmic, propulsive and a bit of a thrill.
Steve Wright
Content producer
I’ve been enjoying the suite to the ballet Kratt
(above) by Eduard Tubin. I’ve long admired Tubin’s
knotty-but-atmospheric symphonies: the Kratt
suite is, by contrast, a barrel of
Baltic fun. Its storyline, about the
antics of a mischievous goblin,
gives you plenty of clues about
what awaits. That music draws
on Estonian folk tunes, and the
movements are every bit as tangy
and captivating as their names –
‘Dance of the Exorcists’, ‘Dance of
the Northern Lights’ – suggest.
Alice Pearson
Cover CD editor
Florence Price’s music is finally getting the
recognition it deserves. Her Piano Sonata is
a real gem, weaving European Romanticism
and African-American folk melodies into a truly
authentic piece that won her first prize in the
1932 Wanamaker music contest. I particularly like
Kirsten Johnson’s recording, recommended in BBC
Music Magazine a couple of years ago.

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 23


Richard Morrison
The impact of arts ‘levelling up’ in
the UK is still not fully understood
I
t all seemed so simple, so obvious,
so fair. For decades, the lion’s share
of the UK’s classical music funding,
public and private, went to London.
‘Of course!’ said some. London is a
world capital. It competes with Paris
and Berlin for cultural tourists. It has a
huge population. And it supports two
opera houses and a dozen professional
orchestras. ‘Nonsense!’ said others.
People in the regions pay their taxes.
They have every right to expect that
money to be redistributed fairly so that
it supports music across the country.
For a long time those arguments went
unanswered. But then along came a
government – the current one – that saw
the advantage of redistributing subsidy
to the regions as part of a bigger policy
called ‘levelling up’. Decrees to that
effect were issued by ministers, and Arts
Council England hastened to comply –
not least because levelling up was a good
fit with its own ten-year plan to partially
defund professional orchestras and
opera companies, and boost community
and voluntary outfits.
The result? We know about English
National Opera, told to relocate to
Manchester to retain its subsidy. But
levelling up has triggered many other
changes to the orchestral and operatic
landscape – and the implications are
not yet fully understood.
So let me raise a few questions about
levelling up’s effect on our artform,
questions that I don’t think have been
sufficiently examined in the media.
First, the biggest winner from levelling
up so far is Manchester, which has
got a new £240m arts centre (the
Aviva Studios) and the promise of
ENO’s residency on top of the three
professional symphony orchestras
already resident in the city. How does
this benefit everyone else in the north,
especially in places such as Bradford
and Sheffield, both with populations
similar to Manchester’s but a fraction of
its professional music activity?
‘Cities should not be pitted against
each other to fight for much-needed
arts investment,’ said Steve Rotheram,
the mayor of the Liverpool city region,
in the wake of losing out to Manchester
over ENO’s relocation. The government’s
response seems to be that cities should
indeed be pitted against one another,
Is taking money away
from London a case
of ‘dragging down’,
not levelling up?
because the communities that want
music the most will clearly fight
hardest to get it.
That, however, raises the second
question, which is whether England’s
local authorities are in any position to
bid for levelling up funds, given how
precarious their current finances are.
Birmingham, Nottingham and Croydon
– which all run major concert halls –
have declared themselves effectively
bankrupt in the past year. Dishing out
levelling up money to start up new
projects in the regions is all very well, but
those projects then need to be sustained
by local investment. It’s doubtful that
local authorities (which are not legally
obliged to support the arts at all) will be
able to provide that if they are struggling
to keep basic services going.
Opinion
And the third question? Is taking
money away from London and its
surrounding counties not a case of
‘dragging down’ rather than levelling up?
Many major music organisations based
in south-east England do vital work in
areas of high economic deprivation,
Think of the Britten Sinfonia’s activities
in East Anglia or the Royal Opera
House’s in Thurrock, Essex. Yet they
have lost subsidy. The logic of that needs
explaining. So far, nobody who took
those decisions has done so.
And finally, isn’t the whole concept
of levelling up a bit old-fashioned?
Instead of trying to spread finite live
resources around the country, why
not go down the high-tech route of
ensuring all performances by our
national performing organisations –
major orchestras, opera, dance and
theatre companies – are available
digitally for anyone, anywhere, to see?
Three years ago, during the pandemic,
the government advised all arts
organisations not just to start streaming
everything, but to work towards making
that digital product a source of valuable
extra income. Yet it seems odd that
streaming has all but disappeared from
the debate about how we disseminate
classical music more widely.
Coming from a Yorkshire mining
family, based in an area that has
virtually no regular professional
music-making, I really understand the
resentment from people who feel they
have been forgotten by the arts world.
The danger with how levelling up is
being imposed at present, however,
is that it will only produce a whole
new batch of resentments.
Richard Morrison is chief music critic
and a columnist of The Times
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 25
 VOTE NOW and help choose the best
classical recordings of the past 12 months
OUR CRITICS REVIEWED many wonderful recordings last year, some hotly
anticipated, others taking us by surprise. Whether it was familiar repertoire from
a much-loved artist or something brand new from a rising star, it all made for
another memorable musical year. So we’re delighted to present the nominations
for the BBC Music Magazine Awards 2024, as selected by our jury. The winners are
up to you, though, so visit classical-music.com/awards and cast your votes. Voting
closes at midnight on Friday 23 February, with the winners revealed at our Awards
ceremony at London’s Kings Place on Thursday 18 April.
THE AWARDS JURY: MICHAEL BEEK, TERRY BLAIN, JESSICA DUCHEN, ANDREW MCGREGOR, CHARLOTTE SMITH

26 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

 Awards 2024 nominees

Orchestral Concerto Opera

nominations nominations nominations
Thomas Adès Dante Stravinsky Violin Concerto etc Rodgers & Hammerstein
Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel Isabelle Faust (violin); Les Siècles/François- Oklahoma!
Nonesuch 7559790616 Xavier Roth Nathaniel Hackmann, Sierra Boggess et al;
Reviewed June 2023 Harmonia Mundi HMM902718 Sinfonia of London/John Wilson
Gustavo Dudamel and Reviewed May 2023 Chandos CHSA 5322(2)
the LA Phil took us on a Isabelle Faust teamed up Reviewed November 2023
trip to hell and back in with Les Siècles for this A surprising entry
this thrilling account of period-instrument take perhaps, but here’s a
Thomas Adès’s three- on Stravinsky’s recording that should be
movement epic, drawn masterful and unshowy celebrated and a classic
from the music for his 2021 ballet based on Violin Concerto. The stage work that shouldn’t
Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Heady textures instrumental casting made for a more be underestimated. As
and great imagination abound in this live subtle and varied soundworld, our review ever, John Wilson brought great passion to
premiere recording. saying, ‘The gut strings imbue Faust’s solo the project, assembling not only his go-to
part with the limpid texture of finely band of top-notch orchestral players, but a
Shostakovich wrought glassware rather than hard steel’. cast totally perfect in their roles.
Symphonies Nos 8-10
Berlin Philharmonic/Kirill Petrenko Nielsen The Concertos Puccini Turandot
Berlin Phil BPHR220421 Ulla Miilmann (flute), Johnny Teyssier Sondra Radvanovsky, Jonas Kaufmann et al;
Reviewed May 2023 (clarinet), Bomsori Kim (violin); Danish Orchestra e Coro dell’Accademia Nazionale
‘Sample these National Symphony Orchestra/Fabio Luisi di Santa Cecilia/Antonio Pappano
performances at Deutsche Grammophon 486 3487 Warner Classics 5419740659
any point and Reviewed November 2023 Reviewed May 2023
you’d probably This release of Nielsen’s Our review called this ‘a
be powerfully concertos was a great major recording event’.
impressed,’ said finale to Fabio Luisi’s Antonio Pappano
our review. Indeed, there were plenty of impressive survey of the brought together an all-
impressive moments in this immersive Danish composer’s star cast for this
survey of three Shostakovich symphonies orchestral works. They glittering account of
from Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Phil. were brought to vivid life by their Puccini’s beloved opera. Beyond praising
The review also called the performances respective soloists, in fine dialogue with the great vocal performances, the review
here ‘unusually vivid’. Luisi and the Danish National Symphony. said, ‘The rhythmic detail is electrifying,
the conductor’s deep understanding of
Delius • Elgar • Howells • RVW Dobrinka Tabakova Puccini the symphonist mesmerising.’
Orchestral Works Cello Concerto*; Viola Concerto** etc
Sinfonia of London/John Wilson *Guy Johnston (cello), **Maxim Rysanov Lully Psyché
Chandos CHSA 5291 (viola); Hallé Orchestra/Delyana Lazarova Ambroisine Bré, Deborah Cachet et al; Les
Reviewed April 2023 Hallé CD HLL 7562 Talens Lyriques/Christophe Rousset
A selection box of Reviewed December 2023 Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS086
English works led by a This album gathered Reviewed March 2023
‘stunning benchmark’ large-scale works by the Lully’s rarely performed
recording of Vaughan Bulgarian-British opera was gifted a
Williams’s Fantasia on a composer in honour of a ‘dazzling’ recording to
Theme by Thomas Tallis, successful run as the mark Les Talens
John Wilson and his brilliant Sinfonia of Hallé’s composer-in- Lyriques’ 20th
London musicians proved themselves residence. The pair of concertos showcased anniversary. Rousset’s
right at home in this repertoire. Elgar’s not only Tabakova’s expression, lyricism great charisma at the harpsichord might
Introduction and Allegro was another and raw emotion, but the great talents of have carried the production along, but the
highlight, along with the album’s Maxim Rysanov and Guy Johnston, the vocal fireworks from the cast impressed
‘magnificent’ sound quality. latter giving ‘a towering performance’. too. It was a fitting celebration.

Now head to www.classical-music.com/awards to vote for your favourites! BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 27
Awards 2024 nominees

Choral Vocal Chamber

nominations nominations nominations
Saariaho Reconnaissance Lili and Nadia Boulanger Schubert
Helsinki Chamber Choir/ Les heures claires – Complete Songs Piano Trios Nos 1 & 2; Notturno, D897;
Nils Schweckendiek Lucile Richardot (mezzo-soprano), Anne de Rondo, D895; Arpeggione Sonata, D821
BIS BIS-2662 Fornel (piano) et al Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Tanja Tetzlaff
Reviewed September 2023 Harmonia Mundi HMM902356.58 (cello), Lars Vogt (piano)
This collection of Reviewed April 2023 Ondine ODE 1394-2D
atmospheric choral There was ‘unalloyed Reviewed April 2023
works by the late Finnish pleasure’ to be found in This treasurable
composer ended up this collection charting collection of Schubert
being a rather poignant the complete songs of the piano trios would be
tribute to her, coming Boulanger sisters, two memorable in its own
out just a matter of weeks after her composers whose output right thanks to the very
untimely death. The Helsinki Chamber was brief but striking. Mezzo-soprano fine recording quality
Choir made expressive work of the Lucile Richardot took on the lion’s share of and effervescent performances by the
programme, including the otherworldly the programme, accompanied with great Tetzlaffs on violin and cello. It was, though,
title work, Reconnaissance. flair by pianist Anne de Fornel. also one of the late Lars Vogt’s final
recordings and he was on radiant form.
Monteverdi Beyond Works by Monteverdi, Caccini,
Vespro della beata Vergine Frescobaldi, Kapsberger, Saracini et al Beethoven Late String Quartets
Pygmalion/Raphaël Pichon Jakub Józef Orliński (countertenor); Calidore Quartet
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902710.11 Il Pomo d’Oro Signum Classics SIGCD733
Reviewed November 2023 Erato 5419772645 Reviewed March 2023
Pichon and Pygmalion Reviewed December 2023 This first volume of
made some judicious Orliński brought his Beethoven quartets from
creative decisions when now-trademark charm the New York-based
taking on Monteverdi’s and energy to this well Calidores takes in the
oft-recorded sacred considered programme composer’s life-
work. Eschewing some of songs, cantatas and affirming late set, and it
of the liturgical elements, this recording opera extracts, many by was delivered here with great precision,
was called ‘an attractive addition’ in our lesser-known Baroque composers. clarity and meticulous attention to detail.
review, its bright and lyrical tone offering a Orliński’s voice ‘pours out like liquid ‘The Calidore players penetrate right to the
refreshing view of the great work. honey’, according to our review. heart of the music, giving warm and
intensely lyrical accounts,’ said our
James MacMillan • Tavener • Walking in the Dark original review.
Vaughan Williams Choral Works Works by John Adams, Barber et al
The Choir of Westminster Abbey/ Julia Bullock (soprano); London JS Bach The Well-Tempered Consort III
James O’Donnell Philharmonic Orchestra/Christian Reif Phantasm
Hyperion CDA68420 Nonesuch 75597908176 Linn Records CKD708
Reviewed September 2023 Reviewed January 2023 Reviewed April 2023
This marked the end of ‘Varied, accomplished ‘This is a truly
music director James and profoundly outstanding album,
O’Donnell’s two-decade heartfelt’ was how our which rewards the
tenure at Westminster review described this listener with profound
Abbey, and Vaughan album from American aural pleasure.’ So said
Williams’s Mass in G soprano Julia Bullock. the original review of
minor was a particularly special moment. As talented a curator as she is a performer, Phantasm’s recording, the third and final
‘As the summation of a golden era in Bullock assembled an enticing programme in its memorable survey of Bach’s
Westminster Abbey’s venerable choral for this, delivering a ‘blazing’ rendition of keyboard works, reimagined for viol
tradition, this consummately performed John Adams’s aria ‘Memorial de Tlatelolco’ consort by Laurence Dreyfus. The result
programme is unmissable,’ said the review. and a pair of Nina Simone classics. was ‘sumptuous and revelatory’.

28 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE Now head to www.classical-music.com/awards to vote for your favourites!
 Awards 2024 nominees

Instrumental Premiere Newcomer

nominations
Szymanowski
Piano Works
Krystian Zimerman (piano)
Deutsche Grammophon 486 3007
Reviewed January 2023
The ‘staggering
virtuosity’ on display in
the Variations on a Polish
Folk Theme was just one
of the standout moments
of this album, a veritable
scrapbook of recordings by Zimerman of
his fellow countryman Szymanowski’s
solo piano works. The composer’s
Masques, too, came across magnificently
in Zimerman’s accomplished hands.
nominations
Missy Mazzoli
Dark With Excessive Bright etc
Peter Herresthal (violin); Arctic
Philharmonic/Tim Weiss et al
BIS BIS-2572
Reviewed June 2023
A showcase of orchestral
works by the New York-
based composer,
performed by two
Norwegian ensembles.
At its heart are two takes
on her evocative 2021 concerto Dark With
Excessive Bright, originally penned for
double bass, which sits among other
notable premiere recordings.
nominations
Le Voyage Songs by Bizet, Ravel et al
Alexandra Lowe (soprano),
Patrick Milne (piano)
Champs Hill Records CHRCD169
Reviewed July 2023
Lowe and Milne were
given ample room to
showcase their
respective talents in this
appealing programme of
French songs inspired by
Greece, the Middle East and Spain. Milne
was a sensitive accompanist to Lowe’s
warm and expressive soprano voice, our
original review noting her impressive
command of the language.

Fauré Lutyens • Maconchy • Visages Baroques Works by JS Bach,

Nocturnes & Barcarolles Errollyn Wallen Rameau, Royer, Forqueray, Duphly
Marc-André Hamelin (piano) Works for Piano & Orchestra Raphaël Feuillâtre (guitar)
Hyperion CDA68331-2 Martin Jones, Rebeca Omordia (piano); Deutsche Grammophon 486 4073
Reviewed November 2023 BBC Concert Orchestra/John Andrews Reviewed June 2023
Marc-André Hamelin Resonus RES10315 This debut saw French
dug deep to bring out the Reviewed June 2023 guitarist Raphaël
drama of Fauré’s Works spanning decades Feuillâtre share not only
Nocturnes and made up this set of his talent as a performer
Barcarolles, indeed the premiere recordings, but also his skill as a
Canadian pianist Maconchy’s 1941 transcriber in an
showcased the power and beauty of the Dialogue just as ‘exquisite, joyfully presented programme’.
composer’s music through superb appealing an addition to Feuillâtre reframed works by JS Bach and
technique and careful thought. These were the repertoire as Errollyn Wallen’s own French contemporaries, our review citing
magisterial performances that demanded modern offering. These were ‘discoveries his ‘supple sensitivity’ and ‘formidable yet
repeated listening. you’ll want to hear many times again’. remarkably unshowy expressive power’.

Profesión Sola – Music for Viola by Mirrors Works by Ravel, Unsuk Chin,
Works by Barrios, Ginastera, Villa-Lobos Women Composers Rachmaninov, Freya Waley-Cohen et al
Sean Shibe (guitar) Works by Amanda Feery, Sally Beamish, George Xiaoyuan Fu (piano)
Pentatone PTC 5187 054 Thea Musgrave et al Platoon Music PLAT15459
Reviewed Christmas 2023 Rosalind Ventris (viola) Reviewed February 2023
The always adventurous Delphian DCD34292 Ravel’s Miroirs was the
Scottish guitarist took a Reviewed March 2023 starting point for this
trip to South America for This ‘altogether breathtaking keyboard
this survey of some of commendable album’ essay by American
the continent’s most saw violist Rosalind pianist George Xiaoyuan
arresting music. Our Ventris explore Fu. His intelligent
original review called it ‘a gleaming and overlooked repertoire approach to the music was fuelled by deep
brilliant album that doesn’t fail to awaken written by women emotion and understanding of the wide
the senses to the exhilarating world of composers. The result was something of a variety of repertoire. That and Fu’s
unadulterated acoustic sound’. Par for the treasure trove, Ventris’s programme entrancing lightness of touch made for a
course for this thrilling artist. ‘beautiful, varied and enlightening’. memorable debut.

Now head to www.classical-music.com/awards to vote for your favourites! BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 29
Rhapsody in Blue

When George Gershwin brought together the worlds

of jazz and classical in the premiere of his Rhapsody
in Blue 100 years ago in New York, a whole new
soundworld was born, as Mervyn Cooke relates

‘H
ow trite and feeble as ‘nauseous claptrap, so Cultural elitism was
and conventional dull, patchy, thin, vulgar, undoubtedly at the
the tunes are; how long-winded and inane heart of the malaise –
sentimental and that the average movie that a Tin Pan Alley
vapid the harmonic audience would be bored tunesmith should dare to
treatment, under its disguise of fussy by it… This cheap and silly try his hand at composing
and futile counterpoint! … Weep over the affair seemed pitifully futile concert music! It’s notable
lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so and inept.’ As late as 1935, that the reviewer of Porgy
derivative, so stale, so inexpressive!’ Such fewer than two years before disliked the commercial
was the verdict of the New York Tribune on Gershwin’s untimely death potential of the opera’s
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, in a scathing from a brain tumour at songs (describing them
review of the premiere in February 1924. just 38, New York’s Herald as ‘sure-fire rubbish’
Yet Gershwin’s piece is today considered to Tribune described the vocal which would ‘no doubt
be a pioneering example numbers in Porgy and Bess – enhance his fame and popularity’), while
of symphonic jazz and, destined to become An American in Paris was apparently so
with the passage of some of the best-loved songs tawdry that even the cinema-going hoi
time, it becomes ever of all time – as the new polloi would tire of it. Similarly, Rhapsody
harder to recapture just opera’s ‘cardinal weakness’ in Blue was panned for being ‘trite’ and
how provocative and and the ‘blemish on its ‘sentimental’. True, Gershwin did play into
controversial the idea musical integrity’. the classical critics’ hands by making his
seemed at the time. Why this thoroughly Rhapsody rather loose in its structure – a
Gershwin would nasty critical backlash on criticism which used to be hurled at some
soon be no stranger to the American East Coast, of Tchaikovsky’s and Grieg’s best-loved
tetchy reviews. Four where Gershwin was fast pieces. This was a consequence of his bold
years later, the New York becoming established attempt to meld elements drawn from
Telegram dismissed his as a pre-eminent figure jazz, popular music and the Romantic
GETTY

An American in Paris in popular songwriting? rhapsodising of Liszt.

30 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

By George:
Gershwin pictured with
the original score to
Rhapsody in Blue; (opposite)
subsequent success came
with Porgy and Bess and
An American in Paris

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 31

 Piano man:
George Gershwin
on vacation in 1930
RHAPSODY IN BLUE WAS
commissioned for ‘An Experiment
in Modern Music’, to be held at New
York’s Aeolian Hall on 12 February
1924. The date was Abraham Lincoln’s
birthday, and the patriotic spirit
underlying the event was evident
in the central question it sought to
address: ‘What is American Music?’
Luminaries adjudicating on this
conundrum included Sergei
Rachmaninov and violinist
Jascha Heifetz (neither of
whom had been born
in the US), and a critics’
committee was also in
attendance. The venture
was the brainchild of Paul
Whiteman, one of New York’s most
successful dance-band leaders,
who conducted the concert with
his orchestra from the Palais Royal,
32 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
an exclusive white-tie-and-tails
ballroom located on West 48th
Street between Seventh
Avenue and Broadway.
Whiteman remains best
known for his connection
with Rhapsody in Blue,
but he was a major figure in
popular music at the time and
his historical significance has
been consistently (and often unfairly)
downplayed in the literature on jazz.
This is largely because he had the
effrontery, as a wealthy white American,
to style himself as ‘The King of Jazz’. For
those who regarded jazz as the exclusive
creative property of African Americans,
Whiteman’s brand of dance music –
pre-composed rather than improvised
– seemed a pale imitation of the real
thing. But Whiteman’s arrangements
were slick and sophisticated, and drew
heavily on the modern concert music
in which he, as a former professional
violinist, was deeply interested. The
absorption into his music of harmonies
inspired by French impressionist
composers was to prove a major ingredient
of the big-band swing style which came
to dominate the globe in the 1930s – and
which owed, in essence, little to the
‘authentic’ jazz born in New Orleans in the

1910s. One of the most highly regarded of
African American jazz musicians, Duke
Ellington, declared of Whiteman’s epithet
‘King of Jazz’ that ‘no one as yet has come
near carrying that title with more certainty
and dignity’. French composer Darius
Milhaud, who had (in the year before
Rhapsody in Blue) composed a stunningly
inventive symphonic-jazz ballet called La
création du monde, described Whiteman’s
band as possessing ‘the precision of an
elegant, well-oiled machine, a sort of Rolls-
Royce of dance music’.
The ‘Experiment in Modern Music’
had a carefully planned programme, with
sections showcasing various aspects of
jazz and classical music, and the potential
interaction between them. Novelty pianist
Zez Confrey performed four of his pieces
under the heading of ‘An Experiment’.
Whiteman had rashly declared in his pre-
concert publicity that Irving Berlin was
to write something new for the event, but
Berlin hadn’t been consulted and refused
to participate, so a selection of his existing
tunes was instead presented under the
title ‘Semisymphonic Arrangement of
Popular Melodies’. Victor Herbert, one
of the most lauded American composers
HUGO GLENDINNING, RODRIGO PEREZ, CLIVE BARDA/ARENA PAL
of his generation, contributed a ‘Suite
of Serenades’ couched in various quasi-
ethnic styles.
Rhapsody in Blue formed the climax
of the proceedings, scheduled as the
penultimate piece in the programme.
The concert ended, somewhat bizarrely,
with a performance of one of Elgar’s
Pomp and Circumstance marches (under
the heading ‘In the Field of Classics’),
though this final item was dropped
Made in Manhattan: (left) the Rhapsody was
premiered at New York’s Aeolian Hall; (opposite
page) a lobby card for the 1930 film King of Jazz,
starring bandleader Paul Whiteman (bottom)
when Whiteman subsequently took his
‘Experiment’ on tour.
Whiteman put up $11,000 (roughly
$200,000 in today’s money) in order to
mount the ‘Experiment’, and estimated
that he lost $7,000 on the venture. He was
beset by an attack of nerves before going
on stage, and slipped outside to see if there
was much of an audience gathering in
the snowy street. He witnessed a crowd
‘fighting to get in the door’ and later
learned from the box-office staff that ‘they
could have sold out the house ten times
over’. When Whiteman finally went on
stage, the portly maestro’s demeanour was
wickedly described by the New York Times
critic Olin Downes: ‘He does not conduct.
He trembles, wabbles, quivers – a piece of
jazz jelly, conducting the orchestra with
the back of the trouser of the right leg.’ The
stage was full of gaudy clutter, including
Rhapsody in Blue
was panned for
being ‘trite’ and
‘sentimental’
several partly deconstructed pianos, a
battery of exotic percussion instruments,
some of them kitchen utensils, and statues
of two austere Chinese mandarins on
pillars. This razzmatazz was repeated
when the concert went on tour, the
stage bedecked with gold and vermilion
curtains and white grand pianos, and
perfumed by a multi-coloured light show.
Legend has it that Gershwin, then only
25, had forgotten about Whiteman’s
invitation to compose Rhapsody in Blue,
and it was only when he read in the press
that Rachmaninov would be present at the
concert and that Gershwin was ‘reported
to be at work on a jazz concerto’ that he
was spurred into action. Only five weeks
remained before the event and Whiteman
agreed that Gershwin would be required
merely to produce a piano score of the
work; the orchestration would be handled
by his trusted arranger, Ferd Grofé. As a
result, the original scoring of Rhapsody
in Blue was for dance band, arranged
Rhapsody in Blue
Down the hatch: disposing of liquor in New York
Teapots and Fidgety Feet
The US in February 1924
Fancy a drink? Those heading to the
Aeolian Hall bar during the ‘An Experiment
in Modern Music’ concert would have
found nothing stronger than Coca-Cola,
as the US was four years into the era
of Prohibition, introduced during the
presidency of Woodrow Wilson. Though
the production and sale of alcohol was
banned, consumption of it was not, and
a significant stash was kept by many
wealthier families – including Wilson’s,
enabling them to raise a toast to the great
man when he died on 3 February 1924.
Meanwhile, the current president
Calvin Coolidge was busy sorting out the
aftermath of the Teapot Dome scandal.
Relating to bribery involving the petroleum
industry, the scandal would later see
former secretary of the interior Albert Fall
jailed and cast a shadow over the brief
presidency of Coolidge’s predecessor,
Warren Harding. Coolidge did find time,
on 22 February, to make the first ever
radio address from the White House.
Beyond the Aeolian Hall, musically
inclined New Yorkers might be heard
whistling ‘It ain’t gonna rain no mo’’, the
big hit by the ukulele-wielding Wendell
Hall, while on 18 February, jazz cornet
player Bix Beiderbecke (pictured below)
headed into the studio with his band The
Wolverines for the first time to record
gold-fronted Radiator
Building on West
40th Street, were
making their mark
on a rapidly
changing cityscape.

Blue note:
Tommy Smith
and the SNJO
Different shades of Blue
Alternative approaches
Among the many,
many recordings
of Rhapsody in
Blue available,
the majority
feature the work in
Grofé’s symphony
orchestra
arrangement. For the jazz band original,
however, try pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s
2009 recording with members of the
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under
Marin Alsop (Decca 478 2189).
Why, though, settle for just one piano?
Sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque have
recorded the work both in an opulent
version for two pianos and orchestra with
the Cleveland Orchestra under Riccardo
Chailly (Decca 466 4242) and by themselves
in an arrangement for piano duet (Philips
400 0222). Going further are the Gershwin
Piano Quartet in André Desponds’s
arrangement for, yes, four pianos (Jecklin
JD720-2), while the
piano is dispensed
with entirely in a
version for organ
and brass band,
recorded by
Wolfgang Sieber
and the Swiss Brass
Consort (Phonoplay PCD 7770).
Few works can match Rhapsody in
Blue when it comes to being reimagined
in all manner of ways – even the shortest
internet hunt for alternative takes on it
rewards with riches galore. Don’t, however,
miss the 50-minute, improv-rich jazz epic
by saxophonist Tommy Smith, pianist Brian
Kellock and the Scottish National Jazz
Orchestra from 2009 (Spartacus Records
STS013) or, at the other end of the scale,
Richard Clayderman’s six-minute disco
reduction from 1978 (YouTube).
34 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Sweet inspiration: (right) Ferde Grofé, the arranger
who fleshed out the Rhapsody’s skeleton; (below)
the label of the original 1924 Victor recording;
(bottom) Whistler’s Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old
Battersea Bridge, as admired by Ira Gershwin
by Grofé from Gershwin’s two-piano
sketch. Grofé was a frequent visitor at the
apartment where the composer still lived
with his parents and siblings: he recalled
that Gershwin’s mother ‘watched our
labors with loving interest… and taught
me to appreciate Russian tea, which she
brewed for us when we rested’. (Gershwin’s
family heritage was Russian-Jewish.) They
worked on the upright piano in a back
room on which George and his lyricist
brother Ira wrote some of their most
famous songs.
Grofé expanded his
initial scoring in 1926 for a
Broadway pit orchestra, but
it was his subsequent and
– some might say – rather
overblown arrangement
for symphony orchestra
(first published in 1942) that
became established in the classical
repertory. In a gratuitous nod towards
the work’s jazz heritage, this version still
included optional parts for banjo and
saxophones. Gershwin scholar David
Schiff has pointed out that, in the original
version, the band seemed jazzy and the
solo piano seemed more classical, whereas
in the symphonic version, the roles
became strangely reversed.
Grofé’s role in bringing Rhapsody in
Blue to life was not without repercussions.
It led to unfounded allegations that
Gershwin was himself an incompetent
orchestrator. Anyone who
has heard An American
in Paris and Porgy and
Bess (both orchestrated
by the composer) will be
fully aware of Gershwin’s
consummate mastery of the
orchestra. Sadly, and perhaps still in the
(now litigious) spirit of ‘What is American
music?’, Gershwin and Grofé eventually
fell out over who enjoyed the primary
rights to the various scores of Rhapsody
in Blue. Grofé claimed that his work as
arranger extended far beyond merely
orchestrating the piece, whereas Gershwin
retorted that the score from which Grofé
worked contained clear annotations about
the intended instrumentation.
Rhapsody in Blue was conceived on a
train journey that Gershwin took to Boston
in 1923 for the opening of his show Sweet
Little Devil. He recalled: ‘It was on the train,
with its steely rhythms, its rattlety-bang
that is so often stimulating to a composer...
that I suddenly heard – even saw on paper
– the complete structure of the Rhapsody…
I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope
of America – of our vast melting pot, of our
incomparable national pep, our blues, our
metropolitan madness.’ He later described
the piece’s attempted melding of jazz
and classical elements as ‘a difficult and
treacherous task’.
The Rhapsody was still not completed
by the time of the Whiteman concert and
Gershwin, who took the solo part at the
first performance (and was described
by one reviewer as having come on stage
‘sheepishly’), reportedly improvised
passages on the spur of the moment.
 Rhapsody in Blue

Initially conceived as An American

Rhapsody, the definitive title had been
suggested by Ira after having been deeply
impressed by Whistler’s blue-drenched
paintings which he had seen at New York’s
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Gershwin and Whiteman repeated
their concert at the Aeolian Hall in March
1924, and then presented it at the city’s
Carnegie Hall in April. As well as touring
the US, Whiteman also took it to Europe in
1926, perhaps tapping into the sentiment
expressed to Gershwin by his friend Carl
Van Vechten in a letter to the composer:
‘Go straight on, and you will knock all
Europe silly’.
Van Vechten, the author of the first
scholarly study of Gershwin’s music, felt
that he had not only written ‘the finest
piece of serious music that had ever come
out of America’, but also ‘the most effective
concerto for piano that anybody had
written since Tchaikovsky’s’. (One can only
hope that Rachmaninov did not chance
upon the 1925 issue of Vanity Fair in which
this comment appeared, though he might
have been flattered that Frederick Jacobi,
professor of composition at New York’s
Juilliard School, had expressed the wish
that Rachmaninov might have given
Gershwin some timely advice about how to On the air:
Gershwin in 1934 at the
develop the slow, expressive theme at the studios of CBS, where he
heart of the Rhapsody.) hosted a weekly radio show
Gershwin made an acoustic recording
of the piece for Victor in June 1924 and an
electrical recording in April 1927. Both
embodied significant cuts to the music,
given the limitations of 78rpm recording ‘You can cut out parts of the Rhapsody
technology, but the composer also made
a solo piano roll of the complete piece without affecting the whole in any way’
in 1925. In 1934, to mark the ten-year
anniversary of the first performance, paste of flour and water.’ He admittedly in 1935 noted that Rhapsody in Blue was
Gershwin played the Rhapsody in no fewer found the big tunes ‘terrific – inspired, the most internationally successful
than 28 US and Canadian cities over the God-given’, but his overall verdict was concert piece ever written by an American,
course of just 29 days. By this time, he that ‘you can cut out parts of it without praising it as ‘a thoroughly professional
had already been offered $50,000 for the affecting the whole in any way except to job executed by a man who knew how to
rights to make the piece into a film; in 1987, make it shorter.’ While classically minded put over a direct musical idea’. Thomson’s
United Airlines paid $300,000 per annum commentators lamented the work’s alleged verdict on Porgy and Bess is equally
to use the music in its TV commercials. structural weaknesses, jazz musicians felt relevant to the earlier piece: he admired
Critical opinions on Rhapsody in Blue it simply wasn’t jazzy enough: later jazzed- the music’s ‘lack of respectability, the
remained divided. Although a passionate up reworkings of the music included those way it can be popular and vulgar and go
advocate of symphonic jazz, Leonard by Glenn Miller (1941), Duke Ellington its way as a professional piece… I like to
Bernstein had a dim view of the piece. In (1960) and Marcus Roberts (1996). think of Gershwin as having presented
1955, he declared that the work was ‘not a Perhaps the most pertinent assessment his astonished and somewhat perturbed
composition at all. It’s a string of separate of the work’s significance came from public with a real live baby, all warm and
GETTY

paragraphs stuck together – with a thin composer and critic Virgil Thomson, who dripping and friendly.’

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 35

36 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
 Robert von Bahr

If I’d followed advice,

I’d never have started
recording. Everyone said
there were easier ways
to go bankrupt
THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW

Robert von Bahr

is seated at his desk in the eco-home he
Fifty years ago, the Swede set up
created near Stockholm. (The building,
BIS as a self-funded enterprise
like its owner, is self-sufficient in energy.)
with an important principle: to
While clearly proud of his successes,
put musicians first. That’s still
he repeatedly steers our conversation
at his record label’s heart today,
he tells Andrew Stewart back to the artistry and industry of the
musicians and colleagues who have helped
PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVID KORNFELD
raise BIS to near-sacred status among
classical record connoisseurs. News of the

D
oing things by halves is not for company’s sale to Platoon, Apple Music’s
Robert von Bahr. Even if it were, music services arm, broke shortly before
the remaining achievements of our interview. The deal, observes the
his 80 years would still be enough to fill a label’s founder, guarantees its future. ‘I
book. His story opens in an age when it was don’t want BIS to disappear. None of my
possible for a music student, with a little seven children would be willing to take it
help from Sweden’s leading symphony over. I’m 80, and one day the Grim Reaper
orchestra, to learn the art of making is going to knock at the door. Unless I did
records by trial and error, and embraces the something, I felt BIS would sink without
brave new world of instant online access to a trace. When the opportunity came to
countless classical albums. And it contains be part of Apple, with its resources and
telling details – about how the director of interest in getting into the classical music
BIS Records still packs customer orders, game, it was a pretty easy decision. They
how he replies to every pitch, and how have distribution possibilities that I could
he has earned a matchless reputation for only dream of. I think our union with a
honesty and integrity since launching his high-tech company is a game-changer.’
company over half a century ago. Von Bahr views retirement as a post-
‘Music keeps me young at heart,’ he mortem condition. He plans to continue
says when we speak via Zoom. Von Bahr making records for as long as fate

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 37

Robert von Bahr

permits, including with young talents

such as pianists Alexandre Kantorow and
Haochen Zhang, violinist Johan Dalene
and the Chiaroscuro Quartet. ‘If we sniff
that an artist really has something to say,
we stick with them,’ he confides. ‘There
has to be something that excites us, even if
we can’t say why. I only care if they make
me sit up and take notice.’
This ‘a-ha’ response led von Bahr to
record JS Bach’s complete sacred cantatas
with an unknown Japanese early music
ensemble; take on Paul Wee, a practising
barrister, to record fearfully difficult piano
works by Alkan and Thalberg; and engage
the young Leonidas Kavakos to make the
world premiere recording of the original
version of Sibelius’s Violin Concerto.
‘I believe that if you treat artists on an
equal footing, it’s good for them, it’s good
for us and it’s good for business,’ von Bahr
comments. ‘I won’t hide the fact that we’ve
been hugely profitable. But I didn’t come
at this to earn a lot of money. It’s always
been about collaborating with the artists.
We make good music and ensure that it
goes out to the world as such. We’re honest,
we deal on the level and have never, ever
cheated anybody: not artists, not creditors,
not composers, not anyone. It’s just not on
– I won’t do that!’
Does his way of doing business stem
from his upbringing? ‘I don’t know whence
it comes,’ he replies. ‘I don’t think it was the doing,’ he observes. ‘I admire that man
upbringing – that was a horrible thing! It’s
not an upbringing I would like to give my
‘Treating artists on an immensely. There’s nothing of the big-
star conductor about him but what he’s
children, let’s put it that way. I’m not saying
I’m better than anybody else, but maybe a
equal footing is good achieved is uniquely good in my opinion.’
Robert von Bahr recounts the origin
little bit different in how I communicate for them, good for us story of BIS with relish. Successful
with people, what I do and how I do it.’ independent classical labels, he notes,
Robert’s father Lars, a civil engineer, and and good for business’ were vanishingly rare half a century
mother, the distinguished Finnish ballet ago. Many tried to capture a slice of the
dancer and choreographer Margaretha the great Swedish diva Birgit Nilsson, who classical market; most failed. What made a
von Bahr-Sorsa, divorced soon after accepted von Bahr’s invitation to make a self-taught Swedish sound engineer think
their boy’s fifth birthday. Margaretha’s lieder album. Subsequent recordings of he could beat the odds stacked against
musical family included Robert’s maternal the symphonies of Sibelius, Stenhammar entrants to the recording business? ‘If
great-grandfather, a renowned music and Tubin paved the way for the label’s I’d followed every piece of advice I got,
critic who signed his columns ‘Bis’, the monumental complete Sibelius Edition. Its I wouldn’t have done it,’ he comments.
musical term for a repeat. Von Bahr’s ongoing relationship with Masaaki Suzuki ‘Everyone said there were easier ways to
ancestral pseudonym, which works well and his Bach Collegium Japan began when go bankrupt!’ As a child he grew to hate
in a multitude of languages, supplied Suzuki’s bold proposal to record JS Bach’s piano lessons and dropped them in favour
an auspicious name for his record complete cantatas arrived in the post. A of playing competition bridge. He returned
company. While the catchy title initially profoundly sceptical von Bahr travelled to classical music in his late teens while
JOHN MILLAR, GETTY

became synonymous with recordings of to the BCJ’s homebase in Kobe and was listening to Bach’s St Matthew Passion at
works by overlooked Scandinavians, its astonished by the quality of what he heard Stockholm’s Engelbrekt Church. ‘I thought,
international profile was soon raised by there. ‘Masaaki really knows what he’s “Hey, I’d like to be part of that.”’

38 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


He became an Engelbrekt chorister and
joined a dozen other choirs. ‘That posed
logistical problems. But the singing took
me through Stockholm University without
the need for a loan.’ Studies in law and
languages proved invaluable for a future
record company director; he acquired
practical business nous, meanwhile, after
finishing his compulsory military service.
‘I was 19 and had no money, so I took three
jobs. I was a postman from 6am to 2pm,
worked for the state pension company
between 2pm and 8pm, and was a cashier
for the public transport system from 8pm.’
Von Bahr’s role in Stockholm’s night-
time economy was punctuated by long
gaps between subway workers’ shifts.
He found a lucrative side-hustle after
discovering that many older Swedish
coins, made from high-grade silver,
were worth more than their face value. A
friendly silversmith opened daily before
dawn to buy the latest haul of pre-1942
Hands-on approach: (clockwise from main)
Robert von Bahr working in the BIS warehouse;
soprano Birgit Nilsson recorded lieder for the label;
conductor Masaaki Suzuki proved a winner in Bach
coins in exchange for half the profit. After
von Bahr’s bullion business collapsed
overnight when a national newspaper
divulged the value of Sweden’s old
coinage, he found a fresh source of silver
in Switzerland. ‘I took to driving to see a
girlfriend in Basel three times a fortnight. I
bought as many silver coins as I could and
made a 15 per cent profit every trip.’ He
added Swiss-made Revox tape recorders
to his cargo, used one of its machines
to make archive recordings for sundry
choirs and secured permission to record
the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra’s
concerts. ‘I’d hang up microphones in
the hall and began learning by doing,’ he
recalls. ‘I recorded Segovia, the young
Barenboim, Birgit Nilsson in her heyday.’
He also enrolled at the Royal College of
Music in Stockholm to train as a music
teacher. ‘And then I got hitched to the
flautist Gunilla!’ The accompanying laugh
references his second, enduring marriage
to another flute player, Sharon Bezaly, a
major contributor to the BIS catalogue.
‘You see, I have a one-track mind!’
Convinced that the first Mrs von Bahr
was ready to record, he wrote to Sweden’s
labels. Undeterred by serial rejections, he
decided to make the recording himself.
‘I sent them the master tape. Only one
company was prepared to release the
record, on condition that they got the
tape, the mastering, the artwork, text and
translations for free and we bought 500
copies at retail price. And forget about
royalties!’ Gunilla von Bahr’s debut disc,
released by Europafilm, sold well. They
suggested she make another. ‘“That’s a
good idea,” I said. “We’ll do it ourselves.”
That’s how BIS started. I was in a rage!’
Von Bahr began asking musician
friends how their recording careers
were progressing. Those with records to
their name had been obliged to accept
draconian contracts. ‘I put a hypothetical
proposition to them: “If I started a
recording company on a different tack,
would you be part of it?” They said they’d
be delighted. Our contracts are short, to
the point and always on the side of the
artist. I’ve been living by those principles
ever since. This is an absolute must for me.
Someone had to go against the unfair way
recording companies treated artists, and
we’ve been doing that for 50 years.’
A new deal:
Neeme Järvi and
the Gothenburg
Symphony worked
with BIS early on
Taking on the unions
A fresh way of working
Robert von Bahr
(left) welcomes
plaudits and
prizes. But he feels
one of his label’s
most significant
contributions
to the recording
business has escaped attention. It
arose following Neeme Järvi’s arrival
as chief conductor of the Gothenburg
Symphony Orchestra in 1982. Von
Bahr wanted to record with them but
was unwilling to pay the heavy upfront
fees dictated by union rules. After
a year of negotiations, he brokered
a deal with the Swedish Musicians’
Union: the Gothenburg Symphony
would record for no advance fee while
its musicians would receive holiday
time equal to hours spent recording.
‘The players said they’d leave the
union if they said no,’ recalls von
Bahr. ‘They accepted it and it worked
well. Everyone was happy – even the
union. This principle spread to the
Stockholm Phil, the Malmö Symphony
and the other Swedish orchestras
and beyond, to Denmark and thence
around Europe. If we hadn’t broken
the union’s hold, so many orchestral
recordings would never have been
made. We and the Gothenburg
Symphony were the icebreaker that
enabled the industry to work in a new
way. It became possible for other
independents to record orchestral
music that would otherwise be
completely unknown. This is the thing
I’m most proud about.’
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 39
Oscar Levant
He’s got rhythm
Oscar Levant built his reputation as an actor and
radio host, but this talented pianist was also a key
interpreter of Gershwin’s music, says Misha Donat
‘U
pper berth – lower berth. That’s
the difference between talent
and genius,’ muttered George
Gershwin to his friend Oscar
Levant as he settled down for the night in
the more comfortable lower bunk. The two
musicians were on the sleeper from New York to
Pittsburgh, where Gershwin was due to perform
his Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F. The
conductor Bill Daly had been held up in New
York, and Levant was to help out by playing the
solos while Gershwin rehearsed the orchestra.
If Oscar Levant was no genius on the level of
Gershwin, he was nothing if not multi-talented.
Pianist, composer, actor, writer, radio show
host – he managed all those careers throughout
his life. As a Gershwin player he was second
only to the composer himself, and at the peak
of his career, in the early 1940s, his concert fee
was higher than those commanded by Vladimir
Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein – not because
he was regarded as a finer pianist (he wasn’t), but
because his radio show Information Please had a
regular audience of 12 million in the US.
Oscar Levant was born in Pittsburgh on
27 December 1906, the youngest son of an
Orthodox Jewish family. He received his first
piano lessons from one of his brothers, and soon
developed into a prodigy. On the day before his
first lesson at high school, Paderewski was to give
a recital in Pittsburgh. The 12-year-old Levant
asked his new teacher if he wanted to know what
the famous pianist was going to play. Instead of
rattling off the pieces verbally, Levant sat at the
GETTY
piano and played the entire programme.
40 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
A born entertainer:
Oscar Levant at a CBS
Radio jam session in 1942;
(opposite) Levant with
Robert Alda in the Gershwin
biopic Rhapsody in Blue
When, in February 1924, Paul Whiteman and
his orchestra presented his ‘An Experiment in
Modern Music’ concert in New York with the
premiere of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue as its
highlight (see p30), Levant’s ears pricked up. On
hearing the piece, he immediately learned the
solo part. He was to become closely associated
with it for the rest of his life, playing it once
with Toscanini and recording it twice. He also
performed it with Paul Whiteman in the 1945
Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue.
On hearing Rhapsody
in Blue, Levant
immediately learned
the solo piano part
As an actor, Levant made his debut on
Broadway at the age of 21 in Burlesque, adapted
by Clifford Odets from a story by Fannie Hurst.
Levant was cast as a pianist and songwriter, and
the play, which also featured a young Barbara
Stanwyck, was filmed the following year as The
Dance of Life, again with Levant. ‘I played an
unsympathetic part – myself,’ he commented.
He played a thinly disguised version of himself
in most of his later films too. In the Vincente
Minnelli musical An American in Paris he
appears as Gene Kelly’s unemployed pianist
friend, and in an egomaniacal dream sequence
performs the finale from Gershwin’s Concerto
in F, managing through film trickery to appear
not only as the soloist, but also all the orchestral
players and an enthusiastic audience member.
In the Joan Crawford melodrama Humoresque
(another Clifford Odets script based on Fannie
Hurst), Levant gives his violinist friend, played
by John Garfield, advice from the piano stool
that might have been intended for himself: ‘It
isn’t what you are, it’s what you don’t become
that hurts.’ In an attempt to give the impression
that Garfield was actually playing the violin
on the soundtrack, his arms were pinned to his
sides while the instrument was attached to his
chin, and two violinists (one of them Isaac Stern)
crouched with their faces out of camera-shot and
did the playing – one the bowing, the other the
fingering. The soundtrack was recorded by Stern
and Levant. After a few takes, Levant suggested,
‘Why don’t the five of us do a concert tour?’
My favourite among the films in which
Levant appeared is The Band Wagon – a Minnelli
musical made in 1953, starring Fred Astaire and
Cyd Charisse, and with songs by Howard Dietz
and Arthur Schwartz. But by this time Levant
was clearly ill, and he couldn’t take an active part
in any of the energetic musical numbers. He had
always been a notorious hypochondriac and had
become addicted to prescription drugs. He was
taking a mixture of Dexedrine and Thorazine
– a cocktail whose effect he described as ‘chaos
in search of frenzy’. Levant made one last film
for Minnelli – The Cobweb – in which he played
another part that might have been modelled on
himself: a patient in a psychiatric hospital.
For all his inbred talent for showbusiness,
Levant made a valiant attempt to become
a serious composer. He took lessons with
Schoenberg, who told him at their first meeting
‘You have a very talented face.’ Levant eventually
commissioned Schoenberg to compose his
Piano Concerto, but then refused to come up
with the high fee the composer was demanding
for the dedication and the privilege of giving
the work’s premiere. In the end, the concerto’s
first performance was given by Schoenberg’s
former pupil and long-time collaborator

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 41

Oscar Levant
All about George
Levant and the Rhapsody
For a long
time, the
Rhapsody
in Blue was
more or less
the only
piece Oscar
Levant
played. After he’d recorded
it for Brunswick Records
early in 1925, he called up
Gershwin (above), hoping to
get his approval – only to
learn the composer firmly
preferred his own recorded
version for Victor. ‘After my
fourth appearance as soloist
in the Rhapsody,’ Levant later
said, ‘my mother wrote me a
brief note, subtly suggesting
that there were other works
for piano and orchestra… My
joy at hearing that Gershwin
had been commissioned
by the New York Symphony
to write a concerto could
hardly have been exceeded
by his – for now I would
have another piece to play.
Automatically, my repertoire
would be doubled.’
Once Levant had been
admitted to Gershwin’s circle
of close friends, they tried
out his new pieces together
on the two pianos in his
New York apartment. ‘I got
so much, vicariously, out of
his ability and creativeness,’
Levant confessed, ‘that
whatever latent talents I had
were completely submerged…
He had such fluency at the
piano and so steady a surge
of ideas that any time he sat
down just to amuse himself
GETTY
something came of it.’
42 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Edward Steuermann. Levant later received
encouragement from Aaron Copland – and
from Bernard Herrmann, who persuaded him
to compose a Sinfonietta and even gave him
lessons in orchestration. ‘Mine,’ said Levant,
‘was the sort of piece in which nobody knew
what was going on – including the composer,
the conductor and the critics. Consequently I
got pretty good notices.’
As a wit, Levant could hold his own with such
friends of his as Dorothy Parker, SJ Perelman
and George S Kaufman. When Kenneth Tynan
His joking stopped
him from being taken
seriously as a musician
interviewed Perelman and Groucho Marx for
The Observer, they picked Levant as one of the
three fastest on the draw for one-liners – the
others being Kaufman and Irving Brecher, who
wrote two of the Marx Brothers’ films. Levant
had appeared (as a pianist named Oscar Farrar)
in Doris Day’s first film, Romance on the High
Seas. When she became synonymous with
the innocent all-American girl next door, he
famously quipped ‘I knew Doris Day before
she was a virgin’.
Levant’s crabby personality was legendary.
Ernst Lubitsch’s comedy That Uncertain
Feeling features an obnoxious pianist who
creates mayhem in the bourgeois marriage of
Merle Oberon and Melvyn Douglas. The part,
brilliantly played by Burgess Meredith, was
reputedly modelled on Levant. Tynan summed
him up accurately: ‘Pearl is disease of oyster;
Levant is disease of Hollywood.’
In the end, it may have been Levant’s talent
for wisecracking that put paid to his ambition
Baby steps: (left) Fred Astaire,
Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant
in the 1953 film The Band Wagon;
(above) the artwork for one of
Levant’s best-known songs
to be taken seriously as a musician. The pieces
he wrote during his period of study with
Schoenberg – a Piano Concerto which he
performed with the NBC Symphony, a String
Quartet premiered by the famous Kolisch
Quartet, and a Nocturne for orchestra – have
sunk without trace. On the other hand, of the
80-odd songs he composed, at least one –
‘Blame it on my youth’ – is still widely known,
and was recorded by such artists as Chet Baker,
Art Farmer, Keith Jarrett and Nat King Cole.
Characteristically, Levant complained that it
brought back more memories than royalties.
Levant’s own recordings as a pianist, all made
for Columbia, include études, polonaises and
mazurkas by Chopin, plus music by Debussy
and Liszt, and Grieg and Tchaikovsky’s
concertos (the latter with the Philadelphia
Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy).
But it is on his Gershwin performances that his
reputation rests. He played all the major works
through to the composer, so his interpretations
have the stamp of authority.
That may not have helped him much
when, after Gershwin’s early death in 1937,
he performed the Concerto in F with the
NBC Symphony and Toscanini. Faced with
differences of opinion between them about
how certain passages should go, Levant told the
Italian maestro, ‘Mr Gershwin wanted it this
way’ – to which Toscanini replied, ‘That-a poor
boy, he was a-sick.’ Be that as it may, Levant’s
recordings of the Rhapsody in Blue (with
Ormandy) and the ‘I Got Rhythm’ Variations
(with Morton Gould and his Orchestra) have
a rhythmic verve and a spontaneity that
have never been surpassed. So much did
Levant fall under the spell of Gershwin that a
chapter devoted to him in his autobiography A
Smattering of Ignorance is entitled – not without
a tinge of regret – ‘My Life’.
 LA SERENISSIMA
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Musical siblings
Keep it in the family
Sibling connections can lead to meaningful musical partnerships – as
long as childhood rivalries don’t get in the way, writes Claire Jackson
T
he audience begins to clap, gradually
gathering speed in time with the
pianists on stage. Willed on by the
percussive accelerando, the duo
zips through Zorba’s Dance, a piece by Greek
composer Mikis Theodorakis that evokes
ouzo-soaked taverns and hot summer nights.
The dark-haired pianists, virtually identical in
sunglasses and denim shorts, finish their own
arrangement of Greece’s popular musical export
with a flourish. As the sun makes a lengthy
retreat behind the tree-lined stage, musicians
invite young audience members to try out some
instruments. A child delights at blowing a
clarinet mouthpiece, another tentatively presses
piano keys. These guests have come from one
of the refugee camps that remain on Lesbos, the
Turkey-adjacent island that unwittingly became
the centre of the 2015 migrant crisis.
A short while later, the stage lights – and
mosquito repellent – are out in full force. The
pianists, Greek-German sisters Danae and
Kiveli Dörken, are back. Alternating between
Greek and English, the Dörkens welcome visitors
to the Molyvos International Music Festival
(MIMF), the event they established – along with
their Lesbos-born mother Lito Dakou – in 2014.
The Berlin-based duo are prodigal daughters
of Molyvos, the picturesque village that they
fill with chamber music every August. Having
played piano duets since Kiveli joined big sister
Danae at the keyboard (the Theodorakis piece
features on their latest album, Apollo & Dionysus,
NIKOLAJ LUND, GETTY
alongside works by Glass, Mendelssohn, Brahms
and others), co-creating a festival seemed like
a natural step. ‘Working together feels like our
superpower,’ says Kiveli. ‘We can accomplish so
44 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
much more.’ Facing hurdles that have included
the European financial crisis, huge numbers
of displaced people, a pandemic and sprawling
forest fires, two artistic heads proved better than
one. The sisters have reflected contemporary
challenges in their programming, from 2016’s
‘Crossroads’ theme to 2023’s ‘Symbiosis’, and are
preparing to curate a special tenth edition for
2024. ‘It’s been challenging, but together we can
keep going,’ says Danae. ‘No-one knows us better
than we do each other,’ adds Kiveli.
While working with a sibling might be an
anathema to many (those birth-order tropes can
be hard to avoid), there are plenty who have made
a success out of it. Polish émigrés the Wonsals
went on to establish a leading film studio,
under the anglicised version of their name,
Warner Bros, and the Kardashians have earned
millions from a reality TV series that follows the
Working relationships between the eponymous sisters.
Even in underground activities, it can pay to
together is like keep it in the family: the Kray twins are among
the UK’s most notorious historic criminals. So,
our superpower. it is unsurprising that when it comes to music,
We accomplish the pattern is repeated. It’s common in rock and
pop – from AC/DC to the White Stripes – and,
so much more perhaps unsurprisingly, chamber music, an
DVbDbWHDP artform reliant on intimacy. In Two Violins, One
Viola, A Cello and Me, Sonia Simmenauer’s recent
memoir about managing string quartets, violist
Krzysztof Chorzelski describes his time with the
Belcea Quartet as a ‘great stroke of luck’. This
was, he writes, because ‘through music, I found
the siblings I missed as a child’.
Elder sisters have a distinctive influence
over their younger family members during
childhood. Shortly after I started playing the
Cut from the same cloth:
pianist sisters Danae and
Kiveli Dörken; (opposite)
cellist Sheku and pianist
Isata of the Kanneh-
Mason clan

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 45

Musical siblings
flute, my sister took up the clarinet, following me
to various wind ensembles – and only years later
admitting she hadn’t enjoyed it all that much.
Perhaps left to her own devices, she might have
found her way to another, more suitable pastime.
‘I felt a desire to emulate Danae for many
years,’ says Kiveli. ‘I wanted to learn the piano
so that I could share that space with her. She
never discouraged me.’ Happily, like Danae,
Kiveli demonstrated prodigious talent, although
she says she always found practising to be a
struggle. ‘Danae was more disciplined. The times
when I enjoyed practising were when we played
together.’ Sometimes it was music for four hands,
but often the sisters would just sit together at
the stool. ‘Having Danae next to me makes it
easier to work,’ says Kiveli. The Dörkens follow
in the footsteps of Katia and Marielle Labèque,
the French piano duo with a vast repertoire and
discography, which includes 2014 album Sisters.
Like the Labèques, the Dörkens live together
with their partners and extended family.
Wolfgang Mozart similarly admired older
sister Maria Anna, known as ‘Nannerl’, who
seems to have been the impetus behind his early
musical forays. The two children performed
together as part of tours organised by their
father and Wolfgang wrote several pieces for
Nannerl to play, including the Prelude and Fugue
in C, K394 and the four Preludes K284a. The
46 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Two of a kind:
Angela Brower as
Dorabella and Julia
Kleiter as her sister
Fiordiligi in Mozart’s
Così fan tutte, 2016
siblings drew apart in later years, perhaps due to
Nannerl’s enforced retirement from the stage in
exchange for marriage, and the separation seems
to have been exacerbated by Wolfgang’s marriage
to Constanze. But until 1785, Wolfgang sent
Nannerl copies of his piano concertos, suggesting
the musical bond wasn’t so easily broken.
If one sibling relationship has the potential
for complication when combined with work
pressures, what happens when multiple brothers
and sisters are involved? The Hagen Quartet,
founded by siblings Lukas, Angelika, Veronika
and Clemens Hagen, ticked along for several
years after it was formed in the 1980s. The
siblings conveniently played the right assortment
of instruments for a string quartet. Of course,
this didn’t happen by chance – their father was
Mendelssohn first violinist in the Salzburg Mozarteum and
encouraged them to play together at home. The
adored his big Hagen Quartet’s biography artfully notes that
‘in 1987, Angelika Hagen left the quartet’. (To be
sister Fanny and replaced by Rainer Schmidt). As the copy also
the two developed observes, these changes in lineup affect most
ensembles – ‘these internal modifications from
their prodigious which few quartets are spared’. Sure, but the
stakes are higher when you are related to your
musicality in colleagues – the ongoing Barclay brothers’ fallout
proximity being a case in point in the business world.
Sibling relationships can often seem strange
to those who may not have direct or comparable
 Band of brothers
Fraternal success stories
Composer-lyricist team
George and Ira Gershwin
worked together for much
of their careers, writing
Family ties: (above) Rainer Schmidt performs with the by a letter in which Fanny tells Felix that he Broadway scores, popular
Hagen Quartet siblings, 2023; (opposite) the Dörken songs and, with DuBose
exerts a ‘daemonic’ influence over her.
sisters perform Zorba’s Dance at their Molyvos festival Heyward, 1935 opera Porgy
At the other end of the scale, the spectacle and Bess. Some decades
experience of them. The closeness between two of large families performing together has later, another set of brothers
sisters is gently mocked in Mozart’s operatic long delighted audiences. It draws inevitable arrived in Hollywood: Robert
farce Così fan tutte, which sees Fiordiligi and comparisons with the Von Trapp Family, a and Richard Sherman
Dorabella get into hot water trying (half- real-life Austrian singing group who inspired became staff songwriters
heartedly) to stay faithful to their fiancés. The Sound of Music. When the Kanneh-Mason for Walt Disney Studios,
Dynamics become further muddied when a siblings – seven brothers and sisters, all of whom producing hit soundtracks
brother or sister takes on a parental role, as was play either violin, piano or cello – appeared including Mary Poppins
the case with Johann Christoph Bach, who on Britain’s Got Talent in 2015, Simon Cowell’s (1964) and Bedknobs and
Broomsticks (1971). While
raised his younger sibling Johann Sebastian pronouncement was: ‘The fact you’re a family
not regular collaborators,
when the latter was orphaned at ten years old. makes this really special.’ The key to success is Andrew and Julian Lloyd
The elder Bach was the organist at St Michael’s maintaining separate careers as well as playing Webber have sometimes
Church in Ohrdruf and Johann Sebastian was together: Kanneh-Mason projects range from combined forces, notably
given organ lessons, as well as learning the basics an exquisite whole-family recording of Saint- in 1978 with Variations,
of organ construction when the instrument was Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals via the Kanneh- Andrew’s piece based on the
overhauled. It seems this period was important Mason Trio (pianist Isata, violinist Braimah and theme from Paganini’s 24th
in JS Bach’s development: his Capriccio in E cellist Sheku) to solo performances. Caprice, performed by his
major is dedicated to Johann Christoph. No-one has better experience of this balancing cellist brother (both pictured
Probably the most famous brother-sister act than the Bevan family, multiple generations above). Julian also recorded
twosome are the Mendelssohns: Felix adored who seem to have isolated the gene for excellent Lloyd Webber Plays Lloyd
Webber, a 1989 album of
his big sister Fanny and the two developed singing voices. The Bevan Family Choir, active
arrangements of Andrew’s
their prodigious musicality in proximity. In in the 1970s, was reformed in 2013 by some musical theatre.
adulthood, as Fanny’s creative life was hampered of the younger Bevans – including sopranos Musically, brotherhood
by the societal expectations of the time, the Sophie and Mary, , who were awarded MBEs has been contemplated in
siblings’ lives remained intertwined; Felix in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2019. the abstract in Arvo Pärt’s
composed large-scale orchestral works, Fanny, The Bevan Family Consort (BFC) released its Fratres, and more literally
with Felix’s encouragement, wrote keyboard debut recording on Signum last year, including a in The Brothers, George
pieces and chamber music, and held regular Magnificat by Dominic Bevan. Their Facebook Antheil’s chamber opera
salons. Fanny died suddenly aged 41 and page profiles each member with characteristic about Biblical siblings
ELEANORA POUWELS PURE PHOTOGRAPHY, GETTY

Felix passed away shortly after, supposedly of
heartbreak. The intensity of their relationship,
witnessed in correspondence, has even caused
some academics to speculate there was romance
between brother and sister. In Rethinking
Mendelssohn, a collection of essays edited
by Benedict Taylor, Angela Mace Christian
introduces the concept of ‘siberoticism’, inspired
wit: Hugh, for example, is described as ‘the first-
born son of Rachel Bevan and John Carter. He
selfishly used up most of the good-looking genes
in the family so none of the rest of us got a look
in. We all hate him but we don’t have enough
basses in the family, so we need him for the BFC.’
The suggestion is that, ultimately, what musical
siblings really need to thrive is a GSOH.
Cain and Abel. JFK’s role
as an absent brother was
considered in Irish National
Opera’s Least Like The Other
(2022). The work explores the
life of Rosemary Kennedy, the
president’s sister, who was
hidden away in an institution
after a botched lobotomy.

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 47

Women conductors
Closing the gap
The number of female conductors on the world’s
orchestral podiums might be rising, but there is
still some distance to cover, writes Jessica Duchen
I
n 2012, I wrote an article for The
Independent saying that the world of
classical music was sexist and misogynistic
up to its back teeth. First, the response was
spluttering outrage; next, a deluge of action. Or
so it seemed. A decade on, I’m asking whether
anything has changed. This is the first of two
articles. Next time I’ll look at composers. First, in
the wake of the film Tár, it is conductors.
These two fields are perhaps the areas where
the gender imbalance is most visible. Sometimes
my interviewees ask me why we are even talking
about such things: surely everybody should be
considered for their artistry, not gender, racial
identity or any other extra-musical issue? Of
course, that would be the ideal...
In 2023, just 11.2 per cent of conductors
represented by artist managements were female.
The figure had more than doubled since 2017,
when it was 5.5 per cent. Yes, it’s better, but the
number is still pitiful. A great deal more work is
needed to make a meaningful impact.
When Marin Alsop became the first woman
ever to conduct the Last Night of the Proms,
NCPA MUMBAI, GETTY, MARCO BORELLI FONDAZIONE, JACK LIEBECK
she spoke of her ‘shock’ that there ‘can still be
firsts for women in 2013’. It was a symbolic
breakthrough. Tár – a film depicting a female
conductor’s abuse of power – has done the cause
few favours, but at least it assumed the likelihood
that a woman could become chief conductor of
the Berlin Philharmonic. That plotline was only
possible because under the podium the tectonic
plates are shifting, if slowly.
In 2002, with financial support from Tomio
Taki, Alsop started the Taki Alsop Conducting
48 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
New directions:
Lidiya Yankovskaya leads
the Refugee Orchestra
Project; (below) Marin Alsop
and an agenda-setting
programme cover from the
Breaking Barriers festival
Fellowship (TACF) to mentor female conductors.
Its website notes that fewer than ten per cent
of the world’s conductors are female: ‘In 2002,
it was more likely that a woman could become
the leader of a G7 nation or a four-star officer in
the US military than become the conductor of a
major American orchestra. In 2023, these odds
have not changed.’
The TACF offers two years of intensive
coaching and mentoring with Alsop and others,
plus financial honorariums. Among its alumnae
According to the
TACF, fewer than ten
per cent of the world’s
conductors are female
are Karina Canellakis, Valentina Peleggi,
Alondra de la Parra, Mei-Ann Chen, Lidiya
Yankovskaya and Chloé van Soeterstède.
Alsop is chief conductor at the Ravinia
Festival. Here, in 2022, she inaugurated Breaking
Barriers, a festival within a festival, focusing
on the achievements of under-represented and
diverse artists and leaders in music. Female
conductors were spotlighted in 2022, composers
in 2023. I caught up with her to ask how much
progress has been made over the past decade.
‘Things were changing glacially. The #MeToo
and Black Lives Matter movements were the
catalyst to move things forward substantively.
Without that, I don’t think we would be any
further on. Orchestras could have had women on
the podium and performed the music of women
composers 50 years ago, but usually they chose
not to. And they chose not to until they couldn’t
choose not to. That said, many orchestras took
this opportunity to dramatically move forward.’
Conductors depend on opportunities to
practise their craft – in short, they need
orchestras – and here, too, signs are encouraging.
‘Every time we have applicants for the TACF,
the level jumps hugely. That gives me hope that
women are getting enough time on the podium
to learn their skills.’
Mei-Ann Chen, who is chief conductor of the
Grosses Orchester Graz in Austria among other
posts, loved her time with TACF. ‘Marin has
launched around 30 young female conductors
into the profession, and that has created ripple
effects.’ For her, TACF was both launch pad
and support system. ‘It was wonderful to have
that camaraderie and share wisdom, with

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 49

Women conductors

Guiding hands:
Alice Farnham puts a
student through her
paces at RPS Women
Conductors; (below)
Valentina Peleggi was
mentored by Marin Alsop

Marin as the matriarch who has faced so many
challenges and could advise us. That’s priceless.
She had to try to break the barriers by herself.’
Chen suggests that now the challenges are
time – and the glass ceiling. ‘Yes, we have more
women in the industry, and some men say we
are locking arms, trying to keep this door open.
But who knows? When the #MeToo movement
is forgotten, there’s a risk that things will go
backwards. We’re racing with time – any social
movement can be short. Orchestras planning
several years ahead need to keep employing
women conductors, not just for the social
movement now, but for the quality they bring.’
Lidiya Yankovskaya is also a TACF alumna
and a fast-rising star. Until recently, she was
music director of the Chicago Opera Theatre,
and her UK debut in 2023, conducting Górecki’s
‘Symphony of Sorrowful Songs’ for English
The only UK
National Opera, made a strong impression. She
doesn’t mince her words about the challenges
orchestra that
currently has a
CATHERINE ASHMORE, KRISTIN HOEBERMANN, GETTY
people around my own age who were telling me
that women shouldn’t conduct. I got hate mail.
One audience member used a fake email address
and sent me a poem about how I should be in the
kitchen, making children.’
But she does have children – and attitudes she
has encountered in the industry towards women
with families beggar belief. ‘When I got the job
at the Chicago Opera Theatre, five organisations
of different sizes and profiles, including major
ones, had been interviewing me. COT was the
only place at which my interview process did
not start with: “Do you have children? Are you
planning to? How will that impact your career?”
It’s not even legal in the US to ask that question
in an interview!
‘A decade later, no one says to me directly that
women can’t or shouldn’t conduct. Maybe they
don’t dare. When audience members approach
me and raise the subject, it’s usually because
they’re happy that there’s a woman on the

she has faced. ‘There’s a misconception that
we’ve changed things more than we have. That’s
because we started in a place that was so bad.
‘After I became a professional, some major
conductors came out saying women shouldn’t
be conductors. This wasn’t long ago, and it was
multiple individuals in my life. Most people I
was assisting or studying with were older men
and they were very supportive. It was often
podium, not because they believe that women
shouldn’t be there. That’s a huge change.’
female principal What about the glass ceiling? Mei-Ann Chen
conductor is the points out that ‘orchestras will engage women
as conductors, but it seems much harder for
BBC Concert them to appoint a woman as an artistic leader.
In America, after Baltimore, I’m waiting to see
Orchestra Marin take over a Top Five orchestra. It’s time!
Who is going to be that brave one?’

50 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

 Uphill struggle:
there is reluctance
to pass on the baton

The need for change

An ISM perspective
Deborah Annetts, CEO of
the Independent Society
of Musicians, traces the
Playing catch-up: ongoing challenges for
‘We’re racing with
time,’ believes female conductors to deeper
Mei-Ann Chen structural issues. Matters
remain, she suggests, ‘pretty
dire’. Most efforts at change
seem merely lip service.
Last summer, Alsop was appointed artistic The conductor Alice Farnham has been a ‘Change means that other
director and principal conductor of the Polish vital change-maker. She created courses to people have to give up
National Radio Symphony Orchestra – in a introduce female music students to conducting, some of their power. That is
country where women’s rights were deeply in collaboration with Andrea Brown and incredibly problematic in the
damaged under the former right-wing Morley College; under the auspices of the Royal music sector, where careers
government. ‘I like the idea of effecting change Philharmonic Society, this became RPS Women are hard to construct.
Everyone loves drafting
from the inside,’ she says, with a smile. Conductors. Now they have a new scheme
codes of practice, but they
Europe is doing slightly better in regard to chief at advanced level with the Royal Northern seem to have zero impact.
conductors, with Chen in Graz, Dalia Stasevska Sinfonia, supported by the North Music Trust. We need better protections
in Lahti, Zoi Tsokanou in Thessaloniki, and ‘It’s a chance for these conductors to work in for freelancers, in respect of
Joana Mallwitz recently named general music front of an orchestra without auditioning and rights under the equalities
director of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin. it’s been hugely positive for the orchestra as legislation. In addition,
Susanna Mälkki is now chief conductor emeritus well,’ Farnham says. She has just brought out a freelance status means
of the Helsinki Philharmonic. book, In Good Hands: The Making of a Modern that people are too scared
In the UK, we’re laggards. Several UK major Conductor. The issue of women in the profession to speak out about sexual
professional orchestras have female principal is restricted to one chapter, headed ‘We Need to harassment.’ It is still rife,
despite everything.
guest conductors – the London Philharmonic Talk about Breasts’.
Recent Arts Council
has Canellakis, the BBC Symphony Orchestra ‘The climate has changed a lot. Ten years ago, England funding cuts have
has Stasevska and the Philharmonia has… Alsop. I felt I was invisible. That’s no longer the case. impacted destructively on
But only one currently has a female principal And now there are loads of women coming touring organisations, where
conductor: the BBC Concert Orchestra, with through.’ She terms it ‘a numbers game’; just younger female conductors
Anna-Maria Helsing. as not every male conductor can be brilliant, previously could build
Change has been more rapid at training neither can every female conductor, so the more reputations. Also, education
level, without which nothing can develop in that are trained, the more chance there is that the cuts disrupt opportunities
the profession. The Dallas Opera launched its best will emerge. in those environments.
Hart Institute for Women Conductors in 2015, So what happens next? It’s evident that women Together with the reduction
since when more than 500 conductors from in music, and conductors in particular, are still of overseas touring following
Brexit, the cuts have meant
40 countries have applied to take part. At the viewed as a ‘minority’ concern. But women are
a dangerous lessening
Royal Academy of Music, head of conducting not a minority. They are more than half the of vital work, which has
Sian Edwards and Jane Glover have initiated population. The purpose of these exercises is impacted strongly on female
a programme for female conductors hoping to to reach the point where special schemes, musicians. The result:
undertake postgraduate courses. A Paris-based courses, competitions, discussions and reports a brain-drain. Annetts
competition for women conductors, La Maestra, are no longer needed, because gender equality suspects that many younger
runs its third session in March 2024 and has an is a given. Some things are looking up – but British musicians are leaving
associated ‘academy’. there’s still a long way to go. the UK for Germany.

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 51

 UK

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SOUNDS OF SUMMER
Holiday music courses can be a hugely important
supplement to term-time tuition, often opening
up new career pathways, writes Clare Stevens

I
t’s easy to see the immediate
appeal of a holiday music
course, especially if you scroll
through a few websites full of
engaging photos of students
and their tutors tucking into
communal meals, and chamber
ensembles rehearsing on sunlit
lawns. But how do those intensive
experiences enrich the students’
lives for the rest of the year?
For younger performers,
especially those attending
mainstream schools without a
music specialism, the biggest
bonus may be the chance to play
or sing with people of a similar
Broadening horizons:
standard to themselves and to National Youth Wind
make like-minded friends. With Ensemble of Scotland’s
both curricular and extra- summer school at the Royal
curricular music being side- Conservatoire of Scotland;
lined in so many schools, this is (left) a Stringwise course in
increasingly important. North London; (below) a
Deborah Young and Joshua Rodolfus Junior Choral Course
Salter, tutors on the Stringwise
four-day non-residential courses in
North London, both teach in local
schools as well. Reflecting on the friends over the four days, and
cross-fertilisation between term-
time and holiday music-making,
‘Meeting people who are experts in because it’s fairly local, they can
sustain those friendships outside
Salter says the main difference
between now and the 1980s, when
their fields can be very aspirational’ the courses. I know two of our
cellists had a duet playdate over
Stringwise started, is that fewer the summer.’
children are receiving one-to-one ‘We divide them into four levels, the younger ones, but with a coach Meeting up independently
tuition at school from an early age. based partly on age and partly with them all the time.’ This is is not so easy for participants
They might take up an instrument experience, trying to be sensitive very different from school, but in the holiday courses run by
in a whole-class situation in Year 4 to older beginners and not put despite the quantity of music they the junior department of the
or 5, and then their teachers have them in with children who are encounter, it seems to stick. ‘Six Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
to help promising students find a literally half their age,’ explains months later, they keep bursting (RCS), who come from all over
way to keep going. Young. ‘If necessary, we write into pieces they learned on the the country. The opportunity
Stringwise courses can provide easier parts or harder parts for courses. They never forget it.’ to spend a week in Glasgow
essential inspiration and links some of them. ‘Moving up through the groups receiving individual tuition, playing
to possible pathways. They are ‘They are playing in orchestras, over the years is an important in ensembles and meeting other
designed for children of all abilities, sight-reading, having musicianship motivation,’ says Salter. ‘It’s quite young musicians can be key to
from those who are still playing sessions and playing chamber a big deal when they are finally in their development, says Marlisa
on open strings up to Grade 8. music, perhaps two to a part for the gold group. They really make Ross, who administers the courses.

‘Working with different members
of staff, meeting people who are
experts in their fields, can be very
aspirational. They can see what is
possible in their discipline and be
inspired by individual performers,
including current students and
NEVILLE YOUNG, MARTIN SHIELDS, BECCA NICHOLS
recent graduates who assist with
the courses. It also gives them
a taste of conservatoire life,
familiarising them with the city
and the building.’
That can be particularly
important for students from
remoter parts of Scotland, says
tuba player Mark Reynolds, who
will lead the RCS’s brass summer
school this year. In term-time,
he is a peripatetic teacher based
If you would like to be a part of the next Education Guide, please call Jenny Allan on 0117 300 8546 Email: jenny.allan@ourmedia.co.uk
in the western Highlands, where
he runs wind bands at primary
and secondary levels, but he
encourages his students to
broaden their experience and
their horizons by attending holiday
courses. ‘It can be intimidating for
them at first, but through group
warm-ups and playing in ensembles
together, the social barriers are
quickly broken down.’
For violinist Andrea Gajic, who
leads the RCS strings summer
school, a huge amount of the
value lies in the mental health
benefits of focusing on practical
disciplines and real-life interaction,
rather than on screens. ‘It’s very
intense, but the students inspire
 All smiles: Anna Tilbrook (3rd left)
and James Glichrist (3rd right) with
Dartington students; (right) Aldeburgh
Young Musicians cello student Eve
If you would like to be a part of the next Education Guide, please call Jenny Allan on 0117 300 8546 Email: jenny.allan@ourmedia.co.uk
one another and begin to realise
what it means to have a musical
vocation. We try to help them to
get a balance between technical
skills and creativity, to cope with
anxiety, whether it’s performance
anxiety or general confidence, and
we stimulate their curiosity – for
example, by introducing them
to unfamiliar repertoire or to
performances by great artists of
the past.’
Marlisa Ross is particularly
proud of the Music Leaders
Scotland Awards, which
acknowledge the progress
students have made, whether
by participating in a range of
ensembles, attending concerts,
engaging with professional
performers or supporting
younger musicians. ‘Silver or
gold awards earn them points for
their university or conservatoire
entrance applications,’ she says,
‘and these recognise what they are
contributing to the activity and
taking back to their schools or
musical communities.’
Simon Toyne, executive director
PATRICK YOUNG/BRITTEN PEARS ARTS, NOBBY CLARK
of music at the David Ross
Education Trust, an academy chain
of primary and secondary schools
in England, has a dual perspective
as director of the Rodolfus Choral
Courses, which give young people
the chance to explore challenging
and varied repertoire in mixed-
voice choirs and sing in awe-
inspiring venues such as medieval
cathedrals and Oxbridge chapels.
‘Our schools take music
seriously, offering a meaningful
music curriculum enriched by
one-to-one lessons and ambitious
co-curricular ensembles,’ he says.
‘But this is just part of their overall
educational diet. The opportunity
to spend a sustained period of
time focusing on just music,
putting everything else to one side
and allowing the mind, body and
soul to explore in depth, is not
something that can be achieved
during the school term.
‘They return to school with a wide-
eyed enthusiasm for new pieces’
‘The impact for our students of
spending every waking hour for
a week in the summer thinking,
living and breathing music, making
music with others their age from
across the country, and working
with some of the country’s
leading professionals, can’t be
overestimated. They return to
school energised and refreshed,
with a wide-eyed enthusiasm
about new pieces (“choral
bangers”) and composers they’ve
discovered, lots of stories to tell
about the musicians they’ve met,
and a far greater, more centred
understanding and experience
of choral music. They then act
as ambassadors for choral music
across our schools. One student
gave a school assembly on his
love for the Walton Coronation
Te Deum!’
While for some participants
summer courses can provide
an introduction to unfamiliar
orchestral or choral disciplines,
for others the process works
the other way. Aldeburgh Young
Musicians (AYM) is a year-long
programme of residential courses,
primarily serving East Anglia,
which focus on creativity and
collaboration. One week might
be devoted to jazz, another to
early music, another to session
music, while a weekend course
might be a deep dive into vocal
techniques or a particular musical
element, such as polyrhythms or
modes. Ex-cathedral chorister
Roo has relished the opportunity
to develop his skills in a freer
environment and explore a range
of genres. A singer and drummer
now attending a STEM college
with no music on the curriculum,
he thought he would go on to
study computer sciences, but AYM
courses have inspired him to apply
for conservatoire. ‘Working with
Matt Skelton, who teaches jazz at
the Guildhall, has had a big impact
on my playing. He has changed my
perspective and opened my eyes
to a whole new area of music.’
Fellow AYM student Eve, a
cellist, agrees. ‘You can think
you want to go into one type of
music, but then doing a one-week
course can completely open your
eyes to something very different.
I had some masterclasses with
Gabriella Swallow that changed
my whole playing. She is amazing.
The freedom and commitment in
her playing were inspirational and
she taught me to be convincing in
whatever I’m doing.’
Pianist and vocal coach Anna
Tilbrook is eloquent about the
benefits of the summer school
experience for conservatoire-
level students, in particular citing
the regular opportunities during
a typical week for them to get
up and perform to an audience,
either informally as part of a study
group, at a masterclass or in an
end-of-course showcase. For
example, a group of pianists and
singers shared a performance of
Schumann’s song cycle Myrthen in
the Great Hall at Dartington this
summer, with Tilbrook and the
tenor James Gilchrist filling in the
few songs that no students had
time to learn.
Some of them have invited
fellow students to do a similar
shared performance back at the
Academy, she says, but such
opportunities are surprisingly
rare during the normal academic
year, and the hiatus caused by the
pandemic means that even some
of her postgraduate students at
the Royal Academy of Music have
had very little stage experience
as soloists. ‘When members
of the audience come up and
congratulate them afterwards, it
really boosts their confidence and
reminds them why they want to
make music their career.’
 USA

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TECHNOLOGY
 UK

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unique, intensive singing
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CHORAL
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28th July – 3rd August 2024

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EYSM has residential or day places for instrumentalists, singers and

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EYSM is held at St. Catherine’s School, Guildford, UK.
MUSICAL DESTINATIONS
Stroud England
Despite the sleepy reputation of its Gloucestershire surrounds, Stroud’s
Hidden Notes Festival likes to push boundaries, reveals Freya Parr
Y
ou might imagine a classical
music festival set in the southern
fringes of the Cotswolds would be
a world of posh frocks, smart jackets and
the sound of clinking champagne glasses.
But just as Stroud feels a million miles
away from the upmarket Chipping Norton
image projected by the media, so too
does its Hidden Notes Festival. Bringing
together cutting-edge contemporary and
avant-garde music with concerts, intimate
listening sessions, exhibitions and films,
Hidden Notes takes over the town for a
60 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
weekend in September. Having started
life in 2019, its momentum quickly stalled
due to the pandemic. But the festival
returned in 2022 and enjoyed a sell-out
run – and another in 2023.
The bulk of the programming takes
place in St Laurence Parish Church,
which last year provided the perfect cool
space during the tail end of an oppressive
heatwave, with audience members nipping
into the churchyard between recitals for
street food and pints of ice-cold beer.
The artists on the bill shared a combined
Picturesque appeal:
Stroud, as seen from
Selsley Common
use of acoustic and electronic elements.
The pioneering Japanese composer and
percussionist Midori Takada headlined,
along with Radio 3’s Hannah Peel, who
performed her Mercury Prize-nominated
album Fir Wave with a hypnotic lighting
display. The ethereal stylings of electronic
drone choir NYX filled the space with
dense harmonies and dramatic builds.
The audiences were friendly; there was
a camaraderie. I was continually caught
off guard by people turning around
to revel in the incredible sound. It was

the atmosphere most classical music
programmers would dream of.
The initial appeal of Stroud is obvious:
set against green, rolling hills, the
town is the meeting point of the five
Gloucestershire valleys. The Cotswold
Way, a 102-mile National Trail running
past Iron Age hill forts, historical features,
woodlands, fields and commons is close
by. But Stroud is not the sleepy town you
might imagine: its calendar is packed
with film and jazz festivals, open studios
and book events drawing audiences from
around the South West and beyond.
And Hidden Notes’s busy schedule is
no different. We stopped in to watch films
about electronic music pioneers Delia
Derbyshire and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and
visited an installation at The Goods Shed,
an impressive Brunel-designed heritage
building with dramatic high ceilings and
jagged brick walls. Christo Squier, the
composer behind the installation Particle
Shrine, hosted a talk with his collaborator
Teppei Katori, an experimental particle
physicist. Their project beamed live
recordings from a neutrino observatory
in Japan into the space using bespoke
cosmic ray detectors, channelled through
soundscapes, vibrations and lighting
design. While many of us were struggling
to keep up with the complex science, it
was undoubtedly something I would not
previously have expected to see or hear
about in Stroud on a Saturday afternoon.
The Goods Shed is run by Stroud Valleys
Artspace, or SVA, which also owns the
Artist Studios in town. It’s here we found
lunchtime book talks and late-night DJ
sessions for those still wanting more
after the headline acts finished. Two of
GETTY
the town’s three tiny independent record
Pioneering performer:
Hidden Notes 2023
celebrated Delia Derbyshire;
(above) a poster for the event
stores offered intimate sessions for the few
people who were able to squeeze in.
The festival is a superb showcase of
Stroud’s diverse range of venues, many
of which give an insight into its unique
artistry and industrial history. For
centuries, it was a hub of textile production
It has the atmosphere
most classical music
programmers and
festivals dream of
– the reason why the young Delius briefly
lived here, employed as a representative for
his father’s wool company – and many of
the old mills have since been repurposed.
The 12-mile canal that runs south of the
centre is a reminder of this time; it was
once used by clothiers and merchants.
Plenty of headlines harp on about the
‘knit-your-own-yoghurt’ feel of Stroud,
The right beat:
Midori Takada
headlined in 2023
MUSICAL DESTINATIONS
An artist’s impression
Damien Hirst
What you might not expect to find
between the B&Q and Aldi on your
way out of Stroud is the workspace
and private gallery of the famously
infamous artist Damien Hirst
(above). Science Studios are home
to his larger-scale projects, sat
alongside the smaller Formaldehyde
Building, which provides a controlled
environment for working with
chemicals, including those Hirst used
for creating dead animal sculptures.
Ten minutes down the road is
Pangolin Editions, where many of
Hirst’s bronze work and sculptures
are cast – as well as works by Antony
Gormley and other top British artists.
and while it’s a slightly overused trope, the
town does still attract artists, creatives,
libertarians and activists. Neighbouring
Nailsworth is home to Forest Green
Rovers, the first and only vegan football
team in the world. Woodruffs Cafe opened
on the High Street in the 1990s as Britain’s
first organic cafe, and Stroud is said to be
the birthplace of Extinction Rebellion.
Even Stroud’s all-female Morris side do
Morris dancing with a difference: Boss
Morris (the festival’s artist in residence)
call themselves ‘prog Morris’, their brightly
coloured costumes flashing neon as they
dance to electronic music.
There’s certainly nothing sleepy about
Stroud and the Hidden Notes Festival,
which feels like it is exploding at the seams.
It’s probably not the relaxed weekend in
Gloucestershire you might have imagined,
but you’re sure to leave with your mind
feeling a little bit stretched.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 61
 Composer of the month
Composer of the Week
is broadcast on Radio 3
at 12pm, Monday to
Friday. Programmes in February are:
29 January – 2 February Stravinsky
5-9 February Sibelius
12-16 February Karl Jenkins
19-23 February Maddalena Sirmen and
her world
26 February – 1 March Smetana
Tartini’s style
String Theory
Fascinated early
on by the science
of music, Tartini
approached the
violin with an
inquisitive ear
that experimented
with the thickness
of strings, acoustical phenomena
such as the Tartini Tone and the
development of the bow to facilitate an
enhanced ‘singing’ style of playing.
Tartini Tone Tartini discovered that
two notes played simultaneously and
perfectly tuned would give rise to the
sounding of a third. The phenomenon
had already been detected in Germany
when Tartini made his discovery in
1714, but he more fully understood its
significance and incorporated it into
his teaching. Also sometimes called
the ‘third tone’ or ‘combination tone’.
Cyphers Although Tartini produced
no operas, he was susceptible to
the power of words to stimulate his
imagination. To movements thus
inspired, he often inscribed quotations
– Metastasio, Petrarch and Tasso
were favourites – teasingly disguised
using a code whose solution was only
discovered in the 20th century.
The Singing Style A contemporary
declared that Tartini didn’t so much
play the violin as sing using the
instrument as his medium of choice.
Exquisitely decorated and expressive
slow movements increasingly became
a hallmark both of his playing and
composition – the composer-flautist
Johann Joachim Quantz (above)
singled out his ‘expressive sweet tone’
GETTY
for special praise.
62 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Giuseppe Tartini
The masterful violinist who brought us the
‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata was also a bit of a demon
as a music theorist, as Paul Riley explains
ILLUSTRATION: MATT HERRING
W
hat is it about violin virtuosos
and fencing? Like his
fellow bow-wielder, the
Guadaloupian Joseph Bologne, Chevalier
de Saint-Georges, half-a-century later,
Giuseppe Tartini was an avid and
reportedly skilled swordsman. And like
Bologne he was a composer, the cut and
thrust of whose music moved that great
man of musical letters Dr Charles Burney
to describe him as ‘one of the few original
geniuses of our century’.
Having arrived in Padua just months
after Tartini’s death in 1770, Burney
made a beeline for the composer’s last
resting place with all the purposefulness
‘Tartini locked himself away in order to
study the use of the bow in more tranquillity’
‘of a pilgrim at Mecca’. Corelli, he noted,
had been the young Tartini’s guiding
star but, Burney contended, ‘Tartini had
surpassed that composer in the fertility
and originality of his inventions’. Any
difficulties of execution were the result
of his ‘consummate knowledge of the
fingerboard and the powers of the bow’.
And, he added, ‘his adagios want nothing
but words to be excellent, pathetic opera
songs’. How ironic. At a time when Italian
composers were falling over themselves
to write for the musical stage, opera is
conspicuous by its absence in the catalogue
of Tartini’s works – striking given his
extensive exposure to the medium as an
orchestral violinist.
Tartini was born in Pirano on the Istrian
coast in 1692. Then part of the Venetian
Republic, now the Slovenian town of
Piran, it boasts a dashing statue of the
composer in the main piazza – generously
forgiving the seeming indifference of its
most famous son. Having sidestepped the
ecclesiastical future envisioned for him by
his parents, Tartini in 1709 fetched up at
the University of Padua to study law, and
the city would exert its gravitational pull
for the rest of his life.
His university career was shortlived,
however. The following year the 18 year-
old married Elisabetta Premazore,
protégée of Cardinal Cornaro, who
promptly threatened prosecution for
‘abduction’; and so Tartini hotfooted it to
safety in Assisi. Musically it was to be the
making of him. Honing his violin skills,
he also studied composition with the
Basilica’s organist. More decisive still was
an encounter in Venice with the celebrated
violinist Francesco Maria Veracini, whose
virtuosity had much the same effect on
him as would Paganini’s on Liszt over a
century later. Tartini took himself off to
Ancona where, according to Burney ‘he
locked himself away in order to study the
use of the bow in more tranquillity, and
with more convenience than at Venice
where he’d been offered a position in
the opera orchestra’. A more tantalising
anecdote suggests that Tartini was set
to engage Veracini in a musical duel, but
feeling out of his depth, fled. Perhaps part
of Ancona’s ‘convenience’ was not having
Veracini breathing down his neck!
The intensive study paid off. In 1721,
with no audition necessary because his
reputation had preceded him, Tartini
COMPOSER OF THE MONTH

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 63

COMPOSER OF THE MONTH
was appointed to the sought-after post of
Primo violino e capo di concerto at the
Basilica di Saint Antonio in Padua – he’d
remain in post there until 1764 – with
a special clause allowing him leave of
absence to perform elsewhere. Indeed,
only two years into the job, in 1723 he
slipped the leash and made for Prague
where he contributed to the celebrations
for the coronation of Charles VI. Enjoying
the patronage of Count Kinsky, he met,
among other pre-eminent musicians,
Fux, Caldara and lutenist Silvius Leopold
Weiss, and stayed on for three years before
returning to Padua in 1726.
Up until now, Tartini’s fame had
rested on his performing skills and his
compositions, which were circulating
widely in manuscript copies – not until
around 1730 did the printing presses roll
when Le Cêne published a set of concertos
as Op. 1 in Amsterdam. Now he resolved
to establish a violin school, and in 1727 (or
1728 – Tartini’s recollection is a little hazy),
the Scuola delle Nazioni came into being,
its aim to transmit everything he’d learned
in Ancona. ‘Nazioni’ wasn’t a grandiose
claim, as students flocked from all over
Europe. Among the Italian cohort was
Gaetano Pugnani, who in turn would later
teach Giovanni Battista Viotti, forging a
direct link between two important schools
of Italian violin practice.
Across the 1730s, Tartini was at the
height of his powers as an executant,
and he particularly impressed the
French aristocrat and writer Charles
GETTY
de Brosses, who enthused in a book
64 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
of letters describing an Italian
journey undertaken at the end
of the decade. But there was a
cloud on the horizon. In 1740,
some say caused by a fencing
accident but more likely a
stroke, Tartini suffered
impairment of movement
in his left arm, forcing
a bit of a rethink about
future priorities. Science
In 1740, impairment of
movement in his left
arm forced a rethink
about future priorities
and musical theory had long absorbed
him, and increasingly he now produced
theoretical treatises exploring the
rationale underpinning his compositions
– compositions which had moved beyond
the early influence of Corelli to embrace
the ‘galant’ winds of change heralding the
dawn of musical classicism.
Relating harmony to algebra and
geometry, his treatise Trattato di musica
seconda la vera scienza dell’armonia was, by
1750, enjoying a wide circulation ahead of
publication in 1754. Not everyone agreed
with its conclusions, but Tartini’s theories
were to find support in philosopher Jean-
Jacques Rousseau who referred extensively
to them in his Dictionnaire de Musique
(1768) – a double-edged compliment,
Trills and spills: (left) Tartini liked to tell people how
Mephistopheles had played him his sonata in a
dream; (below) the writer Charles de Brosses was
a major fan; (right) the composer’s statue in Tartini
Square in his birth town of Piran (Slovenia)
since Rousseau also admired Rameau, a
composer much less palatable to Tartini.
Heeding criticisms that the work was
too opaque and impenetrable, a more
accessible sequel followed, drawing on
some of Tartini’s earlier thinking. His ideas
certainly didn’t go unnoticed in Salzburg.
Compiling his pedagogical Violinschule,
Leopold Mozart incorporated portions,
describing them simply as the teaching
material of a ‘great Italian master’.
Published posthumously in 1771,
Tartini’s treatise on ornamentation also
blazed a trail; at its heart lay a belief that
the printed notes are only a starting point.
A version copied by his pupil Giovanni
Nicolai includes a ‘how-to’ chapter
devoted to the art of the cadenza, while
a manuscript copy in his own hand
conveys detailed instructions on how
to embellish slow movements.
That ornamentation should
have exercised him so much is
hardly surprising. Tartini told
de Brosses that he’d been
pestered to write operas
for Venice, but he always
refused, ‘knowing only too
well that a human throat is
not a violin fingerboard’. Nonetheless,
the human voice and the cultivation of a
naturally unaffected singing style became
increasingly the goal of his melodic
invention. The purpose of his music, he
declared, was to reveal the workings of
the universe as embodied in nature. And
to that end, although the main weapon
in his armoury was latterly to pare things
back to the solo status of the piccole sonate
freed from the artifice of an accompanying
bass line, he also sometimes drew on the
‘authenticity’ of folk music, remembering
the peasant music of his childhood and
songs popular with Venetian gondolieri.
Tartini’s 135 violin sonatas (and an
equal number of violin concertos) trace a
line from the world of Corelli and Vivaldi
– himself once the red-hot avant-gardist
whose concertos set Europe ablaze – to one
with different aesthetic preoccupations.
The Pastorale B.A16 might hark back to
the old practice of scordatura (retuning
the violin’s bottom two strings to A and E)
but it’s to enable the rustic peasant drone
that infiltrates the second movement,

simultaneously freeing the strings to ‘ring’
with pungent brilliance. Even casting a
backward glance, Tartini was doing so
to compose music wholly at one with the
Rousseau-esque spirit of the age. Listening
to Tartini’s concertos, it’s easy to forget that
only five years separate the composer’s
death from the young Mozart’s completion
of his own differently ambitious violin
concerto canon.
If, taken as a whole, the concertos
straddle two worlds, so too do the sonatas.
But both, as Burney acknowledged,
are united in Tartini’s singular grasp
of the possibilities of the violin. And
nowhere does theory and practice collide
so decisively as in L’arte dell’arco (‘The
Art of the Bow’): 50 variations probing
a dapper gavotte from Corelli’s Sonata
Op. 5 No. 10. A summation of everything
he’d learned after his encounter with
Veracini, it’s a technical and compositional
tour de force, an exhaustive (and for the
performer, exhausting) set of studies in
ornamentation, bowing, double stopping
and expressive refinement.
One sonata in particular kept Tartini’s
flame burning throughout the long 19th
century: a piece of diablery known as
‘The Devil’s Trill’ on account of its shady
origins. Supposedly having made a pact
with the devil, Tartini dreamed that
Mephistopheles played a sonata at the foot
of his bed. On awakening he tried to write
it down but, he admitted, compared to
the wondrous original, he achieved only
limited success. Such modesty.
Then again, modesty (and no small
measure of fanciful PR) set the sonata up
for an enduring success which posterity
has rubber-stamped. Perhaps gratitude
should be in order. However tangential, the
‘Devil’s Trill’ ensured that Tartini’s music
was never entirely forgotten. Burney’s
estimation of an ‘original genius’ might
seem over-generous today but, some 250
years after his death, Tartini’s star is on the
ascendant once more.
TARTINI Life&Times
1692
LIFE: Giuseppe Tartini is born on 8 April in
Pirano (Piran, present-day Slovenia). His
mother and father, the general manager of
a local salt mills, plan his education with a
view to him entering the priesthood.
TIMES: In Massachusetts, US, more than
200 people are accused during the Salem
witch trials. Thirty are found guilty, of whom
14 women and five men are hanged.
1710 1726
LIFE: Following
studies in Padua, LIFE: After three successful years in the
and shortly after service of the aristocratic Kinsky family in
his marriage Prague, he finds himself compelled by the
to Elisabetta bad climate and consequent ill health to
Primazore, he return to Padua.
takes refuge in
TIMES: The Italian composer Domenico
a convent in Assisi, where he devotes
Zipoli dies aged 38 in Córdoba (in present-
most of his time to practising the violin.
day Argentina) where, in his role as a Jesuit
TIMES: In the ongoing War of Spanish priest, he has been teaching music to the
Succession, Philip V of Spain suffers Guaraní people.
significant defeats to the allied British,
Portuguese, Dutch and
Austrian forces at the
battles of Almenar
1754
LIFE: His Trattato di musica secondo
and Saragossa.
la vera scienza dell’armonica
is published thanks to financial
1740
LIFE: With his violin
assistance from Count Decio
Agostino Trento, but its theories are
met with some scepticism.
playing severely affected TIMES: In Scotland, a group of 22
by a stroke, his thoughts men found The Society of St Andrews
turn increasingly to Golfers and contribute towards a
music theory, which he silver club, to be competed for on the Links
discusses in regular correspondence of St Andrews on 14 May each year.
with leading academics.
TIMES: Canaletto paints A Regatta on
the Grand Canal and The Basin of San
Marco on Ascension Day, depicting two
1770
LIFE: Having spent the years after the
of the most popular annual festivals in
death of his wife living with the cellist
18th-century Venice.
Antonio Vandini, a close friend, he dies
aged 77 in Padua on 26 February.
TIMES: The 14-year-
old Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart
goes on a lengthy
tour of Italy,
culminating in the
premiere of his
opera Mitridate, re
di Ponto in Milan on
26 December.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 65
 Building a library
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Five Mystical Songs
Amanda Holloway names the best recordings of the work for baritone,
chorus and orchestra that brought joy to the 1911 Three Choirs Festival
The composer
Though the 38-year-old Vaughan
Williams had only completed one of
his nine symphonies at the time of
writing his Five Mystical Songs – and
with the likes of The Lark Ascending
also yet to come – he had hardly been
sitting idle up to that point. Studies
with Stanford at the Royal College of
Music in London had set in motion
a career that, as well as composing,
saw him collecting folk music, editing
The English Hymnal and launching
the Leith Hill Musical Festival. After
further studies with Ravel in France,
the premieres of his Sea Symphony
and Tallis Fantasia in 1910 gave
notice of the glories to come.
Building a Library
is broadcast on Radio 3
at 9.30am each Saturday
as part of Record Review. A highlights
podcast is available on BBC Sounds.
66 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
The work
After the success of his Fantasia on a theme
of Thomas Tallis at the 1910 Three Choirs
Festival in Gloucester, Vaughan Williams
was asked to write a work for the following
year’s festival in Worcester Cathedral. He
returned to a song cycle he’d been working
on sporadically since 1906, with verses
taken from 17th-century Anglican priest
George Herbert’s collection of sacred
poems, The Temple. He had encountered
Herbert’s poetry when he was musical
editor of The English Hymnal from 1904-6
and was attracted to the visionary quality
of his religious verse – both poet and
composer shared a belief in music as
Poet George Herbert and Vaughan Williams
shared a belief in music as a ‘divine voice’
‘a divine voice’. Though the son of an
Anglican vicar, Vaughan Williams was a
self-declared atheist who mellowed into
what his second wife Ursula described as a
‘cheerful agnosticism’.
Vaughan Williams wrote the festival
commission for baritone soloist, mixed
chorus and orchestra. He had originally
written the Five Songs with the baritone
Campbell McInnes in mind – McInnes
had sung in the premiere of his A Sea
Symphony and went on to give first
performances of George Butterworth’s
AE Housman song cycles. Vaughan
Williams conducted the first performance
in Worcester Cathedral on Thursday 14
September 1911 with McInnes, the Three
Choirs Festival Chorus and the London
Symphony Orchestra. As Ursula Vaughan
Williams recounted in her biography
of the composer, McInnes’s sister-in-
law Clare Mackail remembered the
performance as one of ‘unearthly beauty’.
‘Ralph’s own memory of that Festival
was different,’ wrote Ursula. ‘He was
probably aware that his work was awaited
with curiosity: he was even more conscious
of the lack of adequate rehearsal time, a
nightmare almost every composer endures
before almost every first performance.
He had to conduct a new work, and the
orchestra knew very little about it, and the
choirs even less.’ To make matters worse,
Vaughan Williams thought he spotted the
virtuoso Fritz Kreisler playing in a back
desk of the violins. ‘I got through somehow,
and at the end I whispered to [violinist
WH] Reed, “Am I mad, or did I see Kreisler
in the band?” “Oh yes,” he said. “He broke
a string and wanted to play it in before the
Elgar Concerto and and couldn’t without
being heard in the Cathedral.”’
The critic of the Manchester Courier
gave the work a grudging review. ‘The
songs, it may be said at once, are not
among Dr [Vaughan] Williams’s best
works. The writing is often forced, and
the melody rarely takes the ear with
pleasure.’ The Times critic enjoyed the
first London performance (in the version
for baritone and piano) given by McInnes
and Hamilton Harty at the Aeolian Hall
on 21 November 1911. ‘The spirit of the
words is reproduced with extraordinary
sympathy; and the words themselves

Severn plus FIve;
Worcester Cathedral, where
VW’s Mystical Songs were
premiered; (right) George
Herbert, whose poems
supplied the texts
are declaimed in a way which indicates
a true musical descendant of Lawes and
Purcell.’ Some musical colleagues were
unconvinced. Britten wrote scathingly
about the ‘pi, artificial mysticism’ of the
work to Vaughan Williams’s pupil Grace
Williams when he heard them on the radio
in January 1935.
Many would disagree with Britten about
the ‘pi’ nature of the Songs. They may not
be as complex or penetrating as later works
such as Sancta Civitas, but their inspired
simplicity evokes sincere emotional
responses. The five songs are carved out
of four of the best-known poems in The
Temple – the set is bookended by two
communal songs of praise, with three
more personal, meditative poems in
between. Herbert’s ‘Easter’ is split into two
songs: the joyful first anthem opens with
the baritone’s solo exhortation: ‘Rise, heart,
thy Lord is risen’, before the choir echoes
the call and adds, ‘Sing His praise, without
delays’. It is orchestrated with a sort of
quiet Elgarian grandeur that comes from
the cathedral tradition.
‘I got me flowers’ is a more personal
prayer, with the soloist reflecting on the
GETTY
mystery of the Resurrection. The choir
Surprise appearance: violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler
accompanies the simple solo line ‘Can
there be any day but this’ with wordless
melisma, and together baritone and choir
build to a final forceful declaration: ‘There
is but one, and that one ever.’
‘Love bade me welcome’ is a dialogue
between the poet and Love (ie God), so
tender that it feels almost erotic. After
the ardent solo passages, when the poet
BUILDING A LIBRARY
has accepted the Communion – ‘So I
did sit and eat’ – the chorus wordlessly
intones the ancient Gregorian chant ‘O
sacrum convivium’, which celebrates the
Eucharist, as the song, which began in a
modal E minor, moves into the major.
‘The Call’, another sensual love song
for baritone alone, relies on modal
harmonies to evoke a yearning which is
finally fulfilled. The qualities of Christ
are grouped in threes: ‘Come my Way, my
Truth, my Life’, ‘Come my Light, my Feast
my Strength’, and finally ‘Come my Joy, my
Love, my Heart’. How simply it is set, but
how expressive, and what a contrast to the
following Antiphon that ends the cycle in
mighty fashion, as the well-known hymn
‘Let all the World in every corner sing’
builds into an ecstatic shout of joy from
the choir. Energetic, full-throated and
rapturous, the words ‘my God and King’
soar above the rolling, propulsive string
figures – even non-believers may catch a
glimpse of heaven.
Turn the page to discover our
recommended recordings of
RVW’s Five Mystical Songs
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 67
Relaxed authority:
Roderick Williams is at
ease yet masterful as
the baritone soloist
The best
g A case of smaller-scale perfection
recordin
Roderick Williams (baritone)
London Choral Sinfonia/Michael Waldron
Orchid Classics ORC100200
In nominating my top choice, it
may seem perverse to snub the lush
orchestral versions of Five Mystical Songs,
particularly since the first performance
featured a huge festival choir and the
London Symphony Orchestra. But
Vaughan Williams himself recognised
that the songs could be just as effective
with smaller forces, and his version for
baritone, piano and string orchestra –
recorded here for the first time on the
Orchid Classic label – amply testifies
68 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
to that. Conductor Michael Waldron’s
outstanding recording with Roderick
Williams as soloist alongside the London
Choral Sinfonia combines the intimacy
of lieder with the variety of tone available
to mixed strings and, in this case, a very
resonant piano, played by James Orford.
The poised pianissimo in ‘I
got me flowers’ is a shiver-
down-the-spine moment
The success of Five Mystical Songs
relies heavily on the baritone, who is the
hero (or Everyman) and leading voice
in all but the last song. The pianist or
orchestra may be outstanding and the
choir angelic, but if the baritone is not
honest and true, speaking directly from
the heart, the performance will disappoint.
Roderick Williams is the ideal interpreter;
as a man in conversation with his God,
he is a relaxed, generous presence, his
Three other
great recordings
John Shirley-Quirk
(bass-baritone)
The classic recording
for many years was
EMI’s 1968 version
with John Shirley-Quirk,
the Choir of King’s College Cambridge
and the English Chamber Orchestra
under David Willcocks. Shirley-Quirk’s
style, which to today’s ears may sound
old-fashioned, bass-heavy and slightly
ponderous, nevertheless has a touching
nobility, and the King’s choristers find
the contrasts in tone, from rapt brilliance
to quiet mystery. The recording captures
every detail of the woodwind and smooth
strings in the rich acoustic of King’s
College Chapel. (Warner Classics 680 5132)
Brian Rayner Cook
(baritone)
Among other versions
with orchestra, the
Northern Sinfonia
under Richard Hickox
deliver a thrilling, propulsive Antiphon,
but the unimpressive baritone Stephen
Roberts rules out that recording. Just
as exciting, and with a more committed
soloist in Brian Rayner Cook, is Bryden
Thomson’s 1989 recording with the
London Philharmonic Orchestra and
Choir. Again, the Antiphon, with the LPO
strings blooming and the brass and
drums filling St Jude’s Hampstead, is
knockout. The choir drops to a murmur
for that breath-taking moment in ‘Love
baritone flexible and unforced. Listen,
in particular, to the end of the fourth
song, ‘The Call’, in which Williams, with
admirable breath control, spins out a four-
bar phrase tranquillo, reaching the word
‘love’ on a magical, poised pianissimo. It’s a
shiver-down-the-spine moment, followed
swiftly by the rumbling piano chords and
churning strings that introduce the choir’s
joyful hymn, ‘Let all the World in every
corner sing’.
With an approach quite unlike that of
a cathedral choir or a symphony chorus,
the LCS is a blended ensemble of bright-
voiced young soloists responding instantly

bade me welcome’ when the plainchant
‘O Sacrum Convivium’ emerges from the
stillness. (Chandos CHAN8590)
Simon Keenlyside
(baritone)
RVW’s version for voice
and piano deserves
a hearing, and who
better to sell it than
Keenlyside and pianist Graham Johnson,
both fine lieder artists. Johnson’s ability
to conjure an orchestra with two hands
is astonishing – particularly the rolling
scales and arpeggios of the Antiphon.
‘The Call’, with its simple melody and
accompaniment, gives Keenlyside’s
bright baritone a chance to shine. In the
other four songs, however, the piano is
no substitute for the heightened colour
and dynamic contrasts a choir can bring.
(Naxos 8.557114)
And one to avoid…
In the Vasari Singers’
2022 recording,
the combination of
organ, small choir and
Roderick Williams
as soloist should
suit these devotional songs. But the
recording feels unfocussed – the soloist
sounds distant from the organ and choir.
Martin Ford plays the crucial organ part
slowly and reverently and Williams has to
increase vibrato to colour the long-held
notes. In phrases such as ‘My God and
King’, which should blow the roof off, the
Vasari Singers don’t make the impact we
have heard on their other recordings.
to Waldron’s sensitive direction. They are
as one with Williams in the second song, ‘I
got me flowers’, from the gentle melismatic
underpinning ‘Can there be any day but
this’ to the burst of golden sound in ‘There
is but one’.
Admittedly, I have some qualms
about losing the wonderful woodwind
in the orchestral version, particularly
the oboe introduction to ‘The Call’, and
the excitement of percussion and brass
in the Antiphon, but Waldron and his
GETTY, ED SALTER
expert ensemble provide a happy medium
between voice and piano and a full-blown
chamber orchestra.
A bawdy affair:
Richard Hickox conducts
Five Tudor Portraits; (below)
composer Richard Blackford
Continue the journey…
We suggest five works to explore after RVW’s Five Mystical Songs
I
In 1935, Vaughan
Williams returned to
the idea of setting a
quintet of poems for
soloists (in this case, mezzo
and baritone), chorus and
orchestra in his Five Tudor
Portraits. In contrast to the
religious devotion of Five
Mystical Songs, the texts by
John Skelton (1463-1529)
border on the bawdy – much
to the disgust of some,
who stormed out of Vision of a Garden depicts a very different ilk
the work’s premiere.
VW’s setting is, on the
the experiences of a Covid provided
sufferer in hospital
whole, aptly rowdy.
(Jean Rigby (mezzo), John
Shirley-Quirk (baritone); LSO and Chorus/
Richard Hickox Chandos CHAN9593)
Pre-dating Five Mystical Songs by
around five years is Sea Drift, Delius’s
25-minute work for baritone, chorus
and orchestra that sets words by
Walt Whitman. Against an orchestral
accompaniment that suggests the
ebb and flow of the tide, the baritone’s
narrative describes, through the words
of a young boy, a sea bird who sits on
the nest waiting forlornly for his mate
to return. (Roderick Williams (baritone); The work was written in 2005 in memory of
Hallé/Mark Elder Hallé CDHLL7535)
For his Requiem da Camera for
baritone, chorus and orchestra (1924),
Finzi turned to three contemporary
British poets. Finzi’s work begins
with an orchestral prelude before a
choral setting of words by Masefield
BUILDING A LIBRARY
describes the stillness of the
countryside. Hardy’s ‘In Time
of “The Breaking of Nations”’
provides the text for the
baritone solo that follows,
after which the chorus
returns with WW Gibson’s
‘Lament’. (Stephen Varcoe
(baritone); Britten Singers, City of
London Sinfonia/Richard Hickox
Chandos CHAN10783X)
Heading forward a
century, words of
the text for
Richard Blackford’s
Vision of a Garden,
again for baritone
soloist, chorus and orchestra. Over six
movements with titles such as ‘The ICU’
and ‘The Rehab Ward’, the piece depicts
the sometimes-otherworldly experiences
of Peter Johnstone, a Covid sufferer
who spent five months in hospital in
2020. (Stephen Gadd (baritone); Bach Choir,
Philharmonia/David Hill Lyrita SRCD406)
For further settings of poems by
George Herbert, meanwhile, try Vertue,
an exquisite three-movement piece for
unaccompanied choir by Judith Weir. The
Weir’s friend Peter Lerwill who, as the
composer herself explains, is perfectly
described by the words ‘a sweet and
vertuous soul, like season’d timber’ as
heard in the opening movement.
(Choir of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge/
Geoffrey Webber Delphian DCD34095)
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 69
 Reviews
Recordings and books rated by expert critics
Welcome
With the nominees
revealed for the BBC
Music Magazine
Awards (see p26), I can’t
help but get ahead of
myself and wonder what
might be considered
from this year’s reviews. We’re only onto
our second issue of the year, but there are
already some strong releases that we’ll
surely be talking about when the time
comes. Our Recording of the Month (see
over) is one such example, as Patricia
Kopatchinskaja, Reto Bieri and Polina
Leschenko get together and just have a
great time making music. Their joy in
Take 3 is infectious. We’ve composers to
discover, too, with orchestral works by
Helvi Leiviskä (1902-82) and concertos
by Grete von Zieritz (1899-2001). Plus
the hills are still very much alive with
The Sound of Music in our round-up of
Screen highlights.
Michael Beek Reviews editor
This month’s critics
John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Michael Beek,
Terry Blain, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, Geoff Brown,
Michael Church, Christopher Cook, Martin
Cotton, Christopher Dingle, Misha Donat,
Jessica Duchen, Rebecca Franks, George Hall,
Claire Jackson, Stephen Johnson, Berta Joncus,
John-Pierre Joyce, Ashutosh Khandekar, Erik
Levi, Natasha Loges, Andrew McGregor, David
Nice, Roger Nichols, Ingrid Pearson, Steph Power,
Anthony Pryer, Paul Riley, Jan Smaczny, Roger
Thomas, Kate Wakeling
KEY TO STAR RATINGS
+++++ Outstanding
++++ Excellent
+++ Good
++ Disappointing
+ Poor
70 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
RECORDING OF THE MONTH
A feast full of chamber
charm and chutzpah
Paul Riley’s spirits are lifted by Take 3,
Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Reto Bieri and
Polina Leschenko’s life-enhancing album
Take 3
Works by Bartók, Poulenc,
Schoenfield, Nichifor
Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin),
Reto Bieri (clarinet), Polina
Leschenko (piano)
Alpha Classics ALPHA772
66:41 mins
What with Patricia
Kopatchinskaja reaching out
to a lost homeland, Polina
Leschenko nostalgically
dreaming of heritage
tomatoes and Reto Bieri
finding himself drawn to
‘the road less travelled’, the
musicians’ prefatory liner
note musings for this head-
turning album are bathed in
whimsy. Not exclusively so
the playing, however, which
can affectionately embrace
the whimsical to the manner
born, but equally bristles
with spellbinding virtuosity,
compelling insight and crests a
lifeforce carrying all before it.
Take 3 might be built around
substantial trios by Bartók and
Paul Schoenfield; but other
configurations apply, notably
in a reading of the Poulenc
Clarinet Sonata that nails the
sadness that lurks behind the
bittersweet Allegro tristamente
and imbues the Romanza with
supremely poised and heartfelt
yearning – before taking the
finale’s ‘con fuoco’ marking
at its word, whipping up a
fearsome display of fiery glee.
Sassy miniatures from
Poulenc’s incidental music to
Anouilh’s play L’Invitation au
château interleave irresistibly
delicious interludes along the
way. Piquant palette cleansers,
they range over the louche
rubato and portamenti of
the ‘Mouvement de valse-
hésitation’ and the frolicsome
‘Follement vite et gai’, delight in
‘Tempo di Boston’s insouciant
charms and finally corner
into a delicately seductive,
impeccably judged haute-
couture ‘Tango’; simultaneously
a deconstruction and
distillation that at the very

ICE
CHO
end can’t make up its mind
between major and minor and
extinguishes itself with a self-
deprecating shrug.
Framing it, the ‘valse’ and
‘Tempo di Boston’ are the
perfect foil to Schoenfield’s
muscular Trio, completed in
1990 and giving the Chassidic
traditions of Eastern Europe
a gloriously heart-on-sleeve
work-out. The ‘Freylakh’
unites Klezmer traditions with
a hint of Poulenc at his most
devilishly mischievous, and its
unstoppable momentum comes
with a garnish of coruscating
keyboard panache. Following
is an enigmatic ‘March’, still in
thrall to Klezmer influences but
assailed by an undercurrent of
MARCO BORGGREVE
leering menace seasoned with
sardonic street-wisery. Enrapt
and sensuous, the disquieted
and disquieting ‘Nigun’ inhabits
the world of Bartókian night-
music, while the scabrous
finale is a playfully energised
‘Kozatske’, a Cossack dance
from Ukraine.
The sheer chutzpah of the
playing is jaw-dropping, yet
The players bounce
exuberantly off each
other, generating a
vivid tour-de-force
if anything the performance
of Bartók’s Contrasts raises
the bar even higher. Nodding
to Hungarian and Romanian
dance models, the work
was initially proposed by
violinist Joseph Szigeti but
in the event commissioned
by Benny Goodman, whose
Recording of the Month Reviews
Vivacious virtuoso:
Kopatchinskaja
leads a spellbinding
trio of musicians
jazz clarinet afforded
unexpected vistas.
Listening intently,
Kopatchinskaja, Bieri and
Leschenko bounce exuberantly
off each other, generating
a vividly characterised,
conversationally sophisticated
tour de force. It’s capped by
a finale overflowing with
impish snap, crackle and pop.
All in all, chamber music at its
most vivaciously invigorating
and life-enhancing. Cue a
party! Inviting violinist Ilya
Gringolts and double bassist
Ruslan Lutsyk, they sign off
with Klezmer Dance by Serban
Nichifor, a showstopper
garlanded with riotous shrieks,
frenzied clapping and high
spirits galore.
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Performer’s notes
Patricia
Kopatchinskaja
Do you start with the concept, or
the people?
It’s always about the people.
Earlier in my life it was all about
what I do and then with whom,
but now it’s the opposite. If you
have the right partners everything
becomes a story, something that
starts to change your mindset or
enrich your life. Anything goes,
actually, even a small joke; and
you will hear it I hope in the very
small pieces by Poulenc.
Tell us about playing with Reto
and Polina
I love the clarinet playing and
brain of Reto Bieri! He’s a
clarinettist, thinker and philospher
and always in my life, no matter
where I am. Polina Leschenko is a
wizard, an absolutely mysterious
personality, I would say. We never
know how she does it, we’re not
able to analyse her playing; it’s
something that happens in that
moment and we float together.
Is there a standout piece on the
album for you?
I cannot make differences
between all these incredibly
beautiful and fantastic pieces,
because they’re all like our
children. I cannot tell you who
I love more! But I would say
the Poulenc pieces are really
something I will enjoy listening to
for the rest of my life.
Are you ever tempted to repeat a
concept, if it’s so enjoyable?
Well, being a so-called artist is to
be always in search of something
you have never explored before;
it’s not about repeating yourself.
It’s about taking risks, looking
for something else, exploring the
limits, be they technical, musical,
mental, the limits of your soul.
It’s important to move, forward or
somewhere, but always to move.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 71
Orchestral
ORCHESTRAL CHOICE

A fizzing set of Hamburg Symphonies

CPE Bach’s dynamic works are delivered with great panache, says Paul Riley

characteristic precision and panache

inform the irrepressible first
movement of the B flat Symphony,
CPE Bach which nonetheless coyly flutters
The Hamburg Symphonies its eyelashes, and the players lean
Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century/ into the moody volatility with a
Alexander Janiczek (violin) swaggering gusto that subsequently
Glossa GCD921134 65:43 mins resurfaces in the concluding Presto.
According to one observer who heard There’s a trenchant account, too, of
a run-through of the ‘Hamburg the set’s only minor-key symphony
Symphonies’ before they were – No. 4 in B minor – its finale
despatched to their dedicatee Baron quiveringly taut and pugnacious.
van Swieten, ‘the original and Offsetting the high-octane verve,
adventurous trajectory of ideas was however, Janiczek finds an almost
heard with delight’. Mozartian caress
Encouraged Alexander Janiczek in the Largo of the
by the Baron
to be bold and
galvanises a robust Aand major Symphony,
the elegant
unconstrained by and full-bodied sound lyricism of the G
practicalities CPE major’s Poco Adagio
Bach obliged, producing music that is assailed by a subtle restlessness.
exuberantly ambushes expectations Perhaps some of CPE’s arresting
with harmonic daring, dramatic silences don’t always ‘tell’ as much as
unexpected interruptions and an they might – and there’s a little more
elevated sensitivity to the expressive raw theatricality in Trevor Pinnock’s
possibilities of contrast – both much-reissued 1979 release with
dynamic and rhetorical. The English Concert – but the
Directing from the violin, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century
Alexander Janiczek galvanises a is undeniably on fizzing form: stylish, Urbane and precise: Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century are on fine form
robust and full-bodied string sound, urbane and ever-alert.
You can access thousands of reviews from our extensive archive on
further enhanced by a conspicuously PERFORMANCE ++++
the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
warm and spacious recording. His RECORDING +++++

N Berg
Symphonies Nos 4 & 5
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra/
Ari Rasilainen
CPO 777665-2 63:48 mins
You couldn’t
accuse the CPO
label of hurrying
its cycle of early-
20th-century
symphonies by
Sweden’s Natanael Berg, possibly
the only composer to serve as a vet
at his country’s royal stables. The
first volume appeared in 2009 and
the second in 2010, but we’ve had to
wait a full 13 years for Ari Rasilainen
and his Norrköping forces to reach
the climax. At least we go out
with a big bang: the 40-minute
‘Trilogia delle passioni’ is in his
most grandiose, quasi-Straussian
vein, with heavy brass artillery,
heaving chromatic harmonies and a
philosophical narrative describing
the process from human suffering
to final spiritual redemption. If 1924
seems a bit late to be mounting a
gargantuan symphonic exhibit, the
music itself is mostly convincing,
well constructed, and teeming
with enjoyable instrumental life.
The only major letdown is the
peaceful chorale of the final pages,
a ‘happy ending’ that deserves
music of greater character than the
watery conclusion Berg provides.
Rasilainen’s musicians sail through
the earlier tempests very well.
The Fourth Symphony of
1918 is another matter entirely.
Compensating perhaps for
Europe’s four years of war, Berg
and his friend Kurt Atterberg
decided to challenge each other to
write light symphonies timed to
20 minutes, with the stipulation
of a tuba solo somewhere. Berg’s
creation shows his orchestrating
finesse (the woodwind writing
is almost French), Mendelssohn
flits over the second movement,
which he titled ‘Fairy Frolics’, but the
melodic material isn’t captivating
enough to keep the listener riveted
to the spot. The Fifth, however....
Geoff Brown
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING +++
Bruckner
Symphony No. 3
Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne/
François-Xavier Roth
Myrios MYR033 61:45 mins
There’s
something
unique about the
original version
of Bruckner’s
Third Symphony.
Stylistically, it’s poised between
the old Bruckner and the new: still
partly rooted in the rococo liturgical
music Bruckner grew up with,
but beginning to surrender to the
siren-call of Wagner’s erotically
charged mysticism. In terms of
scale, it’s huge, spacious, unfolding
slowly, however fast it may seem

72 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


to move on the surface. But there
are times when you could almost
be in church with Mozart or with
either of the Haydns. No version I’ve
heard manages to encompass all this
perfectly (perhaps that’s impossible),
and François-Xavier Roth’s
interpretation leans more towards
the 18th than the 19th century.
There are clear gains. The sense
of steady flow is gently but firmly
compelling, while the lighter touch,
especially from the Gürzenich
strings, liberates Bruckner’s
repeated accompaniment
figurations – how heavy they seem
when delivered with plush late-
Romantic portentousness.
But there’s less sense of what
this music is straining towards.
In the hands of Georg Tintner
(old school, but often inspired),
for example, that strange mixture
of patience and intense longing
that’s peculiar (in both senses) to
Bruckner comes across beautifully.
The luscious chastity of Lohengrin,
which had already made such a
profound impression on Bruckner,
is definitely present in Tintner’s
version. Here it’s more chastity.
It can be genuinely beatific, but
without that heavenly/earthly
tension, it has a tendency to be
one sided. This is definitely worth
hearing, and it certainly gave me
food for thought, but as a repeatable,
all-round authoritative Bruckner
Third, it doesn’t really measure up.
Stephen Johnson
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
Dvořák
Slavonic Dances
Prague Symphony Orchestra/
Tomáš Brauner
Supraphon SU43322 78:27 mins
Dvořák’s first set
of Slavonic Dances
was decisive in
launching his
international
career. Within
months of publication, they had
been played across Europe and
in the United States. They also
created an image of the composer
as quintessentially Czech. In fact,
beyond the use of popular dance
rhythms, they have very little to do
with Czech folksong and far more
to do with Dvořák’s ability to
VEIKKO KÄHKÖNEN
produce immediately appealing
melody, rhythmic excitement,
imaginative development and
brilliant orchestration. Brauner and
Orchestral Reviews
the Prague Symphony Orchestra
know this music backwards, but On the front foot:
they show little sign of taking Dalia Stasevska
familiar native repertoire for shares a first volume
granted. The brash, curtain-raising of works by Leiviskä
opening of the first dance may
be a touch hectoring, but what
follows is full of ear-catching detail.
Each dance is given a distinctive
character and Brauner always has
an eye to Dvořák’s skilful counter-
melodies. The string sound is lean
and there is much fine woodwind
detail, most delightfully in the
canonic duet between oboe and
bassoon in the C minor dance.
The second set of Slavonic
Dances were composed eight years
later when Dvořák’s reputation
was secure. There is plenty of the
razzmatazz familiar from the first
set, but also introspection. Brauner’s
performances are not quite as
successful here: the faster dances
are terrific, but the wonderful
D flat major dance is too brisk to
really enjoy its yearning, almost
Impressionist harmonies and
the central section’s unexpected
depths. Overall, there is some fine
performing here and, with vivid
recorded sound, much to enjoy.
Jan Smaczny now brought to light three of her like bleakness. It ends quietly.
PERFORMANCE ++++ orchestral works in fine Rebecca Franks
RECORDING ++++ performances by the Lahti PERFORMANCE ++++
Symphony Orchestra, that give a RECORDING +++++
Leiviskä strong flavour of what we’ve missed.
Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 – After the darkly hued, rich Mahler
Sinfonia Brevis; Suite for Sinfonia Brevis, a one-movement Symphony No. 8
Orchestra No. 2; Symphony piece from 1962 (revised 1972), we Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Jess
No. 2 have the immediately appealing Dandy (contralto) et al; Minnesota
Lahti Symphony Orchestra/ 1930s Orchestral Suite No. 2, which Chorale; Minnesota Orchestra/
Dalia Stasevska brings together music from the Osmo Vänskä
BIS BIS-2701 (CD/SACD) 62:56 mins film Juha by Nyrki Tapiovaara. It BIS BIS-2496 (CD/SACD) 82:40 mins
This is my first opens with a movement of springy If only the whole
encounter with rhythmic energy and freshness, of this impressive
Helvi Leiviskä, similar in spirit to Walton, before performance
a 20th-century moving into a rustic dance-like were as assured
Finnish composer Humoresque. The melancholic, as the first
whose name tonal Lullaby leads to a tense, vivid part, Mahler’s
somehow hasn’t travelled overseas Epilogue. And although this music marvellous setting of the hymn
along with those of Sibelius and was written for film, it translates to the Creator Spirit, or the last 20
Rautavaara. Perhaps that’s because brilliantly to the concert hall. minutes, when the treatment of
she was a woman but, argues Symphony No. 2 finds Leiviskä Goethe’s heavenbound final scene
Eila Tarasti in her booklet notes, in knottier territory, when she’d in Faust lifts us up on angel wings.
Leiviskä’s works were known, developed her style from late The problem, as so often with
performed and positively reviewed Romanticism into something more interpretations of the big operatic
in her lifetime. Trained in Helsinki austere, more abstract. The questing, act that is Part Two, is one of overall
and Vienna, she became a composer, brooding woodwind opening opens pace and difficult casting among
music critic and librarian at the up into more expansive – though no the all-important soloists. Neither
Sibelius Academy, and while not less emotionally stable – territory, in baritone Julian Orlishausen as
prolific, wrote three symphonies, which brass fanfares and brooding Pater Ecstaticus nor bass-baritone
various orchestral, vocal, chamber strings create a tragic mood. An Christian Immler are quite
and piano works. enigmatic, energetic central emphatic enough – in other words,
Whatever the reason Leiviskä movement is followed by a finale neither ecstatic or profound – in
has remained a shadowy figure, that begins with wistful flute and their brief roles, though both are
conductor Dalia Stasevska has heads into music of Shostakovich- fine in the upper reaches. And we
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 73
Orchestral Reviews
hit a bit of a reef around the soaring-
in of the Mater Gloriosa (aka the
BVM); Vänskä doesn’t keep it
moving enough, and the Minnesota
strings, though helpfully boasted
by the ever-superb engineering in
Minneapolis’s Orchestra Hall, need
more vibrancy.
The rest works, even given that
Carolyn Sampson, originally down
to sing just the brief but crucial
role of the voice from on high, had
to take on the demanding, ideally
Wagnerian role(s) of Soprano 1. She
may lack the amplitude of Soprano
2, Jacquelyn Wagner, but it all works.
Mezzo Sasha Cooke and contralto
Jess Dandy add distinctive timbres,
too, and the trio of ‘penitent women’,
dynamically careful, is a real beauty.
Neither is Barry Banks an heroic
tenor, but he hits the high notes and
floats the long lines with Italianate
aplomb. The amateur choruses
catch the fervour of the event, and a
seraphic trumpet distinguishes the
final massive optimism. David Nice
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING +++++
Olli Mustonen
Symphonies Nos 2 ‘Johanes
Angelos’ & 3 ‘Heavenly Lights’*
*Ian Bostridge (tenor); Turku
Philharmonic Orchestra/
Olli Mustonen
Ondine ODE1422-2 64:44 mins
Olli Mustonen’s
Second
Symphony
awakens
gradually, moving
as a flower
turning its head to the sun. The
Turku Philharmonic Orchestra
yawns and stretches, and we’re
halfway through the first movement
before urgent, staccato phrases
shared between flutes and brass take
shape. The tutti rhythms use a triad-
based harmony, calling to mind
the tintinnabuli style of Pärt and
the mysticism of Rautavaara, with
whom Mustonen studied. Gentle
alchemy is heard again in the third
movement, which points at religious
ecstasy, although the story is rooted
in the earth-bound ending of the
Byzantine Empire. The symphony’s
subtitle ‘Johanes Angelos’ (The Dark
Angel) comes from the 1952 novel by
Mika Waltari, something of a muse
for Mustonen, who has referenced
the author in other works. The
scampering final movement feels
BBC NOW
a little jovial for the destruction of
a civilisation, although the TFO –
74 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
conducted by the composer, who
is the ensemble’s artistic director
– gather enough storm clouds
to convince.
Mustonen’s Third Symphony
– ‘Taivaanvalot’ (Heavenly Lights) –
was developed from a chamber work
for tenor, cello and piano, which was
performed at the Wigmore Hall with
Ian Bostridge as vocalist in 2019.
The singer reprises his role here in
the retelling of a Finnish folklore in
which a ‘Northland hag’ imprisons
the sun and the moon (an English
translation is provided in the liner
note). Bostridge injects operatic
drama into the mercurial ‘Still the
sun is not shining’ and ‘The bird
sets about talking’. The orchestra
overpowers the soloist in places –
the most impactful parts of the work
are those that are sparsely scored, or
that leave the tenor space to sing (‘He
went to Väinämöinen’). Perhaps a
third version for a smaller ensemble
is the answer. Claire Jackson
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING +++
Schmidt
Symphonies Nos 1-4; Notre
Dame – Intermezzo and
Carnival Music
BBC National Orchestra of Wales/
Jonathan Berman
Accentus ACC80544
206:26 mins (4 discs)
Following their
highly acclaimed
streamed
recording of his
First Symphony,
Jonathan
Berman and the BBC National
Orchestra of Wales have now
completed their Franz Schmidt
symphony cycle. Packaged
together in this sumptuously
designed and luxuriantly recorded
set, the performances of all four
symphonies, released in celebration
of the 150th anniversary of his birth,
pay worthy tribute to an undeniably
major late-Romantic Austrian
composer who, despite the passage
of time, continues to divide opinion.
With almost evangelical zeal,
Berman staunchly defends
Schmidt from his detractors by
providing some insightful personal
observations in the booklet notes
and by investing sufficient energy
and dedication in his interpretations
to allow the music to speak directly
and fervently to the listener. It’s also
clear that members of the orchestra,
the majority of whom must have
Schmidt showcase:
Jonathan Berman
completes his
symphony cycle
experienced this music for the first
time, share Berman’s commitment
and enthusiasm, delivering
playing of sensitivity and technical
brilliance with some particularly
distinguished solo contributions
from trumpet, cello, cor anglais and
horn in the Fourth Symphony.
One of the great virtues of
Berman’s approach lies in its lyrical
impulse which, in movements such
as Finale to the Second Symphony
or the darkly brooding Adagio of
the Third, enables each individual
strand in a densely polyphonic
line to have an inner musical
logic, thereby bringing clarity and
purpose to orchestral textures that
in other hands could easily sound
heavy and overblown.
Berman’s approach to tempos
throughout these works is generally
more relaxed and expansive than
in the rival recordings from Neeme
Järvi (Chandos), Paavo Järvi (DG)
or Vassily Sinaisky (Naxos). For the
most part, this works well, although
the Scherzo section to the middle
movement of the Second Symphony
is surely far too laid-back for the
prescribed marking of ‘Sehr lebhaft’.
Erik Levi
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Mer(s)
Dukas: L’Apprenti sorcier;
Cras: Journal de Bord; Debussy:
La mer
Ensemble Appassionato/
Mathieu Herzog
Appassionato APP001 57:12 mins
This is the first
recording by
the orchestral
ensemble
Appassionato,
their aim being to
unearth 20th-century works which
have, in the estimation of their
directors, been unfairly neglected.
A laudable intention, but there’s
always the possibility that neglect
may sometimes have had right on
its side. The unknown quantity here
is the three-movement work Journal
de Bord, composed in 1927 by Jean
Cras, a vice-admiral in the French
navy. The music acts as a response
to the different characters of the
three night-time watches from 8pm
to 8am, and while I would like to
have been able to distinguish what
those characters are, I had no desire
to hear any of it again. The overuse
of repetition obliterates inspiration:
there are no tunes, merely short
phrases leading nowhere.
Although L’Apprenti sorcier is
dragged unconvincingly into a
message about the sea and our duty
towards it, what delight there is in
this beautifully constructed piece
with its unforgettable tune and
sparkling orchestration. In La mer,
balance is at times a problem (in
the third movement, for instance,
the cornets’ high shriek after figure
51, which should be a terrifying
climax, is drowned by the strings),
but otherwise the performance is
acceptable. Roger Nichols
+++
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING +++
 Concerto
CONCERTO CHOICE

Leonskaja enlightens with this pairing

The pianist brings energy and intellect to Grieg and Schumann, says David Nice

first movement. The Intermezzo is

a true dialogue with the players,
the finale more Beethovenesque,
Grieg • R Schumann but lightened by the ripple effect
Piano Concertos in A minor following in the wake of the fantasy
Elisabeth Leonskaja (piano); Lucerne march in the finale. Sanderling over
Symphony Orchestra/ indulges the cellos at the heart of the
Michael Sanderling work, and makes slightly heavy work
Warner Classics 5419783783 63:17 mins of Grieg’s lyrical countersubject in
Elisabeth Leonskaja’s live his first movement; but Leonskaja
performances of the Schumann always energises even the lyrical –
and Grieg piano concertos have Grieg’s slow movement is a good case
been cause for wonder. The rolling in point. And she offers, as always,
movement over the keyboard in both the right kind of weight in what
the Schumann could be grandiose
and a far from The Intermezzo is a and the subtlest
note-perfect
Grieg with the
true dialogue with the articulation in
the more delicate
Estonian Festival Lucerne players passages. There
Orchestra in are other ways of
Parnu still only went to prove the performing these works, but these
mistake of replacing her at the BBC interpretations are utterly consistent
Proms later that summer with and totally enlightening. Sound is
Khatia Buniatishvili, a brilliant but well balanced; even though the wind
wayward pianist with none of the are slightly set back as they would be Subtle articulation:
same grip on the dance music. in the concert hall, they make their Elisabeth Leonskaja
Here it’s obvious which is the personable mark from the oboe’s always pits her
deeper work because of the chamber perfect turn in Schumann’s opening performance just right
music Leonskaja makes with the to the incandescent flute in Grieg’s
excellent woodwind soloists of finale: pure melodic genius.
You can access thousands of reviews from our extensive archive on
Michael Sanderling’s Lucerne PERFORMANCE +++++
the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
Symphony Orchestra in Schumann’s RECORDING +++++

Dvořák up his orchestra post at Prague’s doesn’t really deserve to have Haydn
Violin Concerto in A minor; Provisional Theatre to concentrate been eclipsed by the popular Violin Concerto etc
Romance in F minor etc on composition. The title suggests Cello Concerto. Blending furiant
Thomas Albertus Irnberger (violin),
Mikhail Pochekin (violin); Slovak the inspiration of Beethoven’s and dumka, the Finale has been
Barbara Moser (fortepiano); Munich
Philharmonic Orchestra/ two Romances for violin and criticised for being less of a concerto
Chamber Philharmonic/
Daniel Raiskin orchestra, but the theme is very movement than another Slavonic
Franz Schottky
Hänssler Classic HC23057 50:03 mins much Dvořák’s, recycled from his Dance, but its natural exhilaration
Gramola 99308 (CD/SACD) 55:31 mins
Despite the violin own String Quartet in F minor. He comes across here thanks to the
being Antonín was never one to lose sight of a good virtuosity of the soloist; indeed, the When Haydn
Dvořák’s first idea and the piece (though perhaps Russian conductor Daniel Raiskin drew up a draft
instrument, his slightly over-extended) certainly and the Slovak Philharmonic all catalogue of his
complete works showcases Mikhail Pochekin’s feel this music instinctively. There’s works, he listed
for violin and sweet tone. of course no disguising the dance the C major Violin
orchestra amount to no more than Though its intended dedicatee, impulse of the Mazurka in E minor: Concerto as
three scores all written in the 1870s, Joseph Joachim, was apparently Dvořák also borrowed this Polish having been ‘fatto per il Luigi’. The
before he became an international sniffy about the Violin Concerto in form in his piano music, and his description is used as the heading
MARCO BORGGREVE

celebrity. But they are all worth A minor and some of its departures affection for it shows again in this for this new album’s booklet,
treasuring. The earliest is the from formal convention, it is a performance. John Allison where it is helpfully translated as
Romance in F minor dating from richly rewarding work that (like PERFORMANCE ++++ ‘made for the Luigi’. The person
1873, two years after Dvořák gave the slightly earlier Piano Concerto) RECORDING ++++ in question was Luigi Tomasini,

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 75

Concerto Reviews
the leader of Prince Esterházy’s
orchestra for nearly half a century.
Judging by the virtuoso demands
of both this concerto and the G
major work recorded here he must
have been a remarkably capable
player. These pieces date from the
early 1760s, before Haydn became
a great composer, though they’re
not without their attractions. The
bulk of the slow movement in the
C major concerto, for instance, is a
serenade, with the soloist unfolding
a long-spun melody to a pizzicato
accompaniment from the orchestral
strings in imitation of a guitar; and
the passages featuring the soloists
in the Adagio of the double concerto
for violin and keyboard are written
in similar fashion. The restricted
compass of the keyboard part in
the latter work suggests that Haydn
may have intended it for a chamber
organ, though the fortepiano used
here works well enough.
The two solo concertos have
a continuo part for harpsichord
which sounds rather intrusive in
the slow movement of the C major
concerto, but so discreet as to be
virtually inaudible throughout the
companion work. Barbara Moser is
an accomplished keyboard soloist
in the double concerto, but Thomas
Albertus Irnberger’s violin playing
is utilitarian throughout and his
cadenzas in the solo concertos are
far too long. This is music that needs
more persuasive advocacy than it
gets here. Misha Donat
PERFORMANCE ++
RECORDING +++++
Samuel Jones
Flute Concerto*; Violin
Concerto**; Trombone
Concerto ‘Vita Accademica’^
*Jeffrey Khaner (flute), **Michael
Ludwig (violin), ^Joseph Alessi
(trombone); Boston Modern
Orchestra Project/Gil Rose
BMOP Sound 1095 78:39 mins
Samuel Jones,
now in his
eighties, is in the
line of American
composers
following a
traditional path, with forebears
including his teacher Howard
Hanson, Barber and Copland. Given
his background as a conductor,
he’s a fine orchestrator, but, in a
style of music where memorable
melodies are a must, he doesn’t
always provide them. The Flute
Concerto from 2018 displays the
76 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
positive side of his musical character
as well as the drawbacks: it begins
with a strong idea which never
quite develops, and the underlying
harmonies are too slow-moving
to have momentum. It’s much the
same in the Interludio, although the
waltz-like scherzo feel does give
it some rhythmic thrust, but the
finale, where Jones quotes American
patriotic songs, has more variety
and interest, and Khaner plays with
sensitivity and technical ease.
There’s greater variety in the
Violin Concerto, in terms of
harmonic interest and melodic
outreach, with Ludwig an eloquent
soloist, dispatching the cadenza in
the first movement with virtuosity.
In its lyricism and overall structure
the Concerto reminded me of
Barber’s: it has the same warmth
and lushness in the first two slowish
movements, with a fast finale where
Jones can’t resist a more spacious
second theme.
The Trombone Concerto is much
more of a showpiece, exploiting
the whole range of the instrument,
and its ability to move between
long-breathed melody, outgoing
bombast and more athletic
passagework – in the right hands.
Alessi certainly has those hands,
especially in the cadenzas, and the
writing is particularly telling when
he is paired off with the orchestral
brass. All the soloists are beautifully
balanced in the recording, with
the orchestra clear and responsive.
Martin Cotton
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Superb performance:
Adele Bitter really
stands out in Ibert’s
Cello Concerto
Sgambati
Piano Concerto in G minor;
Sinfonia festiva
Massimiliano Damerini (piano);
Orchestra Sinfonica di Roma/
Francesco La Vecchia
Naxos 8.573272 50:24 mins
Born in Rome in
1841, Giovanni
Sgambati was a
piano prodigy
and later
conductor who
so impressed Liszt that he became
his favourite student. Becoming the
standard-bearer for non-operatic
music in Italy, Sgambati devotedly
introduced the music of Bach,
Beethoven, Schumann, Wagner
and Liszt to Italian audiences. He
also instituted piano lessons in a
building which became the initial
home of the Rome Conservatory.
And as Tommaso Manera
observes in his liner note, his
Concerto in G minor – composed
in 1879 – was the first Romantic
piano concerto by a composer from
the country that had given the
world both the instrument and the
genre. But while he was writing this
work, Tchaikovsky was writing his
Second Piano Concerto, and the
concertos by the great symphonists
were already history. Sgambati had
belatedly joined a star-studded field.
From Sgambati’s Concerto –
which Liszt approvingly used
in his classes – it’s clear that he
had absorbed all the music of his
predecessors, and he employed the
Lisztean technique of transforming
his thematic material as each
movement progressed. There are
times when one hears echoes of
Chopin, Brahms and Schumann,
but the writing is so dense, and skips
so rapidly from one effect to another,
that the ears are bamboozled. There
may be many incidental pleasures,
but Sgambati seems weighed down
– and his own voice muted – by the
mountain of other people’s music he
carries in his knapsack. And when
it comes to cadenzas, he’s simply too
modest to allow himself the ‘look at
me’ moment the occasion demands.
The appended Overture might
almost have been written by Weber
or Berlioz. Michael Church
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++
Von Zieritz
Le Violon de la Mort (Danses
macabres); Double Concerto;
Japanese Songs*
*Sophie Klussmann (soprano) et al;
Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie/
Jakob Brenner
Hänssler Classic HC23065 63:44 mins
It is chastening
to discover
that only one
previous album
exists dedicated
to the music
of Grete von Zieritz. Gladly, this
accomplished new album offers a
welcome introduction to her work,
and successfully traces the artistic
trajectory of this formidably gifted
modernist composer.
Born in Vienna in 1899, Grete
von Zieritz began her career as a
piano teacher in Berlin. The album’s
opening work, Japanese Songs,
proved her gateway to composing
professionally. Written in 1919, the
work sets ten brief Japanese poems
and its 1921 premiere proved such
a success that von Zieritz promptly
began composing full time. This
richly satisfying work, which
teeters between late Romanticism
and more challenging modernist
tonalities, moves from epic grandeur
to exquisite moments of quiet
beauty. Sophie Klussmann delivers
a gloriously pliant performance,
met at every turn by the excellent
Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie
under Jakob Brenner. A sole
criticism is that the sleeve notes
don’t include the texts of these
intriguing poems.
La Violon de la Mort (1953/1957)
follows, a work sparked by a
dreamlike vision experienced by

the composer of Death playing
the violin in a tree. Violinist Nina
Karmon is somewhat restrained
in the work’s wilder passages,
but conjures a wonderfully eerie
soundworld in its softer moments,
while pianist Oliver Triendl brings a
sense of grace and wit to the ghostly
waltz at the centre of the work.
The album closes with von
Zieritz’s Double Concerto for
Two Trumpets and Orchestra
(1975), a virtuosic and celebratory
work that also dabbles in Latin
American rhythm in its exuberant
last movement. Featuring two fine
performances from trumpeters
Jeroen Berwaerts and Andre
Schoch, it proves a fitting finale to
this excellent album. Kate Wakeling
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Core
Concertos by Hertel, L Mozart,
Molter, M Haydn, Telemann
Andre Schoch (trumpet); Stuttgart
Chamber Orchestra/
Susanne von Gutzeit
Es-Dur ES 2091 49:26 mins
Berlin
Philharmonic
trumpeter Andre
Schoch makes his
solo album debut
with a collection
of concertos from the Baroque and
Classical eras. Elegance, clarity and
technical brilliance are hallmarks
of all five concertos, which Schoch
believes represent the ‘core’ of the
18th-century repertoire. Most
are by forgotten or lesser-known
composers, including Mozart’s
father, Leopold and Haydn’s
younger brother, Michael.
The most celebrated composer
on the album is Telemann,
whose D major concerto is the
least interesting – a typical
four-movement ‘character’ work
lasting barely seven minutes.
More engaging is the concerto
by his younger contemporary,
Johann Melchior Molter, who
kept Karlsruhe’s court orchestra
and trumpeter on their toes in
a ‘concertante’ double act. In
Schwerin, Johann Wilhelm Hertel
was experimenting with the
‘sentimental’ style he had learned
FRANK EIDEL, GIUSEPPE SINATRA
from his teacher, CPE Bach. The
two movements of Mozart Senior’s
trumpet concerto are lifted from one
of his serenades and give a foretaste
of his son’s early compositions.
Michael Haydn’s C major concerto
is unusual for its high register,
with the solo trumpet acting as a
kind of soprano voice against a soft
background of flutes and strings.
Somewhat inauthentically,
Schoch plays a pair of piccolo
trumpets (one in A; the other in
C) – an instrument not developed
until the late 19th century. This
allows him to tackle the technical
challenges (especially in the Haydn)
while maintaining a historically
informed interpretation. He is
sympathetically accompanied by
the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra
under the sensitive direction of
Susanne von Gutzeit. The recorded
sound is clear and spacious.
John-Pierre Joyce
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Écoles de Paris
– Paris pour École
Works by Ibert, Mihalovici,
Antheil, Laks, Stravinsky
Adele Bitter (cello) et al; Deutches
Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/
Johannes Zurl
EDA Records eda 48 66:21 mins
All five of the
composers on
this album did,
for a time, call
Paris home. But
beyond that, not
only does the spirit of Stravinsky
animate three of the works here,
the selection ends with his Octet.
While I’m always delighted to hear
this joyous masterpiece, I do wonder
how kind it is to the Romanian
Marcel Mihalovici, the Pole Szymon
Laks and the American George
Antheil to record it together with
works of theirs all similarly based
on wind instruments. Antheil is
probably best remembered for his
Ballet mécanique of 1925, for his
entertaining autobiography Bad
Boy of Music and, in more rarefied
circles, for his work during World
War II on electrically driven
torpedos. His Concerto for chamber
orchestra of 1932 throws around
Stravinskian scales and repeated
notes, but at over 16 minutes
outstays its welcome. Mihalovici’s
Two Etudes of 1952 are better
constructed, through syncopations,
surprises, melismas, humour and
drive, and both have splendid
endings. But the star of the album,
Stravinsky apart, is undoubtedly
the Pole Szymon Laks, who ended
the war conducting the prisoners’
orchestra in Auschwitz. His
Concerto da camera of 1964, written
for piano, nine wind instruments
and percussion, and tapping into
Polish and Jewish folk music as
well as French chansons, is deeply
impressive, ending with a splendid
fugue. The reviewer of its premiere
wrote, ‘Tumultuously applauded, he
could fortunately convince himself
that music today is still able to smile
and enchant’ – the reference being
to what has been called the ‘serial
terror’ or, by Poulenc, ‘dodécaca’.
The playing in all these pieces, and
in Ibert’s First Cello Concerto, is
superb. Roger Nichols
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Piccolo Concertos
Works by Baksa, Hidas, Krek,
Papandopulo
Francesco Viola (piccolo);
Nationaltheater-Orchester
Mannheim/Salvatore Percacciolo
Naxos 8.579132 76:24 mins
Francesco Viola is
a leading advocate
for the piccolo,
the smallest
member of the
flute family that
has made a recent move from
orchestral colourist to concerto
soloist. Though it is regularly used
to fly high above the ledger lines in
works such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s
Scheherazade, the middle range
of the piccolo can be rich and
sonorous, as demonstrated by
Viola in Boris Papandopulo’s
Concertino. The Romanca has an
Viola and piccolo:
Francesco Viola showcases
his instrument’s many
colourful facets
Concerto Reviews
earthy resonance, particularly in
the interwoven moments between
piccolo and strings, performed by
the Mannheim National Theatre
Orchestra, where Viola is soloist.
Papandopulo returns to the more
traditional chirruping in Igra, an
upbeat virtuosic movement that
is the highlight of the 1977 work.
German-born Papandopulo spent
most of his life in Croatia and the
concerto has a distinctive Eastern
European flavour, a theme that is
felt throughout this programme.
Viola began preparations for
this album back in 2015, with a
recording of the piano reduction
of Andreas Baksa’s lively 2012
Grande concerto piccolo. Under the
baton of Salvatore Percacciolo and
enlarged to its intended scoring,
the 25-minute work blends neo-
Romanticism with mid-century
harmony; conversely, the cadenza
in the first Allegro is positively (and
pleasingly) Debussy adjacent. Here
Viola demonstrates sublime skill
and musicianship, flattered by a
carefully balanced recording (not
easy with an instrument designed to
carry across a large ensemble). The
two-movement Concertino (1967)
by Uroš Krek moves from eerie
meandering melodies – enhanced
by harp and celesta – to Romanian
folk-song and a rousing, timpani-
daubed finale. Frigyes Hidas’s 1951
Oboe Concerto, arranged by Viola, is
a worthy addition to this landmark
album. Claire Jackson
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 77
Opera
OPERA CHOICE
A grand Donizetti opera is
restored to its former glory
Christopher Cook revels in the exemplary casting of
this fully formed French production of La Favorite
A firm favourite:
Annalisa Stroppa
(centre) makes for a
golden Léonor
Donizetti
La Favorite (DVD/Blu-ray)
Annalisa Stroppa, Javier Camarena et al; Orchestra
Donizetti Opera/Riccardo Frizza; dir. Valentina
Carrasco (Bergamo, 2022)
Dynamic DVD: 57992; Blu-ray: 37992 190 mins
Bravo the Teatro Donizetti! La
Favorite not La Favorita. At Javier Camarena is every
last, the four-act Grand Opera
that Bergamo’s most illustrious
inch the bel canto tenor
musical son wrote for the Paris in his final act aria
Opéra in 1840 and not the
somewhat haphazard Italian version that singers have
kept alive. With the ballet too and cuts restored in a onside – though the flailing arms and a slap too much
relatively new critical edition.
The dark history of Léonor, mistress of King
Alphonse of Castile, in love with Fernand who has
abandoned his monastery for her and found glory on
the battlefield against the Moors makes psychological
sense now. Sombre sense, played out in the pit by the
new role Donizetti finds for the cellos and basses.
Dressed in black and grey in the current historical-
contemporary style with boots and great coats for
78 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
the men and Barbie pink and orange satin for the
women in the chorus, La Favorite looks squeezed on
the Bergamo stage. Mountains of furniture covered in
dust sheets, sliding bars and a statue of the Virgin and
a huge gilded cross sometimes overwhelm the action.
Yet the principals never lose their vocal footing.
Javier Camarena is exemplary
as Fernand, every inch the bel
canto tenor in his celebrated
final act aria ‘Ange si pur’.
Florian Sempey’s Alphonse is a
gravel-voiced villain, struggling
to keep both his mistress and a disapproving church
rouge suggest a Panto refugee. Annalisa Stroppa’s
Léonor is gold: her Act 3 recitative and aria brings the
house down.
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
You can access thousands of reviews from our
extensive archive on the BBC Music Magazine
website at www.classical-music.com
Cavalli
Il Xerse
Carlo Vistoli, Ekaterina Protsenko
et al; Baroque Orchestra Modo
Antiquo/Federico Maria Sardelli
Naxos 8.660536-37 152:56 mins (2 discs)
Cavalli’s Il Xerse
is something of a
landmark opera.
Composed mid-
career in 1655, it
was chosen (in a
revised form, with additional music
by Lully) to celebrate the marriage
of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of
Spain in 1660. Its libretto, by Nicolò
Minato, was later set by Handel.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid this is no
landmark recording.
The performance comes from
the 2022 Valle d’Itria Festival in
Martina Franca, which saw the
opera’s prologue cut and several
scenes removed. The production
was staged in the town’s restored
1930s cinema, and sound engineers
have done little to remove audience
and on-stage noise. Worse, the
singers’ annoying hand claps
(ordered by the director) that signal
the beginning and end of recitatives
have been left in.
The opera concerns the complex
amorous affairs of Xerxes of Persia
and is basically a high comedy. But
the humour is roughly delivered
by singers whose enunciation and
diction (essential aspects of early
Baroque Italian opera) are variable
at best. Countertenor Carlo Vistoli
is an unremarkable Xerxes. His
opening ‘Ombra mai fu’ passes
almost unnoticed, although the
extended aria ‘Lasciatemi morire’
is more expressively delivered.
As Romilda, the object of Xerxes’s
desire, Carolina Lippo displays
shaky intonation and a strained
upper register. Dioklea Hoxha,
as her sister Adelanta, is fairer
voiced. Gaia Petrone is a serviceable
Arsamene, the king’s brother,
but fails to exploit the vocal and
dramatic potential of the role.
Ekaterina Protsenko hardly makes a
mark as Amastre, Xerxes’s wronged
betrothed. Instrumentalists from
the Orchestra Barocca Modo
Antiquo under Federico Maria
Sardelli fail to get a handle on
Cavalli’s score, and there are far too
many sour notes in the strings.
John-Pierre Joyce
PERFORMANCE ++
RECORDING ++

M-A Charpentier
Médée
Véronique Gens, Cyrille Dubois,
Judith van Wanroij et al; Le Concert
Spirituel/Hervé Niquet
Alpha ALPHA1020 170:43 mins (3 discs)
Some regard
Médée (1693)
not just as
Marc-Antoine
Charpentier’s best
work, but as one
of the finest operas of the Baroque.
It was the 50-year-old composer’s
only commission ever for a serious
French opera, and he gave it his all:
for the principals, sizzling recitative-
arioso that entangles instrumental
with vocal parts; for the choir,
intricate ensembles alternating with
grand numbers; for the dancers,
dizzying generic variety, from sassy
loure to old-fashioned chaconne;
for the band, an active role in plot
exposition. There are no happy
endings here as the sorceress Médée,
maddened by her lover Jason’s
betrayal, poisons her rival, Princess
Créuse, drives Créuse’s father to
suicidal madness and kills the
children she has borne Jason.
Véronique Gens fits Médée to
her vocal arts: when wounded, her
pitches drip with sorrow; when
threatening, her crescendos gather
like storm clouds; when enraged,
she lays waste to all other parts. But
this super-sized characterisation
lacks soft, straight-toned expression
with which she might express
vulnerability, such as is brilliantly
conveyed by tenor Cyrille Dubois
(Jason) and soprano Judith Van
Wanroij (Créuse), the chemistry
of whose tender joint singing
illuminates their dramatis personae.
The boldness of Le Concert
Spirituel surpasses the earlier
benchmark recording by Les Arts
Florissants (2009). For the climactic
‘Noires filles du Styx’, director
Hervé Niquet extracts chilling
menace from the weird modulations
that mark the arrival of Médée-
summoned devils; conversely, the
group’s galant dance movements
convey a joy wholly new to the
Médée discography. Niquet also
brilliantly deploys continuo – its
pulses, pauses and rushing passages
GIANFRANCO ROTA, EDOLAND
– to shape how we hear the words of
the recitative, which is what drives
Médée forward. A magnificent
performance. Berta Joncus
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Wagner
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
(DVD/Blu-ray)
Heidi Stober (soprano) et al; Deutsche
Oper Berlin Chorus and Orchestra/
John Fiore; dir. Jossi Wieler, Sergio
Morabito, Anna Viebrock
(Berlin, 2022)
Naxos DVD: 2.110766-67; Blu-ray:
NBD0178-79V 240:41 mins
To judge from
the costumes,
this production
by directors
Jossi Wieler,
Sergio Morabito
and Anna Viebrock, filmed at the
Deutsche Oper Berlin in June and
July 2022, and set at the Munich
Conservatoire, evokes the 1970s.
Visually it’s a drab affair, with
essentially a single, interior,
municipal-style set to replace
Wagner’s medieval city of
Nuremberg and meadows beyond.
The central characters are also
reconceived. Veit Pogner (good
solid bass Albert Pesendorfer)
is the departing head of the
Conservatoire who can’t let go; the
song competition is about selecting
his successor.
Hans Sachs (Johan Reuter, at
times running out of vocal steam)
is a percussionist music therapist,
a hippy-ish member of staff who
writes pop songs and is sneaking
around with the director’s daughter
Eva (the dependable Heidi Stober).
Also past his best is Klaus Florian
Vogt’s underpowered and short-
breathed Walther von Stolzing.
Philipp Jekal’s Beckmesser is
the usual clumsy fool, though
not excessively parodied: on the
other hand he’s not especially
memorable, except that he
plays the accompaniment to his
competition entry on the piano,
while Sachs strikes the piano lid
with drumsticks to mark his rival’s
mistakes. Günther Groissböck
offers classy casting as the
Nightwatchman.
Ya-Chung Huang is likable as
masterclass student David, with
Annika Schlicht impressively
ample of tone as his lecturer,
Magdalene (another inappropriate
relationship?).
While musical values – some
overly mature vocalism aside – are
generally good, the show is dully
utilitarian, with little sense of the
creative conflict between tradition
and innovation that lies at the
heart of the piece – let alone of its
celebratory quality.
Summoning up solid choral
singing and orchestral playing, John
Fiore is the dependable conductor.
George Hall
PERFORMANCE ++
PICTURE & SOUND ++++
Operette
Arias by Lehár, Stolz, Messager,
J Strauss II et al
Diana Damrau (soprano), Jonas
Kaufmann (tenor); Munich Radio
Orchestra/Ernst Theis
Erato 5419782798 58:32 mins
No merry widows
here; no student
princes and only
a hint of a gypsy
baron. Diana
Damrau’s foray
into operetta from Johann Strauss
II to the Jazz operettas of the 1920’s
and ’30s follows an unfamiliar
path in 3/4 time with numbers
by Kalman and Lehár waltzing
alongside music by André Messager,
Paul Abraham and Henri Christiné.
Ever the intelligent artist
Darmrau knows how to lighten
the voice to create that distinctive
soprano sound demanded by
operetta – a light sparkling tone,
spiralling coloratura and the
storytelling that is the sine qua non
Opera Reviews
Memorable turn:
Judith van Wanroij
shows vulnerability
in Charpentier
of a good chanson style. In ‘Warum
hast du mich wach geküsst?’ from
Lehár’s operetta biography of
Goethe she elegantly unwraps the
feelings of a woman who knows
that the poet needs a career not a
partner. In Robert Stolz’s duet from
Im Weissen Rössl with the expert
assistance of Jonas Kaufmann, she
reminds us that operetta is fuelled
by the erotic quite as much as
nostalgia and turning social norms
on their head.
Kaufmann actually only partners
Damrau on three tracks but is
a revelation. There’s character
singing of the highest quality in ‘Im
Chambre séparée’ from Richard
Heuberger’s Der Opernball, an
elegant waltz duet that teases both
the characters and the audience
with mistaken identities.
It’s a pity that there’s no word
about often unfamiliar operettas
or composers in the accompanying
booklet. And why no translations
of the sung texts? Yes, you can find
them on the Erato website, but it’s an
awkward journey. Yet when Damrau
ends her recital with a barnstorming
‘I’m a woman who knows what she
wants’ from Oscar Straus’s Manon,
you all but forgive such solecisms.
Christopher Cook
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 79
Choral & Song
a CHORAL & SONG CHOICE JS Bach
Cantatas, BWV 56 & 82
Christoph Prégardien (tenor); Le
A laugh-out-loud romp Concert Lorrain/Stephan Schultz
Etcetera KTC1704 53:28 mins

through songs of the ages Bach was inspired

by the virtuosity
of his musicians
during his time at
Ashutosh Khandekar has his funny bone tickled by as Cantor of the
Hilary Summers and co’s madcap musical circus Thomaskirche
in Leipzig. Between 1725 and 1727,
one singer in particular, the bass
Johann Christoph Lipsius, was a
focus of his creative attentions, with
his two virtuoso solo cantatas for
bass dating from this time, together
with the St Matthew Passion and its
substantial sections written for bass.
Christoph Prégardien, an elegant
lieder singer and a distinguished
Bach Evangelist, makes the switch
here from his usual high lyric
tenor to bass-baritone. This shift
in tessitura, but not in timbre, feels
uncomfortable. In ‘Ich will den
Kreuzstab gerne tragen’, the singing
is missing the darker colouring of a
true bass and, in Bach’s melismatic
passages, Prégardien lacks fulness
of tone. His voice’s natural lyricism
and expressive range are brought
into better focus in ‘Ich habe genug’,
capturing the prophet Simeon’s
Amorphous vocalism:
Hilary Summers poignant sense of fulfilment on
is a woman of encountering the infant Christ.
many voices in this Bach’s settings are technically
memorable cavalcade demanding, as well as requiring an
intense intellectual engagement
from the performers to bring out
the spiritual import of the texts.
Circus Dinogad mezzo in Purcell’s ‘Sweeter Than Roses’. She relishes ‘Ich will den Kreuzstab’ equates the
Works by Byrd, Dowland, Purcell, Ravel, words, caressing and projecting every syllable, and journey of life with all its sufferings
Jean-Luc Ponty et al brings theatrical panache to the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’, to a ship’s voyage, and Bach’s
Mike Fentross (theorbo), Maarten Ornstein (clarinet), 40-second vignettes threaded through this musical orchestration evokes undulating
Hilary Summers (contralto); medley, bitingly arch and hilarious. waters and stormy emotions from
Dudok Quartet Amsterdam And what a fine and innovative instrumental anguish to acceptance. This sense
Zefir ZEF9701 46:33 mins ensemble this is, led by the of life’s drama unfolding before us
Since its launch in 2022, Summers runs the gamut Dutch theorbo and bass eludes Le Concert Lorrain, whose
the madcap, genre-bending
ensemble Circus Dinogad
of her unconventional but clarinet duo Mike Fentross and
Maarten Ornstein, working
playing remains breezy and genial
throughout this live recording, a
has taken its audiences on a expressive range in tandem with the Dudok broad wash of lovely sound, locked
series of quirky and highly Quartet. They move seamlessly in an unwavering allegretto and
entertaining musical adventures, led by the Welsh through the ages, masters of every musical language lacking in nuances of light and
contralto Hilary Summers. Their latest recording is they perform: Irish jig, Scottish folksong, Welsh shade. Ashutosh Khandekar
an exuberant mish-mash of musical miniatures that lullaby, Renaissance lute songs, each piece layered PERFORMANCE +++
defies definition, taking the listener from village- with an improvisatory twist. Above all, they know RECORDING +++
green revelries to smoky jazz clubs, from courtly how to have fun. I laughed out loud several times.
entertainment to giddy end-of-pier frolicking. PERFORMANCE +++++ Byrd
Summers runs the gamut of her unconventional but RECORDING +++++ Sacred Works – Mass for Four
CLAIRE NEWMAN WILLIAMS

highly expressive three-octave range. In her haunting, Voices etc

unaccompanied opening ballad, ‘I will give my love
an apple’, she is a countertenor, sexless and aethereal;
later, she blooms into a gorgeously sensuous high
You can access thousands of reviews from our
extensive archive on the BBC Music Magazine Saint Thomas Choir of Men & Boys,
Fifth Avenue, New York et al
website at www.classical-music.com
Signum Classics SIGCD776
144:01 mins (2 discs)

80 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


Located in mid-
town Manhattan,
St Thomas’s
is the premier
Anglican church
in New York
City and boasts a fine tradition
of sung services. This recording
actually contains two separate
performances – one from 2023 and
the other from back in 1981 – so its
fine choral tradition is exemplified
here alongside a commemoration of
the 400th anniversary of William
Byrd’s death. Most of the motets
are taken from Byrd’s Gradualia
collections of 1605 and 1607,
and they are embedded within
a service for the feast of Corpus
Christi. Byrd’s four-part mass
setting (1590s?) provides the central
polyphonic focus.
When recording performances
in ecclesiastical buildings, there is
often a tussle between wanting to
capture the echoing, atmospheric
magic of a communal church
service and striving to reproduce
the detail of the music close up. Here
the general magic can be enjoyed
for its own sake in the opening
introit Cibavit Eos, and in the very
professional intonations of the bible
readings and prayers by the Rev.
Carl Turner.
When it comes to the organ pieces
(played by Jeremy Filsell and Nicolas
Haigh), the excellent performance
technique is discernible but not
always the intricate textures. Filsell,
Haigh and Turner were all educated
in England so they understand
the choral tradition well, though
with more than 30 singers, the
impressive effects tend to come in
the more monumental pieces, such
as the Gloria and Credo movements,
and the Alleluia Cognoverunt, with
its nicely handled rhythms and
antiphonal singing. With some
entries, the voices are not always
exactly coordinated (Agnus Dei) and
more might have been made of the
delicious harmonic false relations
in O salutaris hostia. The 1981
recording of Byrd’s Great Service is
exultant but somewhat relentless.
Anthony Pryer
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++
Franck
Les Béatitudes
Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de
Liège; Hungarian National Choir/
Gergely Madaras et al
Fuga Libera FUG817 117:47 mins (2 discs)
This is why he
was called ‘Pater
Seraphicus’.
Composed across
a decade and
requiring eight
soloists, choir and orchestra, Les
Béatitudes is the two-hour zenith
of Franck’s sacred expressions.
Nonetheless, as is clear from the
vigorously restless opening of
the first béatitude, this is not the
purely assuaging work that might
be expected from an oratorio about
the Sermon on the Mount. Each
of Christ’s eight pronouncements
is preceded by a challenging
exploration of the human need it
addresses. The Angel of Death and
Satan make appearances, and are
duly vanquished, along with the
Mater Dolorosa, peacemakers, a
panoply of mourning characters, to
name but a few. The text may be a
period piece, but Franck’s glorious
music is timeless.
Lacking the narrative arc
of conventional oratorios, the
handful of previous recordings
capture the contemplative essence
of Les Béatitudes, but underplay
its spiritual drama. This incisive
newcomer, taken live from
bicentenary performances in
Franck’s birthplace, Liège, manages
both. Rich-voiced bass Yorck Felix
Speer’s wayward French aside,
the soloists are generally strong,
notably baritone David Bižić’s
authoritative yet compassionate
voice of Christ. Bass Patrick Bolleire
admirably characterises diverse
roles, from a ‘celestial voice’ to an
imposing Satan, while sublime
soprano Anne-Catherine Gillet is
similarly versatile, especially as a
profoundly moving grieving wife.
Choral & Song Reviews
The Orchestre Philharmonique
Royal de Liège are superb, while the
Hungarian National Choir adroitly
reflects the shifting moods. Plaudits
go to conductor Gergely Madaras for
marshalling the vast forces to create
a vivid performance that is a clear
first choice in this marvellous work.
Christopher Dingle
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Langgaard
Songs
Louise McClelland Jacobsen
(soprano), Kristian Riisager (piano)
Dacapo 8224754 59:35 mins
A poignancy
haunts these
songs by Rued
Langgaard
(1893-1952)
quite beyond
their affecting content. Composed
between the ages of 13 and 24, they
show his astonishing facility and
expressive range from a very young
age – and his stylistic eclecticism.
What they don’t show is his looming
antipathy towards, and struggle
with, the Danish establishment that
– despite a fecundity that produced
16 symphonies and more – would
see Langgaard tragically shunned.
He died largely forgotten and
unheard, aged just 58.
The vast majority of the songs
here are world-premiere recordings
and represent a fifth of the total
Langgaard composed. Performed
with sensitivity and intelligence
by soprano Louise McClelland
Jacobsen and pianist Kristian
Riisager, the settings feature
adaptations from Russia and
Ukraine alongside Danish texts,
including by Langgaard himself.
Affectionate portrait:
The Harmonious Society of Tickle-
Fiddle Gentlemen underscore
choral works by Pepusch
Firmly late-Romantic, Wagner
and Richard Strauss are clear
influences alongside Grieg and
others. Yet what arises is wholly
distinctive and extends to a kind of
impressionism that’s sparked by the
bells Langgaard returns to again and
again alongside vivid descriptions
of birds, weather and landscapes –
and that prefigures minimalism at
points, for example, in the twin 1914
settings of Jenny Blicher-Clausen’s
‘Alle de små klokker’.
There’s even a hint of Weill-
to-be about ‘Sigøjnervise’ (1916),
Langgaard’s playful characterisation
of Thor Lange’s south Russian gypsy
girl. Indeed, it’s the set of eight songs
from which this comes that contains
arguably his most intriguing stylistic
turns, with unusual harmonies and
a paring-down of piano textures.
But no song is merely outwardly
descriptive. Each has a strong
emotional resonance or narrative
that speaks of the composer’s
profound yearning for love.
Optimism, desire, tenderness;
transience, grief, loss. It’s all –
heartbreakingly – here.
Steph Power
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Pepusch
Chandos Anthems
The Girl Choristers of Canterbury
Cathedral et al/Robert Rawson
Accent ACC24397 58:14 mins
Writing of
the German
musician Johann
Ernst Galliard,
who became
a naturalised
Englishman, the 18th-century
music historian Dr. Charles Burney
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 81
Choral & Song Reviews
French finery:
Sandrine Piau is
magnificent in her
album Reflet
remarked that he had never seen
more correctness – or less
originality – in any composer of
the time he had examined, Dr.
Pepusch always excepted. Burney’s
dyspeptic outburst ill accords
with this recording of Pepusch’s
Chandos Anthems.
The Harmonious Society of
Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen has got
form where Pepusch is concerned.
Two previous releases on the Ramée
label revealed music that places
Burney’s assessment very wide
of the mark. The present release
features a Magnificat and two
anthems which Pepusch wrote for
James Brydges, Duke of Chandos.
They were performed variously at
the Duke’s Edgware manor house,
Cannons, at the parish church
and, when it was completed in
about 1720, the chapel. Handel had
already written 11 anthems and
much else for Cannons but, as he
became increasingly involved in
opera, Pepusch became its director
of music.
The two verse anthems and the
Magnificat are written for solo
voices, chorus and instruments.
The music is colourful, mainly
in a theatrical style modelled on
and recalling that of Venetian
composers, but sometimes
with a distinctive Handelian
SANDRINE EXPILLY
flavour. Choruses, arias and
duets abound and the soloists,
the Girl Choristers of Canterbury
82 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Cathedral and the instrumentalists
breathe vitality into the music.
In addition to the vocal works,
there is a single movement oboe
concerto, eloquently played by
Mark Baigent. Robert Rawson, to
whom we owe a debt of gratitude
for his rehabilitation of an unjustly
overlooked composer, directs
with both style and affection.
Nicholas Anderson
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Schubert
Die schöne Müllerin
(arr. Guthrie)
Thomas Guthrie (vocal);
Barokksolistene
Rubicon RCD1086 60:18 mins
Thomas Guthrie’s
singular take on
Schubert’s first
great song cycle
has evolved out
of concert-hall
experimentations implicating
puppetry, piano accompaniments
re-imagined for mixed instrumental
ensembles and his doctoral research
on the ornamentation of Schubert
lieder. Perhaps you had to be there
to get the most out of this decidedly
radical rethink. To newcomers
on album, the almost visceral jolt
(experienced at least initially) is
soon followed by bewilderment:
why tinker with a work that so
incontestably ‘works’ already?
This is especially puzzling when
the interventions so often distract
from the ineluctable unfolding of
the narrative whose trajectory is so
supremely focused when entrusted
to voice and piano.
On subsequent hearings,
however, while questions remain,
they perhaps become less troubling;
resistance surrenders to curiosity,
and some of the ‘novelties’ prove
revealing. Indeed, in spirit, the
result is arguably not a million
miles removed from an earlier
‘Liederspiel’ incarnation with
music by Ludwig Berger that,
pre-Schubert, had enlivened a
Berlin salon.
Configured as a string quartet
with double bass and two guitars,
the Barokksolistene enter
into Guthrie’s reworking with
predictably infectious gusto. The
guitar-rich ‘Dankgesang an den
Bach’ sounds like a shoo-in for a
gemütlich evening in some Viennese
wine stube, and the pizzicato
underpinning of ‘Tränenregen’
beautifully sets up the teardrops and
rain of the lyric. But not everything
is so felicitous – the garishly
overcooked accompaniment to
‘Mit dem grünen Lautenbande’
disquiets, and while Guthrie’s
pleasant tenor makes a good fit
for the protagonist’s youthfulness
(and in its unvarnished simplicity
renders the final watery lullaby
with haunting, consolatory pathos),
across the entire cycle his expressive
range is somewhat circumscribed.
Paul Riley
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING +++++
Tůma
Motets; Cantatas
Andreas Scholl (countertenor); Czech
Ensemble Baroque/Roman Válek
Aparté AP340 48:00 mins
As the music
historian Charles
Burney observed,
18th-century
Bohemia was a
finishing school
for talented and well-educated
musicians who sought their fortunes
elsewhere. Musical establishments
across Europe were the beneficiaries
of a legion of Czech composers and
performers, but Vienna was perhaps
their prime destination.
Among the most celebrated
plying his trade in the imperial
capital was František Tůma. Born
in north-eastern Bohemia in 1704,
Tůma spent most of his working life
in Vienna in the service of members
of the court and the imperial family.
While his music is solidly founded
in the Italian tradition practised
by his teacher Johann Fux, it
possesses an undeniably seductive
brilliance where nothing is entirely
predictable, nor – for the most part
– overlong. In addition, his purely
orchestral writing, showcased here
in a three-movement Sinfonia, is
full of sparky imagination.
This collection offers the
listener a handsome conspectus
of Tůma’s talents, performed with
plenty of enthusiasm and stylistic
understanding. The brief motet
for the opening St John the Baptist
is a delight, with nicely focused
choral singing, particularly in the
upper registers, and an engaging
central aria sung by Andreas Scholl,
flavoured by his familiar rich timbre
and elegant phrasing. Scholl also
takes the lead in two solo motets,
which include some magnificent,
deeply felt arias.
Even more rewarding is a
grand concerted setting of Dixit
Dominus. The resonant acoustic is
an advantage and helps to conceal
some untidy playing in the strings. If
overall the standard of performing is
not of the highest, it rarely gets in the
way of this richly enjoyable music.
Jan Smaczny
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
 Choral & Song Reviews
Dreams, Desires,
Desolation – English Song
Works by Butterworth, Bridge,
Quilter, Vaughan Williams et al
Trevor Alexander (baritone); Peter
Crockford (piano)
Divine Art DDX 21114 68:03 mins
The baritone
Trevor Alexander
has enjoyed a rich
and varied career
in opera and
music theatre,
and on the concert platform. This
selection of English songs is his
debut recording as a soloist, and is
worth the wait. Butterworth’s ‘Is
my team ploughing?’ immediately
showcases Alexander’s mature
interpretive temperament. Unlike
many singers, he has convincingly
unaffected ‘voices’ for the poet
Housman’s two protagonists, and
the technical control to give each the
poise and stability needed.
Subtle delineations of mood
ensure Marshall’s ‘I hear you calling
me’ (a John McCormack calling-
card) avoids sentimentality, sitting
comfortably alongside a mellifluous
account of Quilter’s ‘Now sleeps the
crimson petal’. Though nominally
a baritone, Alexander has a silky,
tenor-like upper register which
lends a sense of elevation to Hely-
Hutchinson’s ‘Dream Song’ and
enables the softly floated top note
concluding Cyril Scott’s ‘Lullaby.’
Nor is Alexander found wanting
when a more dramatic, declamatory
style is needed. His impressive
control of dynamics lends spine and
structure to both Bridge’s ‘What
shall I your true love tell?’, and to
Quilter’s similarly self-reflective
‘I arise from dreams of thee.’ Peter
Crockford provides empathetic
accompaniments, consistently
enhancing mood and atmosphere
while never jockeying with his
singer for attention.
If there’s one drawback to
Dreams, Desires, Desolation, it’s the
preponderance of slow and mid-
tempo songs, with little of an upbeat
nature rhythmically. But that’s a
niggle, not a major objection, and it’s
more than offset by the consistent
pleasure Alexander’s cultured
singing brings. Song texts are absent
from the otherwise informative
booklet, but the crystal clarity of
Alexander’s diction means they’re
hardly necessary. Terry Blain
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Reflet
Works by Berlioz, Britten,
Debussy, Duparc, Koechlin
and Ravel
Sandrine Piau (soprano); Orchestre
Victor Hugo Franche-Comté/
Jean-François Verdier
Alpha Classics ALPHA1019 57:05 mins
It would be easy
to take Sandrine
Piau for granted.
Reflet, her latest
album, is another
fine collection of
orchestral French song, following
on from the utterly outstanding Si
J’ai aimé of a few years ago. That’s
enticing in itself but, as is typical
of Piau, the particular selection of
songs is distinctive and intelligent,
with interconnections on multiple
levels. She states in the booklet
that Reflet is an explicit partner to
her excellent German-language
collection Clair-Obscur. That
juxtaposed light and shadow,
whereas Reflet explores the play of
light, reflections and echoes.
There is familiar fare, with
Berlioz’s ‘Le spectre de la rose’
and Duparc’s ‘Chanson triste’ and
‘L’invitation au voyage’, alongside
delectable rarities from Koechlin,
such as the joyous ‘Pleine eau’. A
couple of Debussy piano works
unexpectedly appear in orchestral
guise either side of a cycle known
better on recordings than in the
concert hall: Ravel’s 3 Poèmes de
Stéphane Mallarmé. Provocatively
for a French singer in French song,
Piau ignores national boundaries
to conclude with Britten’s Quatre
Chansons Françaises.
It almost goes without saying that
the performances are magnificent.
Piau floats dreamily in the opening
of Koechlin’s ‘Épiphanie’, exquisite
in itself, but also creating a distinct
pre-echo of the more disembodied
gossamer threads of ‘Soupir’ from
the Ravel cycle. There is no sense
of juvenilia in Piau’s performance
of the Britten, her deeply affecting
ability to flit between moments
of playfulness and fragility in
‘L’Enfance’ bringing out the
exceptional maturity of the 14-year-
old composer’s setting. Warmly
supported by the Orchestre Victor
Hugo under Jean-François Verdier
and captured in glowing sound, Piau
has created another sublime album.
Christopher Dingle
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Chamber
CHAMBER CHOICE
A quality collection from
the Wigmore Soloists
This is an outstanding appraisal of lesser-known and
frankly revelatory chamber works, says Terry Blain
Team players:
the Wigmore Soloists
work together to create
a delightful recital
Bliss • H Ferguson • Robin Holloway
Chamber Music – H Ferguson: Octet; Bliss:
Clarinet Quintet; Robin Holloway: Serenade in C
Wigmore Soloists
BIS BIS-2547 (CD/SACD) 74:09 mins
The Wigmore Soloists’ three previous albums have
focused on mainstream repertoire, but this new
release probes lesser-known
territory. Belfast-born Howard Each line in the Bliss
Ferguson wrote just 20 works,
tingles with vitality and hyperactive Menuetto, while Diego
and his music gradually fell out of
favour after he stopped composing sharp observations
in 1958. The Wigmore Soloists’
outstanding performance of Ferguson’s 1933 Octet
makes you wonder why.
Scored for the same instruments as Schubert’s,
its opening movement is restless, the putative late-
Romantic idiom constantly challenged by jagged,
almost Mahlerian interjections. With violinist
Isabelle van Keulen and clarinettist Michael Collins
DAVE ROWELL, VERENA CHEN
spearheading the players, it’s unsurprising that the
performance as a whole is something of a revelation.
Collins leads Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet, his
fluttering arpeggios adding delicate grace notes to the
84 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
emotionally ambivalent slow movement. The clarinet
by no means dominates Bliss’s writing, however, and
bristling accounts of the scherzo and finale highlight
the teamwork in this performance, each line tingling
with vitality and sharp interpretive observations.
Robin Holloway’s Serenade in C (another octet)
completes the recital, van Keulen’s skittish spiccatos
typifying the self-deprecating wit
of the opening Marcia movement.
She swaps riffs with Collins in the
Incertis Sánchez’s horn inserts
droll commentary.
Holloway’s urbanity and playful harmonies
probably seemed hopelessly retrograde in 1979, when
the Serenade was written. But quality has a way of
enduring, and this wonderfully enjoyable work has
quality written all over it, as does this entire recital.
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
You can access thousands of reviews from our
extensive archive on the BBC Music Magazine
website at www.classical-music.com
Brahms • Francisco Coll
• Korngold
Piano Trios
Trio Isimsiz
Rubicon RCD1107 77:02 mins
This impressive
recording comes
from an ensemble
that is reaching
its maturity in
a superb way.
Violinist Pablo Hernán Benedí,
cellist Edvard Pogossian and pianist
Erdem Mısırlıoğlu, who formed
their ensemble around 14 years ago
at the Guildhall School in London,
have been rising slowly but steadily
to prominence through some of the
most perspicacious young artist
programmes around, notably the
Young Classical Artists Trust and
the Borletti-Buitoni Trust. Here they
push the boat out with a programme
that includes, alongside Brahms’s
ever-popular Trio No. 2, the sole
Piano Trio by Korngold (who, quite
incredibly, wrote it aged 12) and a
new work they have commissioned
from the Spanish composer
Francisco Coll.
There’s an excellent finesse to
the group’s playing, which holds
their individual contributions and
their collective, conversational
ensemble work in an ideal balance.
In the Korngold, they embrace the
youthful composer’s full-blooded
language, but never make heavy
weather of it; while it is powerfully
played, the touch is predominantly
sprightly, making the most of the
heady stream of melodic ideas.
The Brahms, too, is well calibrated,
even well behaved, but still
emotionally off the leash and full of
high spirits.
The only slight question-mark
hangs over the new work by Coll.
While ambitious and colourful,
setting challenges aplenty to which
the trio rises in style, its atonal,
spiky, modernist musical language
sits perhaps a little awkwardly
alongside the honeyed beauties
of Brahms and Korngold. I’m not
entirely convinced this programme
was the best setting for it.
Overall, however, this is a
delectable cake on which excellent
recorded sound (I’m not at all
surprised to see Andrew Keener
credited here) is the crisp, bright
icing. Jessica Duchen
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++

Handel
Handel for Trumpet –Arias etc
(arr. trumpet and piano)
Jonathan Freeman-Attwood
(trumpet), Tom Freeman-Attwood
(trumpet), Anna Szałucka (piano)
Linn Records CKD736 78:41 mins
This reimagining
of the music of
George Frideric
Handel marks
Jonathan
Freeman-
Attwood’s fruitful and ongoing
association with Linn Records.
The album also affirms Freeman-
Attwood’s musical partnerships,
with his son and fellow trumpet
player Tom, as well as colleagues
Timothy Jones, his co-arranger,
and pianist Anna Szałucka.
Twenty-eight tracks traverse
works from vocal and instrumental
genres. The ‘idiomatic reassigning’
mentioned by Freeman-Attwood in
his liner notes includes four
new sonatas derived from music
initially fashioned as concertos,
a laudable nod to the cross-genre
fertilisations obtained in Handel’s
own lifetime.
Freeman-Attwood’s sound is
mellifluous and gentle, delicately
inflected with vibrato, especially
in ‘With thee th’unsheltered moor
I’d tread’ from Solomon. He is
complemented by Szałucka’s deft
and poised playing. Three duets
celebrate the Freeman-Attwood
family’s affinity with the trumpet,
as son Tom joins his father in
selections from Handel’s music for
the stage. The highlight of these
must surely be ‘Brilla nell’alma’ from
Alessandro; its transformation from
a solo aria is masterly and the effect
is enthralling. The bright optimism
of Paolo Antonio Rolli’s text as sung
by the character Roxana in Act 3
is well-portrayed, prompting us to
wonder why this opera is currently
so unjustly neglected.
Among the album’s four new
sonatas, the third in E flat major is
taken from the F major solo organ
concerto from 1739. We hear the
majesty of the original key noted by
many 18th-century commentators.
Three movements from the D minor
keyboard suite of 1720 also undergo
a refreshing transformation, with
the version for trumpet and piano
revealing the music’s textures anew.
Ingrid Pearson
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Chamber Reviews
Popper
Fabulously finessed:
Perles Musicales; plus
Trio Isimsiz are on fire in
transcriptions of works by Brahms and Korngold
Wagner, Svendsen, Hubay,
Schubert
Martin Rummel (violincello),
Mari Kato (piano)
Paladino Music PMR0128
139:01 mins (2 discs)
The music
and artistry
of Bohemian
cellist and
composer David
Popper (1843-
1913) appeared so often in late-
19th-century concerts that Bernard
Shaw once referred to him as
the ‘inevitable Popper’. Musical
fashions changed; his fame faded.
If resurrection now occurs, it will
be largely due to the gifted Austrian
cellist Martin Rummel, who
has already filled five discs with
Popper’s music and who now offers
two more, devoted to transcriptions
of pieces ranging from a Purcell
air to a large-scale Concertstück by
Popper’s Hungarian contemporary
Jenő Hubay. Popper even
transcribed Wagner, though only in
miniature form – a piano Romanze, output is solidly crafted, fascinating examples of the genre by
not Tristan und Isolde. and fun. Geoff Brown Mozart and Brahms. Certainly,
The central exhibit is Perles PERFORMANCE ++++ the spirit of Mozart hovers over
Musicales, a collection of 28 short RECORDING ++++ the serene cantabile writing of
pieces issued by the publishing the first movement, as well as the
firm Johann André, all used in Reger • Senfter vivacious and inventive set of
Popper’s recitals and transcribed Clarinet Quintets variations that make up the finale.
from Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Kilian Herold (clarinet); Brahms too is recalled in the veiled
Schumann, Mendelssohn and Armida Quartett autumnal soundworld of the
others in a permanently Romantic CAvi-music AVI 8553533 54:22 mins poignant Largo. Yet the complex
style that persists even when the The 150th web of individual musical lines,
composer is Handel. The singing anniversary of along with the brittle humour of
throb of Popper’s manner supplies the birth of Max the second movement Vivace, also
a distinctively period feature, but Reger (1873–1916) point to a later age, making us
the manner is plied with elegant seems to have wonder how Reger’s music would
skill and sensitivity, and splendidly passed by without have developed had he lived into the
matched with Rummel’s own much fanfare. Yet it remains an 1920s and 1930s.
powers of musical persuasion. open question whether ignoring The great virtue of this
The piano accompanist Mari Kato this musical milestone is entirely beautifully recorded performance
trots neatly alongside, though by deserved. For many, the sheer from Kilian Herold and the Armida
design it is always the cello solo line density of Reger’s compositional Quartet lies in its convincing
that counts. processes is simply unfathomable, architectural control, superb
Composer omissions, as Rummel making it difficult for the listener clarity of line and capacity to
notes, are interesting: there is no to steer a clear path through the revel in moments of humour and
Beethoven, or Brahms, or Mozart. resultant musical fog. But when tenderness. The performers bring
But the listener has no time to performers of real calibre and similarly incisive qualities to
lament when Popper and Rummel innate intelligence lavish much- the fine if rather knotty Clarinet
present such varied delights, from welcome care and attention on Quintet from 1950 by the one-time
a graceful piece of nothing by the his output, the results can be Reger pupil Johanna Senfter, an
forgotten Adolf Jensen, through immensely rewarding. unaccountably marginalised figure
lovely morsels of Schubert and Such is the case with the present who on the strength of this work
Schumann, to Chopin and Anton release. Admittedly, the Clarinet alone, deserves far wider exposure.
Rubinstein warhorses garnished Quintet is one of the composer’s Erik Levi
with new twiddly bits. Popper might more genial and accessible works, PERFORMANCE ++++
not be inevitable anymore, but his one which pays homage to the great RECORDING +++++
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 85
Chamber Reviews
Catalan Cello Works by Cassadó, brings us full circle
to the hot-blooded opener, with
Works by Casablancas, Casals, both players responding to the
Cassadó, Granados, Mompou contrasting styles in this well-paced
Dmitry Yablonsky (cello), album. Martin Cotton
Laia Martín (piano) PERFORMANCE ++++
Naxos 8.579097 60:39 mins RECORDING +++++
Cassadó’s
Requiebros gets Our Stories
things off to Works by Carrillo, Casarrubios,
a passionate Day, Oyanadel, Quesada
start, with an Michelle Cann (piano),
irresistible ebb Thomas Mesa (cello)
and flow to tempo and dynamics. Navona NV6571 44:18 mins
Martín is sometimes over- This vibrant
enthusiastic attacking big chords, and varied
but Yablonsky projects a wide range album offers
of tone with subtlety and control. an appealing
They’re more evenly matched in the showcase of
quieter Madrigal and Danza Gallega contemporary
by Granados, not that there isn’t an Black and Latinx composers.
emotional charge to the climaxes. The album’s two most
Strangely, given that he was one introspective works are its standout
of the foremost Catalan musicians tracks. In Tres Campanas de
of his time, Casals’s Romanza has a Rere, Mario Oyanadel conjures a
far less Iberian flavour. It’s close in gorgeous harmonic palette from
mood to the opening of Granados’s the piano, executed with great poise
Maiden and the Nightingale, and by McCann, while Mesa brings a
the quiet emotion of both is painted dreamlike quality to the cello line.
in lovely colours. Cassadó’s three- Carlos Carrillo’s Will the Quiet Times
movement Sonata in the Old Spanish Come takes flight from a line of
Style provides the central pillar poet Joseph von Eichendorff, as set
of the album, and belongs to the by Schumann in Liederkreis, Op.
neo-classical tradition of the 1920s, 39: ‘Wie bald, ach wie bald kommt
putting Baroque musical gestures die stille Zeit’ (How soon, oh how
into modern dress, which begins to soon will the quiet times come),
take over in the central Grave. And which Carrillo explored in light of
the final movement succumbs to Schumann’s personal struggles. As
more obvious Spanish gestures. such, the work opens with a sense
We’re in a different world for of frenetic energy and strident
Casablancas’s brief tribute for dissonance, before an evocation of
Mompou’s centenary. It has a these longed-for ‘quiet times’.
violence at odds with the restrained Nerv! Toccata for Cello and Piano
poise of the first of Mompou’s own by Sebastian Quesada continues
Cançons i danses, and the French the theme of anxious struggle, and
tinge of Casals’s Rêverie and Full presents a high-energy auditory
d’àlbum. The Intermezzo from ‘visualiation’ of this state of nervous
Granados’s Goyescas, arranged tension, while Kevin Day’s Cello
BACKGROUND TO…
Reger’s Clarinet Quintet
There’s a disarming beauty to Reger’s Clarinet
Quintet, which he composed in 1915/16. Its
distinctly mellow qualities may be attributed
to the new-found peacefulness the composer
embraced after he moved to leafy Jena, in
Germany, following the breakdown he suffered in
1914. Though he had thought about writing such
a quintet as early as 1912, the resulting work
of some four years later is likely rather different to what he might have
FADI KHEIR, GETTY
created had he not changed his busy lifestyle. It was to be his very last
completed work, submitted for publication ten days before his death.
86 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Sonata is more celebratory in feel.
The work moves between the
warmly tonal and a more piquant
harmonic range, and the dynamic
first movement proves particularly
successful in balancing these two
compositional approaches.
The album’s most intriguing
conceit is in Andrea Casarrubios’s
Silbo for Cello and Piano, a broadly
tonal work that explores the
variety of whistling languages
used everywhere from Papua New
Guinea to Greece. While some
of the score feels a touch familiar
harmonically, the imaginative use of
cello harmonics is striking and the
idea as a whole is compelling.
Well performed and recorded,
this is an imaginative collection
that provides welcome space for
five commendable contemporary
composers. Kate Wakeling
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Vestiva
Works by Vois, Palestrina,
Praetorius, Bennet, Lassus et al
Lux Musicae London
FHR FHR137 57:34 mins
Vestiva explores
how the art of
embellishment
revolutionised
instrumental
music in the
16th and 17th centuries, allowing
performers to openly flaunt both
Telling their stories:
Michelle Cann and Thomas
Mesa share works by Black
and Latinx composers
their virtuosic and improvisatory
skills alike.
The album takes its name from
Palestrina’s madrigal ‘Vestiva i
colli’ and two versions of Vestiva
show how popular vocal works
were appropriated, transformed
and adorned by instrumentalists.
We also hear contrasted versions
of Lassus’s madrigal Susanne un
jour, a lute intabulation played with
quiet eloquence by Toby Carr and
an arrangement for recorder, lute
and harp with ‘diminutions’ – that
is, breaking up slow, sustained
notes with fast garlands of notes.
Here, recorder soloist Miryam-
Luise Münzel provides her own
stylish diminutions. The players
are sensitive to the wistful air of
Susanne un jour, a quality that also
pervades Verdelot’s madrigal O
dolce nocte and Cipriano de Rore’s
Anche che col partire.
Lux Musicae London show
how embellishment continued
into the Baroque period. One of
Frescobaldi’s keyboard Toccatas
– arranged for solo harp – is
expressively realised by Aileen
Henry, and we’re also treated to
two works by Nicola Matteis: a
Prelude, despatched with terrific
improvisatory freedom, and the
zesty dance rhythms of Diverse
bizarrie. This is an album of pleasing
variety. Kate Bolton-Porciatti
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Instrumental
INSTRUMENTAL CHOICE

Roots, byways and a bit of piano poetry

Michael Church is enchanted by Behzod Abduraimov’s artistry at the keyboard

his teachers, Dilorom Saidaminova.

She too likes to flourish her origins,
hence the novelty in this programme,
Shadows of her collection of short pieces entitled
my Ancestors The Walls of Ancient Bukhara. Five
Prokofiev: 10 Pieces from Romeo hundred years ago, that city was the
and Juliet; Dilorom Saidaminova: biggest cultural centre in Asia, with
The Walls of Ancient Bukhara; Ravel: a remarkable flowering of creativity
Gaspard de la Nuit by poets, painters, mathematicians,
Behzod Abduraimov (piano) architects and musicians.
Alpha Classics ALPHA1028 73:42 mins Her pieces are tonal but gently
Behzod Abduraimov, who began dissonant, and not impressionistic
his meteoric career by winning in the normal sense of the word. But
the London International Piano they’re very atmospheric, and allow
Competition in Abduraimov ample
2009 at the age of I have never heard scope to display
18, seems to prefer
touring the US to
Ravel’s ‘Le gibet’ so his artistry. The
first piece feels
playing in Britain, gravely beautiful like an Uzbek lute
so this album is the improvisation, after
closest British audiences are likely to which the musical landscape opens
get to him at present. And this time, out magically, with Abduraimov
rather than allowing his excellence creating delicately understated
in Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and effects. His account of Prokofiev’s
Rachmaninov to shine out, he keeps Romeo and Juliet suite affords further Accomplished pianist:
Behzod Abduraimov
his main focus on byways. evidence that he is one of the world’s
plays with pride and
He’s not the only Uzbek on the most accomplished poets of the passion for his country
international circuit – others include keyboard, and I have never heard
Yefim Bronfman and Stanislav ‘Ondine’ so dainty and insinuating, or
Ioudenitch – but he’s fiercely proud of ‘Le gibet’ so gravely beautiful.
You can access thousands of reviews from our extensive archive on
his alma mater in Tashkent, and here PERFORMANCE +++++
the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
he’s promoting the music of one of RECORDING +++++

JS Bach conceived it for keyboard. Bach died of importance to know that, Beach
The Art of Fugue during the process of engraving, following the lead of Gustav Piano Music – Variations on
Christophe Rousset (harpischord) leaving us in the dark over his final Leonhardt, Rousset omits the final Balkan Themes; Three Pieces;
Aparté AP313 83:00 mins intentions. A taste for alternative uncompleted Fuga a tre soggetti, Prelude and Fugue etc
Ever since instrumentation has comfortably which may not even belong to the Martina Frezzotti (piano)
his death in held its own since Wolfgang work. Two reasons are given: first, Piano Classics PCL10277 65:01 mins
1750, Bach’s Graeser’s large, orchestral edition that Bach would never have played The sheer
contrapuntal of 1926. an incomplete fugue; and, second, quantity of Amy
masterpiece For his new recording , that all available completions are Beach’s output
has enjoyed harpsichordist Christophe Rousset to be avoided. Readers must decide indicates a
– and perhaps suffered, too – understandably favours his own for themselves the merit of such prolific composer
EVGENY EUTYKHOV, WWW.YOSHIKOSHIMIZU.COM

speculation, hypothesis, fantasy,
legend and romance. We should
not be surprised since Bach did
indeed invite questions which,
in all probability, will never be
answered. Though he left no
specific instrumental requirements
for performing The Art of Fugue, it is
nowadays widely accepted that he
instrument, in this instance one
built by an anonymous German
craftsman dating from the early to
mid-18th century. Rousset plays
with commendable linear clarity,
taking the 13 Contrapuncti in
their accustomed sequence and
concluding with the four Canons.
For the prospective listener, it is
considerations.
Aside from that issue, this is a fine
performance where I found myself
revelling in the delightful mirror
fugues, where Rousset is joined
by fellow harpsichordist, Korneel
Bernolet. Nicholas Anderson
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
who meant
business. Its quality, especially
that of her piano writing, demands
attention and recognition. In this
excellent account of well-chosen
works, composed across some 40
years, the Italian pianist Martina
Frezzotti is a superb advocate, never
stinting on demonstrating the

88 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


virtuosity Beach demands, or the
heights of her emotional expression.
The American composer started
out as a prodigiously gifted pianist,
and she studied with a pupil of Liszt
before making her official debut
at the age of 16. After her marriage,
she was restricted to giving just two
performances a year, but composing
quietly at home was not frowned
upon in the same way as – shock
horror – appearing on a stage. She
resumed her performing career after
her husband’s death in 1910 and
continued to compose for the rest
of her life.
Although these works are not
arranged in chronological order,
the contrasts between them
highlight the progression in Beach’s
language, from the early salon piece
Dreaming to the impressively rugged
Variations on Balkan Themes, and
beyond. The later works, despite
pictorial titles, exceed salon pieces,
often making Lisztian demands
upon the pianist’s technical abilities.
Honeysuckle twists and twines
apace; Humming Bird is a positively
impressionistic perpetuum mobile.
The programme begins with
the two most intense creations: the
imposing cries of Out of the Depths
and the Variations on Balkan Themes
find Beach at times risking sensory
overload. Frezzotti, who studied
at Imola under Lazar Berman,
brings the music a generous,
refulgent sound and a strong
sense of perspective through well-
controlled voicing. Recorded sound
is sometimes a little over-bright, but
basically good. Jessica Duchen
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Crumb
Celestial Mechanics; Zeitgeist;
Otherworldly Resonances
Yoshiko Shimizu (piano)
Kairos 0022012KAI 69:42 mins
Among some
ill-advised tech
breakthroughs in
music – a singing
hologram of
Maria Callas; an
AI-imagined Beatles song, to name
a couple – Yoshiko Shimizu’s ‘solo’
recording of George Crumb’s works
for two pianists is a remarkable
achievement. Given that the
composer considered Shimizu,
with whom he worked directly
over several decades, to be one of
the finest interpreters of his music,
the pianist finds herself suitably
In trusted hands:
George Crumb thought
highly of Yoshiko
Shimizu’s playing
matched. The Bartók-inspired
opening movement of Celestial
Mechanics (Makrokosmos IV) is
hewn with a diamond-cutter’s
precision; each facade glints and
winks. Crumb employs increasingly
complex techniques throughout the
four movements, creating overtones
by muting strings in ‘Beta Cygni’,
dropping metal rulers with cork
strips glued to one side into the
piano guts for ‘Gamma Draconis’,
and combining the damper pedal
with plucked strings in the final
‘Delta Orionis’. The latter two
movements are actually for six
hands: in a nod to Charles Ives,
Crumb includes a part for page-
turning pianist, bringing to life
all non-performing musicians’
nightmares about the perils of
helping as a stage hand.
Shimizu blends the varied timbres
effortlessly – there’s no indication
of the pianistic acrobatics required
from a score that involves the interior
of the instrument as much as the
keyboard. Few composers have
integrated extended techniques into
their harmonic language as neatly
as Crumb; whether it’s the partial
tones in Zeitgeist’s ‘Monochord’
(delightfully depicted in a circular
score, incidentally) or the cluster
chords in Otherworldly Resonances,
nothing jars. Crumb’s own
programme notes are provided for
each work, with additional comment
by Shimizu, who contextualises
pieces with quotes from Crumb’s
Instrumental Reviews
letters and insight into techniques.
Sadly, though, these don’t include the
recording method. Claire Jackson
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING ++++
Lutyens
Piano Works, Vol. 3 – Holiday
Diary; Helix; Three Books of
Bagatelles etc
Martin Jones (piano)
Resonus RES10331 77:32 mins
One of the most
international-
looking of British
composers,
Elisabeth
Lutyens (1906-
83) studied in Paris but came to
be influenced most of all by the
serialism of the Second Viennese
School. That leaning is audible even
in such a relatively early piece as the
Berceuse, given a warmly enigmatic
performance by Martin Jones in the
third and final volume of his survey
of Lutyens’s piano works on Resonus
Classics. Famously hard-living
and combative, Lutyens coined the
term ‘cowpat music’ as a derogatory
reference to the English pastoralists,
but her own styles could range
quite widely. As a reminder that
Hindemith was the fountainhead of
many composers during this period,
there’s also the stately Overture
(a third pressing, perhaps, of the
Hindemithian oil) with which this
album opens. Another early piece,
the Dance Souvenance, features a
haunting tune that points towards
Lutyens’s film scores.
The childlike simplicity of the
Holiday Diary comes complete
with a now slightly dated-sounding
narration (spoken, I think, by Jones
himself) – the small-scale theatricals
recalling Milhaud’s occasional mix
of piano and narration. Written long
after Lutyens’s breakdown in the
late 1940s, there are such mature
scores as Helix for piano duo (Jones
presumably duetting with himself,
but again no indication is given)
and the three books of Bagatelles,
wide-ranging in their emotions
yet all brief, one lasting only half
a minute. All are world-premiere
recordings, and if that implies at least
a little barrel scraping, everything is
meticulously played. John Allison
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Schubert
Piano Works, Vol. 7 –
Impromptus; Moments
musicaux; Adagio & Rondo;
‘Grazer’ Fantasie; Variations
Vladimir Feltsman (piano)
Nimbus NI6442 158:00 mins (2 discs)
I generally avoid
lengthy series of
collected works,
organised in
ways composers
would never
have recognised. The completist
approach fosters a tendency to
play lighter pieces with great
portentousness in order to justify
their inclusion. Vladimir Feltsman,
though, believes ‘Schubert was
incapable of writing bad music or a
mediocre tune’ which, at least, is the
right spirit for this sort of project.
Feltsman’s liner notes reveal
his understanding of Schubert’s
miniatures as ‘calculated works
put together in a specific order’,
despite their being published mainly
piecemeal and posthumously. He
finds anything other than ‘whole
opus’ approaches ‘unfortunate’.
Well, I still recommend listening to
selections because more nuances
emerge than when we try to swallow
over-large chunks.
That said, some interpretations
only make sense in sequence; for
instance, the Moment musicaux No. 2
is exquisitely healing after the robust
No. 1. The unexpectedly violent
No. 5 nearly made me fall off my
chair, after which No. 6 was a huge
relief. Indeed, the piano does sound
bright and heavy at times, evoking
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 89
Instrumental Reviews
not charming Schubert but rather a
badly behaved Beethoven.
Feltsman approaches all the
music with huge affection. The
closing fragmentary Themes
and Variations are played as
lovingly as the rest, including the
doubtful closing Fantasie. Nothing
is hasty, and no opportunity to
tease out a melody is wasted, even
in sparkling passagework. The
readings are mostly unfussy, though
he occasionally allows himself
endearing, almost exaggerated
tempo modifications at turning
points. His pedalling is varied and
the voicing of melody, especially
inner voices, a continuous delight.
Natasha Loges
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++
R Schumann
Piano Works –
Papillons; Humoreske;
Davidsbündlertänze etc
Llŷr Williams (piano)
Signum Classics SIGCD756
152:17 mins (2 discs)
Llŷr Williams’s
Schumann
programme
offers three of
the composer’s
large-scale
masterpieces – the Fantasy,
Op.17, the Humoreske and the
Davidsbündlertänze – together
with the three more modest cycles
of Papillons, Faschingsschwank
aus Wien and the Nachtstücke,
Op. 23. The Nachtstücke (like so
many of Schumann’s piano works,
they borrow their title from the
writings of ETA Hoffmann) are
among Schumann’s less familiar
works, though they were notably
championed in the past by Emil
Gilels. The last two of their four
pieces are particularly fine: an
impassioned Allegro whose
melody characteristically unfolds
amid a swirl of arpeggios, and an
intimate slow envoi with gently
spread right-hand chords. Mahler
seems to have remembered the
yearning miniature introduction
to the latter piece in the second of
the Nachtmusik movements in his
Seventh Symphony, which quotes it
almost exactly.
Williams is a pianist with a
formidable technique (how does
he manage to play the spiralling
right-hand octaves in the third
PHIL SHARP
piece of the Humoreske at such
speed?), but – more importantly –
90 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
The thrill of the new:
violinist Rakhi Singh
explores fresh works
in her solo debut
he has a good deal to say about
the music, too. He’s particularly
successful in the constantly
changing moods of Papillons and
the Davidsbündlertänze, and brings
out the poetry of the Op.17 Fantasy’s
valedictory finale very well.
On the other hand, the Fantasy’s
march-like middle movement
is a bit lacking in energy until its
quicker coda, with those notoriously
dangerous leaps for the two hands
in opposite directions. Also, the
initial melody of the Humoreske
– one of the most beautiful of all
Schumann’s beginnings – fails to
float as it should, largely because
Williams’s tempo is too slow. But
these are small minus points in what
is an enjoyable and well-recorded
album. Misha Donat
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Purnima
Works by Michael Gordon, Julia
Wolfe, Alex Groves, Emily Hall,
Rakhi Singh
Rakhi Singh (violin)
Cantaloupe CA21193 43:25 mins
Violinist-
composer
Rakhi Singh
describes her
debut full-length
solo album as ‘a
planet-hopping journey through
a solar system of some kind’. Rich
with multilayered pre-recordings
and electronics, in it she brings to
bear the joy of her collaborative
work (including as co-founder and
musical director of Manchester
Collective) to embed, transform –
and sometimes disguise – the violin
in solo sonic exploration.
Combining recent music by
British peers with stalwarts of post-
minimalist New York, contrasting
prompts were the lunar qualities
inherent in Singh’s middle name
Purnima, and her arrangement for
solo violin of Julia Wolfe’s nine-
bagpipe juggernaut, LAD (2007). The
results are remarkably cohesive, a
sense of personal mystery embracing
worlds of private vulnerability,
edge-land expansiveness and sheer,
elemental power.
Alex Grove’s intimate Trace I
gives delicately onto Singh’s own
Sabkha, its lovely harmonies shifting
in Baroque-like arpeggios. Whether
the salt flats of its title were an
inspiration is unknown, but Emily
Hall’s three Outshifts prove in any
case complementary, inspired by
nature at ‘the fringes and boundaries
of a town’.
Her sometimes gently vocal,
folk music colours get massively
exploded in LAD, fast becoming
a classic in light of this first violin
arrangement and Sean Shibe’s
recent one for electric guitar. Singh
expertly navigates its keening
layers and drones, erupting into
reels and jigs with uncanny, bagpipe-
like force, while it is salsa that
gets twisted in Michael Gordon’s
‘hyper-Baroque’ Tinge. Composed
post-9/1l alongside Light is Calling
(2004) – here a beautifully poignant
close – Singh adroitly multilayers its
three violins over his equally queasy
soundtrack. Steph Power
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Variation(s), Vol. 2
Works by Beethoven, Sweelinck,
JS Bach, Cage, Feldman, Crumb
Cédric Tiberghien (piano)
Harmonia Mundi HMM902435.36
120:34 mins (2 discs)
Beethoven’s very
first published
work was a set
of variations,
while his Diabelli
Variations,
written during his late period, have
been described as the ‘greatest
set of variations ever written’. In
between, the composer wrote nearly
20 named variation sets, as well
as many variation movements in
his other works, not to mention the
countless improvisations he gave as
a pianist, never written down and
now lost. It says something about us
as listeners today that considerably
less attention is given to them than
his symphonies and sonatas.
Not so for Cédric Tiberghien,
who is on a mission to explore
them all. This is the rewarding
second volume, weaving between
Beethoven’s music and illuminating
interjections by others. His playing
is characterful and lively, relishing
the inventive ways in which the
composer could play with an idea.
On the first disc, we plunge into
Beethoven’s tragic mood with the
32 C minor Variations, balanced by
the rarer 24 Variations on ‘Venni
amore’ – one of the instances
when he turned a light operatic
aria into a piano piece. In between,
the historical scene is set with
melancholic Sweelinck and lyrical
Bach, while a brooding performance
of Bach’s Chaconne, arranged by
Brahms, ends this sequence.
The second disc offers a different
flavour, with Morton Feldman, John
Cage and George Crumb offering
tranquil reflections between several
shorter variation sets. It might be
easy to write these off as less serious,
but listen to the variations on ‘Rule,
Britannia!’ and ‘God Save the King’
to see just what fun Beethoven could
have with a theme. Plus there are
three other variation sets to enjoy,
including that very first set, on a
march by Ernst Christoph Dressler.
Rebecca Franks
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Screen
Michael Beek picks out the best recent releases of music from film & television
February round-up
SCREEN CHOICE Music is at the heart of Bradley
Cooper’s Maestro, the critically
A restoration to cherish acclaimed portrait of Leonard
Bernstein and
his wife, Felicia
The Sound of Music has never sounded so good, Montealegre.
As such, the
thanks to its glorious new soundtrack release soundtrack album
is positively
A drop of golden sun: jam-packed and as colourful as
Maria (Julie Andrews) Bernstein’s story. Dominated by
and the Von Trapps sing superb new recordings by the LSO,
‘Do-Re-Mi’ in Salzburg under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, it
is Bernstein’s own music which is
front and centre, alongside snippets
of Beethoven, Schumann and
Mahler, among other things. The
album is a real snapshot of the film,
arranged in sequences of music
and dialogue; the latter element
might annoy some, but it’s a great
keepsake. (DG 486 5466) +++++
James Newton Howard has
enjoyed a decades-long career on
screen, scoring everything from
Pretty Woman to The Hunger Games.
Night After Night focuses on a
very specific slice of the American’s
varied career, though: the eight
scores he wrote for director M. Night
Shyamalan, from The Sixth Sense
(1999) to After Earth (2013). Their
collaboration brought the best out of
Rodgers & Hammerstein both of them, the
startlingly original
The Sound of Music – Original
stories inspiring
Soundtrack (Super Deluxe Edition)
music that gets to
Julie Andrews, Marni Nixon et al (vocals)
their emotional
Buddy Cole (organ), Vito Mumolo (guitar); The
heart. It’s an
Hollywood Studio Symphony/Irwin Kostal
enticing programme with some very
Craft Recordings CR00445 (4-discs; 1 Blu-ray)
beautiful performances, notably
It remains a film just about universally from violinist Hilary Hahn who
adored and by multiple generations, and The Sound of Music is not makes a return visit to The Village,
too far away from its 60th anniversary. Seemingly too excited to wait having performed on the original
till 2025, Craft Recordings has released this new and exhaustive score. While each film necessarily
presentation of the film’s music and songs, and who can blame them has its own identity, there’s no
because it is glorious. Produced with no small amount of love, this doubting they’re united by the same
mighty four-disc ‘Super Deluxe’ release is a must for true fans of musical soul. (Sony 19439843032)
the film. Trumping all versions of the soundtrack album previously +++++
available, this epic set brings together every single note of music Another sumptuous release was
recorded for the film for the very first time (painstakingly restored Varèse Sarabande’s recent vinyl
and remastered), from the complete underscore to instrumentals, presentation of Basil Poledouris’s
alternate takes and more. Notable gems include the ‘playbacks’ 1997 score for Starship Troopers.
recorded by Christopher Plummer to sing along to when filming – his The sci-fi/action film, directed
performance was later overdubbed by Bill Lee for the final version. by Paul Verhoeven, might have
Irwin Kostal’s fulsome orchestral arrangements have never sounded made some giant leaps in terms
better, while the beautifully presented album notes share a detailed of on-screen technical thrills, but
account of the film and its music. A two-disc version is also available the late Poledouris kept things old
GETTY
if the ‘Super Deluxe’ is too much of a mountain to climb. +++++ school and beautifully earthbound
92 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
with a big-boned orchestral score.
And I mean big, with a ten-strong
percussion section and an enlarged
Hollywood Studio Symphony
(conducted by the composer),
the music
makes quite
an impression.
Visually, Varèse
have outdone
themselves with
the really arresting cover artwork.
(Varèse Sarabande 7245065) ++++
At 97, American composer
Laurence Rosenthal can trace his
career to the cusp of Hollywood’s
Golden Age, and while it’s a while
since he last wrote for film or
television, his musical legacy
remains remarkable. It was only
right, then, that the 2023 Film
Fest Gent bestowed its Lifetime
Achievement Award on him. Part of
the honour includes the recording
of a portrait album. Music for Film
and Television is the first collection
of Rosenthal’s music and, though
brilliantly varied, barely scratches
the surface.
Dirk Brossé and
the Brussels
Philharmonic
glow in suites
and themes
from films like Clash of the Titans,
The Return of a Man Called Horse
and Meteor. Superb. (Silva Screen
SILCD1735) +++++
I’m a bit late to the party when
it comes to all things Inspector
Morse, though I always enjoyed
the music of the late Barrington
Pheloung for the original series.
ITV’s prequel to that, Endeavour,
came to an end last year after nine
series and its composer Matthew
Slater put together an extended
suite of themes
and variations,
dubbed
Endeavour
Variations.
Performed by the
London Metropolitan Orchestra
and conducted by Slater, it’s a very
enjoyable listen, full of dramatic
character and colourful twists
and turns. All in all a great calling
card for the talented composer.
(Redrocca/digital release) ++++
 *

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Brief notes
This month’s short selection features fact, fiction, folklore and a Four Seasons
Alkan Character Pieces etc
Mark Viner (piano)
Piano Classics PCL10275
Don’t be misled by
the quirkiness of the
album’s title or the
brevity of the pieces
in it – there’s a lot
more here than mere fripperies and
frivolity. Works such the headlong-
rushing Le chemin de fer are
miniature masterpieces of musical
picture painting, played with great
flair and no little virtuosity by the
admirable Mark Viner. (JP) ++++
JS Bach
Plucked Bach II
Alon Sariel (mandolin)
Pentatone PTC 5187 109
Bach’s Toccata
and Fugue on the
mandolin? It’s
surprising how well
this translates in
the capable hands of Alon Sariel,
whose second album of self-
94 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Visceral storyteller:
composer Emily
Howard makes an
impression in The Anvil
penned arrangements also features
selections from the well-known
Violin Sonatas and Partitas. In
place of scale and bombast
there’s nuance and precision –
and a cleanness of line that lays
bare Bach’s gorgeous harmonic
architecture. (CS) ++++
Berg • Ligeti • Shostakovich
String Quartets
Minetti Quartet
Hänssler Classic HC23060
The Minettis show a
marked affinity for
the soundworld of
20th-century string
quartet repertoire,
rising to the Berg’s tortured passion
and performing with characterful
range and versatility in Ligeti’s
‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’. For my
money, though, Shostakovich
No. 7 is the album’s gem, its sparser
textures allowing more room for
rhythmic elegance and elasticity.
(CS) ++++
Britten Ceremony of Carols etc
Martinů Voices/Lukáš Vasilek
Animal ANI124-2
Britten’s famous
Ceremony is heard
here in a different
guise – for mixed
(rather than just
soprano/treble) voices and with the
processionals accompanied by harp.
It makes a nice alternative, though
occasionally the singers could do
with being let off the leash a little
more. The Hymn to St Cecilia that
follows is also just a touch too well-
mannered for my liking, but the
inclusion of the less often heard Te
Deum is a welcome one. (JP) +++
Tina Davidson
Hymn of the Universe
VocalEssence Singers/Philip Brunelle
Meyer Media MM23053
Accompanied by
a small chamber
ensemble, the
four-part Hymn
of the Universe
sets out its metaphysical subject
matter in an appealing, accessible
style. Arguably, however, the two
gorgeously crafted unaccompanied
anthems that open and close the
album are the real finds. (JP) +++
Alex Heffes • Sakamoto
Crystalline
Alex Heffes, Ryuichi Sakamoto
Platoon Music DiditalPlat (EP) mins
Heffes and the late
Ryuichi Sakamoto
worked together
on the album
Face to Face, and
these unreleased piano duos were
unearthed from Heffes’s archive
after Sakamoto died. A sense of
poignancy here for sure, but also
a feeling of communion between
two musician friends. It leaves you
wanting more. (MB) +++
Emily Howard The Anvil etc
BBC Singers; Hallé Choirs; BBC
Philharmonic/Ben Gernon et al
Delphian DCD34285 mins
The Anvil was
commissioned
by Radio 3 and
the Manchester
International
Festival to mark the bicentenary
of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, and
it’s an immersive and emotional
experience. In ‘The field turns
inside out’ the orchestral assault
mirrors the flash of sabres and crush
of hooves, voices crying out as chaos
reigns. Visceral and brilliant.
(MB) +++++
Guerrero Missa Ecce Sacerdos;
Magnus, Magnificat & Motets
The Brabant Ensemble/Stephen Rice
Hyperion CDA68408
Ranging in mood
from ebullient
(Gaude Barbara)
to penitential
(Peccantem me
quotidie) and with the substantial
Missa Ecce Sacerdos at its heart,
this makes a terrific introduction
to the wide-ranging output of the
16th-century Spanish composer-
cum-priest. Only the occasional
loose edge in the livelier works mars
the otherwise highly disciplined
choral ensemble of a group that at
its finest blends to simply glorious
effect. Recommended. (JP) ++++
Michael Jarrell
Orchestral Works
Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire/
Pascal Rophé
BIS BIS-2672 (CD/SACD)
You may well find
yourself either
mesmerised by
this album or soon
having your patience
test by it, as Jarrell’s soundworld
doesn’t shift much from one work
to the next. Moments of frantic
scurrying are followed by long, long
passages of stillness, and one man’s
otherwordliness is another’s staring
gloomily into darkness. (JP) +++
Karl Jenkins The Armed Man
Kathryn Rudge, Jamal Aliyev et al;
Hertfordshire Chorus/David Temple
Signum Classics SIGCD779 mins
This is the first
recording of the
‘Ensemble Version’ of
Jenkins’s 2000 ‘Mass
for Peace’, essentially
an arrangement by him for reduced
orchestral forces. There’s no lack
of heft here, though, and what is

perhaps lost in scale here and there
is made up for by the Hertfordshire
Chorus’s vocal weight and attack.
Occasionally spinetingling.
(MB) ++++
Morricone Absolutely Morricone
II – Chamber arrangements
Luca Pincini (cello), Paolo Zampini
(flute), Gilda Butta (piano)
Da Vinci Classics C00809
It’s great that the late
composer’s huge
back catalogue is
being explored in
this way, pairing
rearranged works for the screen
with lesser-known chamber items.
There are plenty of familiar tunes
in this appealing second volume,
with the Leone Suite for cello and
piano a highight among many. The
recording quality is close and quite
imposing, with some room noise
and lots of breathing. (MB) +++
Piazzolla
Four Seasons of Buenos Aires
Kirill Troussov (violin); Anima Musicæ
Chamber Orchestra
Orchid Classics ORC100275 (EP)
Kirill Troussov is
in his element in
this gutsy reading
of Piazzolla’s tango-
infused take on
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. His 1702
‘Brodsky’ Stradivari plunges dark
depths, at the very limits of violin
sound, ably supported by an equally
fiery Anima Musicæ. Occasionally
I miss sweetness and subtlety, but
it’s a fair trade-off in the name of
sizzling passion. (CS) +++
CHRIS MCANDREW, MARCO BORGGREVE, JULIA WESELY
20th-century gems:
Minetti Quartet shine
in Shostakovich
R Schumann
Symphonies Nos 1 & 3
Antwerp Symphony Orchestra/
Philippe Herreweghe
Phi LPH040
Herreweghe and the
Antwerp Symphony
complete their
Schumann cycle
in performances
of brightness and vibrancy, but
that nonetheless make much of
the works’ heroic grandeur. These
are not performances that fall
over themselves with an excess of
enthusiasm and energy, but rather
convey a mature and graceful
stateliness – yet there’s no shortage
of joy. (CS) +++
Close Encounters Works by
Du Puy, Wynton Marsalis,
Winkelman, Saint Saëns et al
Rui Lopes (bassoon), Ruslan Lutsyk
(doubles bass); Gringolts Quartet
Prospero Classical PROSP0057
This repertoire might
indeed be alien to
most listeners, but
what a treat to get
to know it. Lopes’s
love for the bassoon is infectious,
and this selection of works (old and
new) for the instrument and string
quintet is very enticing. Wynton
Marsalis’s Meeelaan is a jazzy
highlight, while the Saint-Saëns and
Du Puy enchant. (MB) ++++
Hungarian Heights
Works by Dohnányi, Kodály, Liszt
Franziska Pietsch (violin), Hila Karni
(cello), Maki Hayashida (piano)
Odradek ODRCD433
An album of
three different
combinations, as
Dohnányi’s Violin
Sonata in C sharp
minor and Kodály’s Duo for Violin
and Cello are followed by Liszt’s
Tristia, La Vallée D’Obermann,
played here in its arrangement
for piano trio. There’s a variety
of moods, too, from the fleet-
footedness of the Dohnányi finale to
the world-weary trudge of the Liszt,
all very deftly handled by players
who are clearly at ease in each
other’s company. (JP) ++++
Mélodies & Chansons, Vol. 2
Songs by Tailleferre and Milhaud
Holger Falk (baritone), Steffen
Schleiermacher (piano)
MDG MDG61322792 mins
There is a really
lovely feeling of
airy enchantment
pervading this,
the second volume
of MDG’s Mélodies & Chansons
series. That said, the air around
Tailleferre’s ‘La Rue Chagrin’ is
somewhat smoke-filled, given just
how evocative it is of a late-night
Parisian bar, patrons drowning
their sorrows. Baritone Holger Falk
navigates the set with characterful
swagger and nuance, while Steffen
Schleiermacher is a responsive
piano partner throughout.
(MB) ++++
Brief notes Reviews
A spring in his step:
Kirill Troussov is in his
element in Piazzolla’s
Four Seasons
Philarmonica
Works by Matteis the Elder et al
Louise Ayrton (violin); Le Consort
Alpha Classics ALPHA1011
Among a selection of
attractive chamber
works by Purcell and
Matteis, this album
from Le Consort’s
highly skilled young period players
includes premiere recordings of
sonatas by the mysterious ‘Mrs
Philarmonica’ – probably a female
composer writing around 1715. It’s
all beautifully performed, with pin-
sharp ornamentation, gloriously
held suspensions and warm, well-
placed vibrato. (CS) ++++
Shades of Romani Folklore
Works by Janáček, Beethoven et al
Ulysses Quartet
Navona NV6567
This is an interesting
concept album,
drawing together
quite diverse
works, including
Beethoven’s Fourth Quartet and
Janáček’s ‘Intimate Letters’ through
‘shades’ of Romani influence. The
playing is technically controlled yet
free in character, and the sound is
nicely balanced, allowing all four
instruments to make their mark –
yet the first violin is perhaps a little
dominant. (CS) +++
Michael Beek (MB), Jeremy Pound
(JP), Charlotte Smith (CS)
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 95
Books
Our critics cast their eyes over the latest selection of books on all things music
And Did Those Feet –
Six British Jazz Composers
Duncan Heining
Jazz in Britain 320pp (pb) £19.99
At one point
during this
journey through
the work of six
prime movers in
British jazz the
author mercifully
dismisses the
old canard about
how ‘writing about music is like
dancing about architecture’. No-one
ever offers the rejoinder that many
choreographers would surely be
more than happy to create a dance
about architecture; furthermore, to
partially borrow this as a metaphor,
the composers featured here – Mike
Garrick, Gibbs and Westbrook,
John Mayer, Barry Guy and Keith
Tippett – are in a sense architects
(Guy literally so during his pre-
career), having constructed their
own distinctive musical edifices
within the music’s fascinating
landscape. Duncan Heining
juggles the conflicting demands
of accuracy, detail, comparison,
contrast, cohesion, brevity (there’s
a lot to pack in) and narrative flow
with informed expertise, redressing
critical imbalances and providing
perceptive insights into their music
and the varied circumstances of
its creation, with the two included
CDs fleshing out each story with
recorded examples. His explanation
for his subject choices is robust,
but this nonetheless excellent book
occasionally reads like a taster for
a much larger project. I wonder…
Roger Thomas +++++
Becoming a Composer
Errollyn Wallen
Faber 336pp (hb) £20
At a workshop some years ago I
enthusiastically asked Errollyn
Wallen how she ‘did’ her job. She
gave the usual polite response:
solitude, time, deadlines. In
Becoming a Composer, the
lighthouse-dwelling musician
expounds her answer, detailing
practicalities (in the case of
Another America: Earth, writing the
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libretto and music concurrently,
96 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Ancient times:
Keith Tippett is one of
six jazz composers in
And Did Those Feet...
collaborating closely with
singers) and essential artistic
procrastination (a diary entry from
1999 details that Wallen needed a
draft completed urgently – ‘so I
read Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s
Stone’). Having
composed 22
operas (‘and
counting’),
Wallen surmises
that operatic
experience
‘continues to
inform all my work’. Becoming a
Composer weaves in poetry (an
account of suicide runs without
fullstops, for example) and stage
work extracts, in parallel with
the quirkier techniques heard in
her music. While some personal
history is included – especially from
Wallen’s traumatic early years spent
with her aunt and uncle, waiting
for her parents to take her to join
them in New York (which they never
did) – the book is only part memoir,
leading the reader down various
emotional cul de sacs.
Claire Jackson +++
Lieder in America –
On Stages and In Parlors
Heather Platt
Illinois 336 (pb) £25.99
If, during the middle years of the
19th century, US song recitals
tended to be the domain of the
cognoscenti, 50 years on lieder
had developed a distinctly broader
appeal; and in charting its rise
Heather Platt isn’t just concerned
with matters of
performance
and reception.
Anchored by
thumbnail
sketches of such
key figures as
George Henschel,
Max Heinrich,
Villa Whitney White and David
Bispham, the book delves into
matters social, technological,
and cultural, pursuing a rigorous
exploration of evolving musical
taste. In the mix are Germans
displaced by the Revolution of 1848,
the growth of music publishing
and increasing ubiquity of parlour
pianos, plus the influence of the
burgeoning women’s music clubs.
The tussle between so-called
‘high art’ and popular song is a
recurring theme, enlarged by the
emergence of songs by African
Americans and Native Americans.
It makes for a dense, capacious read,
and with some 60 pages of notes,
aimed primarily at the scholar
and cultural historian; but Platt’s
scrupulous chronicle will prove
an invaluable resource for anyone
fascinated by the art of song and its
ever-fluctuating fortunes.
Paul Riley +++
Longborough Festival Opera –
The First 30 Years
Richard Bratby
LFO 168pp (hb) £30
‘Eccentric’ and utopian’ is how
Richard Bratby describes the man
who built Longborough Opera in a
Cotswold village.
‘Simply go into a
field with a spade’
Martin Graham is
supposed to have
said, although
it helps to have
a spare chicken
shed and a wife, Lizzie Graham, who
shares your vision.
Richard Wagner was another
eccentric utopian, and the composer
that Longborough have made
their own, with a third Ring Cycle
planned for 2024. And so we
arrive at the Grahams’ greatest
achievement, to have embraced
a gloriously English approach
to Wagner’s music dramas that
began at Bayreuth. For if Hans
Knappertsbusch begat Reginald
Goodall, Goodall begat Anthony
Negus, Longborough’s music
director who worked with Goodall
in Cardiff and London.
Richard Bratby is an affectionate
chronicler of 30 years of summer
Wahnsinn. The Grahams lead the
cast with personal memories, and
photos spill out on every page –
often uncaptioned – as if from a
family album. The history is light-
heartedly anecdotal, almost a latter-
day version of Aubrey’s Brief Lives.
But what happens in the building
with the sugar pink faux Palladian
façade is profoundly serious.
Christopher Cook +++

Our expert Chris Haslam gives valuable advice on buying and using your hi-fi
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A
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Their system takes you through a series If however, you already own a great pair
of beep tests, where various frequencies of headphones and you use an Android
are played through each ear for you to smartphone, the SoundID app can help.
identify. If, for instance, you don’t hear Again, it analyses your hearing and creates an
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are then applied to your headphone’s apply the audio enhancements – and your own
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frequencies to give you greater clarity. models including Sony and Apple.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 97
From the archives
Andrew McGregor looks over this month’s reissued and live archive recordings
February round-up
ARCHIVE CHOICE Bernard Haitink and Bruckner,
a combination so well known
Bournemouth beauties and admired; do we really need
a fifth account
of the Eighth
This 1961 recording from Constantin Silvestri Symphony? I’m
not arguing after
and the BSO recalls his great passion and skill hearing this
performance with
the Bavarian RSO, and one of the
South-coast saviour:
most remarkable things is how little
Silverstri did a lot for
the BSO’s reputation has changed from Haitink’s first
recording with the Concertgebouw
in 1981. But as well as the fluency,
the certainty of line and length, the
balance of the huge Finale, there’s
such energy and beauty in the
playing, and the icing on the cake
is a live performance of Bruckner’s
Te Deum, with a fine solo team and
unstoppable propulsion. (BR Klassik
900212) +++++
So much of the magic of
Tchaikovsky’s ballets is to be
found in the enchanting colour
and imagination of his glorious
orchestrations – just think of the
national dances in Act 2 of The
Nutcracker, or the awakening
of Sleeping
Beauty. But
when you have
transcriptions for
two pianos of this
kind of quality,
Kabalevsky Shostakovich
O
from Debussy, Rachmaninov and
Kabalevsky: Colas Breugnon, Overture; Arensky, so much of the colour and
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 theatricality survives. Mari and
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/ Momo Kodama are compelling
Constantin Silvestri storytellers; not the last word in
ICA Classics ICAC5176 (1961) 68 mins virtuosity or dynamic power and
When Romanian conductor Constantin drama, but a fine recording and a
Silvestri defected to Britain in 1961, he highly enjoyable album. (Pentatone
was tired of dealing with politics behind the Iron Curtain and the PTC5186579) +++
challenges of working with prestigious European orchestras. He If you haven’t come across Luke
wanted a stable environment where the value was time not money; Bedford’s music before, start with
and he found it with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. the first track. Instability is an
Silvestri’s exacting demands and meticulous preparation raised unsettling exploration of entropy,
the BSO’s reputation to new heights, with a series of excellent the chaos and decay that’s an
recordings. There were many BBC broadcasts, and Silvestri kept inevitable consequence of structure
his own archive of hundreds of recordings, which his widow gave and organisation. The BBC
to the orchestra after his death in 1969, aged only 55. This is one Philharmonic and Juanjo Mena
of the earliest, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 at Bournemouth’s recorded this superb performance
Winter Gardens in 1961. There’s the passion and excitement of a in the Royal Albert Hall the day of
new relationship; the players seem to be on the edge of their seats, the Proms premiere. Tenor Mark
an electrical charge that makes the skin tingle as they explore what Padmore is an eloquent soloist
must have been an unfamiliar and demanding work. It’s presented
in mono sound, but it’s swift, lean and savage, with moments of Andrew McGregor is the presenter of Radio 3’s Record Review,
searing beauty and deep sadness. ++++ broadcast each Saturday morning from 9am until 11.45am
98 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
for In the Voices of the Living, a
conversation with literary voices
from the past,
and the Concerto
for Saxophone
Quartet
interrogates the
relationship
between soloists and orchestra in
curiously subtle ways. A brilliant
showcase for a unique imagination.
(NMC CD272) +++++
Jascha Heifetz began recording
movements of solo JS Bach in the
1930s, but it wasn’t until 1952 that
he recorded the complete cycle
of the six Sonatas and Partitas.
It’s instructive to revisit the early
reviews, before the era of historically
informed performance; critics in
thrall to the power and virtuosity
of one of the greatest violinists. But
to modern ears, these can be severe,
unyielding, forceful and relentless
performances,
with little sense
of Baroque dance,
and no lightness
of touch to relieve
the intensity of
the sound. You might emerge filled
with admiration for the violinist, but
Bach is left gasping for air. (Biddulph
85038-2) ++
There’s no such thing as too many
recordings of the Romanian pianist
Radu Lupu, whose poetic touch and
range of timbres was bewitching.
Doremi brought us a series of patchy
but fascinating Martha Argerich
Live and this feels similar. There’s
Schubert from the 1969 Leeds
Competition that helped launch
Lupu’s international career, the First
Brahms Concerto a year later with
Edo de Waart at
the BBC Proms,
a memorably
turbulent BBC
broadcast of the
Franck Violin
Sonata with Stoika Milanova, and
Beethoven’s Third Concerto on a
sub-standard piano with Previn
in Bucharest. Sketchy notes and
variable sound, but I’m up for it.
(Doremi DHR-8213) ++++
 Cleveland treasures:
Artur Rodziński conducted
Reviews Index
remarkable recordings
Alkan Character Pieces etc 94 The Sound of Music 92
CPE Bach Laurence Rosenthal
The Hamburg Symphonies 72 Film Themes 92
JS Bach The Art of Fugue 88 Schmidt Notre Dame – Intermezzo
Cantatas, BWV 56 & 82 80 & Carnival Music 74
Sonatas & Partitas etc 98 Symphonies Nos 1-4 74
Works arr. lute 98 Schubert Adagio & Rondo 89
Beach Prelude and Fugue 88 Die schöne Müllerin 82
Three Pieces 88 ‘Grazer’ Fantasie 89
Variations on Balkan Themes etc 88 Impromptus 89
Luke Bedford Moments Musicaux 89
In the Voices of the Living etc 98 Variations 89
N Berg Symphonies Nos 4 & 5 72 R Schumann
Bliss Clarinet Quintet 84 Davidsbündlertänze 90
Brahms Piano Trio No. 2 84 Humoreske 90
Britten Te Deum etc 94 Papillons etc 90
Bruckner Symphony No. 3 72 Piano Concerto in A minor 75
Symphony No. 8 98 Symphonies Nos 1 & 3 95
Te Deum 98 Senfter Clarinet Quintet 85
Byrd Mass for Four Voices etc 80 Sgambati
Cavalli Il Xerse 78 Piano Concerto in G minor 76
M-A Charpentier Médée 79 Sinfonia festiva 76
Francisco Coll Piano Trio 84 Shostakovich Symphony No. 8 98
Crumb Celestial Mechanics 89 Matthew Slater
Unboxed Otherworldly Resonances
Zeitgeist
Tina Davidson
89
89
Endeavour Variations
Tchaikovsky Ballet Suites
Tůma Cantatas
92
98
82
This month’s round-up features Monteverdi gems Hymn of the Universe 94 Motets 82
DQGPXVWKHDUFROOHFWLRQVRI6FKLIIDQG5RG]LðVNL Donizetti La Favorite
Dvořák Romance in F minor
78
75
Von Zieritz Double Concerto
Japanese Songs
76
76
Slavonic Dances 73 Le Violon de la Mort 76
Rinaldo Alessandrini is one of today’s greatest Monteverdians
Violin Concerto in A minor etc 75 Wagner Die Meistersinger
– indeed, the composer’s music has occupied the conductor H Ferguson Octet 84 von Nürnberg 79
and his ensemble Concerto Italiano for some 40 years. The Franck Les Béatitudes 81
Complete Madrigals (Naïve OP7547) is perhaps their crowning Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor 75 COLLECTIONS
glory, the culmination of a recording cycle that began in 1993. Guerrero Magnus 94 Catalan Cello Works
Magnificat 94 Dmitry Yablonsky, Laia Martín 86
The 11 discs are a trove of vocal treasures, conductor and
Missa Ecce Sarcedos 94 Circus Dinogad
choir digging deep in their exploration of Monteverdi’s world. Motets 94 Hilary Summers et al 80
The first disc is in fact brand new, the ensemble having only Handel Close Encounters Rui Lopes et al 95
recorded books one and nine for the first time in 2020/21. Arias etc (arr. trumpet and piano) 85 Complete Columbia Album
The rest are critically acclaimed, and it is wonderful to have Haydn Violin Concerto etc 75 Collection Artur Rodziński et al 99
Alex Heffes • Sakamoto Complete Decca Recordings
this important recorded venture collected in one box at last.
Crystalline 94 András Schiff 99
Twelve hours of magical Monteverdi. Robin Holloway Serenade in C 84 Core Andre Schoch 77
The music of Mozart dominates András Schiff – Complete Emily Howard The Anvil etc 94 Dreams, Desires, Desolation
Decca Recordings (Decca 485 4493), though the composer James Newton Howard Night After Trevor Alexander et al 83
is in good company, such is the Hungarian pianist’s breadth of Night – Suites and Themes 92 Ecoles de Paris... Adele Bitter et al 77
Michael Jarrell Hungarian Heights Franziska
repertoire. It’s a massive collection at 78 discs, but no wonder
Orchestral Works 94 Pietsch, Hila Karni et al 95
since Schiff recorded regularly for the label from the early Karl Jenkins The Armed Man – Maestro OST London Symphony
1980s till the late ’90s. With that in mind, it’s really a case of A Mass for Peace 94 Orchestra, Various Artists 92
you name it, it’s probably here, from JS Bach’s keyboard gems Samuel Jones Flute Concerto 76 Mélodies & Chansons, Vol. 2
to Britten’s Two Insect Pieces for Oboe and Piano. The pianist Trombone Concerto 76 Holger Folk,
Violin Concerto 76 Steffen Schleiermacher 95
performs in all his guises – solo, of course, but also in a wealth
Kabalevsky Mer(s) Ensemble Appassionato 74
of concertos and chamber works, plus as accompanist to the Colas Breugnon, Overture 98 Operette Diana Damrau et al 79
likes of Sylvia Sass in Liszt and Bartók. Korngold Piano Trio 84 Our Stories
Artur Rodziński presided over The Cleveland Orchestra Langgaard Songs 81 Michelle Cann, Thomas Mesa 86
for ten years (1933-43), shaping them into one of the major Leiviskä Sinfonia Brevis 73 Philarmonica
Suite for Orchestra No. 2 73 Louise Ayrton, Le Consort 95
players of the US music scene. In The Complete Columbia
Symphony No. 2 73 Piccolo Concertos
Album Collection (Sony Classical 19439928772), we can hear Lutyens Helix 89 Francesco Viola et al 77
in cracking remastered sound the great recordings he made Holiday Diary 89 Purnima Rakhi Singh 90
with the orchestra from 1939-42, all available on CD for the Three Books of Bagatelles etc 89 Radu Lupu Live, Vol. 1
very first time. The programme is enticing, too, with standout Mahler Symphony No. 8 73 Radu Lupu 98
Monteverdi Complete Madrigals 99 Reflet Sandrine Piau et al 83
performances of symphonies by Shostakovich, Beethoven
Morricone Works arr. chamber 95 Shades of Romani Folklore
and Tchaikovsky, not to mention Berlioz’s Symphonie Olli Mustonen Ulysses Quartet 95
fantastique. There are concerto curios as well, with what was Symphonies Nos 2 & 3 74 Shadows of My Ancestors
the world-premiere recording of Berg’s Violin Concerto with Pepusch Chandos Anthems 81 Behzod Abduraimov 88
the work’s dedicatee Louis Krasner as soloist. If that weren’t Piazzolla String Quartets Minetti Quartet 94
Four Seasons of Buenos Aires 95 Take 3 Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Reto
enough, the set even includes the first ever release of Nathan
Poledouris Starship Troopers 92 Bieri, Polina Leschenko 70
Milstein’s 1942 recording of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Popper Perles Musicales etc 85 Variation(s), Vol. 2
So much to enjoy. Michael Beek Reger Clarinet Quintet 85 Cédric Tiberghien 90
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Rodgers & Hammerstein Vestiva Lux Musicae London 86

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 99

TV&Radio
Your guide to what’s on BBC Radio 3 this month, plus TV highlights
FEBRUARY’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS
Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see BBC Sounds and iPlayer
1 THURSDAY
Three to look out for 6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Stravinsky
Aural rainbow:
Caroline Shaw 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
talks orchestration 2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
live from Barbican. Helen Grime
Near Midnight, Strauss Oboe
Concerto, Tchaikovsky Symphony
No. 6. Tom Blomfield (oboe), BBC
Symphony/Nicholas Carter
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
11-11.30pm Night Tracks Mix
11.30pm-12.30am
Unclassified with Elizabeth Alker
2 FRIDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Sam Jackson, the controller of Stravinsky
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
BBC Radio 3, selects three
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert
programme highlights for 4.30-5pm The Listening Service
the month of February 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X from Queen Elizabeth Hall.
A chance to hear this acclaimed production of the Higdon SkyLine from City Scape,
opera by cousins Anthony and Thulani Davis, Bernstein Symphonic Dances
which follows the life and times of the civil rights from West Side Story, Kahane
emergency shelter intake form.
leader. The work opened the 2023/24 season at
the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Alicia Hall-Moran, Gabriel
Opera on 3, 3 Feb, 6.30-10pm Kahane, Holland Andrews,
Holcombe Waller (soloists), BBC
An American Rhapsody Concert Orchestra/Kwamé Ryan
10-10.45pm The Verb
One hundred years on from the premiere of George 10.45-11pm The Essay
Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (a piece that perfectly 11pm-1am Late Junction
portrayed America in 1924), cultural critic Olivia
Giovetti looks at the work’s legacy – and finds out 3 SATURDAY
how a composer might write a piece of music that 7-9am Breakfast
captures the spirit of America in 2024. 9-11.45am Record Review
Sunday Feature, 11 Feb, 6.45-7.30pm 11.45am-12.30pm Music
Matters
Colours in Sound 12.30-1pm This Classical Life
Multi-talentedAmerican composer Caroline Shaw 1-3pm Inside Music
takes listeners on a journey through the mysteries of 3-4pm Sound of Cinema
orchestration, exploring how various combinations 4-5pm Music Planet
of sounds can affect audiences in such vastly 5-6.30pm J to Z
CHOICE 6.30-10pm
different ways.
Opera on 3 from the
Sunday Night Series, 4, 11, 18 Feb, 11pm-12am Metropolitan Opera, New York.
Anthony Davis/Thulani Davis The
100 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Singing for equality:
Will Liverman (right)
in X: The Life and
Times of Malcolm X
at the Metropolitan
Opera, New York
Life and Times of Malcolm X.
10pm-12am New Music Show
12-1am Freeness
4 SUNDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Sunday Morning
12-1pm Private Passions
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert rpt
2-3pm The Early Music Show
3-4pm Choral Evensong
4-5pm Jazz Record Requests
5-5.30pm The Listening Service
5.30-6.45pm Words and Music
6.45-7.30pm Sunday Feature
Time Canvasses: Morton Feldman
and Abstract Expressionism
7.30-9pm Drama on 3
The Farewell Glacier
9-11pm Record Review Extra
CHOICE 11pm-12am
Sunday Night Series
Colours in Sound
12-12.30am Classical Fix
5 MONDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Sibelius (rpt)
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert 10.45-11pm The Essay
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert Women of Substances
4.30-5pm New Gen Artists 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm In Concert EBU 7 WEDNESDAY
10-10.45pm Music Matters 6.30-9am Breakfast
10.45-11pm The Essay 9am-12pm Essential Classics
Women of Substances 12-1pm Composer of the Week
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks Sibelius (rpt)
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
6 TUESDAY 2-4pm Afternoon Concert
6.30-9am Breakfast 4-5pm Choral Evensong
9am-12pm Essential Classics 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
12-1pm Composer of the Week 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
Sibelius (rpt) from RFH. Berlioz Les nuits d’été,
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert Mahler Symphony No. 4. Julia
2-5pm Afternoon Concert Bullock (sop), Philharmonia/
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape Santtu-Matias Rouvali
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In 10-10.45pm Free Thinking
Concert from Bridgewater 10.45-11pm The Essay –
Hall. Shostakovich Scherzo, Women of Substances
Op. 7, Symphony No. 1, Adès 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
Concentric Paths, Prokofiev
Cinderella: Suite No. 2. 8 THURSDAY
Christian Tetzlaff (violin), BBC 6.30-9am Breakfast
Philharmonic/John Storgårds 9am-12pm Essential Classics
10-10.45pm Free Thinking 12-1pm Composer of the Week

Sibelius (rpt)
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
live from Royal Festival Hall. Elgar
Cockaigne, Strauss Six Songs,
Op. 68, Rachmaninov Symphony
No. 2. Jennifer France (soprano),
RPO/Vasily Petrenko
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
Women of Substances
11-11.30pm Night Tracks Mix
11.30pm-12.30am
Unclassified with Elizabeth Alker
9 FRIDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
GETTY, DAYNA SZYNDROWSKI
Sibelius (rpt)
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert
4.30-5pm The Listening Service
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
live from Barbican. Takemitsu
Requiem for Strings, Hosokawa
Prayer, Shostakovich Symphony
No. 5. Sayaka Shoji (violin), BBC
SO/Kahchun Wong
10-10.45pm The Verb
10.45-11pm The Essay
Women of Substances
11pm-1am Late Junction
10 SATURDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9-11.45am Record Review
11.45am-12.30pm Music
Matters
12.30-1pm This Classical Life
1-3pm Inside Music
3-4pm Sound of Cinema
4-5pm Music Planet
5-6.30pm J to Z
6.30-10pm Opera on 3 from
ROH. Strauss Elektra
10pm-12am New Music Show
12-1am Freeness
11 SUNDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Sunday Morning
12-1pm Private Passions
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert rpt
2-3pm The Early Music Show
3-4pm Choral Evensong
4-5pm Jazz Record Requests
5-5.30pm The Listening Service
5.30-6.45pm Words and Music
CHOICE 6.45-
7.30pm Sunday
Feature An American Rhapsody
7.30-9pm Drama on 3
9pm-11pm Record Review Extra
CHOICE 11pm-12am
Sunday Night Series
Colours in Sound
12-12.30am Classical Fix
12 MONDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Karl Jenkins
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert
4.30-5pm New Gen Artists
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
February TV&Radio
7.30-10pm In Concert EBU
10-10.45pm Music Matters
10.45-11pm The Essay
Letters to the Overrated
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
13 TUESDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Karl Jenkins
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
from Barbican. Prokofiev
Symphony No. 4, Brahms Piano
Concerto No. 2. Simon Trpčeski
(pf), LSO/Gianandrea Noseda
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
Letters to the Overrated
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
14 WEDNESDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Karl Jenkins
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4pm Afternoon Concert
4-5pm Choral Evensong
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In
Concert from Bridgewater
Hall. Beethoven ‘Egmont’
Overture, Saariaho Leino Songs,
Bruckner Symphony No. 3.
Elizabeth Atherton (sop), BBC
Philharmonic/John Storgårds
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
Letters to the Overrated
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
15 THURSDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Karl Jenkins
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
live from Glasgow City Halls.
Puccini Preludio Sinfonico,
Tchaikovsky Francesca da
Rimini, Roxanna Panufnik/Alma
Mahler Five Lieder, Rachmaninov
Piano Concerto No. 2. Boris
Giltburg (piano), BBC Scottish
SO/Valentina Peleggi
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
Letters to the Overrated
11-11.30pm Night Tracks Mix
11.30pm-12.30am
Unclassified with Elizabeth Alker
16 FRIDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Karl Jenkins
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert
4.30-5pm The Listening Service
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
live from Barbican. Rands
Symphonic Fantasy (BBC
commission, world premiere),
Prokofiev Piano Concerto
No. 3, Stravinsky Le chant
du Rossignol, John Adams
Slonimsky’s Earbox. Alexander
Malofeev (pf), BBC Symphony
Orchestra/Hannu Lintu
10-10.45pm The Verb
10.45-11pm The Essay
Letters to the Overrated
11pm-1am Late Junction
17 SATURDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9-11.45am Record Review
11.45am-12.30pm Music
Matters
12.30-1pm This Classical Life
1-3pm Inside Music
3-4pm Sound of Cinema
4-5pm Music Planet
5-6.30pm J to Z
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 101
February TV&Radio
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert
4.30-5pm New Gen Artists
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm In Concert EBU
10-10.45pm Music Matters
10.45-11pm The Essay
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
20 TUESDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Maddalena Sirmen and her World
Facing the music: 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
Aleksandra Świgut 2-5pm Afternoon Concert
at the 2021 Chopin 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
Piano Competition 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
from Brangwyn Hall, Swansea.
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 1,
TV CHOICE Shostakovich Symphony No. 13.
Jonathan Biss (pf), James Platt
Pole position (bass), BBC NOW/Ryan Bancroft
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
The latest edition of the BBC’s documentary 10.45-11pm The Essay
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
strand Storyville takes a distinctly musical turn.
Pianoforte goes behind the scenes at one of classical 21 WEDNESDAY
music’s most prestigious contests, the International 6.30-9am Breakfast
Chopin Piano Competition. Held in Warsaw every 9am-12pm Essential Classics
five years since 1927, the Chopin is one of the few 12-1pm Composer of the Week
Maddalena Sirmen and her World
global competitions devoted entirely to the works of
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
a single composer. 2-4pm Afternoon Concert
Over its 75-year history, the Chopin has served as 4-5pm Choral Evensong
a career launchpad for some of the world’s greatest 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
pianists – past winners include Bruce Liu (2021), 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
Seong-Jin Cho (2015) and, during a 1960s-70s from Bridgewater Hall. Haydn
purple patch, Krystian Zimerman (1975), Garrick Symphony No. 100 ‘Military’,
Balch whisper concerto, Mozart
Ohlsson (1970), Martha Argerich (1965) and Symphony No. 41 ‘Jupiter’.
Maurizio Pollini (1960). Zlatomir Fung (cello), BBC Phil/
The competition itself is a rollercoaster ride, with Joshua Weilerstein
stringent qualifying rules, multiple stages, some 10-10.45pm Free Thinking
legendary jurors (including Argerich, Vladimir 10.45-11pm The Essay
Ashkenazy and, at the 1932 contest, a certain 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
Maurice Ravel), and plenty of pressure. 22 THURSDAY
Pianoforte takes us behind the scenes of the 2021 6.30-9am Breakfast
Chopin Competition, watching some of the most 9am-12pm Essential Classics
talented young pianists from around the world 12-1pm Composer of the Week
navigate its intense practices. Maddalena Sirmen and her World
Pianoforte is available on BBC iPlayer now. 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
live from Glasgow City Halls.
6.30-10pm Opera on 3 from 5.30-6.45pm Words and Music Tveitt Velkomne med aera (A
Metropolitan Opera, New York. 6.45-7.30pm Between the Ears Hundred Hardingtonar: Suite
Verdi Un ballo in maschera Staggering in the Dark No 1, Op. 151), Dvořák Cello
10pm-12am New Music Show 7.30-9pm Drama on 3 Oleanna Concerto, Tchaikovsky Symphony
12-1am Freeness 9pm-11pm Record Review Extra No. 5. Truls Mørk (cello), BBC
CHOICE 11pm-12am Scottish Symphony Orchestra/
18 SUNDAY Sunday Night Series Tabita Berglund.
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Maddalena Sirmen and her World
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert
4.30-5pm The Listening Service
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
from Fairfield Halls, Croydon.
Replica of a concert presented
by Mozart in 1783. London
Mozart Players/Jonathan
Bloxham
10-10.45pm The Verb
10.45-11pm The Essay
11pm-1am Late Junction
24 SATURDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9-11.45am Record Review
11.45am-12.30pm Music
Matters
12.30-1pm This Classical Life
1-3pm Inside Music
3-4pm Sound of Cinema
4-5pm Music Planet
5-6.30pm J to Z
6.30-10pm Opera on 3
10pm-12am New Music Show
12-1am Freeness
25 SUNDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Sunday Morning
12-1pm Private Passions
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert rpt
2-3pm The Early Music Show
3-4pm Choral Evensong
4-5pm Jazz Record Requests
5-5.30pm The Listening Service
5.30-6.45pm Words and Music
6.45-7.30pm Sunday Feature
7.30-9pm Drama on 3
9pm-11pm Record Review Extra
11pm-12am Sunday Night
Series
12-12.30am Classical Fix
26 MONDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Smetana (rpt)
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert
4.30-5pm New Generation
Artists
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
EBU
10-10.45pm Music Matters
10.45-11pm The Essay
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
from Hoddinott Hall. Takemitsu
Three Film Scores, Kikuko Kanai
Okinawa Fantasy Suite (UK
premiere), Liszt Piano Concerto
No. 2, Dvořák The Wild Dove. Iyad
Sughayer (piano), BBC National
Orchestra of Wales/Nodoka
Okisawa
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
28 WEDNESDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Smetana (rpt)
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4pm Afternoon Concert
4-5pm Choral Evensong
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
from Royal Festival Hall. Elgar
Violin Concerto, R Schumann
Symphony No. 2. Frank Peter
Zimmermann (violin), London
Philharmonic Orchestra/Edward
Gardner
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
29 THURSDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Smetana (rpt)
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
live from Glasgow City Halls.
Puccini Madam Butterfly:
Intermezzo from Act II, Puccini
Manon Lescaut: Intermezzo,
Tchaikovsky Fatum, Bruckner
Symphony No. 9. BBC Scottish
Symphony Orchestra/Alpesh
Chauhan
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
11-11.30pm Night Tracks Mix
11.30pm-12.30am Unclassified
with Elizabeth Alker
10. Kate Bush
9. The saxophone
8. Three
7. They all died at the age of 36
6. Médée (or Medea)
La traviata)
conducted the opera (Verdi’s
5. A woman (Sarah Caldwell)

7-9am Breakfast Colours in Sound 10-10.45pm Free Thinking 27 TUESDAY No. 41

9am-12pm Sunday Morning
12-1pm Private Passions
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert rpt
2-3pm The Early Music Show
3-4pm Choral Evensong
4-5pm Jazz Record Requests
5-5.30pm The Listening Service
BBC/TELEMARK
12-12.30am Classical Fix
19 MONDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Maddalena Sirmen and her World
10.45-11pm The Essay
11-11.30pm Night Tracks Mix
11.30pm-12.30am
Unclassified with Elizabeth Alker
23 FRIDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12pm Essential Classics
12-1pm Composer of the Week
Smetana (rpt)
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony
Symphony No. 43 is closer than
4. Haydn’s ‘Mercury’
3. Johannes Brahms
2. Mendelssohn’s Elijah
1. Tintagel
QUIZ ANSWERS from p 104

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THE QUIZ
It’s time to put your classical
music knowledge to the test
1. Which symphonic poem was
inspired by a visit to Cornwall by
composer Arnold Bax and pianist
Harriet Cohen in summer 1917?
2. Conducted by its German
composer, the premiere of which
biblical oratorio was given at
Birmingham Town Hall on
26 August 1846?
3. Who pitched up unannounced
at the house of Robert and Clara
Schumann on 30 September 1853,
and subsequently made himself
at home?
4. Which is closer to Earth:
Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 or
Haydn’s Symphony No. 43?
5. What happened for the first time
at New York’s Metropolitan Opera
on 13 January 1976, 93 years after
the company was founded?
6. The title character of operas by
Charpentier, Cherubini (as seen
above) and Milhaud, among others,
who takes revenge on her former
lover by poisoning his bride-to-
be with a wedding gift before
murdering their own children?
7. Aside from writing music, what
links Georges Bizet, Henry Purcell,
Peter Warlock and Bob Marley?
8. How many strings are there on
a balalaika?
9. The founder of a quartet that
bears his name, with which
instrument is the American Sigurd
Raschèr (1907-2001) associated?
10. ‘Delius. Ooh, he’s a moody old
man. Delius. Song of summer in his
hand’ are the opening lines of a
song on whose 1980 album Never
for Ever?
See p102 for answers
104 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
The BBC Music Magazine
PRIZE CROSSWORD NO. 395
Crossword set by Paul Henderson
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 395/February 2024,
PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA to arrive
by 20 Feb 2024 (solution in May 2024 issue).
Your name & address
DECEMBER SOLUTION DECEMBER WINNER
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*These clues are linked by an event in February 1924
ACROSS
1 *The composer (6.8)
9 Sadly for music, not entirely more
social when performing (9)
10 French conductor to a great extent
holding note (5)
11 Roman greeting Beethoven’s
response to lost penny as mean (7)
12 Perform with right chap, opening
in Tchaikovsky – such as
Sleeping Beauty? (7)
14 Wagner and Strauss specialist
more popular currently? (6)
15 Brass instrument, grave one,
capturing source of regret (8)
17 *The commissioner and
impresario (8)
19 Wind player is too upset
about bass (6)
21 We initially admire Spanish
conductor’s modes of attack? (7)
22 Suspect Mozart heroine
to be Figaro’s bride (7)
24 Low point for Bizet character (5)
26 Danish composer enthralling
everyone with musical work,
a dance (9)
27 *The centenary piece (8,2,4)
DOWN
1 Add lustre to a tragic opera
heroine (5)
2 Ambitious barrel organ China
resort rebuilt (11)
3 Unhappy expression from Scottish
composer penning account (7)
4 *The arranger (5)
5 Tries to get more wind instruments
after offloading 100 (8)
6 Wordless tune with percussion
accompaniment is not
very exciting (7)
7 One pair of notes – At the Boar’s
Head? (3)
8 Carter opera promising further
works? (4,4)
13 *The venue (7,4)
14 Rock group to try to sell clarinets,
oboes, etc. (8)
16 Lead song excitedly from earlier
in the score? (3,5)
18 Self-centred performance, say,
ruined trio with piano (3,4)
20 Wind instrument support reduced
in the immediate future (7)
22 Witty remark from soprano
Matthews (5)
23 Pop diva tucked into
madeleines (5)
25 Basis of sol-fa does offer hope,
initially (3)
Please note: Because of BBC Music
Magazine’s limited office access
following the Covid-19 pandemic, there
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BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 105

 Music that changed me
Linton Stephens
Bassoonist and radio presenter
Hailing from the Wirral, Linton
Stephens studied first at the Royal
Northern College of Music and then
at the Hochschule für Musik, Liszt
Academie in Weimar, Germany. Today,
he enjoys a multi-stranded career
combining the role of performer – as
sub-principal bassoon of Chineke!
Orchestra and artistic associate of the
Multi-Story Orchestra – with that of
broadcaster, hosting Classical Fix, the
friendly, musically omnivorous podcast
on BBC Radio 3, and also regularly
presenting Radio 3 in Concert. He also
works as a consultant on the subject of
diversity and inclusion within the arts.
M
y dad is from Jamaica and
BOB MARLEY AND THE
WAILERS was always on the
car radio. Driving across the Pennines
from our home in the Wirral to see my
dad’s family in Sheffield, my six brothers
and sisters all squashed into the back seat,
we’d all sing along to ‘Buffalo Soldier’. I love
all of Bob Marley’s music, but the message
in these lyrics is particularly poignant.
I first fell in love with classical music
when I heard the theme tune to the Alton
Towers TV advert – ‘In the Hall of the
Mountain King’ from GRIEG’s Peer Gynt.
It made me want to go out and find out
more, so I took myself off to Bebington
Library, where I looked up instruments on
Encarta 95, and followed up with complete
works on CD. I was playing the oboe at
eight thanks to Wirral Schools Music
Service, which was amazing in the early
1990s. They did pitch tests in Year 4 and
those with the highest score were offered
instrumental tuition.
I played the oboe for three years but
I’d seen a bassoon on Encarta and was
fascinated by this strange instrument.
Inspired by Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice
I asked the teacher if I could change
instruments, but she said I was too small!
BBC
When I was 16 a friend told me the youth
106 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
The choices
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Buffalo Soldier
Island Records
Grieg Peer Gynt
Bergen Philharmonic/Edward Gardner
Chandos CHSA 5190
Weber Andante and Hungarian Rondo
Karen Geoghegan (bassoon); Orchestra of
Opera North/Benjamin Wallfisch
Chandos CHAN 10477
Brahms Symphony No. 2
Leipzig Gewandhaus/Herbert Blomstedt
Pentatone PTC5186851
Michelle Branch
Everywhere
YouTube
orchestra needed a bassoon, so I jumped at
the chance to take lessons. I practised hard
and I was enthusiastic, so I was given lots
of opportunities to play.
Since then I have forged my own path;
I haven’t focussed on being a soloist
– there are not many solo bassoonists –
but I’ve managed to do things I love. As
well as playing with Chineke! and other
orchestras, I’m involved in broadcasting
and social activisim (chairing the
Musicians’ Union Equality, Diversity and
Inclusion committee) – I’m lucky I’ve been
able to make space to do it all.
I picked up my first CD of bassoon
music at HMV in Liverpool, by Yoshiyuki
Nakanishi. Hearing WEBER’s Andante
and Hungarian Rondo, I had no idea the
bassoon could sound so virtuosic. When I
found a French edition, I was able to get my
fingers around the music and I thought, ‘I
can actually do this!’ It’s an amazing piece
– it’s got fireworks, a bassoony melody
in the Rondo and a singing quality in the
opening of the Andante. In 2013, I went to
study in Weimar with Frank Forst, and I
performed it in one of our bassoon class
concerts. It’s a challenging piece – the
last bit is super fast, with rapid tonguing
– but I’m happy I performed it as the
culmination of my studies.
When I was in music college I took part
in the BBC Philharmonic’s access scheme
and played with them in BRAHMS’s
Symphony No. 2. I had played it as first
bassoon with the Merseyside Youth
Orchestra, so sitting with the BBC Phil
and playing the first bassoon part was an
incredible moment for a young lad who’d
only been playing for a year or two. Fast
forward a couple of years and it happened
to be the first piece I played professionally,
as second bassoon with the BBC
Philharmonic in Huddersfield Town Hall.
It was my gateway to the profession.
MICHELLE BRANCH’s ‘Everywhere’
came out when I was 16, and it was the
piece that defined the summer before I
turned into an adult. Now, if life feels a
bit heavy for me, that is the album I’ll put
on to remind me of a simpler time. The
song feels like summer and sunshine:
a time when I was free of school and
responsibility and the days went on for
ever. We certainly all need some of that
sunshine right now. 
Interview by Amanda Holloway