Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2025 i BBC Music Magazine

Is there a better-known tenor than Luciano Pavarotti? Despite his death 18 years ago, the ‘King of the High Cs’ is arguably as powerfully present today as at the height of his popularity. And there can be little argument that Pavarotti was an exceptional opera star, transcending the world of classical music to become a beloved cultural icon. His unforgettable rendition of ‘Nessun Dorma’, chosen as the theme song for the BBC’s coverage of the 1990 FIFA World Cup, propelled him and his fellow Three Tenors to global prominence. But does the shadow of Pavarotti still loom large over today’s operatic greats? On page 24, Ashutosh Khandekar explores the great Italian’s legacy, as we mark his 90th birthday. Elsewhere, we celebrate that most distinctive of brass instruments, the trumpet, with…

The death of Roger Norrington, the irrepressible maverick whose achievements are celebrated in this issue, almost completes a melancholy roll-call – at least for me. When I first started writing about music and musicians, nearly half a century ago, Norrington was one of many radical spirits, nearly all now dead, who were intent on revolutionising how Renaissance, Baroque and even Classical-era music was performed. The magic word they used was ‘authenticity’. Later, that emotive term – implying that everyone’s else’s approach was inauthentic – was replaced by ‘historically informed performance’. Nowadays, even that is regarded as a bit provocative. Every performer with integrity is ‘historically informed’ to some degree. But back in the 1970s and ’80s the ‘authenticity brigade’ – led by the likes of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Christopher Hogwood and…

Folksong Berio’s love of folksong is expressed on an epic scale in 1975’s Coro, an hour-long work in which the 40 instrumentalists of the orchestra are each paired off with a singer. A huge fresco of folksong unfolds, in many languages, in every combination of voice and instrument from duet to tutti. Worlds within worlds In his forties, Berio composed a series of orchestral pieces entitled Chemins, in which a solo Sequenza is wrapped inside a newly composed ‘commentary’. Sequenza VI for viola was wrapped in Chemins II which was itself embedded in Chemins III ‘like the layers of an onion’, as Berio described it. Rescuing the past Berio disliked musicological attempts to complete unfinished works by long-dead composers, and tried something different with Schubert’s (pictured above) sketches for a…

A New Yorker from birth, Gershwin’s teenage activities as a ‘song plugger’ (promoting sheet music) rapidly led to a career as a Broadway composer. As well as penning a wealth of instantly catchy songs – often with brother Ira – he made waves when his Rhapsody in Blue for piano and orchestra was premiered in 1924. A visit to Ravel for tuition in the mid-1920s resulted partly in his An American in Paris, but also in the French composer advising him to carry on pursuing his own style. He was a week short of his 37th birthday when Porgy and Bess was premiered – but, tragically, he also had less than two years to live.…

Welcome This is my 94th issue as Reviews Editor and, I’m sad to say, also my last. What a privilege it has been to be custodian of these pages, sharing music I hope might excite, occasionally surprise and offer reassuring familiarity in equal measure. There’s comfort in listening to what you know (and love), but I’d like to think together we’ve made some new discoveries. As with the preceding 93 issues, my final one brings you a bit of everything – from core repertoire by the great composers to thrilling, genre-bridging concept albums and everything in between. There’s a stunning bit of archival Puccini in Andrew McGregor’s round-up and my own take on the latest releases of cinema and television soundtracks. Michael Beek Reviews editor This month’s critics John Allison,…

JS Bach Orchestral Transcriptions (arr. Andrew Davis) (King of Kings) BBC Philharmonic/Andrew Davis, Martyn Brabbins Chandos CHAN20400 68:23 mins A sometime organ scholar at King’s College, Cambridge (cue the album’s punning title), the late Andrew Davis is in good company orchestrating Bach’s organ works. He was his own man though, combining a little of the didacticism of Schoenberg and Webern, the ebullience of Walton, the grandeur of Elgar and, sparingly, the showmanship of Stokowski. And it’s all done with evident affection – the gloriously rasping bottom ‘D’ that interrupts the opening flourish of the famous Toccata BWV 565 has Davis’s twinkly humour all over it. He himself conducts four of the works, including the very first transcription he made back in 2003: that of the Passacaglia and Fugue, BWV 582,…

Kinan Azmeh Clarinet Concerto Kinan Azmeh (clarinet); LPO/Enrique Mazzola LPO LPOD943 (digital) 20 mins The Syrian clarinettist Kinan Azmeh takes centre-stage in his fluid and engaging concerto written in 2018. Moving through an introduction, lullaby and an ecstatic dance that draws on the ‘Katakufti’ or ‘Nawari’ rhythm from Arabic music, it’s a 20-minute showcase for his soulful and improvisatory playing that also has fun with orchestral colour. Rebecca Franks JS Bach Ravel JS Bach: Works arr. Paul Wittgenstein; Ravel: Piano Concertos in G major and D major Yeol Eum Son (piano); Residentie Orkest The Hague/Anja Bihlmaier Naïve V8447 50:41 mins It’s a nice idea to bring together Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, with Wittgenstein’s own arrangements of Bach keyboard works. Yeol Eum Son is…

Radiant Dawn Works by Hildegard of Bingen, Tallis, James MacMillan, Owain Park et al Matilda Lloyd (trumpet); The Gesualdo Six/Owain Park Hyperion CDA 68465 69:35 mins This is an ingenious and moving collection of pieces framed as the interplay between light and dark, and moving across the spectrum of such experiences. Central to the project have been Owain Park (ensemble conductor, composer, performer) and Matilda Lloyd (trumpeter extraordinaire). Both studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, are acclaimed musicians and have garnered previous accolades from BBC Music Magazine and much else besides. At one end of the spectrum we have works anchored in church services for night vigils and daybreak such as Tallis’s O nata lux, performed with nicely controlled dynamics that give it shape and hint at the unfolding light. In…

Mozart Arias, Lieder and Instrumental Works (Mozart’s Clavichord) Georg Nigl (baritone), Alexander Gergelyfi (clavichord) Alpha Classics ALPHA1142 81:30 mins The clavichord was essentially a quiet, domestic instrument, but unlike the harpsichord it could provide gradual dynamic effects and varied types of touch and articulation. The one here is preserved in the Mozarteum in Salzburg but was used by Mozart to compose works in Vienna in the last ten years of his life. Baritone Georg Nigl and keyboard player Alexander Gergelyfi have assembled a fascinating collection of such works to demonstrate its qualities. In the purely instrumental pieces Gergelyfi demonstrates, via his arrangement of the fugal overture to the opera Die Zauberflöte, how the different ‘voices’ can be given different weight and emphasis, and in the march from La Clemenza di…

JS Bach Confluene: Six Trio Sonatas, BWV 525-530 Sooyun Kim (flute), Kenneth Weiss (harpsichord) Musica Solis MS202506 55:25 min JS Bach’s Trio Sonatas for Organ are among his most perfect solo works. The blend of virtuosity and intricacy that characterises them was probably intended to hone the keyboard skills of his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Even today, along with Bach’s C minor Passacaglia for organ, they are seen as something of a gold standard where clear articulation on the organ is concerned. Bach’s approach to style in these works looks beyond dazzling figuration drawing in the Italian concerto, with robust leading ideas in the fast music and elegant melodic cantilenas in the slow movements. Transferring these remarkable works, in which so much is dependent on the equal interplay between two…

Mozart Twelve Variations in C; Ten Variations on a Theme by Gluck; Adagio in B minor; Sonata in A Federico Colli (piano) Chandos CHAN20350 65:56 mins Who among us possesses the miraculous ability of a Mozart to recall, note for note, an entire concert? Thank goodness then for recordings, allowing us mere mortals to return repeatedly to a performance, absorbing each nuance, and, in this case, better able to reflect on an individual approach to well-known works. This is Volume 2 in a cycle of Mozart’s solo piano music by celebrated Italian pianist Federico Colli. A four-year gap divides it from the first rendezvous but its connection is the choice of a central piece, here the Sonata in A, K331, where the original manuscript has been lost. With scholarly maturity…

John Williams Jaws – Original Motion Picture Score Hollywood Studio Symphony/John Williams  Backlot Music (digital) /Mondo (vinyl) 54 mins It’s half a century since audiences were first left terrified by John Williams’s primal musical response to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, the ultimate cinematic fishing trip. The composer’s simple motif for the shark ended up saving the director’s bacon, given the lack-lustre performance of the film’s mechanical monster – we knew it was lurking, even if we couldn’t see it. But the music of Jaws is so much more than two notes; the rest of Williams’s score is a breathtaking, seafaring musical masterclass. From the moment the hunt for the shark begins, Jaws becomes an adventure on the high seas. To mark 50 years, the original score has been lovingly restored from…

Puccini Madama Butterfly Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti; Vienna Philharmonic/Herbert von Karajan Decca 4871043 (2CD) It’s the hope that kills in Puccini’s Madam Butterfly – love and deception, then loss, denial and devastation. For the last half-century, Decca’s 1975 release has maintained its status as one of the great classics. Mirella Freni is utterly believable as the young, vulnerable Cio-Cio San, breaking hearts with the tenderness of her singing. Her regular partner Luciano Pavarotti is on formidable form, in the prime of his life as Pinkerton, seducing us with the thrilling passion of his performance. Karajan’s support, sense of line and the beauty of sound from the Vienna Philharmonic compensate for some lovingly slow speeds. Newly remastered in high definition, this Butterfly has never sounded more immediate and immersive, and if…

Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason is a former lecturer at Birmingham University and a campaigner for music education. She and husband Stuart are parents to seven talented musicians, as she chronicles in House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons. Her new book, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, explores the challenges of growing up as a Black artist, with contributions from her children. They release their second collective album, River of Music, on Decca in September. I was touched that my son Sheku chose MOZART’s Requiem for his own Music That Changed Me (September 2022) because he knew it was my favourite. I used to listen to it when I was much younger, and I connected to it because it’s so full of grief and yet it makes a kind of beauty and transcendence…

Ashutosh Khandekar Journalist and critic ‘In my teens, Pavarotti gave me my first taste of the beauty of the tenor voice. It was wonderful to revisit his career and find that, beyond the phenomenal global celebrity, his singing still goes straight to the heart.’ Page 24 Matilda Lloyd Trumpeter ‘It’s not often that I can unashamedly boast about my instrument, so I am delighted to take you on a journey through the trumpet’s history and development, told through the lens of ten great trumpeters!.’ Page 36 Joe Phelan Freelance writer ‘The Piano Boat is a tale of love, loss and the power of music in the most intimate of settings. Its owner Rhiana’s determination is extraordinary, and I feel honoured to have the chance to share her story here.’ Page…

For a different take on Petroc Trelawny’s home patch (see above), we turn to Kenneth Wilson. ‘Nowhere has hills as steep as Cornwall,’ reflects the cyclist-cum-cellist, who has spent his summer pedalling his way across England with instrument in tow. On his journey, the former vicar has visited all 42 of the country’s Anglican cathedrals and, in most of them, given a recital featuring movements from JS Bach’s Cello Suites. Cornwall’s Truro Cathedral came roughly halfway along the mammoth trip, which began with Newcastle Cathedral, headed south and then west before returning northwards to finish at Carlisle Cathedral. Though hoiking a bulky cello and case added to the already hefty demands on the 66-year-old Wilson’s legs, he says it also proved a popular conversation topic from one city to the…

When Luciano Pavarotti died in in 2007, he was one of the most famous men in the world, his celebrity extending far beyond the opera stage. This year, as we prepare to celebrate what would have been the tenor’s 90th birthday, does this legacy endure? Pavarotti himself acknowledged he had played an important role in changing public perceptions of the opera singer in the modern age. As one of the Three Tenors, and the only true Italian of the trio, his appearance at the Caracalla Baths in Rome on the eve of the FIFA World Cup in 1990 brought him to the attention of a global audience of around 800 million and turned him into a legend. Pavarotti had a knack for self-promotion, aided and abetted throughout his career by…

UK London Sinfonietta The Story Garden, King’s Cross, London, 14 September londonsinfonietta.org.uk The UK’s leading contemporary music ensemble has green fingers! Who knew? An al fresco September start to the season unites the Sinfonietta, Exaudi and on-stage gardeners for the world premiere of a hymn to horticulture by Omri Kochavi. An appearance at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival explores the Polish scene, while George Benjamin presides over October’s Boulez centenary tribute. Welsh National Opera Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, from 7 September and touring wno.org.uk James Bonas’s fizzing, visually ingenious production of Bernstein’s Candide makes a September return, ensuring that WNO’s 80th anniversary season is ‘for the best of all possible worlds’. A new staging of Puccini’s Tosca keeps it company, while in the spring Tomáš Hanus conducts Jack Furness’s reimagining of…

The great modernist composer Luciano Berio shares his surname with a best-selling Italian brand of olive oil, which seems apt as he was a very Italian sort of modernist. He loved the singing voice, he loved history as embedded in tangible things like instruments and the lusty folksong of his native land, and he loved to complicate his music with a buzzing polyphony of different kinds of music and speech happening all at once, as if the concert hall had been invaded by the spirit of a noisily Italian political rally. Sometimes this tendency towards theatre even takes on a ‘commedia dell’arte’ gestural comedy, as in Berio’s music theatre piece Allez Hop!, which tells the story of a travelling showman and his performing fleas, or Sequenza V for solo trombone,…

The work Porgy and Bess marked the pinnacle of Gershwin’s ambitions to be taken seriously as a composer and is by far his most substantial work. At its try-out in Boston in September 1935, the opera’s running time (including intervals) was nearly four hours, from which 45 minutes were cut before it transferred to Broadway’s Alvin Theatre in the following month for a run of 124 performances; it was subsequently taken on tour to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Washington DC. The piece had an (almost) exclusively African American cast, all but one of them classically trained as opera singers, and several of the principals flatly refused to perform it in Washington until the theatre there agreed to desegregate its audience. Critical responses were generally favourable, though the work contained controversial…

Liza Lim A Sutured World*; Mary**; The Compass^ *Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), **^Carin Levine (flute), **^William Barton (digeridoo); Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra/*Edward Gardner; **Franck Ollu;^ Christoph Poppen BR Klassik 900647 69:03 mins Liza Lim is a weaver of worlds. An Australian of Chinese heritage, her music arises from a trans-cultural urge far deeper than surface references – and extending into realms of ecology, metaphysics and female power. These works are typical in their terrific energy and fecundity. Two concertos sandwich the second of her Annunciation Triptych celebrating three icons of female spirituality. A Sutured World (2024) foregrounds the cello in a piece that explores the beauty of scars. Richly textured, with sudden, unexpected sounds and harmonic segues adroitly threaded by soloist Nicolas Altstaedt and conductor Edward Gardner, as with all the…

Purcell Dido and Aeneas Joyce DiDonato, Michael Spyres, Fatma Said et al; Il Pomo d’Oro/Maxim Emelyanychev Erato 2173228488 52:43 mins It’s been a mystery why Joyce DiDonato appeared to have bypassed Purcell’s miniature masterpiece. A concert performance at London’s Barbican Hall last year revealed her as a consummate Dido; and for the most part this is what is recorded here with a handful of cast changes. Most notably, Michael Spyres, who uniquely combines baritone gravitas with a tenor sensibility making his Aeneas more than an ancient Action Man. There’s real grief in his parting from Dido: a hero when Belinda eggs him on to pursue her in Act 1, he is all but undone when duty calls and he abandons love. A proper exemplar of the great Baroque operatic conflict…

Handel Alexander’s Feast Miriam Kutrowatz, Daniel Johannsen, Damien Gastl; Arnold Schoenberg Chor; Zefiro/Alfredo Bernardini Arcana A582 81:45 mins This live recording of Alexander’s Feast, made at the 2024 Styriarte Festival in Graz, captures the full expressive sweep of Handel’s ode to the power of music. The work sets John Dryden’s poem recounting how the Theban musician Timotheus stirred the emotions of Alexander the Great – from triumph to pity, desire to rage – through music alone. Handel’s 1736 score – a kaleidoscope of styles and textures – finds a persuasive advocate in Alfredo Bernardini with his ensemble Zefiro. Bernardini shapes the work’s architecture with articulate phrasing, alert rhythms and dramatic dynamic contrasts. As an oboist himself, he coaxes some exquisite instrumental playing, and Zefiro’s transparent sound highlights the colours of…

Barber Debussy Nielsen Say Chamber Works Ensemble Astera Claves 50-3139 65:32 mins There’s both a delightful sprightliness and no little feistiness to Ensemble Astera’s playing, heard at its best in the Praeludium – Tema con variazioni of Nielsen’s Kvintet, Op. 43 and the opening movement of Fazil Say’s gripping Alevi dedeler rakı masasında from 2011. Overall, a very enjoyable showcase of music for wind quintet (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn), though perhaps Gordon Davies’s arrangement of Debussy’s Petite Suite lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Jeremy Pound Bonis Farrenc Elena Firsova Chamber Music Ensemble Louise Farrenc CPO 555 624-2 65:18 mins Three contrasting chamber works in energised performances by the Ensemble Louise Farrenc make this album a stimulating listen. After a fervent reading of their namesake’s engaging…

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The Composer Embalmed – Relic Culture from Piety to Kitsch Abigail Fine Chicago 288pp (hb) £28 At the British Library’s ‘Beethoven 250’ exhibition, visitors could view a laundry list scribbled in the composer’s hand, while over in Warsaw at the Chopin Museum, artefacts include a lock of the great man’s hair. Abigail Fine’s granular study The Composer Embalmed explains the development of this continuing 19th-century devotion, and how admiration veered into religious fervour as belongings and bodies became relics. Alongside pseudo-scientific interest in composers’ physicality (Beethoven continues to be presented with an over-large forehead), there was a belief that proximity to grisly objects would allow a transference of ‘genius’ to the beholder. This resulted in gruesome graverobbing (in the case of Haydn’s skull) and an obsession with Beethoven’s death mask.…

From the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth comes a 25-CD set showcasing unmissable recordings of six of Wagner’s operas (Eloquence 4847580). Recorded by Decca, Phillips and Deutsche Grammophon between 1951 and 1974, this set captures nearly 25 years of landmark performances. It opens with Hans Knappertsbusch’s Parsifal, described by The Record Guide as ‘one of the great achievements in the history of the gramophone’; perhaps topped only by Knappertsbusch’s 1962 live recording of the same opera, also included here. The 1966 Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Karl Böhm, has ‘an almost unmatchable cast’, wrote the Penguin Guide. Plus, there are performances of Lohengrin, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. If a little light relief is needed after Wagner, then Lyrita’s spotlight on Eric Coates might be just the thing…

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Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contact us on Facebook and X (Twitter) A very English list I read September’s Picture Perfect – your choice of the best use of classical music in films – with interest… and enormous disappointment. Opinions about ‘best’ are subjective, but your choices were for the most part both predictable and limited. All 12 films chosen were English-language titles; what about the rest of the world? Your magazine doesn’t restrict itself to the music of Anglophone composers, so why treat cinema that way? (Yes, I know Visconti was Italian and Von Trier is Danish, but even with them you selected works in English.) If you really had to include Tristan und Isolde, why not Buñuel’s…

Time for a collective doffing of caps to tenor Nicky Spence, who has personally raised funds of £50,000 to enable less well-off students to attend the Guildhall School in London. The beneficiary of the very first Nicky Spence Scholarship will begin this autumn, though the fund remains open for further donations. ‘I am really happy that my involvement in the School will give a talented group of singers from a lower socio-economic background the opportunity to flourish in the environment which Guildhall creates so uniquely,’ says Spence. ‘My own upbringing never foretold success and I would really like to help establish more state school representation on our stages.’…

In mid-October 1871, a message was cabled from New York City to Franz Liszt in Europe. In itself, this was nothing unusual. Nearing 60 years old, the Hungarian composer and pianist had long been a globally famous musician, attracting 2,000 letters a year in correspondence. But this new communication was startlingly different. It was from a former pupil of his, the 26-year-old Olga Janina, and her message was brutal: she was returning by steamship to Europe, and she was going to kill him. Liszt was no stranger to extremes of human behaviour. As a pianist his extraordinary skill and charisma had roused audiences to unprecedented levels of adulation. Women in particular adored him, fainting at his concerts and scrambling to lay hold of his personal possessions in a frenzied hero-worship…

For a conductor who eventually achieved global recognition and left a dazzlingly varied discography, Sir Roger Norrington was something of a slow starter. Born in Oxford in 1934, his early musical activities revolved around playing trios and singing Elizabethan madrigals with family members. And when Norrington went to university at Clare College, Cambridge, it was to study not music, but English Literature. His musical abilities, however – he played violin and was a good enough tenor to sing the Evangelist in Bach’s St Matthew Passion – ensured he was in constant demand as a performer. Norrington did not, however, immediately embrace music as a profession. He worked first as an editor at Oxford University Press, while continuing a myriad musical activities, including forays into conducting. Finally, in 1962, he acknowledged…

‘In a remarkable and slightly macabre journey, Chopin’s sister Ludwika honoured his wish – smuggling the composer’s heart from France to Warsaw in a jar of cognac’ Often admired andadoredduring their lifetimes, the great composers would, you might think, enjoy similar reverence after death. Once the last rites had been read, surely these great cultural icons would be left in peace, the very notion of tampering with their corpses deemed an act of unacceptable desecration? Sadly not, it would seem. Over the centuries, various composers have, for one reason or another, suffered the indignity having their bodies hoiked around from A to B or, worse still, literally taken apart. Prepare yourself for some of the more notorious examples… Haydn loses his head On 31 May 1809, at the age of…

A luxury spa hotel in the Bavarian Alps, where a day of mountain views and gourmet food is topped by a world-class concert? Schloss Elmau, south of Munich near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, seems a positively paradisical destination. Nor am I the only one who thinks so; the G7 Summit was held there in 2015 and ’22. I arrive on a lung-piercingly fresh February afternoon to find hotel and mountains snuggling under a 15-tog duvet of snow. Outside, some guests are learning to do cross-country skiing; and inside, in the intimate concert hall, the Young Classical Artists Trust 40th anniversary tour is getting under way. Ten of YCAT’s distinguished alumni are playing together for the first time and this is the perfect place to rehearse and give an initial performance before going on…

Premières Symphonies Works by Bizet, Gounod and Saint-Saëns Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo/Kazuki Yamada Alpha Classics ALPHA1149 89:27 mins (2CD) The most familiar of these three classically-inclined mid-19th-century French symphonies is Bizet’s irresistibly fresh Symphony in C. He was all of 17 years old when he composed it, and although it can’t compare for originality with the works Mendelssohn wrote at a similar age, it’s an astonishingly accomplished piece. Bizet was a pupil of Gounod at the Paris Conservatoire at the time, and his symphony was obviously influenced by his teacher’s recent Symphony No. 1: a theme in Bizet’s opening movement echoes the attractive second subject in Gounod’s finale, and in both works the slow movement has a passage in fugal style. But Gounod’s fugal section outstays its welcome, and his…

Brahms Enescu Brahms: Violin Concerto; Enescu: Ballade; Aria and Scherzino Charlie Siem (violin); Philharmonia Orchestral/Oleg Caetani Signum Classics SIGCD936 44:19 mins Composer, violinist, pianist and conductor without equal in his day, George Enescu was (for Pablo Casals) ‘the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart’. This outstanding Romanian musician’s network somehow stretched back to even before his fame, and as a student in Vienna in the early 1890s he played under Brahms – probably a good enough reason for this recording bringing the two composers together. The main interest here lies with the miniature Enescu pieces, however slender they may be. Composed in 1895 (two years before Brahms’s death), Enescu’s Ballade, Op. 4a belongs to the tradition of slow, standalone movements for violin and orchestra going back to Beethoven and opens with…

Giacomelli Cesare in Egitto Arianna Vendittelli, Emőke Baráth et al; Accademia Bizantina/Ottavio Dantone Alpha Classics ALPHA1141 164:39 mins (3CD) Largely forgotten today, the Italian composer Geminiano Giacomelli (1692-1740) enjoyed a solid career writing operas for the main Italian cities and for those as far afield as Vienna, producing some 20 works between 1724 and 1739. To a libretto by Carlo Goldoni and Domenico Lalli, Cesare in Egitto was premiered at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan in 1735, then revived at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, Venice, in the autumn of the same year. Giacomelli’s most successful work, it also received stagings in Parma, Naples and Graz. This live world-premiere recording presents the revised Venice version in a stylish performance by a leading Italian period-instrument ensemble under its long-term artistic…

Zaytoun Songs by JS Bach, Monteverdi, Purcell and Sayed Darwish et al Haitham Haidar (tenor), Sylvain Bergeron (archlute), Abdul-Wahab Kayyali (oud) et al Athene ATH 23027 51:44 mins In medieval Spain, musicians of Las Tres Culturas (‘the three cultures’) performed ‘Andalusian’ music, a form combining the traditions of Jews, Christians and Muslims which was sundered when all Muslims were ethnically cleansed from 17th-century Spain. But that Andalusian style is being reborn today, thanks to musicians who have the patience to trawl for performance clues in the archives. Zaytoun – the Arabic word for ‘olive’ – represents the boldest and cleverest attempt so far to recreate this happy musical amalgam. And it’s the brainchild of the Lebanese-Palestinian-Canadian tenor Haitham Haidar, who stars in almost every track. He grew up in a…

Edge of the Storm Works by Bacewicz, Britten and Weinberg Telegraph Quartet Azica Records ACD-71381 74:08 mins The turbulent, destabilising and demoralising impact of the Second World War hovers uneasily over the three quartets in this enterprising and thought-provoking release. Perhaps its influence is less obvious in Bacewicz’s Fourth Quartet. Composed in 1951, at a time when Stalinism was wreaking havoc on Polish musical life, its elegant and clear-cut neo-classical design, not to mention its seemingly jaunty finale, appear, at least on the surface, to banish such connotations. Yet the Telegraph Quartet’s high-voltage account of this particular movement is anything but carefree, the skittish figurations sounding manic rather than upbeat. And if there were any further doubts about the work’s darker subtext, two powerfully projected passages in the first movement,…

Echoes of Exile Works by Bartók, Ben-Haim, Enescu, Ysaÿe and Zimmermann Sueye Park (violin) BIS BIS-2332 63:06 mins Turbulence from the Second World War impacts most of the composers on this album. The shadow of conflict for some entailed displacement – a loss of self-identity encouraging these composers to look to folk music to re-establish connections with their heritage. This searching for roots certainly defines Enescu’s captivating Ménétrier from his Impressions d’enfance. Sueye Park captures the world of the travelling fiddler, enchanting us much like a storyteller. Bartók also emulates folk music characteristics in his Sonata for Solo Violin, but this element is laced into a tightly woven fabric. In the Fuga’s ferociously argued contrapuntal lines, Park provides impressive clarity, and in contrast whispers eloquently in our ears in the…

October round-up Although it was composed a decade before his death, Henry Mancini’s The Thorn Birds might well be considered the high point of his career, musically speaking. Sure, he was one of Hollywood’s coolest cats long before this 1983 melodramatic TV miniseries – after all, he had already gifted us ‘Moon River’, Peter Gunn and The Pink Panther… But this represents the apex of Mancini’s talent for dramatic scoring and melodic writing, supporting with flair and flourish the show’s big, beautiful locations and its intimate, forbidden love story. This deluxe release, available to stream and on a gorgeous 2CD set, is a glorious thing. (Varèse Sarabande/Craft Recordings VCL03251247) Speaking of beautiful scenery, The Salt Path was a wonderful advert for the UK’s South West Coast Path. It was also…

October round-up It starts with a sudden snap, crackling with urgency and energy; Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos in the recording he made with Jacques Février for the film The Secrets of the Orchestra, 30 years after they’d given the first performance, is a reminder of Poulenc’s talents as a pianist a few weeks before his death. The slow movement is one of Poulenc’s trademark bittersweet beauties, played with surprising spikiness. Poulenc’s Aubade is a concerto inspired by Diana the Hunter, the story of which he choreographed from the keyboard in 1930. In between, he plays his own solo piano music and shows his affection for Erik Satie’s eccentricities. (SOMM ARIADNE5041) Pierre Monteux: A 150th Anniversary Tribute marks the great French conductor’s birthday with live broadcast recordings from 1961…