Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2020 i BBC Music Magazine

Stephen Moss Guardian journalist ‘Zoom interviews can be poor imitations of the real thing, but the hour-and-a-half I spent in the virtual company of Viktoria Mullova and her son Misha Mullov-Abbado to talk about their new disc was a delight.’ Page 26 John Bridcut Filmmaker and writer ‘What a privilege to watch Bernard Haitink rehearse and perform Bruckner 7. Final concert, yes, but there was no sense of just coasting. Fine-tuned and paced, it rolled round my head for months.’ Page 56 Kate Bolton-Porciatti Academic, writer and critic ‘The change in performing styles of Corelli’s concertos over the decades offers a fascinating look of how Baroque interpretation has moved on since the anachronistically Romantic first recordings of his Op. 6.’ Page 64…

Socko voce The grim course that 2020 has taken may have scuppered most of the events planned for Beethoven’s 250th-anniversary year, but at least the German composer can take solace in one thing: he has been commemorated in a pair of socks. The splendidly named ‘Beethwoven’ is the latest range from ChattyFeet, who assure us that the socks are, unlike the man himself, warm, comfortable and not at all prickly. The keys to happiness Good news, too, for Angela Hewitt. Six months after her beloved Fazioli was destroyed by the removal men, the pianist has welcomed a brand new instrument to her home in Umbria, Italy. ‘The one I chose has great depth, warmth, power, endless possibilities,’ wrote Hewitt on Twitter after making her selection from five F278s at Fazioli’s…

Poulenc Le Chemin de l’amour Yvonne Printemps EMI CDM 69541 2 I’ve always been passionate about music dedicated to a particular voice and written with a particular artist in mind. Poulenc talked about the beautiful way Yvonne Printemps performed his music; she gives very intense interpretations of every melody. In French we would say ‘Le Chemins de l’amour’ is désuet, a bit light; we would also say it was fleur bleue which means ‘a bit cheesy’. It is cheesy, but I really love it. Couperin Les barricades mystérieuses Marcelle Meyer (piano) Documents 282936 Before becoming a singer I was a cellist and was really into Baroque music. I discovered a beautiful French pianist called Marcelle Meyer, who was very influential; she was respected by all the big musicians of the…

Jess Gillam Saxophonist As a saxophonist, I’ve never really played any orchestral music, so every symphony is a discovery for me. Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 is a classic I turned to when the world was in a complete state of chaos. I love the Concertgebouw and conductor Mariss Jansons’s live recording for both its pacing and its luxurious, but never overindulgent, interpretation. It has a sense of momentum and you never feel stuck in it. And I love the spontaneity of live recordings. Rónán Hession’s book shows that the simple things in life can be the most rewarding I came across the music of Caroline Shaw through her Partita for Eight Voices, which blew my mind in showing me what was possible with building textures. I recently came across her…

Singing keeps a lot of us sane. About two million people in the UK sing in amateur choirs – or used to. A love of choral music is one attraction, of course, but the communal companionship and the therapeutic benefits of a regular mental and vocal workout are also big factors. Fewer people make their living from singing in choirs, but they have been hammered even harder since March. They have lost all of the above, and their income. By the time you read this we will have a clearer idea about whether choirs can reassemble this year. Belatedly, Public Health England commissioned a ‘singing doctor’, the laryngologist Declan Costello, to do scientific research into whether (and how far) singers might spray potentially harmful droplets or aerosol. His results are…

It’s a brave offspring who decides to embark on a musical career in the shadow of internationally renowned parents. Here are just a few examples. In a 2012 Independent interview, violinist Michael Barenboim, the son of pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim and his second wife Elena Bashkirova, admitted that his surname came with expectations, but that ‘what counts is how I play. If my performance is good enough, then it is. If it isn’t, then no surname can help me.’ Daniel and son have often performed together, and if Barenboim Snr is to be believed, their on-stage relationship is purely professional: ‘When I make music with Michael, I don’t think of him as my son.’ ‘I was not out to breed musicians at all,’ pianist Alfred Brendel told the New York Times…

After lying forgotten for decades, a revelatory tranche of musical history is reaching our ears at last: the work of composers whose lives and careers were devastated by the Nazis. War, displacement, prejudice and ideology all played roles in their suppression, but the longterm result was the skewing of how we view 20th-century music. Some of these figures have been gloriously rehabilitated: Erich Korngold, Mieczyslaw Weinberg and the Czech composers incarcerated in the Terezín concentration camp – Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krasa and Viktor Ullmann. But they are the tip of the iceberg. There is much more to find, and among those who have made their discovery a personal mission is Simon Wynberg, artistic director of the Artists of the Royal Conservatory (ARC) Ensemble in Canada. Wynberg, an Edinburgh-born…

Isabella Colbran (1785-1845) Like Pasta, Colbran was thought of as a soprano sfogato: a mezzo with the range of a coloratura soprano. Colbran's husband Rossini's writing for her suggests she had extensive technical ability. Giuseppina Grassini (1773-1850) Grassini was considered to be a great expressive interpreter. After her retirement, she became Pasta’s singing teacher. Despite a relatively narrow vocal range, she mustered some impressive power. Vincenzo Negrini (1804-40) Despite a short life – dying suddenly at 35 – Negrini created several leading roles and sang opposite Pasta in the premiere of Bellini’s Norma. Ester Mombelli (1792-1827) Mombelli sang with the family opera company and trained with her famous tenor father before making it onto the leading opera stages – where she became a renowned Rossini interpreter. Andrea Nozzari (1776-1832) Another…

A keen, if limited, player of the flute, mandolin, clarinet and guitar, author Louis de Bernières (below) created one of the most popular musical figures in recent literature with the title character of 1994’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Set on the Greek island of Kefalonia in World War II, the book became a major hit and later inspired a best-selling CD. Performed by guitarist Craig Ogden and mandolin-player Alison Stephens, Music from the Novels of Louis de Bernières featured works by the likes of Vivaldi, Turina, Villa-Lobos and Giuliani, plus sleevenotes written by the author himself.…

Ole Bull (above) was one of the greatest violinists of the 19th century, on a par with Paganini. He was also a proud Norwegian, and in 1852 Bull founded a colony in Pennsylvania called New Norway. When the experiment failed, some of the Norwegian immigrants who lived there headed to Minnesota, a state with strong Scandinavian connections. Bull felt guilty about the colony debacle, and made amends by thenceforth performing often in Minnesota. A statue of him stands in Loring Park, Minneapolis, playing his violin atop a plinth inscribed ‘Erected by Norwegian Americans’.…

1838 LIFE: Max Bruch is born on 6 January in Cologne, Germany. His father is a lawyer and his mother, who gives him his first piano lessons, is a soprano and a singing teacher. TIMES: Huge crowds gather in London to celebrate the coronation of Queen Victoria, just over a year after she has succeeded to the throne of the United Kingdom. 1880 LIFE: He moves to England to take up the post of director of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society. The experience proves stressful, and he returns to Germany in 1883. TIMES: More than 600 years after its foundation, Cologne Cathedral is finally completed. The original medieval plans are adhered to throughout its construction. 1892 LIFE: Bruch is appointed professor of composition the Berlin Hochschule für Musik where his pupils…

Amandine Beyer (director) Gli Incogniti Zigzag ZZT327 These live performances have a thrilling spontaneity that sets them apart One of the reasons for the extraordinary popularity of Corelli’s Concerti grossi lies in their protean quality: you can jettison the ripieno parts and play these works as intimate trios, or you can scale them up – as we know the composer himself did on special occasions. His contemporary Georg Muffat describes Corelli performing his Concerti grossi in Rome ‘by a large number of players’; wind instruments – trumpets and trombones – were added for special feast days or celebrations. Today, therefore, there are recordings to suit all tastes: from intimate, chamber accounts to performances that take on an almost symphonic scale, like Modo Antiquo’s – complete with wind instruments – or…

I always enjoy music that crosses over into other genres, or draws on sounds and ideas from other cultures. So this month it is great to be including a classical-bluegrass mash-up from Yo-Yo Ma and friends, and a barnstorming disc of music inspired by Macedonian folk traditions – led by pianist Simon Trpceski. There’s also guitar music aplenty this issue, with a portrait of Chinese works from Xuefei Yang, Spanish classics performed by Junhung Kuang and a mix of music ancient and modern for the 12-string guitar. We’ve bumper pages of choral and chamber music this month, too, and do be sure to visit the new look classical-music.com , where you’ll find our extensive archive of reviews. We’re adding to it all the time, so do go and explore. This…

CPE Bach • Beethoven CPE Bach: Symphonies in F, Wq. 175 (H650) & Wq. 183/3 (H665); Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21; Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 36 Akademie für Alt Musik Berlin/ Bernhard Forck Harmonia Mundi HMM 902420 77:55 mins Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-88) was the big symphonic force in 18th-century Germany, and when anybody mentioned ‘Bach’ in Vienna it was to him rather than to his father that they were referring. Mozart is reported to have said of him: ‘He is the father, we are the children.’ The young Beethoven was taught keyboard technique by Gottlob Neefe with the aid of CPE’s celebrated treatise on the subject. This recording is designed to show how CPE’s symphonies may have been distant models for Beethoven’s first…

Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4; Corolian Overture; The Creatures of Prometheus – Overture Kristian Bezuidenhout (piano); Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/ Pablo Heras-Casado Harmonia Mundi HMM 902413 44:34 mins In his booklet note, Kristian Bezuidenhout touches on an issue raised by Beethoven’s legendary talent as an improviser: how much should this influence a pianist’s approach to the solo part in his concertos? The question is especially pertinent as the soloist’s music was often only very sketchily written out when Beethoven himself first performed them. So here we have devices which aren’t necessarily meant to sound contentious but nonetheless do, such as the upwards-rolled solo chord that opens the Fourth Concerto, and similar examples elsewhere. Bezuidenhout’s fortepiano – a modern copy of a Conrad Graf of 1824, a brand known to Beethoven –…

Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini (DVD) Michael Spyres, Sophia Burgos, Maurizio Muraro, Tareq Nazmi, Adèle Charvet; Monteverdi Choir; Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/John Eliot Gardiner Chateau de Versailles (DVD): CVS020 120:53 mins Berlioz’s first opera isn’t very often performed, and it’s not difficult to see why. It is pretty long, there are few memorable melodies in it and the composer’s libretto is distinctly homemade. The basic plot is that the great sculptor and layabout Cellini has to complete a statue for the Pope, with the ultimate penalty if he fails. But Berlioz is so keen to create and maintain atmosphere that the central idea disappears for half-hours at a time, while miscellaneous characters hold up the action and there is a carnival – The Roman Carnival Overture is the only celebrated piece in…

Beethoven Canons and Musical Jokes Soloists; Cantus Novus Wien; Ensemble Tamanial/ Thomas Holmes (piano) Naxos 8.574176 54:53 mins In his anniversary year, the quest to record every note Beethoven wrote continues. This is the second recording of his canons and musical jokes in a few months, and that’s perhaps one more than they require. Beethoven often scribbled snippets of music for friends and colleagues, whether as gifts or as appendages to letters. The conductor Thomas Holmes and his various Vienna performers give us a compilation of more than 50 of them, most being less than a minute long. There are puns on the names of friends, and a couple of numbers comparing Beethoven’s erstwhile violin teacher to a donkey; others are more respectful greetings addressed to patrons, even as high…

JS Bach The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 Accademia Strumentale Italiana/ Alberto Rasi Challenge Classics CC 72842 68:15 mins I have always defended the right of performers to choose what kind of instrumental approach to adopt in this musically profound and scientific work. Bach probably envisaged a keyboard approach but his intentions remain unclear. Alberto Rasi and the Accademia Strumentale Italiana use a single string ensemble of violin, viols and violone and solo organ. In an informative essay Luca Guglielmi, the organist, argues in favour of Bach’s Berlin Autograph (c.1742) as opposed to the first printed edition (1751) which has so often provided the basis for rival accounts. Among many strengths of this reading of Bach’s contrapuntal odyssey around a single musical subject is one of amiability. Bach would have…

Barber Excursions; Piano Sonata; Ballade; Souvenirs*; Nocturne Yeseul Moon, *Hardy Rittner (piano) MDG MDG9042177 (CD/SACD) 66:42 mins Other albums of Samuel Barber’s piano output contain more music. With a running time only three minutes longer, Leon McCawley in 2010 managed to find room for five early flights (two Interludes, three Sketches), given no opus numbers, yet all worth hearing. The statistic may underline the relative slowness of some of Yeseul Moon’s speeds. It reveals nothing about the superior quality of this South Korean pianist’s playing, or the depth of her engagement with the varied moods of an American composer today’s musical world too often takes for granted. There may be only one ‘major statement’ here: the Sonata of 1947-49, dedicated to Vladimir Horowitz. But it’s of granite strength, and Yeseul…

October round-up Lawrence Leonard’s arrangement of Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition turns it into a sort of piano concerto, but falls between the incisiveness of the original and the glamour of Ravel’s orchestral version. Bizarrely the soloist, Tamás Ungár, is uncredited in this re-released edition, although he does his best with an unrewarding task. The orchestral contribution from the Philharmonia and Geoffrey Simon is not always focused though, and that affects some of the other pieces, all orchestrations of Musorgsky by other hands. The more familiar Gopak, and Night on Bald Mountain come off best, but the B flat Scherzo and Prelude to Khovantschina never get quite off the ground. (Cala Signum SIGCD 205 ★★ ) Sviatoslav Richter preferred to be caught on the wing, and this version of Mozart’s…

Bowers & Wilkins Formation Wedge £899 I adored the Formation Duo streaming bookshelf speakers, and this one-box alternative with its 120-degree elliptical speaker design displays the same hi-res (24-bit/96 kHz) brilliance in a beautifully organic shape. bowers-wilkins.co.uk Q Acoustics 3030i £329 The best-value speaker brand I know has updated its exceptional passive bookshelf design with a new subwoofer, which means better bass response without the bulk of a floorstanding speaker design. qacoustics.co.uk The Fives £829 Vintage style with a modern heart, these 160W active speakers connect via Bluetooth, HDMI, optical, USB, 3.5mm and phono inputs, meaning you can stream from your phone, turntable or TV. klipsch.com…

Composer Max Richter presents an episode of BBC World Service’s Music Life, in which he asks composers Hans Zimmer, Hildur Gu›nadóttir and Angélica Negrón about their creative processes. Together, they discuss how they entered the music industry, the ways they convey emotion in their work and the difficulties involved in the process of composition. You can find the episode on BBC Sounds, where it’s also available as a podcast. Over on BBC iPlayer, catch up with ‘This House is Full of Music’, an episode of the imagine... series. The first remote-access film made during lockdown lets you into the home of the Kanneh-Mason family, featuring Sheku, Isata and their five siblings. Performance artist, activist, musician and single mum Bryony Kimmings is host of a new BBC Four documentary Opera Mums,…

Evenings have been a little freer of late, what with no commute to the office and no musical events – so far – to enjoy. It’s given me a chance to indulge in rather more organ practice than usual, and to draw up wish lists of the music I’d like to learn. One of those is Bach’s great C minor Fantasia and Fugue, as fruitily orchestrated by Elgar. My Novello editions may be out of fashion, but they contain a few delights in their editorial notes: ‘…but for the happy intervention of Herr Reichardt, the manuscript book written by Krebs, the pupil of Bach, containing this work, would have fallen into the hands of a petty shopkeeper and been used as waste paper….’ Presumably such things did happen – a…

MY FINEST MOMENT Beethoven String Trio in E flat major, Op. 3 Trio Zimmermann BIS BIS-2087 (2014) The other day I was listening to some of my trio’s recordings – I must say we really invested a lot of energy and it shows. I think our most convincing recording is the Beethoven Op. 3 and Op. 8 trios, which was our third disc. We had played it maybe 20 times before going into the studio, but we really worked hard on it for more than two years and I think that really paid off; it is very satisfying to listen to now. I was so lucky to meet these two guys; both of them I had known before we decided to play together. I was always the young guy in…

We like to think that the great glacier of posterity has done the work for us: the islands of the ‘greatest’ are all that remains as the tide of time sweeps away the ephemeral and the temporal. Classical music is left as a cultural Mount Rushmore with just a few scowling faces and periwigged pates etched in the granite: the titanic visages of Beethoven, Brahms, Bach and Bruckner – and some other names that aren’t Austro-German and that don’t begin with ‘B’, but who are all male, all white and all dead. Behind all this is the mysterious force of ‘The Canon’: but what are the mechanisms that determine who’s in and who’s out? It’s a complex question whose answer isn’t to be found in a formula like wild hair…

Chris Tibbetts Glasgow With all due respect to John Williams, has there ever been a finer film composer than the late Ennio Morricone? Extraordinary to think that he had to wait until the age of 86 to win his first Oscar, for The Hateful Eight in 2016. Listening again to iconic scores such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Cinema Paradiso or the exquisitely moving ‘Gabriel’s Oboe’ from The Mission makes me wonder if the Academy Awards jury had cloth in its ears back then! Stuart Whelan Gloucester I was delighted to read Roger Nichols’s September issue Composer of the Month feature on Florent Schmitt, a composer who I feel deserves to be heard more often. I first got to know Schmitt’s music ten years…

“ An orchestra should be a stimulator of intellectual discourse between people, an incubator of ideas” Is there anything more melancholy than a conductor in lockdown? We often think of conductors as musical leaders, but lockdown revealed the real truth: they can’t lead without the entirety of musical culture around them. They’re dependent on musicians and audiences for their survival and their purpose in life. When I spoke to the Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen at the end of May, he was exquisitely and painfully aware of this absence: ‘The last concert I conducted was in March, that Beethoven madness with the Philharmonia.’ On 15 March, he recreated the ‘total excess’ of Beethoven’s marathon December 1808 concert, with the premieres of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the Fourth…

Volume 1: Ben-Haim There’s everything of Ben-Haim in the first movement of the Clarinet Quintet. He has a real affinity for the clarinet and this movement has a Klezmer influence too. Sometimes a clarinet in a quintet can be much more soloistic, but he blends it with the strings, playing in close register. Volume 2: Fitelberg The third movement of the First Quartet has a charming middle section that would be really compelling to Fitelberg newcomers. It’s such virtuosic quartet writing. His music has echoes of Bartók and Shostakovich, but he’s got a unique voice. Volume 3: Laks Laks’s Divertimento is interesting because of its unusual instrumentation – violin, clarinet, bassoon and piano – and its jazzy rhythms and folk influences. The second movement of the Piano Quintet is equally…

For centuries music lessons looked the same: teacher and student meeting face to face, usually once a week. Even if the quality of content varied, the classroom setting remained a constant. Coronavirus broke the mould. The ongoing pandemic obliged conservatoire students and their professors to join a mass unplanned experiment last term, one set to continue across the academic year and beyond. Early results suggest that online tuition is more than a lockdown stopgap. Chances are that e-learning programmes will become standard for top young instrumentalists and singers, a virtual complement to COVID-secure coaching sessions convened on music college and conservatoire campuses. Linda Merrick, principal of the Royal Northern College of Music and chair of Conservatoires UK, says her college is offering a ‘blended’ schedule of online and face-to-face lessons…

Did Max Bruch compose the ultimate one-hit wonder? The question is worth asking given that the German’s First Violin Concerto, unquestionably one of the greatest 19th-century works in the genre, has eclipsed almost every other work he composed. Indeed, its enormous success seems to have become a huge burden. Already aggrieved that he had sold the publishing rights of the concerto for the measly sum of 350 thalers (around £4,000 in today’s money), Bruch even began to resent its very existence. ‘Nothing can equal the laziness, stupidity and dullness of many violinists,’ wrote Bruch Several times his frustrations rose to boiling point. For example, in a letter written to a colleague in 1887, he declared, ‘Nothing can equal the laziness, stupidity and dullness of many German violinists; every fortnight one…

The work Restrained and elegant, Corelli’s style befits the urbane Roman circles in which he moved ‘For if musick can be immortal, Corelli’s consorts will be so,’ wrote the English biographer Roger North in 1710. It would be no exaggeration to say that the 12 Concerti grossi forming Corelli’s Op. 6 are still among the most venerated and emulated works in the musical canon. For years after his death, they were performed annually in the shadow of his tomb in the Pantheon, the great Roman temple to all the gods. In the 18th century alone, over 20 editions and arrangements were published across Europe, and in Georgian England, North reported they were ‘the onely musick relished for a long time’. For Corelli, the collection seems to have been an autumnal…

Roy Goodman (director) Corelli’s Op. 6 was instantly popular in England and there are several excellent versions by British ensembles. The Brandenburg Consort’s 1992 recording is directed with grace and panache by violinist Roy Goodman. His 19 players offer refined performances, tempos are sensitively judged and dance movements are delightfully lithe. The continuo realisations on organ or harpsichord and archlute add variegated colours and textures. If there’s an occasional wiriness to the violin sound, it doesn’t seriously detract from these felicitous accounts. (Hyperion CDD 22011) Pavlo Beznosiuk (director) Thanks to the unassuming direction of violinist Pavlo Beznosiuk, The Avison Ensemble captures the subtle graciousness of Corelli’s style. There’s a real sense of chamber music in their alert exchanges and spirited banter, and in the exquisite details of the continuo realisations…

Rachmaninov Préludes in A flat major, G sharp minor, F minor, B minor and D major; Lilacs, Op. 21/5; Etudes-Tableaux, Opp 33 & 39; Melody, Op. 21/9; Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op. 19 – Andante; Moments Musicaux in E flat minor and C major, Op. 16 Sergei Babayan (piano) DG 483 9181 58:26 mins There’s some extraordinary playing on this beautifully recorded disc. The Armenian-born American pianist Sergei Babayan exhibits a profound empathy for Rachmaninov’s music, revelling in its richness of sonority, its contrasting moods of elation and melancholy, and its structural fluidity. His recital eschews conventional practice which at least on disc tends to favour complete cycles of the Preludes or the Etudes-Tableaux . Instead, we have a mixed programme that dips in and out…

Respighi Fountains of Rome; Pines of Rome; Roman Festivals Sinfonia of London/John Wilson Chandos CHSA 5261 (CD/SACD) 60:06 mins Wilson and the Sinfonia nail Pines with stunning verve Chandos already has a robust disc of the ‘Roman Trilogy’ in its catalogue, with Yan Pascal Tortelier leading the Philharmonia. That was recorded 30 years ago, however, and there’s no doubt that sonically this new version is more sophisticated – especially in SACD or high-res download format. John Wilson’s conducting has more nuance too. In ‘L’Ottobrata’ from Feste Romane , for instance, Tortelier leans heavily on the slicing string figurations, while Wilson takes an altogether more balletic approach. But there is no lack of wallop – the opening of ‘Circenses’ has tremendous adrenaline, with spitting trumpets and a pleasing snap to the…

Dvořák Cello Concerto; Waldesruhe, Op. 68/5; Songs My Mother Taught Me, Op. 55/4; Four Songs, Op. 82 – ‘Leave Me Alone’; Goin’ Home Kian Soltani (cello); Staatskapelle Berlin/ Daniel Barenboim The Berliners provide an ideal foil for Soltani’s brightly lit line DG 483 6090 61:05 mins Swiss-born Iranian cellist Kian Soltani recounts in his notes how he declined an invitation from the West-Eastern Divan (where he has been principal cellist) because he had an imminent performance of the Dvorák Cello Concerto and needed to focus. Barenboim was having none of it, told him to bring the score along and devoted his spare hours to preparing it with him. It’s a touching story of master and apprentice, with a happy ending – this live collaboration with the Staatskapelle Berlin. I’ve been…

Adam Le Postillon de Lonjumeau (DVD) Michael Spyres, Florie Valiquette, Franck Leguérinel, Laurent Kubla, Michel Fau, Yannis Ezziadi, Julien Clément; Accentus; Rouen Opera Orchestra/ Sebastien Rouland; dir. Michel Fau (Rouen, 2019) Naxos DVD: 2.110662; Blu-ray: NBD 0112V 137 mins Franck Leguérinel makes a grandly over-the-top Marquis de Corcy Best remembered for his ballet Giselle (1841), Adolphe Adam (1803-56) was a leading light of the French musical theatre for some 30 years. Of his 36 opéras comiques, two or three were longterm successes – especially the present work, unveiled in 1836 and eventually running up some 569 performances at the Paris Opéra Comique itself, as well as appearing at numerous other theatres throughout Europe and beyond. It’s an unashamedly lightweight entertainment, in which the discovery of a local coachman’s extraordinary tenor…

Michael Finnissy Pious Anthems and Voluntaries Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge/ Andrew Nethsingha; Glen Dempsey, James Anderson-Besant (organ) The choir makes the music sound as lived-in as Byrd or Howells Signum Classics SIGCD 624 83:56 mins (2 discs) Reading Michael Finnissy’s thought-provoking reflections on the backstory to this ambitious cycle (not to mention Andrew Nethsingha’s detailed liner notes), you’d be forgiven for expecting something formidably cerebral. Taverner, Tallis, JS Bach and Tippett provide models and inspiration for vocal works which are complemented by elaborate instrumental commentaries, the whole underpinned by a complex theology, and referencing anything from artist David Hockney to Boulez’s Le marteau sans maître. Completed over the course of a three-year residency and designed to celebrate the 150th anniversary of St John’s College Chapel, Pious Anthems and…

Fauré • Franck Franck: Piano Quintet; Fauré: Piano Quintet No. 1 Wihan Quartet; Mami Shikimori (piano) Nimbus NI6397 68:20 mins In 1905, as Fauré’s First Piano Quintet was nearing completion, he wondered whether three movements would be enough, ‘as in the beautiful Quintet by Franck,’ finally deciding that they were. Instrumentation aside, this is almost the only similarity between the two works. The ensemble is alive to Franck’s frequent ‘subito’ markings Franck’s piece, beginning dramatico , lives through what Debussy rather unkindly called its ‘perpetual paroxysms’, and one of the performers’ tasks is to grade these excitements so that we get some feeling of shape in a whole movement. Here this task is fulfilled admirably, helped by discreet rubato here and there, notably in allowing just a touch of extra…

Beethoven Seven Bagatelles, Op. 33; Eleven Bagatelles, Op. 119; Six Bagatelles, Op. 126; Bagatelle in A minor, WoO 59 ‘Für Elise’; Klavierstück in B flat, WoO 60; Klavierstück in B minor, WoO 61; Klavierstück in G minor, WoO61a; Fantasia in G minor, Op. 77 Paul Lewis (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMM902416 69:41 mins These gems show Beethoven in a puckish mood It’s remarkable how much Beethoven we don’t, or only rarely hear. Think of all the Beethoven you listen to, and then remember that his opus numbers reach the late 130s. Certainly some is best forgotten, but this disc serves to remind us how much marvellous music Beethoven wrote where there isn’t a scowl in sight. The 32 piano sonatas are recorded and performed endlessly, while the Bagatelles, which are mainly…

October round-up Dusk, the eagerly-awaited debut album by trumpeter and flugelhornist James Copus, features his own compositions. And with Tom Cawley (piano), Conor Chaplin (bass) and Jason Brown (drums), it adds up to a formidable, well-integrated unit. Although it falls within the modern-jazz mainstream, they sound fresh, exciting and consistently interesting and Copus blisters the paint or creates elegant, laid-back lines with equal conviction. His writing is varied too, from the high-octane ‘Straight Ahead’ and ‘Outro’ to the atmospheric ‘Yearning’. (Ubuntu UBU0058) ★★★★ For Momento, Dave Milligan has mined his Scottish heritage, with tracks based on folk-songs alongside originals referencing Caledonian culture and history. Over three days in Udine, Italy, where Alpine views made Milligan feel unexpectedly at home, he joined bassist Danilo Gallo and drummer U.T. Gandhi, recording everything…

The Making of Handel’s Messiah Andrew Gant Bodleian Library 978-1-851-24506-2 144pp (pb) £15 Andrew Gant’s title doesn’t just embrace the hinterland to the Dublin premiere of Messiah in 1742. Skirting subsequent performing traditions during the composer’s lifetime, the Victorian swerve into gargantuanism, and 20th-century ‘decluttering’, it examines the ‘making’ of an institution: musical, national, a Christmas touchstone despite its broader remit. There’s a fine pedigree for the ‘Messianic’ monograph of course, and if Gant hasn’t much to add, lavishly illustrated, technical detail readily explained, he offers the general reader an eminently approachable introduction. When he’s off the chronological leash the flow sometimes startles – from a sentence pondering Handel’s theology, he hops to one musing on his sexuality. And some of the asides and single sentence summaries can be lame.…

Dan Brown enjoyed a brief career as a musician before turning his attention to writing. Best known for his 2003 thriller The Da Vinci Code, his other novels include Inferno and Origin and he has just published his first children’s picture book, Wild Symphony, with his own orchestral soundtrack to accompany the stories, accessible through an app or on CD from Parma Records. I grew up on the campus of Philips Exeter Academy, a school in New Hampshire where my father taught mathematics. He was a talented singer while my mother played the organ and the guitar and taught me piano. The school had a phenomenal music programme and our family didn’t have a television, so I was accustomed to going to hour-long concerts almost every night. I had two…

Proms heroes I was surprised that, in The People who Shaped the Proms (August), Michael White made no mention of the man who launched the event in 1895: Robert Newman, impresario and manager of Queen’s Hall who entrusted the 26-year-old Henry Wood with bringing his vision to fruition. My first memory of the Proms was when, as a 17 year-old, I attended the second night of the 1944 season. I went to several more concerts until, after about three weeks, a German flying bomb attack forced the Albert Hall to close down. Some of the remaining concerts were broadcast from Bedford, to where the BBC Symphony Orchestra was evacuated. Sir Henry Wood conducted his last concert on 28 May and died just three weeks later, so I was fortunate to…

Nathan Meltzer Violinist Born: Washington, US Career highlight: The surprise long-term loan of the Totenberg-Ames Stradivarius when I was 18. Playing it has really broadened my horizons and allowed me to explore new musical ideas. Musical hero: Violinist Itzhak Perlman has been my teacher since I was 13, and is kind, funny, warm and approachable. You can sit in his kitchen and discuss music, baseball and food, and really feel his zest for life. Dream concert: I was supposed to play my dream concert this year, but it was sadly cancelled. It was John Rutter’s Visions at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, with the RPO, the Bach Choir and Rutter himself. Selina Ott Trumpeter Born: Krems, Austria Career highlight: Winning the ARD competition in the trumpet category in…

A new online database of music by women composers has been launched with the aim of bringing largely neglected works into the mainstream. Called Ask Clara – after composer Clara Schumann (left) – the site already lists 4,662 works from across four centuries, with many more yet to be added. It is the brainchild of harpsichordist Claire Bodin who can now add her name to the list of classical music’s notable cataloguers… Though composers having been labelling their works with opus (Op.) numbers since the 17th century, often they have done so in a haphazard way, paying little attention to chronological order and leaving some pieces out altogether. Thankfully, the likes of Ludwig Köchel (1800-77) have helped to get things in some semblance of order. Köchel is best known for…

Acclaimed as the ‘father of Czech piano music’, Radoslav Kvapil recently made a new recording in the cloister at Prague’s beautiful Brevnovský Abbey. The 86-year-old pianist performed four Mozart piano sonatas – K310, 330, 331 and 545 – in June and his recording will be released by the Musical Concepts label this month. Pianist Paul Wee impressed with his debut album of Alkan piano works, released by BIS late last year, not least of all because he is first and foremost a practising lawyer. Wee follows Alkan with a recording of Thalberg’s complete L’Art du chant appliqué au piano; it’s a work rarely recorded in its entirety. BIS plans to release the two-disc album at the end of the year The Belgian clarinettist Roeland Hendrikx has begun work on an…

Oliver Condy Editor It was a joy recently to host the online launch of a recording of Schubert’s Winterreise by baritone Nikolay Borchev and pianist Wu Han, released on the ArtistLed label. Despite me, my interviewees and our audience being scattered across the globe, the video technology nevertheless held up, and our fascinating discussion ranged from performing editions and Schubert’s grim wintry world to fond memories of pre-lockdown recording sessions. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor I’ll admit that, given that it fell two days after my 18th birthday, the world premiere of John Tavener’s The Protecting Veil at the BBC Proms in September 1989 didn’t exactly crop up on my radar. What a treat, then, to be able to hear it broadcast as part of this summer’s series of…

Viktoria Mullova Arvo Pärt Viktoria Mullova (violin); Estonian National Symphony Orchestra/Paavo Järvi Onyx ONYX4201 Released in 2018, when our review pointed to these artists’ ‘sense of proportion in tempo, phrase arc and inner voices’. Vivaldi Violin Concertos Viktoria Mullova (violin); Il Giardino Armonico/Giovanni Antonini Onyx ONYX4001 Despite using gut strings, Mullova’s performances fizz with a modern virtuosity and agility. Tchaikovsky and Sibelius Violin Concertos Viktoria Mullova (violin); Boston Symphony Orchestra/ Seiji Ozawa Philips 478 4812 The highlight on this 2012 recording is the Sibelius Concerto – Mullova’s performance digs deep into the work’s Nordic soul. Misha Mullov-Abbado Cross-Platform Interchange Misha Mullov-Abbado (bass), James Davison (trumpet), Matthew Herd (alto sax), Liam Dunachie (keyboards), Scott Chapman (drums), Elad Neeman (percussion) Edition 1091 Mullov-Abbado’s second jazz album plays on his love of trains…

Floof (1988) Subtitled ‘Songs of a Homeostatic Homer’, Floof is scored for soprano plus amplified clarinet/contrabass clarinet, cello, piano, synthesizer and percussion. Salonen describes the piece, which stretches the singer to the limit, as ‘the ultimate product of the electro-troubadour, set to dodecaphonic rap music.’ LA Variations (1996) Again, Salonen makes huge demands of his musicians, in this instance the players of the LA Philhamonic, for whom this 20-minute piece was written. Aside from the instrumental acrobatics, there are gorgeous passages of big-scale orchestral scene-painting. Wing on Wing (2004) Another LA Phil commission, Wing on Wing is inspired by the architecture of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall (above). Scored for two sopranos and orchestra, it moves from eerie stillness to a crashing climax… and back. Violin Concerto (2009)…

Within the operatic world there lingers a longstanding prejudice that, before the likes of Maria Callas took the world by storm in the 20th century, performances were slightly uninspiring in their dramatic impact. This was so because no one – singers or audiences – was interested in acting, only in singing. Of course, that’s a parody. Regardless of how prolific this trope has become, it’s clear from the reviews of the time that this wasn’t really the case. At the very least, there was usually someone in charge of assembling a dramatic experience within the opera in the early 19th century, be that a stage director or manager, or occasionally the work’s librettist – or even the composer. In any case, performances certainly weren’t devoid of excitement when the likes…

Melody The prime ingredient in Bruch’s musical armoury was melody. When his melodic inspiration soared, as in the wonderfully lyrical slow movement of the First Violin Concerto or in the mournful introduction to the Scottish Fantasy, the impact is overwhelmingly beautiful. Folk music Bruch was an avid enthusiast for folk music. Although fervently German in his orientation, he composed a number of works that draw upon a surprisingly eclectic range of countries, including Russia, Sweden and, most famously, Scotland. Musical conservatism Bruch’s works are strongly imbued with the Romantic musical language cultivated by his predecessors Mendelssohn and Schumann. Although his second opera Die Loreley contains some stylistic allusions to Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, he rejected Wagner’s later music-dramas as anarchic and even believed that they would not stand the test of…

Born in the northern Italian town of Fusignano in 1653, Arcangelo Corelli forged his career in Rome where he enjoyed the generous patronage of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. Making his name as both a violinist and composer, he enjoyed the company of many of the leading artists of his day and, at his death, left a legacy of 142 paintings. In 1706, Corelli became a member of the Arcadian Academy, a Roman circle of intellectuals and literati who aimed to revive the ‘pastoral’ ideals of Ancient Greece. Bach and Handel were among the composers influenced by his music.…

After becoming the first artist from the USSR to attend international music competitions without state sponsorship, Armenian-American pianist Sergei Babayan made a name for himself on the international piano scene in the early 1990s, winning a trio of international competitions in quick succession: the Cleveland, Hamamatsu and Scottish. He went onto become an artist in residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1992, a position he still holds, alongside his role on the teaching faculty at New York’s Juilliard School. Babayan has made a name for himself as a fine collaborator and chamber musician, making his DG debut in 2018 in a joint recording with pianist and close friend Martha Argerich. The disc featured a programme of music by Prokofiev transcribed for piano by Babayan, including excerpts from the…

Born into a musical family, son of a coloratura soprano and a Berlin Phil violinist, the young Alban Gerhardt took up the piano and cello. Following studies in Berlin and Cincinnati – at the latter studying chamber music with the Tokyo and LaSalle quartets – Gerhardt then met his most important cello teacher, Boris Pergamenschikov. Success in various competitions followed, and his international career was launched in 1991 with his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov. He has since become one of music’s most fearless and inquisitive performers.…

With performances of her music across the globe, from Scottish Opera to the Sydney Symphony, it’s safe to say Missy Mazzoli’s voice is being heard. In the US she is celebrated as one of the country’s most inventive composers, working across genres and with innumerable ensembles. In 2018 she was one of the first women to be commissioned by the Met Opera, while her Luna Composition Lab was founded in 2016 to provide mentoring and support to young female-identifying composers. She is currently a composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony.…

Composing started early for Finnissy, who took to the piano before he was five and soon began to create his own tunes on the keyboard. A scholarship for the Royal College of Music was followed by an Italian scholarship, during which time the young musician earned a crust as a dance rehearsal pianist and playing jazz. Returning to London, Finnissy went on to found the music department at the London School of Contemporary Dance. He has, over the years, performed, conducted and taught and maintains creative partnerships with ensembles in the UK and Australia.…

Higdon was 15 years old when she picked up a flute and taught herself to play, and 18 when she began formal music studies. But that late start hasn't held her back; if anything it has only spurred her on. The Brooklyn-born composer has had a remarkable rise to success in the US, following a Pulitzer Prize win in 2010 (for her Violin Concerto) and, so far, three Grammys. One of America's busiest composers, she works across genres and has written everything from chamber works to opera – including the popular Cold Mountain for Santa Fe Opera in 2015.…

Thalberg was in his early teens when he made his public debut as a pianist; that occasion took place in London, where he had been under the tutelage of Moscheles. Just a few years earlier he had moved to Vienna from Switzerland, where he was born, and claimed to have been present at the premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. An extraordinary pianist, Thalberg was a flamboyant, skilful and innovative artist at the keyboard and known throughout Europe. His fame meant his own music became popular, too, but his star waned soon after his death.…

Beethoven Piano Trio Op. 70 No. 2; Symphony No. 2 (arr. trio) Beethoven Trio Bonn CAVi-music AVI 8553111 The Bonn trio continues its fine series; the gentle hues of the Piano Trio are beautifully contrasted with a very perky performance of the symphony arrangement. (MB) ★★★★ Beethoven • Ligeti String Quartets Jupiter String Quartet Marquis MAT 81499 What a superb pairing of Beethoven and Ligeti quartets. An extensive palette of colours is explored in the Jupiters’ interpretations here. Compelling playing with a good deal of drama. (FP) ★★★★ Esteban Benzecry Ciclo de canciones; Violin Concerto etc Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Naxos 8.574128 Here’s a composer with a lot to say; Benzecry’s vernacular is richly inventive. The sound pictures painted in the concertos are enticing, with great daubs of rhythmic colour.…

Beethoven: Angela Hewitt and the piano sonatas  Pianist Angela Hewitt joins Donald Macleod to discuss her experiences of playing Beethoven, as part of her ongoing project to record his complete piano sonatas. She’ll be sharing some of her favourites, as well as talking about the role of humour and invention in his music. Composer of the Week: 19-23 October, 12 noon Between the Ears: Songs of the Sky Karin Lehmkul, a wildlife ranger from a small native Alaskan village in the Arctic Circle, takes us into the forests where she captures the ethereal sounds of the Northern Lights with a low-frequency radio recorder. These sounds are then incorporated into a new work by composer Matthew Burtner. Between the Ears: 25 October, 6.45pm Composer of the Week: Kaija Saariaho Donald Macleod…