Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2026 i BBC Music Magazine

When Nicholas McCarthy took to the stage at the BBC Proms last summer to perform Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, he did so as the only professional one-handed concert pianist in the world today. But this was just one in a series of remarkable achievements for the inspiring and resilient British artist. Born without a right hand, McCarthy defied early naysayers to become the first one-handed pianist to graduate from the Royal College of Music in its 130-year history in 2012 – and in the same year performed to an audience of 500 million in the closing ceremony of the London Paralympic Games. A gifted motivational speaker, McCarthy is equally committed to helping other musicians with disabilities: witness his collaboration with the ABRSM to launch the world’s first…

Organist and conductor Anna Lapwood shares works to make you fall in love with the pipe organ Anna Lapwood is a British organist and conductor who has brought classical music to millions through social media, often under the hashtag #PlayLikeAGirl. She originally studied the organ alongside piano, violin, viola, composition and harp before going on to receive an organ scholarship at Magdalen College, Oxford. At 21, she was appointed director of music at Pembroke College, Cambridge. This year she was named the inaugural official organist of the Royal Albert Hall. On 15 January, she performs Jongen’s Symphonie concertante with the Hallé at Bridgewater Hall. Saint-Saëns Danse macabre (arr. Edwin Lemare) Many of the programmes I put together explore the organ as storyteller; in fact, storytelling is what I think the…

In 1891, Scriabin was burning the midnight oil – fellow classmates at the Moscow Conservatory included Rachmaninov and Josef Lhévinne, and competition among students was fierce. Determined to prove his pianistic prowess, the diligent Scriabin practised too hard and developed tendonitis in his right hand as a result. During his recuperation, he wrote Prelude and Nocturne for the Left Hand, Op. 9 that have become two of the most significant solo pieces in the left-hand repertoire. Pianists are prone to such injuries, and the development of one-handed works has continued in a similar way. When Leon Fleisher (1928-2020) began suffering from what would later be diagnosed as focal dystonia, he turned his attention to left-hand repertoire. In 2004, he premiered Paul Hindemith’s Klaviermusik (with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by…

Music was a minority pursuit at Clare College when John Rutter (above) began studying the subject there in 1964. ‘Music students were a rarity,’ he recalls. ‘In my year, there were exactly two of us.’ That number was set to soar. The wave of student protests that swept the US and Europe in the 1960s was about break on the River Cam. Calls for change prompted Cambridge’s bastions of male learning to open their doors to female students for the first time. ‘We suddenly had a cohort of eager, musical, intelligent young women who wanted to sing the music that their brothers had sung as cathedral choristers, but they had been excluded from.’ During his tenure as music director of Clare’s mixed-sex choir, Rutter scored a series of notable firsts.…

Michael Kamen was a New Yorker but ultimately made his life and career in London. His death from a heart attack in 2003, at the age of just 55, deprived the world of an artist who poured himself into everything he wrote and loved, and who brought everyone around him along for the ride. Before he scored some of the biggest films of the 1980s and ’90s, the Juilliard-trained composer played the oboe, co-founded The New York Rock & Roll Ensemble and honed his craft as an arranger for some of the world’s biggest rock and pop acts. Indeed, he worked closely with Pink Floyd and went on to perform with both Roger Waters and David Gilmour after the band split. Other collaborators included Queen, Eurythmics and Kate Bush, and…

The composer In 1723, the 38-year-old JS Bach moved from Köthen to take up the position of Thomaskantor (director of church music) in Leipzig, where he would remain for the rest of his life. He was a busy man, with duties including teaching music to the students of the Thomasschule as well as being required to write music for the city’s churches all the year round. Famous sacred works from Bach’s Leipzig years include the Christmas Oratorio and his Passion settings, though he did also find time for secular masterpieces such as the Goldberg Variations for solo keyboard and the Double Violin Concerto. The work Mocha? Flat White? Americano? Those patronising Zimmermann’s coffee house in 18th-century Leipzig would have been out of luck. But in the easy-going surroundings where the…

Shostakovich takes the spotlight in a series of standout releases this month. In Silenced, our Recording of the Month, Hyeyoon Park delivers a masterful performance of his First Violin Concerto, pairing it with Bosmans’s lesser-known but equally powerful Concert Piece for Violin and Orchestra. LSO Live presents the composer’s entire symphonic cycle under the expert direction of Gianandrea Noseda in our Unboxed section, whilst Saskia Giorgini presents a unique pairing of Shostakovich and Mozart piano works. Other highlights include the Bavarian Radio Symphony’s bold exploration of Nicolaus Richter de Vroe, Debussy and Szymanowski from the Belcea Quartet, and a beautifully curated recital by countertenor Reginald Mobley. Miranda Bardsley Reviews editor This month’s critics John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Terry Blain, Garry Booth, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, Geoff Brown, Michael Church, Christopher Cook, Martin…

Nicolaus Richter de Vroe Tetra bIV; Shibuya Movements; Euforia Isao Nakumura, Irvine Arditti et al; Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks/Peter Rundel, Cristóbal Halffter, Mariss Jansons BR Klassik 900649 57:02 mins Following their first feature release of music by Nicolaus Richter de Vroe comes this second from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Born in 1955 in the then GDR and long based in Munich, the composer and violinist deserves wider recognition. These works showcase Richter de Vroe’s brilliance as an orchestral composer: two are substantial and multilayered, while the third (Euforia, conductor Mariss Jansons) forms a brief – yet no less complex – celebratory postlude. All three were recorded thrillingly live at their respective world premieres. Earliest is Shibuya Movements (conductor Cristóbal Halffter), signalling an important location for the composer in the…

Christ lag in Todesbanden Bach Cantatas BWV 4, 106, 131 Ensemble Correspondances/Sébastien Daucé Harmonia Mundi HMM902745 59:13 mins For several years Sébastien Daucé and his Ensemble Correspondances have been delighting us with music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Now they are turning their attention to Bach and, if this new release is an indication of what may lie in store, we have much to look forward to. The three cantatas are representative of Bach’s earliest essays in the form, only BWV 150, which may well just pre-date them, being absent. What a pity, since there is comfortable space on the disc to accommodate it. All the music dates from Bach’s short appointment as organist of Mühlhausen’s Blasiuskirche but, while it draws upon 17th century traditions, the three cantatas reflect a diversity of…

Schubert 4 Hands Fantasia in F minor D940, Allegro in A minor D947, 'Lebensstürme' etc Leif Ove Andsnes (piano), Bertrand Chamayou (piano) Erato 2173296578 47:40 mins Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou include all the four-hands music Schubert composed in the last year of his life, 1828. Most familiar is the Fantasia in F minor, but no less great are the two larger-scale pieces among the remaining items. The Allegro in A minor, D947 first appeared in print some 12 years after Schubert’s death, under the catchpenny title of ‘Lebensstürme’ (‘The Storms of Life’). The title almost certainly originated with the publisher, Anton Diabelli, and it has encouraged players to take it at great speed ever since. Andsnes and Chamayou launch into it with excitement and intensity, but they relax…

Karishmeh Felfeli-Crawford Writer and pianist ‘Growing up in 1980s and ’90s India, the piano was a large part of my life. In India today, the piano continues to empower students of all backgrounds to access a classical tradition that isn’t normally associated with our country.’ Page 32 Andrew Stewart  Author and music journalist ‘Beyond the glorious music-making on offer at Clare College, I was charmed by the friendly atmosphere of the place and the generous spirit of its students. There’s something really rather special in the Clare air.’ Page 40 Ivan Hewett  Music journalist and author ‘Listening to bleached-out, drifting, endlessly repeated chords for hours – who could resist the prospect? Seriously, though, rediscovering the quiet mystery of Morton Feldman’s music after decades away from it was a joy.’ Page…

Charlotte Smith Editor A trip to Calgary for the Honens International Piano Competition offered the opportunity to hear three fantastic pianists in the live finals – each performing chamber music with the Isidore String Quartet, followed by concertos with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. In truth, there was little to separate Carter Johnson, Anastasia Vorotnaya and Élisabeth Pion, all of whom showed incredible facility and artistry, but in the end, Pion carried the day with an introspective and, at times, brilliantly bravura Prokofiev Third. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor How to survive January and February, those cold-hearted tyrants lording it at the top of the calendar? My recommendation is Mahler, and lots of it. One tactic is to stick with one conductor and orchestra through all the symphonies, but I prefer to…

For a truly inspiring example of how to introduce classical music to youngsters, look no further than Australian children’s television, as Tom Service explains There are endless debates about how best to introduce our youngest audiences to the wonders of classical music. And short of the simplest and most effective answer of all – putting music education at the heart of every child’s school experience, the solution that every government in this century has failed to grasp – evidence that classical music is a birthright of our youngest generations can seem thin on the ground. Yet there is hope. And one of the most compelling answers is the TV show Bluey, the animated stories of an Australian dog and her family: Bluey, her sister Bingo, Mum and Dad. The show…

There’s a big new word looming on the horizon. Trouble is, nobody can agree what it is. Some say it’s semiquincentennial, others bisesquicentennial. There’s also a fierce lobby holding out for sestercentennial. Very confusing for those of us who gave up Latin at 16. In fact, all three words refer to the same thing. Next July the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding: the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The rejoicing will take many forms, but I hope America’s music and musicians are strongly featured. And here I am going to voice a controversial thought: it’s that when you take into consideration how comparatively young the US still is, compared with the ancient civilisations of Europe and the Far East, it has made a more significant…

There was once a time when native New Yorkers like Aaron Copland and Ferde Grofé composed odes to the American West; when Europeans like Darius Milhaud and Frederick Delius extolled the deep South; and when the Atlanta-bred Jennifer Higdon was surveying the wilds of Wyoming’s Teton Range. In today’s America of blue and red states, such musical postcards are perhaps less welcome. But the works – and the ideas that inspired them – still stand. Below are 15 key examples. Note that some entries focus on cities more than states, but these inevitably say something greater about regional identity and folklore. 1 Alaska John Luther Adams In the White Silence John Luther Adams has captured the windswept panoramas of rural Alaska in several pieces, but none feels so lonely as In…

Embouchure is the expression used to describe the set of muscles creating the shape of the mouth; connecting with the mouthpiece and pushing the air through forms a note. In brass instruments, depending on the size of the mouthpiece, either a ‘tight’ or ‘loose’ shape is formed. Some brass band instruments aren’t used much outside this medium. Examples are cornet, E flat horn and euphonium. Skills are transferable, however; euphonium and trombone players require the same embouchure, though, of course, the seven slide positions must be worked out to match the seven fingering positions of each instrument. Trombonists that play exclusively in brass bands can’t make an easy transition to other ensembles; not only do they read the treble clef (rather than bass), but the notes they play are different.…

After the premiere of his orchestral piece Coptic Light in 1986, Morton Feldman was described by an irate American critic as ‘the most boring composer in the history of music’. Listeners coming to his music for the first time might well nod in exasperated agreement. First impressions are of tiny muffled gestures, often amounting to no more than a single tolling note or a wispy three-note melody, separated often by huge silences, floating by in a musical landscape devoid of direction or drama. ‘Where is the interest or attraction of this music?’, they might reasonably ask. The music of those other notorious dynamic range somewhere between quiet and inaudible. Feldman, along with the Austrian pre-war modernist Webern, was the great master of the pianissimo – although (again like Webern) his…

The best recording Masaaki Suzuki (director) Carolyn Sampson (Liesgen), Stephan Schreckenberger (Schlendrian), Makoto Sakurada (narrator); Bach Collegium Japan BIS BISCD1411 From espresso machine to percolator, there are many ways to make a cup of coffee, and such is the case with Bach’s cantata, too. Sporting just two soloists plus cameo narrator, tracking down a vocal dream team shouldn’t be too problematic, but it’s a dream that proves unstraightforward. Performance styles have evolved over the 70-or-so years since the oldest still available version emerged, stentorian and stiff as a wing collar. Conductors Helmuth Rilling in Stuttgart, or Neville Marriner supporting an all-jowls-blazing Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, afford plush propositions on modern instruments, but there’s no denying that period instruments liberate the light-hearted rough and tumble more convincingly. Adding the chitarrone to his…

Silenced Works by Shostakovich and Bosmans Hyeyoon Park (violin); WDR Sinfonieorchester/Gergely Madaras Linn Records CKD772 73:01 mins The intriguing link between the two mid-20th-century concertante works featured on this vividly engineered disc is that they both fell victim to cultural proscription, albeit under rather different circumstances. In the case of Shostakovich, the composer waited seven years before unveiling his First Violin Concerto. The work was completed in 1948, the year that he came under attack from the Soviet authorities for what was perceived to be the negative and deeply ironic nature of some of his more recent compositions. Yet, given the dark and often introverted nature of the concerto, it’s hardly surprising that Shostakovich kept the work under wraps for so long, feeling that programming it was inadvisable until the…

Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2; Three Intermezzi, Op. 117 Francesco Piemontesi (piano); Gewandhausorchester Leipzig/Manfred Honeck Pentatone PTC5187461 61:03 mins Francesco Piemontesi and Manfred Honeck’s account of the mighty Piano Concerto No. 2 announces itself within moments as one of the most satisfying and inspiring Brahms performances that I’ve heard in a long time. Piemontesi plunges straight into the essence of this rugged yet velvety score. There’s an ineffability to his sound as he responds to the opening horn calls, transparent and empathetic; and soon he is channelling elemental energy through the octave-rich heights. This is direct Brahms, striving for superhumanity – and achieving it, yet without any affectation. It’s exultant and masterly pianism, offering a vast range of expression from magical introspection to mountain-range power, as well as gentle wit…

Little Wanderer Works by Britten, Imogen Holst, Daniel Kidane et al Nick Pritchard (tenor), Ian Tindale (piano) Signum Classics SIGCD952 62:15 mins It’s a daunting programme that Nick Pritchard, a much-lauded Evangelist in Bach’s Passions, has chosen for his debut album with Ian Tindale. Utterly English too, with Britten and his Aldeburgh amanuensis Imogen Holst joined by a first recording of Daniel Kidane’s Songs of Illumination, Pritchard’s diction is as scrupulous as Britten’s settings of Thomas Hardy’s text in Winter Words with an exemplary sense of telling the ‘story’ in ‘Midnight on the Great Western’, as a night train carries an innocent boy into the darkness. If he lacks that sense of ironic detachment that Britten finds in ‘The Little Old Table’ and elsewhere, that surely will come. Pritchard conveys…

Touch Tortoise International Anthem IARCD0099 This remarkable group is often described as being ‘post-rock’, ‘post-jazz’ or occasionally ‘post-everything’, but a little more detail doesn’t hurt. More accurately, then, this is a music in which jazz, Americana, progressive rock and subtracted elements of the conservatoire avant-garde are dismantled then selectively reassembled into something that reflects all of these components without being identifiable with any of them. Along the way, instrumental roles are routinely redefined, with multiple drum and percussion lines to the fore while melodic instruments provide a backdrop. Twangy Bill Frisell-esque guitar solos come and go like a cowboy mistakenly strolling into a therapeutic sound bath and jazzy chord shifts are underpinned by punchy lo-fi drums, all of which interlock with an impeccable internal logic powered by a robust and…

Hommage à Jodie Devos (Alpha Classics ALPHA1191) is a stunning 7-CD box set celebrating the life and artistry of the late Belgian soprano, who tragically died in 2024, aged just 35. The set brings together all of Devos’s recordings for Alpha Classics over 10 years, showcasing her exceptional voice across a range of genres. Featuring works from Pergolesi and Offenbach to Debussy, Britten and Legrand, her interpretations are careful and nuanced throughout, each piece delivered with emotional sensitivity and technical precision. This release also shines a light on the love that Devos had for American music, including pieces by Gershwin, as well as a concert she gave in 2017 at the Gaume Festival. All proceeds from the release go to the Jodie Devos Fund, a poignant nod to the sorely missed…

JANUARY’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see BBC Sounds and iPlayer 1 THURSDAY 6.30-9.30am Breakfast CHOICE 9.30am-1pm New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna 1-4pm Classical Live 4-5pm Composer of the Week British Light Music 5-6.15pm Words and Music 6.15-7.30pm New Gen Artists 7.30-9.15pm Radio 3 In Concert from Stockholm Concert Hall. Dessner Mari, Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Dvořák Symphony No. 9, ‘From the New World’. María Dueñas (violin), Royal Stockholm PO/Semyon Bychkov 9.15-10pm Lebrecht Interview 10-11.30pm Night Tracks 11.30pm-12.30am ‘Round Midnight 2 FRIDAY 6.30-9.30am Breakfast 9.30am-1pm Essential Classics 1-4pm Classical Live 4-5pm Composer of the Week British Light Music 5-7pm In Tune 7-7.30pm Classical Mixtape 7.30-9.15pm Friday Night is Music Night 9.15-10pm Lebrecht Interview 10-11.30pm Late Junction 11.30pm-12.30am ‘Round Midnight 3 SATURDAY 6.30-9am Saturday…

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‘I watched Haitink and wrote it all down; the conducting seed had been planted’ Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård is music director of the Minnesota Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra. He was a percussionist in the Royal Danish Orchestra, starting his conducting career with the premiere of Poul Ruders’s opera Kaf ka’s Trial, which opened the new Royal Danish Opera building. Music director of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales from 2012‑18, Søndergård leads his second annual Nordic Soundscapes Festival in Minneapolis in January 2026. I started my musical career in the percussion section of a marching band in my hometown, Holstebro, where we had a very passionate teacher. He and my parents encouraged me to go to a music school. At that time STEVIE WONDER made an incredible impression…

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) LETTER of the MONTH A Porgy to be reckoned with In his thorough and insightful Building a Library overview of Porgy and Bess (October), Mervyn Cooke refers to Robert Russell Bennett’s Symphonic Picture of Gershwin’s opera, but he also might have mentioned the composer’s own orchestral suite, Catfish Row. A more pertinent omission, however, mystifies me. Although Cooke refers twice to Houston Grand Opera’s 1976 ‘landmark resurrection’ of Porgy ‘after years of neglect’, he neglects to mention that that production was recorded. In fact, the RCA album won the Best Opera Recording Grammy Award – ‘just one year after another recording of the same opera’, as producer Thomas…

‘I felt that I should like to kiss the hands that had awakened a new world of music for me.’ The year was 1888, the occasion was the Paris debut of a 27-year-old pianist named Ignacy Jan Paderewski. And the lady expressing her enthusiasm was far from being the only member of the audience whose head was turned by the young Polish artist’s playing. ‘Maestro! It was sublime!’, a French duchesse emoted. ‘Now that I have heard you, you can die!’ These reactions were typical of the impact made by Paderewski in the first two decades of his career as a travelling virtuoso. Audiences across Europe lapped up his ‘almost unparalleled powers of expression’ and in the US a cult of ‘Paddymania’ was born. Not since Liszt had a pianist…

Donald McIntyre Born 1934 Bass-baritone Though Donald McIntyre’s repertoire ranged from Mozart to Berio, it was for Wagner that he will be best remembered. As well as appearing more than 40 times at the Bayreuth Festival, McIntyre (left, in 1989) also played major Wagner roles in venues including the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera, New York, San Francisco Opera and many others. His recordings of the composer, meanwhile, include the part of Wotan in Bayreuth’s 1980 Ring Cycle under Pierre Boulez, plus Gurnemanz in a Welsh National Opera Parsifal under Reginald Goodall and Telramund in Rudolf Kempe’s 1967 Bayreuth Lohengrin. Born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, McIntyre studied at the Guildhall in London before making his stage debut as Zaccaria in Verdi’s Nabucco at the Welsh National Opera in…

Created in 2010, and presented by Furtados, one of India’s oldest Western music booksellers and instrument dealers, the Con Brio Piano Festival and Competition takes place at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai annually. The competition is dedicated to John Gomes (1927–2003), the pioneering Furtados bookseller whose business acumen ensured Indian students across the country could access sheet music in the decades before the internet. Today, also a fledgling business in the sale and hire of musical instruments, Furtados has joined forces with Parvesh Java, director of the Stuti Choral and String Ensemble, and the NCPA to create a platform for young Indian piano virtuosos to display their talents. The 2025 contest was won by 18-year-old Sean Noel from Pune, who studied under the Trinity College…

Soon after landing in England in the autumn of 1326, Isabella of France, estranged wife of Edward II, and her mercenary army mustered in Cambridge. The fenland town had acquired a second college just six months earlier, an impoverished institution called University Hall. Its fortunes changed later when Elizabeth de Clare, sister-in-law of Isabella’s sworn enemy, Hugh Despenser, and one of the country’s richest women, endowed the renamed Clare Hall and became its chief benefactor. Clare College, as it has been known since Victorian times, enters its 700th year as a centre of academic excellence with a proud international reputation. That reputation has been enhanced over the past half century by Clare College Choir, whose work flows from the weekly round of choral evensong to reach a worldwide audience through…

Hugely admired US composer Eric Whitacre once dreamt of being a rock musician, so no surprise that David Bowie has been an inspiration. ‘When I was in college starting to write choral music, I was especially influenced by the architecture of Bowie’s “Space Oddity”,’ he says. ‘The way it builds, then everything explodes. I don’t know how many of my pieces do that, but it must be most of them. ‘Bowie as “Ziggy Stardust” made such an impression on me… the combination of full-on theatre and hyper-authenticity. Somehow, by playing this character Bowie was speaking incredibly truthful things. He was always being himself… he wasn’t driven by the desire for popularity, writing lowest-common-denominator music. That’s what I’ve tried to do in my own music, to be authentic. ‘When working on…

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Humperdinck Das Mirakel Sophie Klussmann, Josette Micheler; Rundfunkchor Berlin, Kinderchor des Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gymnasiums Berlin, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Steffen Tast Capriccio C5543 88:46 mins (2CD) This forgotten, largescale work brought together three highly talented creatives. The mystery play’s writer was Karl Vollmöller, the director of its outsize spectacle (1,700 performers took part in its initial production at London’s Olympia in 1911) was Max Reinhardt, while the composer was Engelbert Humperdinck, best known for his fairy-tale opera Hänsel und Gretel. The multi-talented Vollmöller (1878-1948) also wrote the screenplay for the Marlene Dietrich movie The Blue Angel (1930), while the internationally acclaimed theatre director Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) was one of the founders of the Salzburg Festival. This vast quasisymphonic work is expertly crafted Humperdinck (1854-1921) needs little introduction, though apart from Hänsel his compositional output is…

Debussy Szymanowski Quartets Belcea Quartet  Alpha ALPHA1074 64:57 mins The Belceas have been firmly in the vanguard of the international chamber music scene since the millennium, and for this eagerly anticipated new recording, they revisit Debussy’s Quartet (which featured on their debut EMI disc 25 years ago) and include the two string quartets by Karol Syzmanowski. As his only String Quartet neared completion, Debussy remarked that, ‘Music is written to express the inexpressible,’ adding that, ‘I would like it to seem to emerge from the shadows and at times to return to them.’ Such aspirations were fully realised in the fleetingly elusive imagery of his G minor String Quartet, but the work was nevertheless indifferently received at its 1893 premiere. A long-standing staple for the Belcea Quartet, they’re uncannily alert…

A History of the World in 50 Pieces – The Classical Music That Shapes Us Tom Service BBC Books 978-1-785-94937-1 320pp (hb) £25 Tom Service offers an open-ended definition of what a ‘piece’ may be: ‘It’s something whose transmission, either in oral cultures through the handing on of embodied tradition, or through symbolic representation as written notation, allows music both to be part of the time and place of its creation, and to be independent of it.’ For him, this means everything from songlines to symphonies. It means the subterranean growl of the earth rotating or the song of the humpback whale. It’s gamelan, church bells or Yoko Ono inviting strangers to snip pieces out of her clothes. It can be the Dies Irae chant, or ‘Dido’s Lament’, or a…