BERG AND THE TERROR OF 23 MINIMALIST HERO

Plus the other oddball obsessions of the great composers The enduring genius of Steve Reich

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150th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL See p100

RACHMANINOV
The master
of melody
Have we underestimated
the 20th-century titan
for too long?

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…

Walk like an Egyptian
The composers inspired by
the land of the pharaohs

Kirill Gerstein
How a rough diamond
became a polished pianist

Philharmonia Fantastique
The Clarion Choir A magical animated journey
On recording Rachmaninov
through the orchestra
The birth of Brigg Fair
Grainger’s folk song discovery
Leslie Howard
100 reviews by the
The champion of Liszt
world’s finest critics
Recordings & books – see p68
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SUBSCRIPTIONS Melancholic, nostalgic and

& BACK ISSUES hopelessly sentimental – in
Tel: 03330 162 118 previous decades, detractors of
Web: buysubscriptions.com/contactus Rachmaninov thus dismissed his
Post: BBC Music Magazine, PO Box 3320, melodic genius. His works’ instant
3 Queensbridge, Northampton
allure was seen as evidence of his
inability to move with the times,
of his failure to throw off the
shackles of tonality. ‘When I was
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of his piano music,’ Howard Shelley tells Andrew Green on
page 28. ‘It was felt that works with an immediate appeal to
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Yet Rachmaninov was hardly hiding from the future
– he loved the technology that arrived with 20th-century
Find us online life, from speedboats and fast cars to the new recording
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innovations that enabled him, as both pianist and
conductor, to capture personal interpretations of many of
Subscribe to our podcast his own works, including classic accounts of the four piano
concertos under Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski.
As we mark his 150th birthday, we celebrate the energy
and distinctiveness of his works – yes, his soaring melodies
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war in Ukraine forces many artists to flee their homeland,
his voice as a musician in exile has special relevance today.

Charlotte Smith Editor

THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS

Andrew Green Steve Wright Claire Jackson

Writer and broadcaster
‘Sharing a lifelong enthusiasm
for Rachmaninov with a string of
leading performers was a privilege,
and spurred me to explore still
more of this extraordinary legacy of ravishing
music. Is there ever a disappointment?’ Page 28
BBC Music content producer
‘Many great composers have
harboured lifelong obsessions.
Some are wholesome (Dvořák and
his beloved trains), others more
esoteric (Alban Berg and the number 23). Each is a
fascinating insight into the creative mind.’ Page 44
Journalist and critic
‘With mysterious mummies,
decadent death masks and tall
tales aplenty, mythology around
ancient Egypt is almost as complex
as the civilisation itself. No wonder the land of the
Pharaohs has inspired such rich pickings.’ Page 48

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 3

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Contents
APRIL 2023
See p100

FEATURES
28 Cover: Sergei Rachmaninov
On the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth,
today’s performers explain his genius to Andrew Green
40 East meets west
The Clarion Choir is marking Rachmaninov 150 by
recording all his choral works, discovers Charlotte Smith
44 Compulsively driven
Steve Wright on the unlikely obsessions of the great
composers, from trainspotting to fear of the number 23
48 Call of the Nile
Claire Jackson explores how Egypt and its rich history
have inspired a wealth of music across the centuries
52 An orchestral odyssey
A dazzling new animated film introducing the
orchestra has caught the eyes and ears of Tom Stewart

EVERY MONTH
8 Letters
12 The Full Score
27 Richard Morrison
36 The BBC Music Magazine Interview
28 The genius of
Sergei Rachmaninov
Pianist Kirill Gerstein tells Michael Church how it took
some seriously stern words to put his career on track
58 Musical Destinations
Charlotte Smith heads for the musical peaks of Gstaad Picture editor Sarah Kennett
Senior digital editor Debbie Graham
60 Composer of the Month
COVER: GETTY THIS PAGE: GETTY, MARCO BORGGREVE, JANE HOBSON, MARTIN KNIZIA

Listings editor Paul Riley

Forging his own technique and tackling tough subjects
Subscriptions £64.87 (UK); £65 (Europe);
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64 Building a Library EDITORIAL
Plus our favourite Rachmaninov work
Daniel Jaffé on Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil (Vespers) Editor Charlotte Smith
Cello Sonata in G minor
98 Live concert and opera highlights Deputy editor Jeremy Pound
Symphonic Dances
100 Radio & TV listings Reviews editor Michael Beek
Piano Concerto No. 2
104 Crossword and Quiz Multi-platform content producer
106 Music that Changed Me Steve Wright
Symphony No. 2
Pianist Leslie Howard Cover CD editor Alice Pearson
Vocalise
Art editor Dav Ludford
Piano Concerto No. 3
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 Letters
Have your say…
Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST
Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contact us on Facebook and Twitter
L ET
of thTER Ring in English
MON e I would like to add to your
TH March issue’s selection of
outstanding recordings of
Wagner’s Ring one of special
importance to English
speakers – namely the
[Reginald] Goodall Ring of
the 1970 ENO production.
The great recordings all come
to be known usually by the
conductor at the helm, but
of course they depend on a
Sole music: great deal of teamwork. How
Composers in Red
Sneakers’ eponymous
extraordinary that such a team
LP, released in 1985 including Rita Hunter, Alberto
Remedios and Norman
Bailey came together and
Sneaky performers was able to enthuse a whole
In response to your 15 Unusual Ensemble Names feature generation to come to Wagner
(January), my all-time favourite is Composers in Red in that amazingly Wagnerian
Sneakers. This group, most of whom held doctorates in translation of Andrew Porter
composition, formed in Boston in 1981 and continued, – not to mention that in those
with shifting personnel, until 2010. As the name suggests, days ENO toured and many a
they had a puckish sense of humour and an allergy to youngster was gathered up into
pretension, although they were serious composers. Sure, the staging and costumes of
they could have called themselves Les Ambassadeurs de the production. The Goodall
Musique Nouveau or The Bay State Academy of Collective Ring is available on vinyl,
Chamber Consonance or something equally dreary, and CD and streaming services.
died a quick, if dignified Given his insistence on the
WIN! £50 VOUCHER death. But they knew the total experience of the music
FOR PRESTO MUSIC Red Sneakers tag was drama, and knowing that
catchy, and even I, who Wagner approved of his operas
Every month we will award sadly never saw them in in English, I’m confident he
the best letter with a £50 concert, remember it. would endorse this!
voucher for Presto Music,
Anybody who showed up at Stuart Edwards , Morecambe
the UK’s leading e-commerce
site for classical and jazz one of their performances
recordings, printed music, wearing red sneakers got in A long walk home
music books and musical for free. Did they themselves Terry Blain’s article about
instruments. Please note: the wear red sneakers during a Prokofiev’s misfortune in
editor reserves the right to
shorten letters for publication.
live performance? I’m sure passing away on the same
they must have. day in March 1953 as Stalin
David English, Acton, (Timepiece, March) brought
MA,US back a recollection of a visit
to Glastonbury in 1996
8 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
by Prokofiev’s son Oleg, a
professional artist. He gave
a fascinating talk about his
father, including many of the
revelations reiterated in your
feature, but I seem to recall
that he also mentioned that the
composer’s funeral cars were
requisitioned actually during
his service, so that those who
attended had to walk away
from the funeral. Oleg may
still be heard with his own son
Gabriel, now of course himself
an eminent contemporary
composer, narrating Peter
and the Wolf in Ronald Corp’s
Hyperion recording with the
New London Orchestra.
Hywel Jenkins, Glastonbury
March of the women
Wonderful! March’s BBC Music
Magazine has a letter about
women, an article on female
musicians, a female Composer
of the Month – Dorothy
Howell, and an article on a
new concerto about Amelia
Earhart featuring a female
violinist. I hope this is setting a
trend, not just because March
marks International Women’s
Day. For several years, a friend
and I have been presenting
programmes on female
composers to Haywards Heath
u3a Music Appreciation group.
So far, we have managed five
presentations and have covered
over 50 female composers.
Our main difficulty has been
to find recordings of the pieces
we would like to present, and
Dorothy Howell is a perfect
 case. I heard on Radio 3 part
of her ballet Koong Shee, but I
am unable to find a recording
of this piece. I appreciate that,
as Richard Morrison says,
‘female musicians have come
a long way’, but unfortunately
the recording of the music of
female musicians does not
seem to have kept pace with
the enjoyment of their music.
May I put out a plea for more
recordings to made of the
music of female composers?
Mary Armour, Burgess Hill
The editor replies:
It is true that there is still a lot
of ground to be made up, but
at least recordings of women
composers are now becoming
more commonplace, as a quick
look at this month’s reviews
pages hopefully shows.
A Clara gem
It was good to see the review
of Beatrice Rana’s excellent
performance of Clara
Schumann’s Piano Concerto
(March) and read Rebecca
Franks’s high opinion of the
work. To my mind, there is
an even better one – her later
Konzertsatz. Well orchestrated
by Jozef de Beenhouwer, it
is a highly expressive piece
in Clara’s sombre and noble
manner. It would be lovely to
see a recording in the catalogue
of this one too.
Diana Ambache, London
Terrible Tár
While I am always delighted to
see classical music portrayed
on popular media, I have
very grave reservations about
the film Tár (see January
issue) from both a particular
and general perspective. In
particular, the description
of the main protagonist is
very similar to Marin Alsop
FOCUS FEATURES LLC
who, like the Cate Blanchett
character, is a pupil of
Leonard Bernstein and in
No great role model:
was Cate Blanchett’s character
in Tár an unfair representation?
a same-sex relationship.
It seems extremely unfair
for Alsop, a hardworking,
energetic and decent artist, to
face the possibility of being
associated with such a deeply
unattractive, indeed repellent
character. In general, the film is
totally unjust to the still vastly
outnumbered cohort of women
conductors such as Alsop
and the great JoAnn Falletta,
the long-serving principal
conductor of the Buffalo
Philharmonic Orchestra. It is
especially galling for women,
as the appalling behaviour
from some conductors has
been particularly among men.
Geoffrey James, Ponteland
A coastly mistake
I really enjoyed your February
issue cover CD – beautiful
music, accompanied by good
information in the magazine.
Perhaps with one exception:
when in the note on Johan
Halvorsen (‘Fiddler on the
hoof’) you say that Bergen is
located on the east coast of
Norway, I suspect that you have
been looking at the map of our
country in a mirror!
Bernt Gudrunson Bøe, Norway
Russian revelation
When opening up my January
issue, I found on the cover CD
(below) Tchaikovsky’s fine
Symphony No. 1 and, as an
added but no less important
piece, Sviridov’s The Blizzard.
What a joy! I loved the themes
and melodies, especially in the
latter. Of course, any piece of
music lends itself to investigate
a composer further. We’ve
had plenty of Tchaikovsky
overviews throughout the
years, but it would be a
welcome addition to do one on
Sviridov. Please consider it – he
needs more exposure!
Dan Ferguson, Honolulu, US
The mystery of Thule
Anthony Pryer asks ‘who
knows what Thule, the period
of cosmography’ is really about
(Reviews, February)? Well, I
do. Thule is Iceland, period
equals full stop, cosmography
is world mapping. The poet
goes on to say that despite the
frozen climate, Iceland has the
volcano Hekla, a mountain
of fire. This is like the lover,
who freezes with fear at
approaching the woman of his
dreams but burns with the fire
of desire. The second stanza
repeats the idea with Fogo,
a volcano in the Cape Verde
Islands. There are very few
songs that mention volcanoes!
Roger Musson, Edinburgh
Festive affront
I was offended by your writer’s
comment about the ‘cheeriness,
crooning and clichés’ of some
Christmas recordings in your
Diana Damrau interview
(Xmas). I grew up listening
to Bing Crosby’s ‘White
Christmas’ and Gene Autry’s
‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed
Reindeer’ – tunes that, along
with many others, are etched
in our hearts and are part of a
tradition, to be listened to and
expected at Christmas.
James Hall, Lawrenceburg,
TN, US
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 9
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 Thefullscore
Our pick of the month’s news, views and interviews
Gustavo Dudamel to take over at the New York Phil
Venezuelan conductor set to make the switch from Los Angeles in 2026/27 season
Gustavo Dudamel has been named as
the next music director of the New York
Philharmonic, a move the Venezuelan
conductor describes as ‘a dream come
true’. He will be taking over the post, one
of the most prestigious in the business,
from Jaap van Zweden at the beginning of
the 2026/7 season, at which point he will
have completed his final season as music
director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Dudamel’s shift from west to east coast
is, by all accounts, the result of a long
and determined pursuit by NY Phil CEO
Deborah Borda, who also brought him to
the LA Phil when she was in the same role
there. That was back in 2009, and in his
GETTY
years at Walt Disney Concert Hall he has
12 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Pointing east:
Gustavo Dudamel will bring
his 17-year stint in LA to an
end; (right) Zubin Mehta at the
New York Philharmonic, 1978
proved immensely popular. ‘You cannot
imagine how I have changed in these last
years,’ he reflected in a recent interview.
‘I’m not a young conductor anymore.’
Dudamel is in fact still only 42, though
his conducting career stretches back more
than 20 years – it was as an 18 year-old
that he was appointed music director of
the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra,
the flagship ensemble of Venezuela’s famed
El Sistema music education system where
he learnt his skills, firstly on the violin
and then as a conductor. Winning the
Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition
in Germany in 2004 and then catching
the attention of conductors such as Simon
Rattle, Claudio Abbado and Esa-Pekka
Big Apple batons
Recent NY Phil conductors
Leonard Bernstein (American; 1958-69)
Pierre Boulez (French; 1971-77)
Zubin Mehta (Indian; 1978-91, above)
Kurt Masur (German; 1991-2002)
Lorin Maazel (American; 2002-09)
Alan Gilbert (American; 2009-17)
Jaap van Zweden (Dutch; 2018-26)
Salonen with scintillating performances
at events including the BBC Proms and
Beethoven Festival in Bonn saw his career
take a rapid upward term – he was 26
when appointed to the post of principal
conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony
Orchestra in 2007, adding the LA Phil to
his CV two years later.
The New York Philharmonic, whom
Dudamel first guest conducted in 2007,
is, in contrast, a venerable old institution.
Founded in 1842 – and so older than any
of Britain’s major orchestras – its list of
former music directors includes greats
such as Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini
and Leonard Bernstein. Dudamel will be
the first South American to hold the post.

Here for the ride:
Sheku Kanneh-Mason
greets local cyclists
A benchmark performance by Nottingham’s finest
Sheku Kanneh-Mason is set to become a
familiar sight to travellers on two wheels in
Nottingham after he was chosen by Sustrans
as one of three ‘local heroes’ to adorn a cycle
path in the Midlands city. The cellist, whose
likeness sits alongside those of Olympic silver
medal-winning weightlifter Emily Campbell
and much-loved community volunteer Karl
White, who died of Covid in 2021, writes on
THE MONTH IN NUMBERS
14
… Verdi operas and concerts being
staged to raise funds to preserve the
Villa Verdi, the composer’s house in
Sant’Agata (below), for the public.
Facebook that ‘I can’t put into words how
honoured I am to have this portrait bench’.
Though recent years have seen Kanneh-
Mason play at the wedding of Prince Harry
and Meghan Markle and perform right
across the globe, he still remains mindful
of his Nottingham roots. ‘My love of music
began there,’ he says. ‘To be recognised like
this for what I love doing is very special.’
5
… further years for Nicholas Collon as
chief conductor of the Finnish Radio
Symphony Orchestra, as his contract in
Helsinki is extended to at least 2028.
2
… X chromosomes in the Berlin Phil
front desk, as Vineta Sareika-Völkner is
named as its first ever female leader.
2,500
GETTY, FRANCES MARSHALL
… pounds from The Finzi Trust to the
winner of a competition to write a new
piece to accompany the composer’s
Lo, the full, final sacrifice.
Thefullscore
SoundBites
Cancelled in Florida: the King’s Singers
Singers snubbed
The King’s Singers have expressed their
sadness at having a concert in Florida called
off at the last minute on the grounds of
sexuality. Pensacola Christian College, which
was due to host the group, said in a statement
that it cancelled the event ‘upon learning
that one of the artists openly maintained
a lifestyle that contradicts Scripture’. In
response, the King’s Singers said that ‘This is
the first time that anything other than bad
weather, the pandemic or war has caused a
concert cancellation in our 55-year history.’
Choral diversity
Works by Florence Price, Julia Perry and
Ken Burton are among those featured in
The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black
Composers, a new collection published
by Oxford University Press. ‘Through
publishing this anthology, we are raising
the profile of composers who have added
great value to the choral repertoire but who
have previously been and continue to be
underrepresented,’ says editor and composer
Marques LA Garrett, who himself has a piece
in the groundbreaking volume.
Political conduct
Leading Bulgarian conductor Nayden
Todorov has been named as his country’s
new minister of culture. Reacting to the
appointment, Todorov said ‘I don’t know if
I will be able to meet all the expectations,
but I know that I will give my best.’ He joins
pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski and composer
Ivo Josipović, former PM and president of
Poland and Croatia respectively, in the list of
musicians-turned-politicians.
Little Britten
Last July, we reported on the Britten As
A Boy statue currently being created for
Lowestoft, the Suffolk town where the
composer was born in 1913. If the design
caught your eye, the good news is that 30
miniature versions have been made and are
being sold for prices ranging from £4,800
(18") to £9,600 (36"). See brittenasaboy.com.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 13
Thefullscore
RisingStars TIMEPIECE This month in history
Three to look out for…
Luka Faulisi Violinist
Born: Paris, France
Career highlight: Signing
with Sony Classical and
IMG Artists has given
me a voice in the classical
music industry. It’s
through these signings
that I’ve been able to
record my first album, Aria.
Musical hero: So many! Violinists such
as David Oistrakh, Josef Hassid and
Patricia Kopatchinskaja have inspired me
enormously. Among composers, Korngold,
Debussy, Prokofiev and Danny Elfman have
shaped my musical development.
Dream concert: To perform the concerto I
am currently writing with an outstanding
orchestra and in my home city of Paris.

Lucy Humphris Trumpeter

Born: Winchester, UK
Career highlight:
Travelling to Sanday
in the Orkneys to film
my recording of Peter
Maxwell Davies’s Litany
for a Ruined Chapel Tuneful town:
between Sheep and Shore a street market in Brigg
was an amazing experience. in the early 1900s
Musical hero: Pianist Joanna MacGregor,
comedian Victor Borge and bass-baritone
Gerald Finley – to name but a few!
Essentially, any musician who has a
APRIL 1905
distinctive voice and strong creative spirit.
Dream concert: I’d love to get a bunch of my
musical pals from various different genres
Fair competitor gives Percy
and put on a concert of new commissions
and old favourites. I’d also love to perform
Maxwell Davies’s Trumpet Concerto or HK
Gruber’s Aerial.
Grainger some Brigg ideas
‘H
is ringing voice – one of the old Australian composer he sounded
Aidan Mikdad Pianist loveliest I ever heard – was as significantly younger. ‘Nothing could
Born: Amsterdam,
Netherlands
fresh as a young man’s… His be more refreshing than his hale
Career highlights: In effortless high notes, sturdy rhythms countrified looks and the happy lilt
2022, I released The and clear unmistakable intervals were of his cheery voice,’ Grainger later
Scriabin Ravel Connection, a sheer delight to hear.’ Writing these recounted.
my first album with Linn words, Percy Grainger was referring But what was Percy Grainger doing
ALAMY, GETTY, PATRICK FOUQUE, BENNY VERNON, KIRSTEN VAN SANTEN

Records. The album was
promoted by the Qobuz
streaming service and featured on its Best
of 2022 playlist
Musical heroes: Liszt, whose music I
discovered at a young age, is very dear to me.
Other favourites include Beethoven, Scriabin
and Rachmaninov. I could (and do) listen to
all of these favourite composers on a loop.
Dream concert: It has happened already! I
recently gave two concerts to replace Arcadi
Volodos, who was unable to complete them
due to illness. It was such an honour to share
the stage with him.
not to some eminent opera singer but to
Joseph Taylor, an agricultural labourer
and bailiff who lived in the tiny village
of Saxby, Lincolnshire. Taylor it was
who introduced Grainger to the song
‘Brigg Fair’, which both he and his
friend Frederick Delius later used to
write new compositions.
Grainger first heard Taylor sing on
11 April 1905, at a music competition
in Brigg, North Lincolnshire. Taylor
was 71 at the time, but to the 22-year-
at an obscure provincial music festival
in northern England in the first place?
The tale goes back to his student days
in Frankfurt, where a composition
teacher showed him a set of Scottish
folk songs. Grainger set 14 of them,
galvanised by the genre’s freshness and
emotional immediacy compared to
what he viewed as the stuffiness of the
established classical tradition.
This spark of interest in folk music
became a full-blown fire when Grainger

14 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


subsequently moved to London.
Through the tenor Gervase Elwes
he met Lucy Broadwood, attending
her lecture ‘On the Collecting of
English Folk-Song’ in March 1905.
Captivated by the songs Broadwood had
collected, a month later Grainger was
in Lincolnshire himself, scouting for
authentic folk singers.
Grainger’s encounter with Joseph
Taylor was now imminent. From their
home in Brigg, Gervase Elwes and
his wife ran the North Lincolnshire
Music Competition, and at Grainger’s
suggestion included a new class for the
‘best unpublished old Lincolnshire folk
or plough song’ at the 1905 competition.
Taylor entered and won it with a song
called ‘Creeping Jane’. But it was another
song, ‘Brigg Fair’, which particularly
attracted Grainger’s attention. Taylor
sang it for him after the competition,
and Grainger assiduously noted down
the melody.
Where had ‘Brigg Fair’ come from?
Taylor had, it seems, learned the song
while a teenager from gypsies camped
near his home village of Binbrook. Its
lilting melody, telling of a young man’s
trip to meet his sweetheart at Brigg’s
annual horse market, gripped Grainger’s
imagination. He soon composed a
plaintive setting of ‘Brigg Fair’ for tenor
and five-part chorus and showed it to
Delius in 1907.
The English composer in turn used
the song’s alluring tune to write a now-
famous 15-minute set of orchestral
variations entitled Brigg Fair, An English
Rhapsody. When the piece received its
London premiere in March 1908, with
Thomas Beecham conducting, Grainger
and Joseph Taylor were in the audience.
Hearing the tune he had originally
performed for Grainger three years
previously, Taylor reportedly stood up
and sang along with the orchestra.
Recognising the historical importance
of Joseph Taylor and other singers
like him, Grainger made over 200
Edison cylinder recordings of their
performances. Taylor himself also
‘Nothing could be more
refreshing than the happy
lilt of his cheery voice’
released nine folk songs commercially
on 78 rpm records for the Gramophone
Company of London. Several of these
seminal recordings, including ‘Brigg
Fair’, can still be heard today.
To the end of his days, Grainger
viewed the natural expressiveness of
folk singers like Joseph Taylor as far
superior to the more studied efforts of
trained classical performers. ‘No concert
singer I ever heard, dull dogs that
they are,’ he commented, ‘approached
these rural warblers in variety of tone
quality, range of dynamics, rhythmic
resourcefulness and individuality
of style.’ Terry Blain
Brigg gathering: (left) Grainger
(centre back) with Lincolnshire folk
singers including Joseph Taylor
(front left); (above) Frederick Delius
Thefullscore
Molecular mind: physicist Albert Einstein
Also in April 1905…
2nd: A service is conducted by Swiss and
Italian bishops to bless the spot at which
workers on the two sides of the Simplon
railway tunnel have recently met in the
middle. Running for 12 miles under the Swiss
Alps, the tunnel will be used for the first
time in January 1906, eight years after its
construction began.
14th: Richard Strauss conducts the first
performance of Humperdinck’s Die Heirat
wider Willen (The Forced Marriage) in Berlin.
Based on Dumas’s play Les demoiselles de
Saint Cyr, the opera tells a comic tale of two
men, Robert Graf von Montfort and Emil Duval,
who have to agree to marriage to secure their
release from prison. Soprano Emmy Destinn
plays Hedwig, Montfort’s rejected wife.
18th: In a letter to zoologist Adam Sedgwick,
Cambridge University biologist William
Bateson makes the first suggestion of the
word ‘genetics’ to describe the study of
inheritance and the science of variation.
He will introduce the term publicly at the
Third International Conference on Plant
Hybridisation in London the following year.
30th: Tsar Nicholas II of Russia issues an
Edict of Toleration, granting legal status to
those who are not Orthodox Christians. As
well as providing protection from religious
persecution, the edict allows mixed marriages
between different religions and allows
Orthodox Christians to adopt children from
other religions.
30th: Albert Einstein completes his
doctoral thesis A New Determination of
Molecular Dimensions, the second of five
documents that will later lead to 1905 being
widely regarded as his ‘miracle year’. In it,
Einstein uses his knowledge of fluids to set
out an innovative method of measuring the
dimensions of molecules with a degree of
accuracy not previously achievable.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 15
www.iamaworld.com/32nd-conf | www.iamaworld.com/audio-classique
 Thefullscore
MEET THE COMPOSER
Valerie Coleman
Burning inspiration:
‘Once we choose a
subject, it becomes
a topic of passion’

Doctor going for a song wanted in Cornwall

What to do if your town is short of
a doctor? In the case of Lostwithiel,
the answer is to appeal for a new
GP by recording a specially written
song. Containing lines such as ‘You
can negotiate your terms, If you
keep us free from germs’, the Nina
Simone-inspired ‘Need a doctor’
also highlights the Cornish town’s
attractions – from the River Fowey
to fine eateries – in its bid for a
medic. We wish them luck, while
wondering if they have thought
of targeting James Gilchrist, a top
tenor who trained as a doctor before
taking his career elsewhere. Might
such a musical welcome tempt him
to come and multi-task…?

One of the leading voices in American chamber music-making,

Valerie Coleman founded the quintet Imani Winds in 1997 and is
acclaimed as both a flautist and composer. Her 25-minute Shot Gun
DÉJÀ VU Houses will be performed by the Pacifica Quartet and clarinettist
Anthony McGill in Pittsburgh and Syracuse in late April.
History just keeps on repeating itself…
I treat playing and composing graduated I didn’t think there was
King’s College, Cambridge (left), has
as different disciplines. I like a place for someone like me in the
received permission to install 492
to think, however, that one fuels composing world. It wasn’t until
solar panels on the roof of its famous
the other. We’ve got away from later, when Imani Winds came
chapel. Able to supply around 105,000
that idea of the performer being together and I wrote more and
kWh of energy a year and so cut annual
a composer, although we have a more for the group, that I started
carbon emissions by more than 27
vast amount of repertoire from to realise I am a composer, that
tonnes, the panels will supply all of the
composers who were just that. So this is a part of my identity.
chapel’s energy, making it the latest in
that’s something I advocate. Shot Gun Houses was a passion
a growing number of buildings where
I always knew I’d be a flautist. project. I lived not far from
the performance of music comes with
I remember picking up branches Muhammad Ali’s house in West
minimal cost to the environment…
and pretending they were Louisville, and his parents were
King’s follows the lead of Chester and Gloucester cathedrals – flutes, but before I could get the well known in the community. I
both home to excellent choirs – which have installed 200 and 150 instrument in my hands one wrote with the map of the town
solar panels on their respective roofs. The Church of England in of the components of playtime in mind, the houses, the colour
general aims to become net zero by 2030, as does the recently for me and my sisters was to of the sky and the nostalgia of
refurbished Bristol Beacon concert hall, whose early moves in improvise. We had a little cheap what it was like to be parented
that direction include replacing its diesel van with an electric organ-like instrument and we by a generation that really cared
one. Since 2013, there have been 558 solar panels on the roof would hold a note, make a drone for one another. I want people to
of Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, US, and they are also and sing a melody on top, or remember West Louisville the
central to the design of the new Ostrava Concert Hall in the Czech improvise with the other hand. way it was and for people to know
Republic, which is being constructed from recyclable materials I always knew I’d be a composer this is where Ali came from.
such as zinc and maple. At Glyndebourne, meanwhile, a 67m wind too. I would draw out my own Composers owe nothing. But
turbine has been helping the opera venue to reduce its carbon staff paper and write symphonic I believe that once we choose
GETTY ILLUSTRATION: JONTY CLARK

footprint by more than 50 per cent since 2012. And talking of works until the sun went down.
opera, in 2018 Gothenburg Opera, which also has solar panels Daydreaming of having a
on its roof, announced a production of Wagner’s Ring that aimed symphony orchestra perform my
to be as sustainable as possible, from costume designs to interval works was always in my mind.
snacks – appropriate for an opera cycle that, ending in rising At college I started to recognise
waters and flaming skies, hints at its own environmental message. there weren’t a lot of people that
looked like me. And by the time I
a subject it becomes a topic of
passion and we take on a mantle
of responsibility. I believe that
is the strength of any creator,
not only to have responsibility
toward the past but also to give a
vision of what the future can be.

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 17

Thefullscore
StudioSecrets

Queen of the console:

organist Anna Lapwood
signs with Sony Classical

We reveal who’s recording

what and where...
Organist Anna Lapwood is something
of a TikTok sensation since becoming an
associate artist at the Royal Albert Hall. Her
late-night exploits at the RAH’s organ console
have won her many new fans and, now, a
recording contract with Sony Classical.
Lapwood, also director of music at Pembroke
College, Cambridge, releases a five-track
EP in April, to be followed by a full album
(recorded in February) later this year.
Lorelt Records recently marked its 30th
anniversary and shows no signs of slowing
down, with a handful of new releases on the

horizon. Landing in the Spring is piano music
by Fanny Mendelssohn and chamber music
by Charles Shadle, while Samantha Ege and
Lontano take to the studio in June to record
Carwithen’s Piano Concerto, scheduled for
release in October.
Alpha Classics’s new series ‘Piano Stories’
aims to give a platform to up-and-coming
young pianists. The series will see four new
album releases each year and is off to a fine
start with Lumen by Camille El Bacha already
out and April’s release of Meeting My Shadow
by Giorgi Gigashvili. Juliette Journaux
follows in September with her album
Wanderer Without Words.
German pianist Martin Helmchen has
recorded all of JS Bach’s Partitas on a Tangent
piano. He made his recordings in September
and January at Berlin’s Haus des Rundfunks
on the instrument, which was found boxed-
up in an attic after 200 years. Helmchen’s
recording is set for release in the Autumn,
also on Alpha Classics.
Late Autumn will also see the release, on
FHR, of (b)romance, the second duo album
from cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist
Michael Stephen Brown. The pair recorded
at the Oktaven Audio studio in Mount
Vernon, NY in January and laid down an
eclectic selection of works by the likes of
Copland, Clara Schumann and Debussy.
REWIND
Great artists talk about their past recordings
This month: JOHN NELSON Conductor
MY FINEST MOMENT major European prizes. My professional
Berlioz Les Troyens career began in 1972 with a concert
Joyce DiDonato et al; Strasbourg performance of the opera at Carnegie
Philharmonic/John Nelson Hall which catapulted me on to an
Erato 9029576220 (2017) international career and a life-long
Often when I am conducting a great association with this extraordinary
piece of music with a fine ensemble I feel work. Fortunately, I waited 40-plus
it is my finest moment. But in 2017 with years before recording it for posterity.
the superb Orchestre A second, if I may, would be Handel’s
Philharmonique Messiah. My first complete performance
de Strasbourg and was at Westminster Choir College soon
a fabulous cast after graduating from Juilliard. It was
headed by Joyce not a success and as with the Berlioz
DiDonato, Marie it took me years to find my own way
Nicole Lemieux and with it. Fortunately I waited to record
Michael Spyres we recorded Berlioz’s it until this past November when I
four-and-a-half-hour Les Troyens for was surrounded by the finest period-
Erato and promptly garnered all the instrument musicians on the planet.

18 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


All in good time:
Nelson waited over
40 years to record
Berlioz’s Les Troyens
MY FONDEST MEMORY
Berlioz La Damnation du Faust
Michael Spyres et al; Strasbourg
Philharmonic/John Nelson
Erato 9029541735 (2019)
I conducted a Brahms Ein Deutsches
Requiem in 2012 with my old orchestra,
the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra,
in honour of my wife who had passed
away just two weeks prior. She was
universally loved, certainly loved by my
musicians more than I was, and on this
occasion everyone – orchestra, chorus
and soloists – poured out their hearts for
this deceased angel in a performance I’ll
probably never surpass.
Anita was not a musician. In fact she
GREGORY MASSAT, MARCO BORGGREVE, GETTY, TOM ARBER
could hardly keep a tune! But that was
a blessing because we never argued
interpretation. During performances
she, an intense Christian believer, would
simply fold her hands and surround me
in her prayers. Turning around at the
end of a concert to take a bow and seeing
her beautiful smile of approval from
the balcony meant more to me than the
deafening noise of applause.
Now she is never in the audience but
ever with me inspiring me to better
and deeper music making, not least in
those heavenly moments as Marguerite
ascends with the angels at the end of
Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust with 12
harps lifting her heavenwards. This
was another wonderful Berlioz project
with a dream team
of Michael Spyres,
Joyce DiDonato and
Nicolas Courjal,
the Orchestre
Philharmonique de
Strasbourg and the
Coro Gulbenkian which we recorded live
in Strasbourg.
I’D LIKE ANOTHER GO AT…
Beethoven Symphonies Nos 1-9
Ensemble Orchestral de Paris/John Nelson
Ambroisie AM9993 (2007)
When I record a work I tend to prepare it
meticulously since it’s for posterity and
I’ll probably never record it again.
If the question was, ‘What past action
would you like to see altered?’ my reply
would be that in both of my full-time
positions – Indianapolis and Paris – I
could have been more sensitive and not
so antagonistic in my relations with
the players. I was a pianist who never
played in an orchestra. I did not know
the experience of being on the other side
of the podium. I was more of a dictator
than a servant leader and no doubt the
performances showed it.
Now I have come to know better and as
a result am enjoying
wonderful relations
with every orchestra
I conduct. It is
amazing to see how
the musicians light
up when they know
the music lies in their hands and not in
those of a dictator.
On reflection, I may want to ‘re-do’ the
nine Beethoven symphonies because my
first go was with a chamber orchestra
and as a result a bit too lightweight. That
worked for the first two symphonies
written in the style of Haydn, but
beginning with the Third Symphony we
hear Beethoven’s true voice that requires
larger forces. Will I have the privilege to
record them again? Maybe.
John Nelson’s new recording of Berlioz’s
Roméo et Juliette is out on Erato, 31 March
Thefullscore
Man of the people: Shostakovich fought quietly
MyHero
Conductor Vasily
Petrenko tells us
why the music and
humanity of Dmitri
Shostakovich so inspires him
Shostakovich was probably the last great
symphonist. No later composer will equal
his number of masterpiece symphonies.
He was also able to absorb the melodies,
tunes and characteristics of folk musics
from different nationalities. He had no
Jewish heritage, for example, but some of
his music sounds so Jewish.
More than this, though, Shostakovich
was a great humanist. He counted human
life above everything else – particularly
remarkable, given the times that he
was living through. For example, he
deliberately expanded the orchestration
of his Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’ for its
premiere in the besieged city. Why are
there offstage brass, two harps and other
things? Because this meant that more
musicians were required for the premiere
– and could be called back from the front
line and given extra food. Later, he sat on
the board of the Soviet Composer’s Union,
next to the composer Tikhon Khrennikov,
who had waged a campaign against him.
Shostakovich had the courage to sit with
Khrennikov every other week, discussing
works by their fellow composers and trying
to save them from government difficulties.
I also admire how he was able to use
music to protest against oppression,
abusive governments and the terror of the
military machine. He was able to convince
the Communist Party he was writing the
music they required of him, while others
could detect the deeper emotions and
messages within. He’s unique in his ability
to present intimate thoughts to listeners,
and make them feel like their own.
Petrenko conducts Mahler at the Royal
Albert Hall on 30 March and 27 April
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 19
Thefullscore
THE LISTENING SERVICE

To the beat of the drum

For all their association with
military matters, marches
were often adopted for an
entirely different purpose
by composers of the last two
centuries, says Tom Service

ILLUSTRATION: MARIA CORTE MAIDAGAN

W
hat’s happened to marches?
Military, funeral, wedding,
or revolutionary: composers
just aren’t writing them like they used
to. Is it because their overtones of pomp
and circumstance no longer chime with
our times? In the post-imperial world of
the West, it’s not only the civilisations
who did the marching-as-to-war we
remember, but those who were the
victims of those conquests.
Yet the marches written for the
concert hall – not as soundtracks for
military subjugation – reveal a different
story. Throughout the 19th and 20th
centuries, composers were satirising
and deepening the meaning of marches,
so that the obstinate two-time, left- funereal tread of the slow movement of eruption that’s more exciting than the
right sounds of drill-halls turned into his ‘Eroica’ Symphony to the finale of climax of most symphonies. I’m never
something much richer and stranger. his Fifth Symphony, a C major utopia surprised that audiences often think
That’s true even for the Pomp and that takes the rhetoric of tunes like La this is the end of the whole piece, but
Circumstance Military Marches – to give Marseillaise into the stratosphere. Tchaikovsky is playing a game with the
them their full title – that Edward Elgar sound and psychology of the march,
composed from 1901 onwards. The first Elgar’s distinctive emotional and with all of us in his audience. After
batch were written to shore up popular this march to nowhere, there’s the final
support for the British army, humbled
complexity undermines the Adagio movement of the ‘Pathétique’,
by the Boer wars, and while their tunes militarism of his marches a lament that reveals the march was a
have inspired any number of dreams futile exercise in marching on the spot, a
about a ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, Elgar’s But my favourite 19th-century mask of militarism – exactly the kind of
characteristic emotional complexity example of a symphonic march that militarisation that the Russian Empire
is there throughout, shading and explodes the meaning of the military and all other empires were building up
undermining their supposed militarism march is the third movement of in 1893 – which is empty at its core.
with orchestral half-lights and nostalgia. Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony. And it’s in their subversion of musical,
Elgar’s marches build on a tradition What’s so weird about this breathless, military and political power that
that subverts the genre: Berlioz marches skirling march is that its relentless marches still matter: as La Marseillaise
his hero to the scaffold in the drug- energy goes nowhere. There is no goal of says, ‘Marchons, marchons!’
addled oblivion of his Symphonie victory, only a sense of going round and
fantastique, while Beethoven’s round in ever more dizzying circles. Tom Service explores how
symphonic marches amplify their At the end of the movement, music works in The Listening
emotional and structural scale, from the Tchaikovsky creates an orchestral Service on Sundays at 5pm

20 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

 FAREWELL TO…

OA1349BD (DVD) | OABD7300BD (Blu-ray)

Putting music on film:
Christopher Nupen was
a great documentarian

Christopher Nupen Born 1934 Filmmaker

Nupen was a true pioneer in the field of classical music documentary,
taking advantage of the improved (quieter) camera technology of the in this vibrant, heartfelt performance…”
1960s and his own ability to put musicians at ease in front of the lens. The Times
Born in Johannesburg, Nupen studied law and even flirted with a
career as a banker before moving to England to pursue work as a sound “…Impressive singers and musicians shine
engineer for BBC Radio. His next move was television, where he cut his in a beautifully realised semi-staging that
teeth on 1960s shows like Contrasts and Omnibus, including the iconic sounded totally assured...”
1967 episode of the latter, ‘Jacqueline’, about Du Pré and Barenboim’s The Guardian
recording of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. He co-founded Allegro Films, the
UK’s first independent production company, in 1968 and went on to

OA1361D (DVD) | OABD7308D (Blu-ray)

make over 75 films about some of classical music’s most illustrious
names, winning numerous awards (including a BAFTA) along the way.

Gilbert Biberian Born 1944 Guitarist, composer

Another 1960s trailblazer, Biberian was an innovative performer and
champion of new guitar repertoire. A composer himself, he studied
with Elisabeth Lutyens and Hans Keller and in 1969 founded The
Omega Players, one of the UK’s first professional guitar ensembles.
Born in Istanbul, Biberian enjoyed studies in France with guitarists Ida
Presti and Alexandre Lagoya, and also at Trinity College of Music. His
own compositions were a significant addition to the guitar repertoire.

David Lumsden Born 1928 Organist, choirmaster

A man who will be remembered for many things, Lumsden played
an impactful leading role at the Royal Academy of Music, where
he was principal from 1982-93. A skilled organist and much-loved
choirmaster, the Newcastle-born musician studied at Selwyn College,
Cambridge with Boris Ord and Thurston Dart. He spent over 20
years at New College, Oxford (1955-76) as organist and tutor, and was
principal of the Royal Scottish Conservatoire of Music and Drama and
chair of the National Youth Orchestra.

Also remembered…
The British philanthropist Nigel Brown (born 1945) founded
not only the Stradivari Trust – helping many leading violinists
acquire instruments – but also the charity ArtsShare and the artist Introducing a baroque double bill, featuring two
management agency Hazard Chase. masterpieces of early English Opera recorded in the
Matthew Rye (born 1962) was a British classical music journalist KLVWRULF&RQëGHQFHQ7KHDWUH6ZHGHQ7KHVHFODVVLF
ALLEGRO

whose wide knowledge graced not only these pages as a writer and sub- court operas by John Blow and Henry Purcell
editor, but also those of The Telegraph and The Strad. make the perfect pairing.

opusarte.com
Thefullscore
Music to my ears
What the classical world has been listening to this month
David Skinner Choral director
One of my
lockdown projects
was to learn the
Renaissance harp.
I’d been so inspired
by Andrew
Lawrence-King, who has been on a
number of Alamire’s records, that I
wanted to learn it myself. My
favourite piece to play is ‘My Lady
Carey’s Dompe’, written for Anne
Boleyn’s eldest sister – it has a
lovely ground bass and some nice
twiddly bits on top – but I don’t
play in front of anyone apart from
my wife and the cat at present.
I also conduct the choir
at Sidney Sussex College,
Cambridge. It’s a fantastic choir
and particularly adept at early
music, because we sing a weekly
Latin Vespers in addition to two
Evensongs a week. Last year
we really got into the composer
22 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Sami languages in The
Earth, Spring’s Daughter
Jheronimus Vinders; he’s a
contemporary of Josquin and
pretty much famous for this one
tribute motet to Josquin. He’s
never had a disc devoted to him,
so we’ve recorded some wonderful
masses and a number of Dutch
and Latin songs.
‘“My Lady Carey’s
Dompe” has a lovely
ground bass and some
nice twiddly bits’
My son has his own band called
Cavetown and recently released
his fourth album, Worm Food. It’s
fantastic. As a Renaissance/late-
medieval musician, I don’t know
how to describe the pop genre, but
it’s sort of everything – it’s creative
and every song is very different.
He’s one of these kids who learned
the trade on cheap computer
equipment in his bedroom at
13-14, and now he’s flying high.
And also…
I’ve always enjoyed cooking a lot,
but I’ve just fallen in love with
the entire concept of an air fryer.
It might sound boring, but it has
changed my life! Everything is so
quick, it’s healthier, it’s crispier…
Oyster mushrooms are stunning
in it. You put them in whole with a
light drizzle of olive oil and salt –
they crisp up and are just amazing.
Alamire’s ‘Byrd 1589’ collection is
released on Inventa on 7 April
Eva Ollikainen Conductor
I listen a lot to music
from Denmark,
where I live;
Finnish perspective:
Finland, where I
Outi Tarkiainen sets come from; and
Iceland, where my
main job is. Langgaard’s First
Symphony is a remarkable work.
He was 17 when he completed it
and, while we can hear a lot of
Richard Strauss and Wagner in it,
it is so impressive that someone of
that age could write this
55-minute work with huge
orchestration. It’s also very
thrilling. I find myself wondering
READER CHOICE why such an interesting composer
isn’t played much.
Peter Littleton
Outi Tarkiainen’s The Earth,
Poulton-le-Fylde
I was interested in Spring’s Daughter is one of the
what Mark Elder most beautiful contemporary
had to say in your pieces I have heard recently.
March issue about It’s written for mezzo and
how the challenges
of conducting
chamber orchestra, and the text
Wagner change as is a collage of poetry by Sami
his style progresses. people. I don’t know any of the
Though I love later Sami languages yet, but even
masterpieces such as
Tristan and Parsifal,
without understanding the words,
I can’t understand
the music is so touching, and
also dramatic at times – like a
why his really early
operas rarely get a contemporary Mahler. The mezzo
look in. Rienzi, in Virpi Räisänen does an incredible
particular, has much job on her recording with the
to enjoy, including a
dramatic medieval- Lapland Chamber Orchestra.
era plot, an admirable In contrast to Langgaard’s
title character and huge symphony is the miniature
some terrific vocal intimacy of Kaldalóns’s Ave
writing. The 1970s
Maria, as arranged and performed
Dresden recording
with René Kollo as by Víkingur Ólafsson. It’s a lovely
Rienzi would be my song written in around 1925,
recommendation. and Víkingur’s arrangement is

incredible – he plays on an old
upright piano and the sound is
so magical, with the instrument’s
imperfections making it somehow
even more interesting. Víkingur is
one of my favourite artists and I
always enjoy everything he plays,
but this is even more special.
And also…
When I was working with students
in Baltimore, I went to the George
Peabody Library, which must
be one of the most breathtaking
in the world – as you enter it, the
beauty is all-encompassing. It also
made me think about libraries in
general, and how fascinating it is
that the books which originally
filled the library would have led
to further books being written,
creating a chain of knowledge that
carries on to this day.
Eva Ollikainen conducts the Iceland
Symphony Orchestra on its UK
tour, 20-28 April 2023
Boris Giltburg Pianist
I keep coming back
to Mark Elder and
the Hallé’s disc of
Vaughan Williams
featuring the Tallis
Fantasia, Pastoral
Symphony and Five Variants of
‘Dives and Lazarus’. In particular,
Thefullscore
there is a kind of ethereal beauty READER CHOICE has vision and experimentation
in the way that the Tallis Fantasia – it uses a broad range of musical
is presented. This is the best expression to convey a very strong
recording of it I have found. It’s the emotional message.
only one where I can really hear And also…
the so-called ‘organ’ effect when A while ago my passport was
the string quartet comes in. taken for visa processing, and I
I recently experienced an had to cancel some concerts. To
amazing ‘documentary opera’ get over the frustration, I learned
called Russia: Today by composer Cristina Romero to make ramen. I can now make
Eugene Birman. The text features San José, CA, US quite a good bowl of miso ramen
New York is very
verbatim accounts by Russians lucky to be getting with ginger, garlic and chilli, plus
about what their country means conductor Gustavo vegetable stock and marinaded
to them. The piece is scored for Dudamel (see p12), eggs. It takes time, but the
five voices and structured like who has brought so explosion of flavour is worth it.
much joy to audiences
an Orthodox church service. The Boris Giltburg’s recording of
in my former home
music is powerful, with some very city of Los Angeles Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos
imaginative uses of the human for the last decade or Nos 1 and 4 and Rhapsody on a
voice. I left Russia when I was so. Before he heads theme of Paganini is released on the
five, and I love Russian music and eastwards in 2026, Naxos label in April
would BBC Music
literature – but I was unaware of Magazine consider
feeling this almost molecular-level taking a look back at
connection to the country. his time there? For me,
I’ve been listening a lot to his LA Philharmonic
Beyoncé’s 2016 album Lemonade. recordings of John
Adams’s The Gospel
It’s a really complex, multi-layered, According To The
fantastically performed work of Other Mary and
art. The lyrics and the personal Must the Devil Have
journey she goes through across All the Good Tunes?
the album are amazing, and the will be highlights I
can treasure forever,
melodies, harmonies, vocals and but I have plenty
arrangements are exquisite. It of memories of live
made me realise that there is so performances too.
much that classical musicians can
learn from pop music. This album Regal Lemonade: pop princess Beyoncé

Our Choices The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites

Charlotte Smith Editor Steve Wright Content producer
Braving a trip to the Barbican on a cold February I’ve been enjoying Florence Price’s Symphony
evening was well worth the effort, not only to No. 1. Yes, you can hear echoes of Dvořák’s ‘New
hear Bacewicz’s Fourth Symphony, passionately World’ Symphony, but the piece is most interesting
performed by the BBC Symphony under Sakari when it follows its own musical avenues: a lovely
Oramo, but also for the chance to see two of Largo, evoking African-American church music and
the best young string players of the moment – featuring some beautiful woodwind writing; the
violinist Johan Dalene and violist Timothy Ridout magical moment when the main theme returns,
– performing Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante. All this time joined by the sound of bells; and the
expectations were realised in a reading of great boisterous good fun of the third movement, a
NIKOLAJ LUND, SASHA GUSOV, EETU LINNANKIVI, GETTY

sensitivity, humour and charisma. Bravo! stomping, thigh-slapping ‘Juba Dance’.

Jeremy Pound Deputy editor
The film itself leaves me unmoved – she’s drippy,
he’s a cad – but Brief Encounter does at least have
a memorable soundtrack. Hearing Moszkowski’s
Bolero played in the tearoom inspired me to
explore of all five of his Spanish Dances in the
1957 recording by the LSO under Artaúlfo Argenta
– sunny and characterful, these are performances
that, unlike our romantic couple, I really warm to.
Michael Beek Reviews editor
I enjoyed catching up on Steven Spielberg’s Desert
Island Discs. One of his choices was Bach’s Fugue
in G minor and it reminded me how beautifully he
used the Adagio from composer’s Concerto in D
minor, BWV 974, in his film The Fabelmans (above).
He made a rare departure from an original score,
underlining the discovery of the mother’s marital
infidelity with the inexplicable sadness of this piece
on solo piano – played by her in the next room.
Alice Pearson Cover CD editor
Jessye Norman’s 1977 recording of Duparc’s song
L’invitation au voyage is stunning, and the perfect
incentive to explore more of his music. The Parisian
master of song sets words by Baudelaire that were
inspired by the exotic beauty the poet discovered
while on a voyage to India. Duparc mirrors the
words to create exquisite music of ‘harmony and
beauty, luxury, calm and delight’.

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 23

Group dynamism:
Manchester Collective at the
Southbank; (below) founders
Rakhi Singh and Adam Szabo
RPS Music Awards 2023
Rebecca Franks meets the founders of Manchester Collective,
winners of the Ensemble Award, to learn their recipe for success
Ensemble Manchester Collective
In the spring of 2016, in a Shoreditch
restaurant, violinist Rakhi Singh and
cellist Adam Szabo dreamt up Manchester
Collective. ‘It was one of those astonishing
right place, right time things,’ says Szabo,
now the ensemble’s artistic director and
chief executive. ‘We thought it might be fun
to put on some chamber music – and, in the
way you do when your life responsibilities
are not that big, within 90 minutes we
agreed we’d do a year of concerts.’
From the start, Manchester Collective
had a distinctive ethos and style – surely
no small part of why it has won this year’s
Royal Philharmomic Society Ensemble
Award. The programme for its debut
concert was typically eclectic: Biber
interwoven with Cage and juxtaposed with
Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. The players
spoke to the audience; the performance
24 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
was in the round; there was stage-lighting
(hastily bought from Ikea, reveals Szabo).
The aim was to make the classical concert
experience part of contemporary culture,
rather than seem like a museum artefact.
‘If you want to stay true to your
principles, they have to be simple, direct
and clear,’ explains Singh, now the
Collective’s music director (and lead
violinist). ‘There were three things for
us: to play what we want, in the way that
we want. That includes everything from
clothing to lighting to seating to speaking.
To play to whoever we want. And to do it as
well as we possibly can – to give it your all.’
It’s been a winning formula. As Richard
Morrison wrote in The Times, Manchester
Collective is a ‘free-wheeling ensemble that
can go in a blink from the slow movement
of a late Beethoven quartet to a selection
of Scottish fiddle tunes – and play both
as though steeped in the repertoire from
birth’. The group’s reputation has soared as
it has toured the country in venues ranging
from gig spaces to traditional concert halls.
Like everyone else, Manchester
Collective had to contend with the
pandemic. During that tough period, the

group released its first EP and used the
time to record and live-stream. When live
music returned, the Collective was ready
to make waves. ‘We’ve been going seven
years now,’ says Szabo, ‘so it feels like this is
the start of a second act. Or at least it’s not
the beginning anymore.’
A bumper year was kickstarted by their
BBC Proms debut in August 2021. ‘It was
amazing,’ says Singh. ‘I wondered if our
tiny ensemble would look like little ants
in that colossal space, but it wasn’t as big
as I’d remembered. We stand up to play
anyway and our players gave it their all.
With Adam there to compère, it really felt
as if we had built up to the point where we
could own the stage.’ With close miking
and effective lighting, the small group
made a big impact.
An artist residency at London’s
Southbank Centre gave another high-
‘In the Albert Hall,
we really had built up
to the point where we
could own the stage’
profile platform. The Collective’s first
season included the George Crumb-
inspired ‘Voice of the Whale’, and the ‘big
percussion, live electronics and amplified
strings’ of their ‘Heavy Metal’ programme.
‘They were buzzy, full shows,’ says Szabo.
‘It was really exciting.’ The year culminated
in ‘The Oracle’ tour with the Manchester-
based cellist Abel Selaocoe, with whom
the Collective had previously worked. ‘It
was like all the bits of the company came
together. The commissioning, the classical
interpretations, bringing together music
from different cultures, the production
aspect, the chat, the lights,’ says Szabo.
Often ‘ensemble’ awards are about the
players on the stage, but for Manchester
Collective the word encompasses the
ALAN KERR, ROBIN CLEWLEY, JIYANG CHEN, JET
whole team. Designers, producers and
photographers, among others, are listed
alongside the musicians on the website.
‘There are lots of extra-musical aspects to
a live experience that can be terrifically
exciting and engaging for an audience,’ says
Szabo. ‘The way the work looks and feels is
so important. We are a big collective.’
Royal Philharmonic Society Awards
And the winners are…
This year’s Royal Philharmonic Society Awards recipients
That winning feeling:
(above) violist Timothy Ridout;
(right) soprano Anna Dennis
Chamber-Scale
Composition
Ben Nobuto
SERENITY 2.0
A commission for Manchester
Collective, SERENITY 2.0 by
British/Japanese composer
Nobuto explores the ‘feelings
of dread alongside joy’ evoked
by physical and virtual spaces such as clubs
or Instagram.
Conductor
Martyn Brabbins
Music director of English National Opera
and conductor of an acclaimed Vaughan
Williams symphony cycle with the BBC
Symphony Orchestra: 2021-22 was a busy
and fruitful year for Martyn Brabbins.
Impact
The Multi-Story Orchestra The Endz
A collaboration with teenagers from
Peckham, TMSO’s The Endz uses rap, song
and spoken word to tell the story of two
friends torn apart by gang violence.
Inspiration
Torbay Symphony Orchestra
The Devon ensemble’s busy schedule
includes chamber and orchestral concerts
(sometimes of specially commissioned
works) as well as an impressive commitment
to music education in schools.
Instrumentalist
Abel Selaocoe, cello
The South African cellist, vocalist and
composer made great waves in 2021-22 with
his superb debut album Where is Home and
willingness to take risks and cross genres.
Large-Scale Composition
Gavin Higgins Concerto Grosso for
Brass Band and Orchestra
Premiered by the Tredegar Town Band at
the 2022 BBC Proms, Higgins’s large-scale
orchestral work is, in its composer’s words, a
‘love letter’ to the brass band world.
Opera and Music Theatre
Theatre of Sound/Opera Ventures
Bluebeard’s Castle
This poignant reimagining
of Bartók’s opera, reset in
modern suburbia, replaces
the original’s secrets
and deceptions with a
happy marriage clouded
by dementia.
Series and Events
Leeds Piano Trail
In this innovative sculpture
trail-cum-street concert
series, several sculptures
created from recycled pianos
were placed around the
city alongside artist- and
community-decorated playable pianos.
Singer
Anna Dennis, soprano
Described by The Times as a ‘delectable
soprano and a serene, ever-sentient presence’,
Anna Dennis is especially noted for her work
in both modern and Baroque repertoire.
Storytelling
Manchester Camerata Untold: Keith
This moving and uplifting short film follows
Keith, who lives with young-onset dementia.
We learn how the condition affects Keith’s
everyday life – and how music can provide
light in difficult times.
Young Artist
Timothy Ridout, viola
The young violist enjoyed a packed and
successful 2021-22, including recordings
of Prokofiev, Schumann, Berlioz and
Mendelssohn, plus live performances with
the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Frankfurt
Radio Symphony and others.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 25

Richard Morrison
Music by exiled composers is still
a vital part of our creative culture
W
hen I was a music student
my tutors were scathing
about Rachmaninov. To
that generation of academics, obsessed
by Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez and all
the other serialists, Rachmaninov was
not just an anomaly – a full-blooded
Romantic composer marooned, like a
beached whale, in the anti-Romantic
20th century – but an irrelevance. What
could that lusciously scored, melody-
saturated music possibly say about the
modern age?
Today, older if not wiser, I realise that
Rachmaninov not only belonged in the
20th century but was emblematic of it. A
depressive and increasingly morbid man,
he fell foul of the Communist regime in
his native Russia almost as soon as the
Revolution happened, and spent the next
26 years leading a nomadic existence in
western Europe and America until his
death in 1943. In other words, he was one
of the tens of millions of people displaced
from their homelands – for reasons
of political and religious persecution
or sheer starvation – between about
1880 (when a wave of anti-Semitic
pogroms ignited across the Russian
Empire) and the fall of the Nazis in 1945.
And the experience of being uprooted
profoundly affected his music. What he
could no longer access geographically
– the Russian landscape and culture
– he visited spiritually, referencing the
modes of the Russian Orthodox church
in his music, and infusing it with an
overwhelming sadness and loss.
Rachmaninov was just one of
thousands of composers, performers
and conductors forced to become
émigrés in those decades, and this mass
upheaval had a huge effect on music.
Imagine, for instance, what popular
American song would be like without
the Gershwin brothers, Irving Berlin,
Jerome Kern and Leonard Bernstein –
all sons of first-generation immigrants
from eastern Europe. Imagine what
ballet would be like if Diaghilev,
Stravinsky, Fokine and Nijinsky, all
Russian émigrés plying their trade in
Paris, hadn’t created that convention-
shattering trio of masterpieces – The
Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring
– between 1910 and ’13. And imagine
what British musical life would be like
without Glyndebourne, the London
Imagine what American
song would be like
without the Gershwin
brothers or Bernstein
Symphony Orchestra and the Edinburgh
International Festival – none of which
would have got off the ground without
the inspiration of exiled foreigners.
Tragically, mass exile and the
repercussions it has on music is not
something that has happened only up to
the semi-distant past. To take just two
obvious cases, the Russian invasion of
Ukraine has forced around eight million
people to leave the country in the past
year, while an estimated 2.6 million
Afghans are now living outside their
homeland – refugees from the brutal
Taliban regime that is now back in
power after the withdrawal of British
and American troops in August 2021.
Among those huge groups of displaced
people are many musicians, often
with heart-breaking life-stories and, of
Opinion
course, hugely uncertain futures. I have
been privileged to talk to several Afghan
musicians who, though forced out of
their homeland by the music-hating
Taliban, are determined that their
nation’s cultural heritage, its unique
musical voice and their own creativity
will not be stamped out.
Symbolic of that resolve is the rescue of
the pioneering Afghan National Institute
of Music, which for 11 years offered a
musical and general education to boys
and girls equally before being shut
down immediately when the Taliban
retook Kabul. Thanks to efforts by the
international musical community, with
Yo-Yo Ma and Simon Rattle prominent
champions, more than a hundred of its
staff and pupils have been relocated to
Portugal, where they can keep the flame
of Afghan musical life alive.
And that is their intention, expressed
with a burning determination that
shames those of us in the comfortable
free world who take music so much for
granted that we became blasé about it. ‘If
I had a choice of not playing music or not
being alive, I would rather not be alive,’
the young Afghan composer Arson
Fahim told me. ‘I think that goes for a lot
of Afghan musicians.’
Rachmaninov and every other musical
exile would have understood that
sentiment. If you have lost your home,
passport, possessions and often contact
with family and friends, the ability to
make music may be the sole remaining
impetus that sustains you as a creative
human being – and the result is often
both astonishing and inspiring. Exile
is a terrible thing – but how musicians
respond to it can be truly wondrous.
Richard Morrison is chief music critic
and a columnist of The Times
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 27
Rachmaninov at 150

The

As we celebrate Rachmaninov’s
150th anniversary this month,
Andrew Green talks with leading
musicians who explain why there’s
so much more to a composer often
derided as nostalgic and melancholic

N
ew Year’s Day 2016. On BBC Four up pops a new Tom Service
documentary on the life and works of Sergei Vasilyevich
Rachmaninov, featuring a multiplicity of resonant locations
in and outside Russia. Slowly a veil is lifted. I’m totting up so
many favourite works treasured over the years. The thought
stirs that I’ve been slow to accommodate the notion that a composer who
wrote so much of such range and such quality surely deserves to be regarded
as a true 20th-century great.
Many a commentator has held back from that ‘great composer’ verdict. Yes,
those distinctive melodies and harmonies may be wistfully winning, but
didn’t Rachmaninov betray the ongoing march of compositional progress
by trading in a ripe, melancholic Romanticism past its sell-by date? Barbed
critical comment pursued him during his lifetime, detractors dismissing
his music as ‘artificial and gushing’ or owing more ‘to the salon than the
Underestimated genius:
Steppes’. His Fourth Piano Concerto was given the ultimate raspberry from Rachmaninov’s glittering career
the New York critic Pitts Sanborn: ‘long winded, tiresome, unimportant, in as a pianist long overshadowed
places tawdry’. Rachmaninov reckoned critics were ‘always waiting to devour his abilities as a composer
GETTY

me’. Thankfully, audiences have made up their own minds.

28 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 29
AS THINGS STAND, in
this 150th anniversary of
Rachmaninov’s birth, signs
have been emerging that
critical opinion is shifting.
Rebecca Mitchell, one
of the composer’s latest
biographers, detects there’s
‘a movement among scholars
towards a more serious
consideration of his music.
A broader view is emerging.
For me, he’s one of the great musical minds
of the 20th century.’
As for performers, Steven Isserlis has
soaked up much more Rachmaninov
than just the Cello Sonata: ‘To those who
dismiss Rachmaninov’s music, I can only
say it’s their loss. As a colleague said to me
about such people, pointing to his heart,
“They must have a huge hole here.”’
Given the current war in Ukraine,
Rachmaninov’s music is demonstrating a
vital contemporary relevance for Russian-
British conductor Vasily Petrenko. The
music director of the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra is one of many Russian-born
musicians currently swallowing the
bitter pill of exile – Rachmaninov’s own
experience after fleeing Bolshevik terror
in 1917. ‘I’ve lived mainly in the UK for over
15 years,’ says Petrenko, ‘so the nostalgia
in Rachmaninov’s music was already in
my veins. Now, because I don’t have the
possibility of returning to Russia, that
feeling is even more enhanced.’
Pianist Howard Shelley is one of many
who recall the prejudice in times past
30 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Leading champions: (clockwise
from left) conductor Vasily
Petrenko; pianist Howard Shelley;
and the composer they admire,
together with his wife Natalya
against Rachmaninov the
composer. ‘When I was a
student at the Royal College
of Music, you’d play hardly
any of his piano music. It
was felt that works with
an immediate appeal to
audiences must, by definition, be lesser
music. I really can’t understand that now –
the fact is that even ever-popular pieces like
the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and
the Second Piano Concerto are so inventive
and individual. The famous piano Prelude
in C sharp minor is brilliantly evocative,
a kind of brief tone poem. Anyway, only
when I much later set about recording
the complete solo piano repertoire did I
realise what a huge amount there is, all of
absolutely wonderful quality. There’s this
energy, intensity and depth of feeling. It’s
music that utterly consumes you.’
Shelley’s Rachmaninov recordings have
helped change perceptions, embracing
also the works for piano and orchestra and
many of the bewitching songs, in which
he partners soprano Joan Rodgers – a
passionate advocate for this repertoire,
not least due to her university degree in
Russian. ‘Too many singers avoid the
songs because of the need to read Russian
Cyrillic,’ she observes, ‘but it’s easy now to
learn pronunciation phonetically online.
There should be far more curiosity about
A Russian spirit abroad:
Rachmaninov arrives
in Prague, 1930; (right)
Orthodox bells, whose
sound infused his music
this amazing repertoire. When singers do
programme songs, they tend to be the same
familiar ones over and over again. More
role models are needed to encourage them
to look further. If I put these songs in front
of pupils, they take to them like ducks
to water.’
Unsmiling stereotypers pigeon-hole
Rachmaninov’s music under ‘M for
Melancholic’ and ‘N for Nostalgic’.
OK, there was plenty in his life to feel
melancholic and nostalgic about: the
loss of his family’s idyllic country estates
during his childhood thanks to his father’s
financial mismanagements; then the
break-up of his parents’ marriage; the
death of his beloved sister Yelena just
as she was on the threshold of a singing
career; the sudden demise of Tchaikovsky,
his idol and supporter during student days
in Moscow.
No wonder Rachmaninov clung to the
emotional security of the remote Ivanovka

With exile, his fabled skills as a pianist
were largely favoured over his composition
estate made available to him by relations
and where he worked on many of the
pieces that built his reputation. And no
wonder he mentally escaped into the
timeless sound of Orthodox chant and the
Russian church bells that so obsessively
permeate his music.
The final blow was exile, with his
beloved wife Natalya and their children,
following the Russian Revolution.
Resettlement in the USA meant further loss
– the need largely to forsake composition
GETTY, ALAMY, ERIC RICHMOND
in favour of monetising his fabled skills as
a pianist. He had a family to provide for.
Thankfully, masterpieces emerged even so.
All that accepted, what does
Rachmaninov’s music actually suggest
about his personality beyond melancholy
and nostalgia? Pianist Lucy Parham is
touring Elégie: Rachmaninoff, A Heart in
Exile, her words-and-music programme
featuring the likes of actor Simon
Russell Beale. Yes, the title suggests the
culminating sadness in the composer’s
life, but Parham’s view of Rachmaninov’s
piano music embraces much more.
‘Think of the Op. 39 Études-Tableaux,’
she suggests; ‘agitated, demonic and
tumultuous but rarely melancholic or
nostalgic. You have to counterbalance that
clichéd picture of Rachmaninov as silent
and withdrawn with his sense of humour
and capricious side – think of his love of
speedboats and fast cars.’
Rachmaninov at 150
In his own words
Rachmaninov on composing and exile
‘The sound of church bells
dominated all the cities of the
Russia I used to know… they
accompanied every Russian
from childhood to the grave
and no composer could escape
their influence.’
[Of the Ivanovka estate] ‘I grew fond
of this broad landscape and away
from it would find myself longing for
it, for Ivanovka offered the repose of
surrounding that hard work requires.’
‘Composing is as essential a part
of my being as breathing or eating.’
‘What I try to do, when writing down
my music, is to make it say simply and
directly that which is in my heart.’
‘One day the Prelude [in C sharp
minor] simply came and I put it
down. It came with such force that I
could not shake it off.’
‘Melody is the supreme ruler in the
world of music… a perfectly conceived
melody implies and develops its own
natural harmonic treatment.’
‘I feel like a ghost wandering in a
world grown alien. I cannot cast
out the old way of writing and I
cannot acquire the new.’
‘You cannot know the feeling of a
man who has no home. Perhaps no
others can understand the hopeless
homesickness of us older Russians.’
‘Only the critics can understand
everything after a single hearing.’
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 31
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 Rachmaninov at 150
Driven by Rachmaninov:
soprano Joan Rodgers
and (below) cellist Steven
Isserlis; (right) the composer,
a fan of motor vehicles, at
the wheel of his first car

‘He addresses every

human emotion in
his piano music,’ adds
Shelley. ‘In works
like the Variations
on a Theme of Chopin
and the First Piano
Sonata there are these
contrasts between powerful and tender
statements, between introspection and
romantic optimism. I can’t go along with
the idea that his signature moods are
melancholy and nostalgia.’
Rodgers says it’s ‘undeniable that
Rachmaninov was drawn to melancholy,
but in the Op. 38 Songs, for example, you
have numbers like “Daisies”, in which
sunlight breaks through, and the playful
“Pied Piper”. The range of emotions in his
music reflects the curiosity that went into
researching texts.’
Rodgers also waxes lyrical over
Rachmaninov’s sensitivity to his singers’
vocal cords. Does he write well for the
voice? ‘My goodness yes, with such a feel
for lyrical flow.’ Which raises the question
of whether Rachmaninov’s skills as an
all-round craftsman-composer beyond His Fourth Piano Concerto disappointed
the obviously idiomatic piano writing
have been under-valued. Choral conductor as it wasn’t the Rachmaninov they knew
Paul Hillier considers the example of a
Rachmaninov standard – the All-Night violinist Nathan Milstein asked why he’d Chopin or Liszt – his is a much more
Vigil (widely known as the Vespers; see written so little for violin: “Why should I interesting approach to orchestration.
p64), written in a flash of inspiration write for the violin when there’s the cello?” It isn’t piano first, orchestra second.
during World War I: ‘It’s superb writing. He Quite right.’ Rachmaninov was keen to explore
knows exactly what he’s doing. Apart from It’s easy also to under-appreciate the different approaches in developing his
moments near the end, thrillingly high skills of Rachmaninov the orchestrator, own voice.’
and exposed, everything sits comfortably says Mitchell. ‘When you compare him to Mitchell argues that Rachmaninov’s
on the respective voices – he’s so obviously other keyboard virtuosos who composed music was arguably ‘modern’ for its day,
sensitive to that. The scoring is richly piano works with orchestra – such as even if it wasn’t ‘modernist’. ‘He didn’t
inventive throughout. You see his skill in believe anything worthwhile could
the way he never lets his harmonisation grow out of modernist approaches to
obscure the Orthodox chants in which the composition because they lacked the
work is rooted. It almost brings tears to the one great essential – heart. In rejecting
eyes just looking at the score.’ melodiousness, avant-garde composers
Then take the Cello Sonata in G minor. adopted only a narrow definition of
‘Beautifully written!’ says Steven Isserlis. what modernism might mean. In fact, in
‘Rachmaninov fully understands the Rachmaninov’s later years based in the
essentially lyrical nature of the cello US you hear in his music a kind of
and takes us on an enormous emotional stripping down of the Romantic gestures
journey. There’s excitingly dramatic and thick harmonies – in the Fourth
use of pizzicato, flying staccato and so Piano Concerto, for example. But then he
on, particularly in the scherzo. I like disappointed some because it wasn’t the
GETTY

Rachmaninov’s response when the Rachmaninov they knew!’

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 33

Rachmaninov at 150
Composing retreats:
Rachmaninov in
Ivanovka; (below) at Villa
Senar in Switzerland
A creative haven
Rachmaninov’s Ivanovka estate
No location played a greater part in
nurturing Rachmaninov the composer
than the secluded Ivanovka estate, some
600 kilometres south-east of Moscow. It
was the rural family home of his well-to-do
relatives, the Satins. ‘I grew fond of this
broad landscape,’ he said, ‘and, away
from it, would find myself longing for it, for
Ivanovka offered the repose of surrounding
that hard work requires.’ Rachmaninov
said he counted ‘with anguish’ the days
left to him at the estate before any
departure. Among the many works that
took shape here were his Symphony No. 1,
the First Piano Concerto and many songs.
Rachmaninov had to face the trauma
of leaving Ivanovka behind as revolution
engulfed Russia, fleeing abroad with his
family – the estate and local village were
decimated over the succeeding years of
civil war. It’s hardly surprising that in exile,
Rachmaninov should have
sought to reproduce the
Ivanovka environment
on buying an estate in
Switzerland as a retreat
from his international
performing career, based
in the US. Named Villa
Senar, the estate likewise
became a haven, where
GETTY, ALAMY, SVEN ARNSTEIN
he wrote the Rhapsody on
a Theme of Paganini and
his Third Symphony. Alas,
a second exile, from Senar,
began with the outbreak of
the Second World War.
34 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Petrenko is of the same
mind. ‘As a man he was
actually progressive – he
was, for example, one of
the first owners of a private
car in Russia. Especially
in the later years you hear
a progressiveness in his
orchestration and things
like the influence of jazz –
in the Symphonic Dances,
for example. You sense the
energy, the pulse, of the industrialised
20th century. His music is a fascinating
mixture of the retrospective/introspective
and looking forward to the future.’
Is one key to a more widespread public
appreciation of Rachmaninov’s worth
a fuller appreciation of his compelling
life-story? For Parham, he represents ‘one
of those few examples where knowing
something of a composer’s life
really does offer an insight into
their music. Schumann is one
such. Shostakovich another.
That sense of loss is so often
present in Rachmaninov’s
music, even when the basic
mood is triumphant.’
When it comes to investigating
(and, for musicians, learning
from) Rachmaninov’s legacy
of recordings of his own music,
the explorer is spoilt for choice
as far as solo piano repertoire is
concerned, but left frustrated
Signature roles:
Rachmaninov in 1927
with Serge Jaroff,
conductor of the Don
Cossack Choir; (below)
pianist Lucy Parham
by the lack of examples of
his easily forgotten talents
as a conductor. We’re left
tantalised by having just
three works in which
he directs an amazing
Philadelphia Orchestra
in 1929 (Vocalise and Isle
of the Dead) and 1939 (a
white-hot Symphony No. 3).
In Rachmaninov’s hands
the playing in particular
of the symphony more than suggests his
desire for a disciplined sense of direction
and immaculate shaping, but at the
service of unmistakable passion and
ravishing colour, evident even through the
shortcomings of deficient recorded sound.
Petrenko is bursting with ideas for
works which can build a broader public
perception of Rachmaninov’s music.
‘There are the operas, like Aleko, written
when he was just 18, full of emotion. If
people know The Bells – such a wonderful
choral piece – they should try the Three
Russian Songs and the Spring cantata. I’m
working hard to make these better-known.
‘Rachmaninov’s music is so relevant to
these days. After his exile he hoped the
spiritual power of the Russian character
in the hearts of the people would clear
out the evil of Bolshevism. We live now in
this turbulent situation, with again many
Russian musicians in exile. They hope the
spiritual power for good can once again
clear their homeland of aggression.’
 

 

Nicola
Benedetti






  
Santtu-
Matias
Rouvali Stephen
Hough

Sheku
Kanneh- Bryn Esther
Mason Terfel Yoo

London season at the Royal Festival Hall

Bryn Terfel sings Wagner Santtu conducts

Sunday 26 March Stravinsky I: The Firebird
Thursday 18 May
Santtu conducts Brahms,
Schumann & Sibelius Santtu conducts




Thursday 30 March Stravinsky II: Petrushka
 Sunday 21 May
Santtu conducts
 



 



 

  
Tchaikovsky & The Bach Choir:
 

 

 
   


    
!
Shostakovich The World Imagined
 "


 

 
 
 !
 #
Thursday 27 April Thursday 25 May

 
Stephen Hough Santtu conducts
plays Beethoven Beethoven & Strauss

  
 

  


!
  

#
Featuring Nicola Benedetti,
Thursday 4 May
 Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Saint-Saëns’s and Benjamin Grosvenor
 #

$ 

 

!

 

Organ Symphony Thursday 8 June

 

 
 

$ 
 
 $  
Sunday 7 May




 


 

%#

 

#
 

!


 
 
  
  
Scriabin’s Prometheus &
! 
 #

& "
'#
( Rachmaninov’s The Bells Tickets from £10
With Scriabin’s original lighting philharmonia.co.uk
Thursday 11 May 0800 652 6717

 
36 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
 Kirill Gerstein

Mine wasn’t the

archetypal musician’s
tortured childhood,
playing nothing
but scales and etudes
THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW

Kirill Gerstein
The Russian-born pianist
tells Michael Church about
stretching the bounds of a
phenomenal natural talent that Steven Isserlis in his kitchen, flipping over
happily embraces everything
from classical music to jazz
PHOTOGRAPHY: MARCO BORGGREVE
events; ‘but they did allow us to bring
together interesting people from all over
Europe. For example, it was nice to see
the pages as he explained Beethoven’s cello
sonatas. And I love interviewing people.’
Gerstein lives in Berlin, where he’s a
professor at the Hanns Eisler Academy. He
is also on the faculty of Kronberg Academy,

W
hen a revolutionary new piano which hosts his ‘Kirill Gerstein invites’
design, the Maene-Viñoly seminars, and this year has residencies
Concert Grand, needed at Wigmore Hall in London, with the
to be test-driven last year, its creators Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
chose Kirill Gerstein. For wherever this in Munich and at the Aix-en-Provence
inspirational figure leads, people tend to Festival. Having lived in the US throughout
follow, correctly assuming that whatever he his teens and twenties, his roots are deep
does will in some way be original. there, and with his dizzy touring schedule –
We saw this in the pandemic. He was not in every part of the globe barring his native
the only musician to invite us into their Russia – he is hard to pin down.
living room, but no one came near his tally I’ve managed several chats with him, and
of online guests, because what he offered have registered his versatility, and also the
was much more than a free recital: each nonchalant ease with which he handles
week he hosted a musical seminar – all now what most pianists would regard as
archived and available to the public – with daunting challenges. I’ve seen him electrify
speakers not only from the world of music, an audience with his own monumental
but also from architecture, choreography arrangement of ‘I got rhythm’, in which jazz
and philosophy. ‘They certainly haven’t and classical idioms fight for dominance.
replaced live music,’ he says of those online And I’ve seen him breeze impeccably

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 37

Kirill Gerstein
Perfect curve:
the ergonomic
Maene-Viñoly piano;
(below) Gerstein at a
conventional keyboard
A shape of things to come
Gerstein on a new piano design
Last July in
Verbier, Kirill
Gerstein gave
the first ever
concert on
the Maene-
Viñoly Concert
Grand. Its
ergonomically
designed
keyboard
gently curves round the player,
and its strings fan out over a
wider soundboard than that of a
conventional instrument. This gives
it, claim the makers, an ‘augmented
capacity for nuance, clarity and power’.
Gerstein’s verdict was enthusiastic.
The curved keyboard, he said, is
surprisingly intuitive. His hands
adjusted almost immediately, and
after a couple of days of practising, he
was no longer aware most of the time
during the recital that the keyboard
was curved. ‘But what interests
me most about this piano,’ he said,
‘is the differing sonic signature
of the instrument. The architect
Rafael Viñoly had the instinct to
try and enlarge the surface of the
soundboard, and to do so by making
the piano wider, not longer, as it
fans out from one point. The curved
keyboard is an essential part of the
overall concept.
‘Straight-strung as early 19th
century instruments were – and as
the new Barenboim piano is – this
instrument is an integrated blend of
design and function, and is ideal for
use in chamber music: the registers
are very distinct and polyphonic
sounding. It shakes the tree a bit, and
that is good. I think it has a future.’
38 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
through Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a
theme of Paganini after a mere six-minute
preparation with the orchestra.
In 2010 he was awarded the Gilmore
Artist Award, with its $300,000 cheque
attached: ‘A lot of money, and absolutely
not for spending on Lamborghinis. But as a
lover of pianos I was tempted, because with
them, I’m like a kid in a candy shop.’ But he
realised that his collection of pianos didn’t
need any augmenting. In addition to the
Steinway Model B with which he fell in love
on encountering it in the factory, he has a
rare 1930s Bechstein with two keyboards,
an 1848 Pleyel with its original strings and
hammers, and the 1899 Blüthner he grew
up with. So he decided to spend the money
on commissioning new works from Oliver
Knussen, Alexander Goehr, Timo Andres,
Matthew Aucoin and the boundary-
crossers Chick Corea and Brad Mehldau;
with two of these composers he cheated
mortality by catching them just in time.
Meanwhile Thomas Adès’s friendship
with Gerstein was cemented when, after
collaborating on a number of works, they
premiered Adès’s Piano Concerto together.
But whence sprang this phenomenon?
From the ‘black earth’ Russian city of
Voronezh 43 years ago, where he grew up
with his mathematician father and piano-
teacher mother; his grandfather was a
Talmudic scholar, but in the Soviet period
the family were careful not to parade their
faith. Gerstein’s piano tuition started early:
‘I became my mother’s guinea pig, as a way
to get her attention. And for her, it was a
way of bonding with me.’
‘I always loved music, but I didn’t
think of myself as necessarily becoming
a pianist,’ he says, adding that his first
ambition was to direct road traffic. ‘Mine
wasn’t the archetypal musician’s tortured
childhood, playing nothing but scales
and Chopin etudes. I paid for that later, of
course, by having to practise much more
than other student pianists.’
He was in fact a little prodigy, at seven
playing Bach, Schumann, Clementi and
Tchaikovsky in concerts at the specialist
school he attended, and on one occasion
imitating a full orchestra. But his parents’
collection of jazz records opened a
seductive alternative world for him, where
he developed ways of recreating the sounds
of Oscar Peterson and the bebop brigade.
Bloody encounters:
Gerstein with his
mentor Ferenc Rados
Overheard unwinding with some jazz
after winning a classical piano competition
in Poland at 12, he was invited to join a
jazz workshop. One thing led to another,
influential people kept noticing him,
and by the age of 14 he found himself the
youngest-ever student on a full scholarship
to study jazz piano at the Berklee College
of Music in Boston. Did he feel musically
schizophrenic? ‘Not at all, because it was
all just music to me. I’d started classical
‘I now realise that
leaving Russia was
a trauma I didn’t
acknowledge’
music with singing and listening, and with
jazz it was the same process, even though
one kind of music was written down, and
the other was captured by the microphone.
My ear was strongly developed, and my
understanding of how one chord leads
to another applied as much to jazz as to
classical.’ Though he was eventually forced
to choose which mode would become
his career, he still encourages his Berlin
students to play on both sides of the divide.
What were his feelings about his sudden
uprooting to America? ‘I now realise that
was a bigger break than I thought, a trauma
I didn’t acknowledge. Speaking Russian is
still very important to me, even though I’m
quite comfortable in English and German.’
And he’s amused, rather than irked, that his
citizenship should be so complicated: he
has US citizenship, plus a residence permit
for Germany, while his unwanted Russian
 A player of many parts: ‘I’d started classical music
with singing and listening,’ reflects Kirill Gerstein
(right), ‘and with jazz it was the same process’

citizenship still sticks to him like a burr: ‘It’s

a Catch 22 – you can only get it revoked if
you fill in the requisite form, but that form
is never issued!’ Yet, like Evgeny Kissin,
he ruefully points out that in his Soviet
passport he was described as ‘Jewish’,
rather than ‘Russian’. He’s sad that Russian
culture’s finest flowerings – Pushkin,
Tchaikovsky et al – should now be ‘stained’
by what is happening in that country.
Gerstein’s pianism is so effortlessly
accomplished that it’s hard to imagine
him ever struggling, but he attributes his
success to some ‘very bloody’ encounters
with key mentors. First there was the
Russian pianist Dmitri Bashkirov, then
came the Hungarian Ferenc Rados, whose
pupils have included András Schiff, Zoltán
Kocsis, and the Takács Quartet. Bashkirov,
says Gerstein, was a tornado: ‘He had a very
low opinion of my playing when I was 16.
“If you insist on playing like that, perhaps
you should not play at all,” he said. Maybe
I had masochistic tendencies, but I wanted
to learn, and I realised there were things he
knew which I seemed to need.’ So, he went
back repeatedly for more, ‘and as a result I
remodelled my approach to everything’.
He met the legendary Rados at Prussia
Cove: ‘And in my first two hours with
him, he made endless fun of everything
I did. It was so bloody that he was taken
aback when I asked if I could play for him
again.’ That was when Gerstein was 23,
and he went on to waylay Rados wherever
he happened to be in Europe – he still
waylays him today: ‘With everything I
play, I am thinking of ideas culled from the great Italian admired, influenced have what the Germans call the Nachklang,
one of our sessions.’ The other Hungarian or prefigured. His opening recital was the after-sound; and then you realise that it
whom Gerstein acknowledges as a key more like a seminar, each Busoni piece relates to the short notes you see in Chopin
source of wisdom is composer György teasingly tonally disoriented (and to the nocturnes normally marked with a dot.
Kurtág: ‘Before Rados and Kurtág, I’d never audience disorienting), before he let rip As with the curved piano, it stimulates the
met anyone for whom one single note with an absolutely molten rendering of player’s sound-imagination. And you can
could matter so much. The world may be Liszt’s Études d’exécution transcendante. replicate this effect on many pianos.
collapsing, but what is that C sharp doing?!’ His parallel passion for Rachmaninov ‘If you open the pedal all the way on a
When Gerstein gets his teeth into has resulted in a recording with the Berlin concert grand, and keep it open, the whole
MARCO BORGGREVE, KAUPO KIKKAS, PIET MEERSSCHAUT

something, he won’t let go. He’s a tireless
champion of Komitas, whose haunting
choral arrangements of Armenian
folk songs are the rallying point for
Armenian patriots every Holocaust day,
but who otherwise is still hardly known.
Meanwhile Gerstein’s obsession with
Ferruccio Busoni is currently taking the
form of a Wigmore series in which he plays
Busoni with works by composers whom
Philharmonic, due out this month on the
Platoon label.
With Gerstein, the big picture may be
full to overflowing, but he’s always ready to
dive into minutiae. Itemising his pianos, he
suddenly goes into detail about the Pleyel.
‘When the damping is set up, it has a very
long resonance – you play a short note and
the damper is not so tied to the string, and
that’s not a mistake, but by design. You
thing swims in mud. But if you open the
damper ever so slightly, it is possible not
to change the pedal. People talk about
half-pedalling, but this is like six per
cent pedalling.’ Then he goes over to a
piano and shows me, with infinitesimally
delicate touches on the pedal: ‘I tell my
students you can spend just one per cent
of your pedal budget, and you have a very
different sound.’

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 39

 East meets west
For Steven Fox, music director of The Clarion Choir, Rachmaninov’s
anniversary year presents the perfect opportunity to celebrate the
composer’s often overlooked choral music, as he tells Charlotte Smith
‘I
n the darkest days of the pandemic,
as I was sitting at home, it occurred to
me that 2023 would be a significant
year – the 150th anniversary of
Rachmaninov’s birth. Would I live to see another
anniversary of such importance? Perhaps if I
lived to 90! So, I thought to myself, “If we ever get
though this, I’m going to celebrate properly.”’
Steven Fox, music director of New York’s
Clarion Choir, is speaking to me in a restaurant
just a stone’s throw away from 505 West End
Avenue, the stately New York apartment where
Rachmaninov and his wife Natalia eventually
settled after fleeing the turmoil of the Russian
Revolution. Fox is telling me about his very
ALAMY
special project for 2023 – to conduct all of
40 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Rachmaninov’s major choral works. ‘I had no
worries that orchestras would celebrate the
symphonies and that pianists would perform
the concertos, but so little attention is given to his
choral works in general,’ he continues, ‘and they
were his favourite works. The two works he was
most proud of at the end of his life were the All-
Night Vigil and The Bells – he even requested that
part of the Vigil be sung at his funeral.’
Fox is a Russian music specialist, having
studied the Russian language at school and at
university – and subsequently making several
trips to St Petersburg and Moscow during his
tertiary studies at New England’s Dartmouth
College and London’s Royal Academy of Music.
The first time he heard Russian spoken by a

teacher at his New York high school, he fell in
love with its ‘dark and mysterious sounds’ and
instantly gave up French so he could immerse
himself in the exotic and captivating dialect.
His first trip to Russia was in 1998, in the
days of Boris Yeltsin. ‘It was a difficult time as
the rouble had been devalued, but it was also
very exciting, as there was no ceiling on artistic
experimentation – it felt a bit like the Wild
West,’ he says. ‘That’s when I fell in love with
Russian music – I saw amazing performances
of Rachmaninov, Shostakovich and Prokofiev
for just a dollar at the Mariinsky Theatre,
and experienced the wonderful connection
between the people and their music. I had
profound conversations with taxi drivers – their
composers were like heroes.’
Fox went on to combine his other great love,
early music performance, with his newfound
interest in Slavonic music on successive trips
to Russia, and at the age of just 21 founded
the country’s first period orchestra. ‘I heard
beautiful performances of Mozart, Handel and
Bach in Russia, but at the same time the playing
was overly Romantic and heavy,’ he says.
A chance encounter with a small, forward-
thinking ensemble from Moscow, who were
experimenting with period bows and playing
with ‘great energy’, was all the incentive he
needed to establish his group. For the next few
years, it grew and evolved – moving beyond the
standard fare by Bach and Handel to embrace
little-known Russian music of the 18th century,
written for the court of Catherine the Great.
It’s testament to his vision and drive that the
orchestra still performs in Moscow to this day.
But the exchange of ideas went both ways, and
Fox’s desire to bring Russian music and culture
The Clarion Choir
Celebrating Rachmaninov: (clockwise from far left) The
Clarion Choir in performance; choir founder and director
Steven Fox; the choir’s Grammy-winning Kastalsky album
from 2017, and the new All-Night Vigil; Sergei himself
back to New York took shape in earnest following
another fortuitous encounter – this time, with
a board member of the Clarion Music Society,
a reputable New York-based period orchestra,
founded in 1957 by conductor Newell Jenkins.
Despite its standing, the ensemble had been
dormant for the past ten years, so Fox set about
rebuilding the orchestra – and adding to this a
choir. As a freelance tenor, he was in the perfect
position to assemble a group of singers capable of
meeting the challenges of performing in Russian.
‘If I was performing with singers I liked, I’d take
note,’ he says, ‘and I really thought about the
sound of the group – how the individual voices
would blend. I also tried to pick singers who I
knew were sharp on the uptake – so even if they
didn’t have experience in Slavonic music, I’d take
them if I felt they had the right type of voice.
‘And then we spent a good amount of time
working on the language together in rehearsal. I
like to think that there is a Clarion sound, but of
course we mould this to suit different repertoire
– and languages have a sound of their own.
When singing Slavonic music, we often talk
about adding a little more darkness to the sound
than we would in, say, Gabrieli, which has an
Italianate brightness to it.’
Since their formation under Fox in 2006,
the Clarion Choir and Orchestra have been
building their reputation as first-class
performers of Russian repertoire throughout
the US and Europe, and in addition to releasing
two Grammy-nominated albums of music by
Rachmaninov’s mentor Alexander Kastalsky
in 2017 and 2020, the choir also released
Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil on the Pentatone
label in January – 20 years after Fox’s first
performance of the work with his fellow students
at Dartmouth. There are also plans to record
Rachmaninov’s other sacred work, the Liturgy of
St John Chrysostom, later this year.
I like to think Fox has also established an annual custom of
performing Russian Orthodox music to mark the
there’s a Clarion new year – initially, in 2012, in Trinity Church
sound, but we Wall Street and more recently in the Clarion’s
new home, the Church of the Resurrection on
mould this to suit East 74th Street. ‘The audience have become part
of our regular crowd,’ he says. ‘There are some
the repertoire – devotees of Russian music, but there are also a
and languages wider group of music lovers who enjoy the idea of
listening to choral music at this time of year.’
have a sound of 2023’s Rachmaninov celebration began at the
larger Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral
their own with a performance of the Liturgy, and will
be followed by a special performance of the
All-Night Vigil at Carnegie Hall in May. In
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 41
The Clarion Choir
Refracted light
Fox on his ‘other’ choir
I’m conducting The Bells
with the Washington Choral
Society and Baltimore
Symphony Orchestra in the
National Cathedral in March.
The Washington Chorus isn’t
a professional choir – it’s a
volunteer chorus made up
of around 120 singers who
perhaps sang in school,
but who went into different
professions. It’s a wonderful
ensemble to conduct, as it’s
so very different from the
Clarion Choir, which is much
more intimate, so it allows
me to take on really big,
expansive repertoire.
The Cathedral is absolutely
awe-inspiring – with its
stained-glass windows
which refract the light so
beautifully, it’s a building we
really got right. It’s also the
perfect location to perform
The Bells, which is very
dramatic, with a marvellous
text by Edgar Allan Poe,
translated by the symbolist
poet Konstantin Balmont.
Though the choral part
isn’t as complicated as those
of Rachmaninov’s liturgical
works, it is difficult to sing
well, and the orchestration
is very complicated. But the
first movement, about the
beginning of life, is so joyous
– like a recollection. And
GETTY, STEPHANIE BERGER
hearing the bells combined
with that marvellous
baritone at the end, as we
move towards death, is so
incredibly moving.
42 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
A choir for each city: The Clarion at The Met Cloisters,
New York; (above left) a stained glass window at the venue
of Steven Fox’s other choir, the Washington Choral Society
March, Fox also hotfooted it to DC’s Washington
Cathedral to conduct his other chorus, the
Cathedral Choral Society, in The Bells, alongside
the Isle of the Dead with the Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra. And in November there will be
further performances of Spring and the Three
Russian Songs, again with the Clarion singers.
So, what are the challenges of performing
the two liturgical works? Both are a cappella,
and presumably there’s nowhere to hide any
imperfections. ‘The All-Night Vigil features
four different types of chant, and it’s very rich,’
explains Fox. ‘Such is the level of complexity
that I’d describe it as “vocal orchestration”. Each
movement is its own work, with a singular
character – some are hymn-like, while others are
polychoral with different textures happening
at the same time. And the extremes of range
and tessitura are tested at the top for sopranos
and tenors, and at the bottom for the basso
profundos. Our recordings of compositions
by Rachmaninov’s vocal adviser Kastalsky
have helped us to get to the heart of the work
– Rachmaninov shared his manuscripts with
Kastalsky, as he respected his knowledge of
chants, but you can still sense Rachmaninov
expanding from where Kastalsky left off.
‘As a way of breaking down the complexity
and richness for audiences, we often perform the
original Kievan and znamenny chants between
movements, because then you can hear how
he integrated them – that’s the way we’ve also
recorded the work. The Liturgy, on the other
hand, is more straightforward – the text is very
clear and could almost be sung as part of a
service, but in its simplicity, it is stunning.’
As the two works have very different
characters, Fox is choosing to record them
in different spaces – the All-Night Vigil was
recorded in the Church of the Resurrection,
and the Liturgy will be recorded in the Greek
Orthodox Cathedral. ‘In all our recordings we
like to capture the beautiful, natural acoustics of
the spaces in which we sing,’ he says. ‘For the All-
Night Vigil we needed a brighter, more energetic
space with a lot of clarity, as there’s so much
detail. But for the Liturgy we can go for more
atmosphere and luxuriate in the sound.’
Rachmaninov had stopped attending church
services by the time he wrote the Liturgy in
1910 and All-Night Vigil in 1915, and his ‘spirit
of modernism’ was condemned by the Russian
Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities, who refused
to sanction the performance of his Liturgy as
part of their service. But for Fox, Rachmaninov’s
deeply ingrained sense of spirituality was
evident throughout his career. ‘Early on in his
life, Rachmaninov’s grandmother took him to
church services, and this stayed with him,’ he
explains. ‘It’s not just his liturgical works that
demonstrate that influence, but his orchestral
works, too. The Symphonic Dances quotes the All-
Night Vigil, and you can hear the Dies irae in the
Isle of the Dead. Then there are ringing bells in
many of his works. They’re a powerful symbol.’
But just as religion seeps across from his
liturgical to secular works, so too do vocal
qualities infiltrate his orchestral pieces – and
vice versa. If the All-Night Vigil can be described
as ‘vocal orchestration’, there’s also a ‘mellifluous
quality’ to works such as Isle of the Dead, which
Fox believes ‘informs the fluidity of his writing’.
To ignore the vocal works in Rachmaninov’s
anniversary year would be remiss – for these
were central to his identity as a composer.
City Halls, Glasgow
Thursday
13.04.2023
7.30pm JOIN US FOR A VERY
SPECIAL PERFORMANCE OF
Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Sunday
16.04.2023
3.00pm

Omega &
FRESH Alpha
The end and the beginning

INVIGORATING A powerful re-telling of the Easter Passion story

BEETHOVEN Sunday April 16th 2023 at 7:30pm

Symphony No.6 ‘Pastoral’ ‘Omega and Alpha’ takes you on a musical journey through the
Easter story. This performance, the first in Yeovil, celebrates 10
years since the acclaimed World Premiere in Wells Cathedral.
Messiaen The Sermon to
the Birds: Act II, Tableau 6 Martin
Emslie
Jonathan
Ansell
from Saint-François d’Assise COMPOSER&
CONDUCTOR
G4 &
LES MUSICALES

Ashley Riches bass-bartione Marta John

Nicky Spence tenor Fontanals-Simmons Savournin
G LY N B O U R N E ENO & CHARLES
Ryan Wigglesworth conductor ENO & WNO COURT OPERA

Tickets £35, £25 & £18

bbc.co.uk/ Available from westlandsyeovil.co.uk
bbcsso or telephone Box Office on 01935 422884
Westlands Entertainment Venue
Book your tickets
1 Westbourne Close, Yeovil BA20 2DD
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ILLUSTRATION: SAM FALCONER/DEBUT ART
‘I
t consists of many parts created by many
different components. Everything has
a purpose and role, and the result is
amazing.’ This is composer Antonín
Dvořák discussing not an orchestra nor a
symphony, but something equally dear to his
heart: the steam engine.
The Czech composer was a big fan of
locomotives, which burst forth into the same
mid-19th-century world as his music. Indeed,
he once famously declared, ‘I would give all my
symphonies for inventing the locomotive.’
Dvořák is just one of a handful of composers
who harboured extra-musical obsessions
throughout their lifetimes. Let’s meet some of
these compulsive composers, starting with the
rail-obsessed Romantic himself…
Prime suspect: the 23-fixated Berg,
with Schoenberg’s portrait of him Antonín Dvořák: Trains
Dvořák’s life story and that of the locomotive
$FHUWDLQ ran, for a while, along similar tracks. The railway
reached his hometown of Nelahozeves during
QXPEHUNHHSV his childhood, bringing workers from across the
Austro-Hungarian Empire for the construction
FURSSLQJXSD project. From the family home, across the street
number which from the train station, he would watch the new
iron dragons pull past, laden with soldiers
KDVJUHDW and civilians. This love of trains persisted
throughout his life, and on moving to Prague, he
VLJQLILFDQFH designed a morning walk that took him above
the tunnel through which trains would pull out
IRUPH7KH from the city’s imposing main station.
number 23 Dvořák once asked his student and future son-
in-law Josef Suk to make an early-morning trip
to note down the engine number of the Vienna
express train. Suk duly set his alarm clock and
headed off, opera glasses in hand, to get the
GETTY
crucial information. After the train had whistled
44 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
through, he dashed to Dvořák’s flat to show him
the number. However, his precious information
was greeted with a snort of laughter: instead of
the engine number, Suk had noted the tender
number at the rear of the train. Rookie error.
Where, if at all, can this love for locos be heard
in the great composer’s music? It’s not always
obvious, though for many the gently rocking
motion of his famous Humoresque, Op.101 No. 7
recalls the movement of a train. And if you think
that the main theme from the first movement
of his great Seventh Symphony has a certain
rhythm of the rails, you’re onto something. ‘I
got this theme when the festival train from Pest
was arriving in the State Station in 1884,’ reads
Dvořák’s note on the score.
Alban Berg: The number 23
Writing to his teacher and mentor Arnold
Schoenberg in 1915, Berg was struck by the
date stamps on two telegrams from the latter.
He wrote, ‘A certain number keeps cropping
up: a number which has great significance for
me. The number 23. I will keep quiet about the
many times I have come up against this number
and only give you one or two examples from the
recent past: I received your first telegram on 4/6
(46 = 2x23). The telegram contained the number
Berlin Südende 46 (2x23) 12/11 (12+11 = 23). The
second telegram contained the numbers 23/23
and was sent at 11.50 (11.50 = 50 x 23).’
Whew. Still with us? Berg was very probably
seeing 23 more than needs be here, but that’s
the point: he had long since decided that this
number had a special meaning for him. Various
theories have been advanced to explain his
obsessive interest in this particular number.
He may, for example, have got it from the
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 45

Shining star:
the actress Lilian
Harvey was an object
of infatuation for
composer Charles
Koechlin (below)
German doctor Wilhelm Fliess, who believed
that the human body went through 23-day cycles
or ‘biorhythms’. Others maintain that Berg’s
obsession dated from 23 July 1900, when – still
recovering from his father’s death – he suffered
his first asthma attack. The condition would
continue to trouble him for the rest of his life.
Whatever the cause, the number 23 acquired
immense significance. His six-movement Lyric
Suite, for example, is made up of a sequence of
23-bar phrases. An encoded depiction of Berg’s
love for the author Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, the
Lyric Suite also uses the number 23 to represent
the composer himself, while Hanna is assigned
Koechlin went the number ten (she’s represented, for example,
by a particular ten-bar section).
on to dedicate
Maurice Ravel: Mechanical toys
more than 100 Stravinsky famously referred to Ravel as ‘the
works to the most perfect of Swiss watchmakers’, and it’s
true that the latter’s music has an extraordinary
German-Anglo intricacy and attention to detail. No surprise,
then, that he maintained a lifelong fascination
actress Lilian with mechanics.
‘[Maurice] admired everything which was
Harvey mechanical, from simple tin toys to the most
intricate machine tools,’ his brother Édouard
46 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Flaming passions: (right) Belgian symbolist Jean Delville’s
title page for the score of Prometheus: The Poem of Fire
by Scriabin (centre right); (far right) the elegant if eccentric
Satie models his bowler-hat-and-winged-collar look
recalled. ‘He would thus spend entire days in
front of street vendors’ stalls, and was delighted
to come with me to factories or to [exhibitions]
of machinery. He was happy to be in the midst
of these movements and noises.’ Indeed, his
most famous work, Boléro, can sound like a large
and complex piece of machinery clicking and
whirring into life.
Ravel lost many friends in World War I, losses
compounded by the deaths of his mother and
his fellow composer Debussy. His response was
to shut himself away in Le Belvédère, his home
south of Paris, and surround himself with objets
d’art and mechanical toys. A favourite among
the latter was a small mechanical bird in a
golden cage, given to him by the sculptor Léon
Leyritz. When its handle was turned, the avian
automaton would give a beautiful rendition of
the song of the nightingale. Ravel named the
toy bird ‘Zizi’, and would sit and listen to its
mechanical song for hours at a stretch.
Rued Langgaard: Carl Nielsen
Langgaard’s obsession was, alas, rather less life-
enhancing than trains or wind-up nightingales.
The Dane never got the recognition from
his country’s musical establishment that his
idiosyncratic, visionary music might have
deserved, but found his work overshadowed by
that of a compatriot whose music had, perhaps,
greater immediacy: Carl Nielsen.
Of Langgaard’s 16 symphonies, eight string
quartets and many other orchestral and
chamber works, none were commissioned and
only half even got a performance during his
lifetime. And Langgaard clearly blamed his rival
composer for much of his undeserved obscurity.
This antipathy came to a head in 1948, when
an embittered, 55-year-old Langgaard wrote
Carl Nielsen, vor store komponist (‘Carl Nielsen,
our Great Composer’), a sarcastic choral
work which he had the chutzpah to send to the
State Broadcasting Company for consideration.
Dedicated to ‘the world of music in Denmark’,
the piece consists of just 32 bars, to be ‘repeated
for all eternity’. Get the point?
Never one to let a grudge lie, in one of
Langgaard’s final writings he referred
to Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, ‘The
Inextinguishable’, as a symbol of all that was evil.
‘Life will drown “the unquenchable” in pure light
and beauty of sound,’ he wrote in hope.
Charles Koechlin: Cinema
Born in 1867, Koechlin had to wait until the
age of 65 to see his first film, 1930’s German

comedy-drama The Blue Angel. The experience
made a huge impact on the Frenchman, who
promptly became a silver screen addict.
That same year, consumed with his new
passion, Koechlin penned his Seven Stars
Symphony, each of whose movements depicts
a leading celluloid star. These include Greta
Garbo, who gets an other-worldly ‘pagan hymn’
played on the eerie ondes Martenot, and Charlie
Chaplin, the subject of a brilliantly nuanced
15-minute character study in music.
Another of the seven stars is the Anglo-
German actress Lilian Harvey, for whom
Koechlin developed a particular obsession. He
went on to dedicate more than 100 works to her
– these included the storyline and score to a film,
The Portrait of Daisy Hamilton, in which he saw
himself and Harvey in the starring roles.
Married with five children, Koechlin always
avoided meeting the object of his infatuation.
Instead, he sent his wife to meet her – and to
show her some of his latest musical tributes.
Anton Bruckner: Numbers (and death)
Bruckner is now widely believed to have
displayed some form of obsessive-compulsive
disorder. He certainly did exhibit a condition
known as numeromania: a compulsion to count
things. Bricks and windows in buildings, bars in
each section of his vast symphonies: Bruckner
would enumerate them religiously. He would
also plan the number of bars for an entire
symphonic movement before composing its
GETTY, ALAMY, SCRIABIN MEMORIAL MUSEUM
first note. This rigour has led many reviewers to
comment on the mathematical precision, even
the architectural quality, of his symphonies.
This obsessive personality also led to a
profound interest in death and dead bodies.
When his mother passed away, Bruckner had
a photograph taken of her on her death bed and
kept it in his teaching room as his only memento
Composers’ obsessions
Eccentrically Erik
Satie’s strange world
Of all composers, Erik Satie
of her. There are also accounts that, when is perhaps most deserving
the corpses of Beethoven and Schubert were of the label ‘obsessive’.
exhumed and moved to a different cemetery in Witness his dress phases
Vienna, Bruckner made sure that he was there to over the years: a fondness
for priestly robes was
touch and kiss the skulls of both.
followed by seven identically
coloured velvet suits. His
Alexander Scriabin: final ‘look’ was the neat
The occult and the ‘mystic chord’ bourgeois gentilhomme,
Scriabin spent much of his life obsessed with the sporting bowler hat, wing
occult and religious symbolism. For example, he collar and umbrella.
was a devotee of Theosophy, the 19th-century Food was also bound
movement that aimed to furnish its followers by strict (and unusual)
with psychic and spiritual powers. rules. In his Mémoires d’un
This lifelong fascination reached its musical amnésique, he stipulates he
eats only ‘food that is white:
culmination with the so-called ‘mystic chord’,
eggs, sugar, grated bones,
which he believed represented divine powers in the fat of dead animals,
musical form. A hexachord (six-note chord), the veal, salt, coconuts, chicken
‘mystic chord’ is built on intervals of a fourth – A, cooked in white water,
D sharp, G, C sharp, F sharp and B. Scriabin, who fruit-mould, rice, turnips,
claimed to see colour in sound, believed that the camphorated sausages,
chord had a ‘smoky’ colouration. pastry, cheese (white
The chord made its first appearance in his varieties), cotton salad and
1910 symphonic poem, Prometheus: The Poem of certain kinds of fish.’
Fire, where it opens the piece with a strange mix More broadly, Mémoires
of calm and foreboding. Loosely based on the evokes a rigid daily itinerary:
‘I rise at 7:18; am inspired
Greek myth of Prometheus, this 20-minute work
from 10:23 to 11:47. I
is scored for an orchestra, piano soloist, optional lunch at 12:11 and leave
choir… and, for one New York performance only, the table at 12:14. A
a clavier à lumières – a ‘colour organ’ which would healthy ride on horseback
project a different coloured light for each note. round my domain follows
For the remaining five years of his life, the from 1:19pm to 2:53pm. 
‘mystic chord’ would feature in almost all of Another bout of inspiration
Scriabin’s compositions, including four of his from 3:12 to 4:07pm. From
five remaining piano sonatas. The composer’s 4:27 to 6:47pm various
occupations (fencing,
lifelong interest in mysticism was designed to
reflection, immobility, visits,
be heard (and seen) at its fullest in Mysterium, a
contemplation, dexterity,
large multimedia piece that he left unfinished swimming, etc.). Dinner is
at his death. Scriabin envisaged a multi-sensory, served at 7:16 and finished
seven-day experience, performed in the at 7:20pm. From 8:09 to
foothills of the Himalayas and bringing spiritual 9:59pm symphonic readings
enlightenment to audiences. Alas, the ambitious (out loud). I go to bed
project died with its creator. regularly at 10:37pm.’
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 47
Egyptian allure
Call of the Nile
With its pharaohs, hieroglyphs, mummies and
gods, Egypt has long fascinated composers, keen
to capture its unique allure, says Claire Jackson
T
he pencil-drawn diagrams are
meticulous, noting the contents
and whereabouts of their author’s
discoveries. A map depicts a bird’s
eye view of one room, showing a pile of wheels;
another shows a series of steps. The documents
– recently displayed at Weston Library in
Oxford as part of ‘Tutankhamun: Excavating
the Archive’ – describe the discovery of the first
known intact royal burial from ancient Egypt
that became a world-famous archaeological find.
But long before Howard Carter and co’s 1922
haul, the land of the pharaohs had proved an
irresistible draw, with a fascination for the early
dynasties frequently translated into music.
Biblical connections were a focus for the likes of
Handel (Israel in Egypt), Rossini (Moses in Egypt;
Moses and Pharaoh) and Anton Rubinstein
(Moses), whose works were based on the Old
Testament’s deliverance of the Israelites, while
the ‘Arabian Dance’ from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite
No. 2 evokes a historian who visits the Sphinx,
and Philip Glass’s 1983 opera Akhnaten explores
the titular pharaoh’s monotheism.
Interest in the mysterious world of mummies
and hieroglyphs was stirred when merchants
began importing curiosities from their
travels, generally acquired by dubious means
(tomb looting was common until the early
20th century). Collectors such as Giovanni
Battista Belzoni (1778-1823) paved the way
for Egyptology to become an area of academic
study, usually defined as the period from the 5th
JANE HOBSON, GETTY
millennium BC to the 4th century AD.
The dry climate of Egypt supported the
survival of ancient musical instruments such
48 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Walk like an Egyptian:
Anthony Roth Costanzo
in the title role of Glass’s
Akhnaten in director Phelim
McDermott’s production
(right); (below) Saint-Saëns
(with stick) and Egyptologist
Georges Legrain visit the giant
granite scarab at Karnak
as end-blown flutes and pipes played originally
with single or double reeds, harps and trumpets
(see box, p50), providing evidence of music in
this early civilisation. Pythagoras is believed to
have investigated musical theory in Egypt before
moving to mathematics and Plato is said to have
praised its practice of the art form.
Western composers have often approximated
these Middle Eastern modal flavours in their
interpretations. In his Egyptian March –
commissioned for the inauguration of the Suez
Saint-Saëns pays a
nod to a Nubian folk
song he heard sung
by Nile boatmen
Canal in 1869 – Johann Strauss II combines
the popular polka style with off-beat rhythms
and unexpected accidentals. Saint-Saëns took
a similar approach in his ‘Egyptian’ Piano
Concerto No. 5 . Composed in 1896 in Cairo
during one of his winter jaunts to warmer climes,
Saint-Saëns’s work was not strictly observing
the music of his surroundings – only the central
movement shows any real departure from the
Parisian tonalism of the day, with a nod to a
Nubian folk song he heard sung by Nile boatmen.
As we might expect from the mind that brought
us Carnival of the Animals, Saint-Saëns references
the chirruping crickets and ribbetting frogs
he heard during his stay through a repetitive,
delicate figuration in the solo part.

Such Western appropriations vary in terms
of taste and reliability. Films like The Egyptian
(1954), The Mummy (1999) and, most famously,
the Indiana Jones franchise present ancient
Egypt with overblown, kitsch colonialist
imagery. One of the more extreme examples is
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat:
in the 1999 film (with Donny Osmond in the
title role), Egyptian bigwig Potiphar is seen
counting his money on a triangular abacus,
while his wife – Joan Collins! – appears in a
figure-sculpting dress with a Nefertiti-esque
headdress. Meanwhile, the pharaoh removes
his Tutankhamun death mask to reveal an Elvis
quiff, before recounting his dreams in a 1950s
rock ‘n’ roll show, layering parody upon parody.
Director Phelim McDermott was keen to avoid
such tropes in his 2016 production of Glass’s
Akhnaten. Despite a highly inventive staging,
the ancient Egypt setting is recreated through
sparse, block colour backgrounds and bold
oversized costumes. Anthony Roth Costanzo has
sung the title role multiple times, at both the New
York Met and English National Opera, where the
work is revived again this spring. It has become
a career-defining piece for the US countertenor,
who not only sings complex music in Egyptian
nearly constantly for three hours, but appears on
stage naked – and virtually hairless.
‘Someone passed me in the street and said
“Oh, there’s Akhnaten”,’ says Costanzo. ‘It does
feel like method acting. I don’t always look
forward to shaving my head – it has a strange
effect of making me feel like an alien in my
real life but that I belong when I’m on stage.’ As
the sun king and high priest, Akhnaten would
have been depilated; Costanzo’s hair removal is
just one aspect of his commitment to the role,
which has involved consultation with experts
including Richard Bruce Parkinson, professor
of Egyptology at Oxford University. ‘I wanted
to understand the source material. Of course,
if you try to be a facsimile that might not feel
authentic, so it was about balancing that,’ says
Costanzo. ‘When you have three hours of very
repetitive music it is crucial to understand what
the characters’ motivations might have been and
maintain audience attention.’
Costanzo certainly does that. Over the course
of three acts, we follow Akhnaten’s rise to power,
his marriage to Nefertiti and their introduction
of proto-monotheism centred on the sun god
Aten. It’s a performance that is admired by both
music fans and, perhaps surprisingly, historians.
Last autumn, to coincide with ‘Tutankhamun:
Excavating the Archive’, Costanzo was awarded
a visiting fellowship at Oxford, where he spoke
about Egyptology and opera, and performed
pieces linked with the exhibition. ‘The Akhnaten
libretto juxtaposes original sources and the
audience has to create the story; in basic terms
that’s also what an historian does,’ observes
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 49
Egyptian allure
A call to arms?:
James Tappen plays
Tutankhamun’s trumpet
Harbinger of doom
A cursed instrument
The modern myth of
Tutankhamun’s curse
arose after the death of
Howard Carter’s patron Lord
Carnarvon (below) shortly
after the tomb’s discovery,
and quickly became part
of popular culture. The
orientalising obsession
reignited in 1939, when
a trumpet that had been
found among Tutankhamun’s
belongings was played in a
BBC broadcast from Cairo
Museum by bandsman
James Tappen.
A modern mouthpiece was
used, damaging the silver
instrument. Perhaps it was
this, and the belief that the
trumpet would have been
used in a military setting, that
led to the scaremongering
that the performance caused
the onslaught of World War II.
The mystery continues into
the 21st century – among
items stolen from Cairo’s
Egyptian Museum, only
to be anonymously
returned a short time
later, the trumpet
was said to have
been blown a
week before the
2011 Arab Spring.
To hear its
sound, incidentally,
– surprisingly
powerful for an
object that had
been silent for
thousands of years –
head to Ghost Music on
GETTY
BBC Sounds.
50 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Golden sands:
the pyramids at Giza
provide the backdrop for
Verdi’s Aida, 1998; (below)
Tutankhamun’s Shoes, 2022
Parkinson. ‘That’s where history and art happen,
in that space between the evidence.’
The sandy backdrop of Cairo Opera’s 1998
production of Aida took authenticity a step
further – the performance took place in the
shadow of illuminated Giza pyramids, and a
1987 staging was held outside the 3,000-year-
old Temple of Amenhotep III in Luxor. (Very)
loosely based on a true story, Verdi’s beloved
opera is one of the most famous examples of
ancient Egypt in music. Cairo’s Opera House
opened in 1869 with Rigoletto, but archaeologist
Auguste Mariette persuaded the Turkish
governor of Egypt to commission an ‘Egyptian’
opera about Radamès, who wants to lead the
Egyptian army against the invading Ethiopians
and be with Aida, a captured Ethiopian princess.
But there’s a catch: the Egyptian princess
Amneris is smitten with Radamès, and a
complex love triangle ensues. The opera has, of
course, been staged and recorded many times,
and the Royal Opera House presents a new
production this season, with Angel Blue as Aida.
With its distinctive culture and captivating
geography – the Sahara Desert, Red Sea and
Nile River – life in ancient Egypt seems far
removed from contemporary concerns. But
works such as Aida focus on the
social constructs that transcend
civilisations – and Akhnaten
has an underlying storyline that
appeals to modern audiences.
‘He portrayed himself as having
feminine characteristics –
or perhaps he actually had
those characteristics – so he is
something of a symbol for gender
fluidity,’ explains Costanzo.
This is represented musically
through the countertenor’s weaving arias, which
generally occupy the range roughly comparable
with a mezzo-soprano, sometimes arching above
the melodies sung by Nefertiti. ‘His otherness
has attracted people throughout history,’ adds
Parkinson. Akhnaten’s impact is recognised by
Glass, who places the Egyptian king alongside
Albert Einstein (Einstein on the Beach) and
Mahatma Gandhi (Satyagraha), with the opera
forming part of a trilogy about individuals
driven by convictions that altered history.
There is, of course, always room for artistic
licence: Akhnaten – also known as Amenhotep
IV – can be spelled ‘Akhenaten’, but Glass
chose the version without the second ‘e’ as three
syllables are easier to sing than four. His choice
in Pharaoh is also up for discussion. ‘For history
as written by the ancient Egyptians, Akhenaten
actually didn’t have that much impact; after his
reign ended, he was written out of history,’ says
Parkinson. ‘The real potential of his role as an
historical figure came with the rediscovery of
the city of el-Amarna, and public awareness
increased with the Tutankhamun discovery.’
In short, what’s most interesting about ancient
Egypt is our interest in ancient Egypt, a topic
subversively explored by English Touring Opera
in its 2022 piece Tutankhamun’s
Shoes, written by ETO general
director Robin Norton-Hale and
composer Rosabella Gregory. In
this children’s opera, Nefertiti –
now an immortal cat – narrates
the dual stories of Carter and
Tutankhamun, simultaneously
teaching young audiences about
the roaring twenties and the
ancient world – all through music,
of course.
 Schumann
FOR CLARA mainstream and pre-
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Mason Bates

An orchestral odyssey
In the footsteps of Prokofiev and Britten, with assistance from a sprite
and an A-list team, American composer Mason Bates has created a
new audiovisual guide to the orchestra; he explains all to Tom Stewart

A
s the camera pans from orchestra
to audience in the final scene of Tár,
we learn just how far the mighty
conductor has fallen. We first met her
many indiscretions earlier, as she was preparing
to record a complete cycle of Mahler symphonies
with the Berlin Phil. Now she finds herself
directing a provincial performance of music
from a video game, with a giant projection screen
behind the orchestra, players wearing click-track
headsets and an audience done up in elaborate
fantasy cosplay.
TODD ROSENBERG
to scoff at in Tár. But does this offer anything to
artists beyond boosted revenues? US composer
Mason Bates certainly thinks so. His audiovisual
guide to the orchestra, Philharmonia Fantastique,
uses the same set up and, later this month, will
receive its European premiere by the Aurora
Orchestra at London’s Southbank Centre.
‘Orchestras have really locked down a new
medium with the projections and the click
tracks,’ Bates tells me from his studio outside
San Francisco. ‘I thought it would be really fun
to write for it specifically, rather than just seeing

In reality, live orchestral performance has them do Home Alone or something every year.’
found necessary new eyes and ears in recent years Philharmonia Fantastique was first performed
thanks to events just like the one we’re invited last spring and recorded by the Chicago

52 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

 A magical mystery tour:
(clockwise from left) Sprite
inside the flute; dodging the
whip; Mason Bates and team
film the flute’s interior; a poster
for Philharmonia Fantastique;
(below left) Mason Bates

Symphony Orchestra, one of the six American

ensembles that first commissioned it (the
others being Dallas Symphony Orchestra,
National Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony
and the American Youth Symphony). The
25-minute work comprises a ‘concerto for
orchestra’ with live electronics and a charming
What happens Finding Nemo. It was directed by Gary Rydstrom,
whose seven Oscars include Best Sound for
animation, projected behind the players, of a when you push a Titanic and Jurassic Park.
two-dimensional ‘sprite’ who goes on a magical The orchestra is a complex being that can take a
mystery tour of the instruments on stage. valve on a tuba? little explaining for the uninitiated. The two best
‘Animation is the perfect medium for showing
people the way the orchestra works,’ says Bates.
I had to show known works that do this are Prokofiev’s 1936
Peter and the Wolf and A Young Person’s Guide to
‘There’s so much technology involved – what this in the music the Orchestra, which Britten wrote in the months
happens when you push down the valve on a immediately following World War II. In between
tuba, or press the pedal on a timpani? I had to while making came Fantasia, Walt Disney’s 1940 animated
think very carefully about how to show all this
in the music at the same time as making sure
sure everything feature that brought composers from Bach to
Musorgsky to the attention of the cartoon-
everything still made musical sense.’ still made watching public. All three have endured, but the

PXVLFDObVHQVH
The animation was led by Jim Capobianco, Prokofiev in particular is regularly re-recorded
whose previous credits include Pixar’s Oscar- with new celebrity narrators: you can watch
winning Ratatouille as well as The Lion King and Viola Davis on YouTube with the LA Phil and

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 53


Past masters:
(clockwise from left) a poster
for Disney’s Fantasia; Viola
Davis narrates Peter and The
Wolf; the premiere recording of
Bates’s Apple-inspired opera
Gustavo Dudamel in 2021, for example. As Bates
points out, however, there hasn’t been a new
work like these ones for quite some time.
Like Fantasia (and unlike the others),
Philharmonia Fantastique is a wordless work
that relies on the animation, live-action shots of
the players and the score itself to tell the story.
The music erupts from a glittering, primordial
soup of sound, the players racing up and down
the harmonic series and, on screen, a stave
stretching out ahead of the audience like the
famous opening of the Star Wars films.
Bates’s music is slick and shiny – it’s an There’s a
exciting, action-packed score with nothing to
scare anyone off and plenty to keep young ears moment when
engaged. The same goes for Capobianco’s playful
and colourful animation. ‘As I was writing the
Sprite goes inside
music, I was constantly communicating with Jim the flute and Jim
about what visuals he thought could work,’ Bates
says. ‘I’d never really storyboarded anything asked how she got
like that before, but he would be sitting there
scribbling all these different sketches. There’s a there – did she
moment when Sprite goes inside the flute and I
remember Jim asking how she got there – did she
trip and fall, or
trip and fall or did she climb in out of curiosity? did she climb in
It felt like a minute detail, but he was trying to
figure out the motivation of the character on out of curiosity?
screen, which then helped me create a sound and
a motivation for it in the score.’
When Britten was asked if he adapted his
GETTY
musical language for the young audience of his
Mason Bates
1945 score, he responded that he ‘never really
worried that it was too sophisticated for kids
– it’s difficult to be that for the little blighters’.
When I ask Bates the same question, he says that
Philharmonia Fantastique ‘had to have a kind of
clarity to it’. His solution was to give each section
of the orchestra its own distinct sound. ‘You had
to be able to hear when the families started to sing
each other’s tunes, to speak each other’s tongues,’
he says. ‘I wanted those interactions to be obvious
– the music couldn’t just be underscoring what
you can see on screen. I wanted to connect the
orchestra to different sides of contemporary life.’
There’s ‘film noir’ for the woodwinds, he says,
and ‘drum corps’ for the percussion. Then comes
the romantic, lyrical string writing, and techno
brass that reminds me of when a military band
at the 2017 Bastille Day celebrations played a
medley of songs by Daft Punk.
Bates was born in Philadelphia in 1977 and
studied composition at Juilliard with Samuel
Adler, John Corigliano and David Del Tredici.
When he was in New York, he began to try his
hand at DJ-ing, though it wasn’t until he moved
to California, aged 21, that it began to play a more
important role in his musical life. ‘San Francisco
was a total party town,’ he says. ‘It was during the
tech boom and basically every space in the Bay
Area had a DJ playing in it. For a while it was just
something I did on the side, but later I began to
integrate it into the other things I was writing.’
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 55
Mason Bates

Instrumental takes: (clockwise

from main picture) Mason
Bates and violinist Asuka Yanai
in the studio; Bates DJ-ing;
Benjamin Britten

Tread carefully:
Sprite explores the
keys of an oboe

An animator’s tale
Jim Capobianco on his role
I joined the project just
as Mason started work
on the score. Usually the
animation comes first and
the music comes next, but
for Philharmonia Fantastique
we were collaborating all the
way through because we had
to work together to tell the
story without any dialogue. Nowadays, the pops and crackles of a drum younger composer’s affinity with Californian
One example is the scene machine might be the most characteristic culture is clearest in his 2017 opera The
where Sprite jumps between electronic sound in Bates’s scores – listen to (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, an account of the Apple
the different sections of the Philharmonia Fantastique for an idea of how they founder’s life. ‘It was the stuff of opera,’ Bates
orchestra. Mason wanted
permeate the textures – but there’s much more says. ‘He lived in such an intensely artistic white
to show how the different
families of instruments were besides. ‘If you have speakers set up on stage then heat; there was so much passion, betrayal and
divided up, so director Gary you can have whatever sounds you want. You can obsession. All the animalistic elements you need
Rydstrom and I came up with have a recording of a spacewalk from the outer for an opera were there already.’
the idea of her looking down The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs has been
on the players from above,
with each section a different
‘DJ-ing was something programmed multiple times since its first
run, while the Santa Fe Opera’s recording of it
colour and interacting
almost like a game of ‘Simon
I did on the side, but won the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Opera
recording. ‘I think one of the reasons the piece
Says’. Mason took the idea
away, came up with the
later I integrated it into has done so well is that the medium of opera
allows you to get closer to the essence of a
music, and then we added in
the animation. music I was writing’ story than, say, film, which is so much more
representational,’ says Bates, adding that it may
There are a few moments
when we pay homage to atmosphere or something from the bottom of the also have something to do with the fact so many
Disney’s Fantasia. I’ve ocean.’ It was the latter he drew on for Whalesong, of us use Apple technology on a daily basis. ‘We
always loved the graphical commissioned by the BBC and given its first all carry him around in our pocket,’ he says.
element where the players performance at last year’s CBeebies Prom. That may be true, but does Bates feel a more
in Bach’s D minor Toccata The addition of electronic sound design personal connection to Jobs? ‘Absolutely. It was
and Fugue were silhouetted gives Bates’s already glossy and confidently almost meta-fictional, doing all this work in
against the coloured constructed scores an extra layer of polish. a studio filled with Mac equipment,’ he says.
backdrop – I do the same Where Philharmonia Fantastique is concerned, ‘Steve Jobs’s basic vision was that you’d have
thing in Philharmonia
comparisons with A Young Person’s Guide to the almost no division between your thinking and
Fantastique. But the
strongest connection with Orchestra are difficult to resist, and one here the device you’re holding, almost as if it was a
might help to illuminate things for anyone who musical instrument. That part really resonated
GETTY, TODD ROSENBERG

Fantasia is the way neither

of these works uses words, hasn’t heard Bates’s music before. Structural with me.’ In some ways, that’s what Philharmonia
relying instead on the score and conceptual differences aside, it’s a bit like Fantastique is doing too: revealing function via
and the picture working hearing Britten through the prism of one of form and blurring the line between the two, all
together to create the story. Bates’s early noughties Bay Area DJ sets. The the while looking and sounding stylish.

56 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

The Way Ahead with MOZART
PIANO CONCERTOS
SOMM Nos. 21 & 24
Robert Levin | Richard Egarr
NE W RELEASES AAM resumes a landmark project
begun in 1993 to record Mozart’s
complete works for keyboard
and orchestra.
SOMMCD 0664-2

J S Bach
Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord
Adrian Butterfield / Silas Wollston

This ninth volume is released after an

extraordinary 20-year wait, and will be
followed by the four final volumes
SOMMCD 0665

later this year and in 2024.

Buy | Stream | Download

Songs by Eric McElroy
James Gilchrist / Eric McElroy

Worldwide Distribution
www.somm-recordings.com Pre-order all five volumes at aam.co.uk
MUSICAL DESTINATIONS
Gstaad Switzerland
The hills are alive with the sound of music in Saanenland, home of the
violinist Yehudi Menuhin’s enduring festival, finds Charlotte Smith
T
he Swiss Alps are home to some of
the most dramatic scenery in the
world – and taking the three-hour
train journey from Geneva to Saanenland
does not disappoint. Lakes of the deepest
blue; dense forests and lush, green
farmland; waterfalls and majestic peaks
make the journey a rare screen-free treat:
check your phone at your peril, for you
may miss a natural marvel.
It’s little wonder, then, that Yehudi
Menuhin was so enraptured with the
region, making the town of Gstaad his
58 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
family home in 1957. A summer season of
concerts, suggested by the region’s head of
tourism, was all the incentive the violinist
needed to set up a festival here, and what
began with two modest performances
featuring Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears
and French cellist Maurice Gendron
gradually grew each year under Menuhin’s
stewardship to incorporate several months
of chamber, symphonic and operatic
concerts – and, in 1977, the introduction
of the International Menuhin Music
Academy for elite young performers.
Captivating beauty:
the church of Gsteig plays host
to chamber delights; (opposite)
Sandrine Piau and Christoph
Filler in The Magic Flute, 2022;
(opposite bottom) Yehudi
Menuhin in Gstaad, 1988
Today the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and
Academy is thriving under the direction
of Christoph Müller, former manager
of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, who
assumed control of the event 20 years
ago. Every summer, two months of top
class music-making do much to ensure
the region is now known for more than its
ski-friendly slopes, luxury hotels, designer
shops and royal vacationers. It was Müller
who steered the festival to calmer waters,
following several years of turbulence
under the more radical direction of

violinist Gidon Kremer, whose ‘artistic
goals,’ the Gstaad website remarks tactfully,
‘were not congruous with the previous four
decades marked by Yehudi Menuhin’.
Among the many innovations of
Müller’s tenure have been the 2014
introduction of an annual three-week
Gstaad Conducting Academy for ten
selected participants (from an average of
250 applicants), a week-long orchestral
course for ‘ambitious amateurs’ and a
comprehensive digital arm, which since
2017 has made available online a great
number of orchestral performances and
masterclasses – and during two years of
Covid disruption proved to be invaluable.
True to the festival’s origins, chamber
music remains at its heart, but there are
also choral and opera performances,
concerts with an ‘unconventional
character’, concerts in unusual places,
‘Discovery Concerts’ for children,
performances and open masterclasses
featuring Gstaad Academy young
musicians, all of whom receive free tuition
following a rigorous audition process –
plus concerts featuring the Gstaad Festival
Orchestra, since 2017 under the direction
of Jaap van Zweden, and of which Müller is
especially proud.
‘The ensemble is comprised of leading
orchestral musicians from around
MELANIE UHKOETTER, SIMON FOWLER, GETTY
Switzerland, such as Bern, Basel or Zurich,’
Müller explains. ‘There is a core of around
15 players who have been coming back
to play every season for years. They put
together their own sections of players,
and this is a great system, as they are
responsible for the high quality of the
orchestra. But the ensemble also has the
character, energy and excitement of a
project orchestra, as the players come
together just once a year – it feels special,
as we don’t know if that particular energy
will ever be repeated.’
‘It feels special, as we
don’t know if that
particular energy will
ever be repeated’
‘Vienna – Beethoven Delayed’ was the
theme of the 2022 season, which I attended
for three days at the end August, affording
me the opportunity to take in a concert
performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute
in the impressively large and acoustically
enhanced Gstaad Festival Tent. A pure-
voiced Sandrine Piau as Pamina teamed
with tenor Jeremy Ovenden in the role of
Tamino, and a show-stealing Rocío Pérez
MUSICAL DESTINATIONS
Guiding light:
Renaud Capuçon
champions young
musicians in Gstaad
Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad
The ‘other’ festival
Since 2001, winter in Saanenland has
played host to Sommets Musicaux
de Gstaad, an annual nine-day
festival uniting young musicians and
world-class artists. Violinist Renaud
Capuçon has served as artistic
director since 2016, and in 2023 the
cello was in the spotlight under the
guidance of Steven Isserlis.
Each year, the festival awards
the Thierry Scherz Prize to one of its
young musicians, enabling them to
record their first CD, while the André
Hoffmann Prize recognises the
best interpretation of a piece by the
season’s composer-in-residence.
as a menacing Queen of the Night. Les
Talens Lyriques under Christophe Rousset
provided a crisp backdrop.
The next day I headed to a small,
Baroque church in the nearby town of
Gsteig to hear Sibelius Competition-
winning violinist Christel Lee – a 2022
Menuhin Heritage Artist – perform
alongside cellist Jonathan Roozeman and
pianist Yekwon Sunwoo. The atmosphere
in the intimate space contrasted perfectly
with the grandeur of the previous evening
– and the opportunity to hear Beethoven’s
‘Archduke’ up close and personal
(alongside Haydn and a new commission
by Martin Wettstein) demonstrated just
how flexible the festival has become.
The 2023 season, entitled ‘Humility’,
looks set to offer an equally exciting
range of over 60 concerts – with a timely
emphasises on ‘nature and other issues not
entirely within our control’. Roll on July!
Further info: gstaadmenuhinfestival.ch
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 59
Composer of the month
Composer of the Week
is broadcast on Radio 3
at 12pm, Monday to
Friday. Programmes in April are:
3-7 April Hildegard von Bingen and
Isabella Leonarda
10-14 April Sullivan
17-21 April Poulenc
24-28 April Joseph Haydn
Steve Reich’s style
Phasing… Reich’s early tape pieces
introduced the concept of phasing –
the gradual shifting and overlapping of
musical cells. This was later developed
in a canonical way, with pieces
requiring players to layer multiple
recordings of themselves (see below).
The ‘phases’ emerge as one part
changes tempo slightly, while the other
remains
constant.
…and
processing
Reich has
used the
term ‘process
music’ to
describe his
work, suggesting that it is important
that the compositional parameters are
audible. Pieces such as Pulse (above)
are often considered kaleidoscopic;
the gradual structural movement is
clearly identifiable.
Pandemic-proof During the Covid
lockdowns, works such as Vermont
Counterpoint (1982) – from the
counterpoint series that can be
performed either by individual
musicians and recorded versions of
themselves, or ensembles – were
ready-made for self-sufficient soloists
such as Claire Chase, who played
piccolo and bass flute parts along to
her pre-recorded flute sections during
an online concert.
To cap it all On stage or in press
shots, Reich is rarely seen without
his baseball cap. For him, the hat is
an important part of his Judaism. ‘In
synagogue I have a regular yarmulke
on, but outside I wear the hat,’ he told
Canada’s The Globe and Mail.
60 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Steve Reich
In developing a unique soundworld as he
tackles fraught subjects, the American has
proved hugely influential, says Claire Jackson
ILLUSTRATION: MATT HERRING
A
way from the kettled crowd, a
group awaiting evacuation began
tapping a beat on one side of the
shipping containers. The rhythm was
picked up by others, who mimicked the
motif through claps and stamps, creating
a surprisingly musical expression of
discontent. The outburst took inspiration
from Steve Reich’s Clapping Music, the
piece that had been performed by the
composer and David Cossin at Bloc
Festival in London Pleasure Gardens just
hours before the ill-fated 2012 event was
curtailed due to overcrowding.
Initially written by Reich when on
tour with his band in Belgium in 1972 –
The reception for Reich’s Four Organs at
Carnegie Hall in 1972 was practically riotous
marvelling over the amount of kit they
travelled with, he decided to compose a
work that could be played independently,
any time, any place – that same percussive
piece had been performed shortly before
Bloc Festival at a late-night Prom held
to mark the composer’s 75th birthday.
Last summer, Clapping Music featured
in a piano recital at Aldeburgh Festival.
Reich’s music is as likely to be heard at
an open-air gig with dubious health and
safety precautions as in Snape Maltings’s
Britten Studio or the Royal Albert Hall. As
Radio 3’s Tom Service put it, the 86-year-
old American is ‘the most influential
composer on the planet’.
It wasn’t always this way. When
conductor Michael Tilson Thomas
invited Reich to contribute a piece to
a series he was curating for the Boston
Symphony Orchestra’s 1972-3 season, he
was delighted to discover Four Organs,
the 1970 work based on repeated, subtly
interlocking patterns. It fitted perfectly
with the programme themed around
multiples – pieces that feature more than
one of the same instrument – and was
performed alongside Liszt’s Hexaméron for
six pianos. The reception in Boston was
mixed; when the concert was repeated at
Carnegie Hall, it was practically riotous.
The audience ‘became so unruly that in
spite of the fact [the performance] was
heavily amplified, we couldn’t really
hear one another anymore!’ says Tilson
Thomas in Conversations, a selection
of transcriptions derived from Zoom
calls Reich made during the 2020 and
’21 lockdowns that has been published
as a quasi-memoir. ‘I began shouting
out numbers… In retrospect, I realised
that that’s exactly the description that
Stravinsky had of the performance of The
Rite of Spring, when Nijinsky was standing
on a chair in the wings yelling out the
numbers to the dancers.’
The reference to Stravinsky’s notorious
1913 Paris premiere is apt. The ballet
was one of the first pieces to have an
impression on Reich. ‘I had never heard
anything like it,’ he tells composer David
Lang in Conversations. It was this work,
along with Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg
Concerto and music by Charlie Parker,
that led Reich to study music – albeit
as a secondary subject to philosophy,
which he majored in at Cornell. As he
has often recounted, while early
COMPOSER OF THE MONTH

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 61

COMPOSER OF THE MONTH
music, particularly Gregorian chant, and
20th-century tonal composers including
Stravinsky and Debussy thrilled him,
he was – and remains – unmoved by the
Classical and Romantic eras. There is a
much duplicated, but important, anecdote
about Reich’s post-Juilliard studies
with Luciano Berio, who at the time was
committed to serialism. Upon considering
Reich’s latest attempt to integrate 12-tone
ideas, the Italian advised: ‘If you want to
write tonal music, write tonal music.’
Whether or not Berio’s comment was
intended to be disparaging, it was certainly
instructive: Reich refocused efforts on
finding his own method. This led him to
experiment with tape loops, a technique
now closely associated with the Reich
sound. It’s Gonna Rain (1965) uses a short
recording of a preacher uttering the titular
words; the spliced snippet gradually shifts
until the lyrics are barely perceptible. This
piece and the subsequent Come Out (1966),
which uses a recording of a member of the
Harlem Six describing his time in jail, are
considered some of the earliest examples
of minimalism.
In New Music: the Avant-Garde since
1945, the British composer and critic
Reginald Smith Brindle asserts that ‘the
school of “minimalism”, which began
around 1970, had the specific aim not
only of simplicity and non-cerebralism
but of reducing demands on the listener’s
perception and intellect to a minimum.
Minimalist music is therefore directed
towards a specific public – listeners who
prefer to avoid the stress and turmoil of
the “music of our time”, or indeed wish
to evade our times altogether.’ But there’s
nothing relaxing about Reich’s tape works
– the frenzied religiosity of It’s Gonna
Rain was invoked to reference the Cuban
GETTY
missile crisis, and his later pieces Different
62 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Trains (1988) and WTC 9/11 (2010), both
composed for the Kronos Quartet, refer
respectively to the Holocaust and the
September 11 terrorist attacks, neither of
which might be described as light topics.
Much of Reich’s music benefits from
driving polyrhythms that come from his
early years as a percussionist. Drumming
(1970) was inspired by a visit to Ghana,
which he had to cut short due to a bout of
malaria. The resulting piece uses Reich’s
Different Trains and
WTC 9/11 refer to
the Holocaust and
September 11 attacks
then-established phasing (see ‘Reich’s
style’, p60) and an arching structure
similar to the African bell pattern format.
It signified a turning point in his music
– and, later on, Colin Currie’s career.
The Scottish percussionist formed an
ensemble specifically to perform the work
in celebration of the composer’s 70th
birthday at the 2006 BBC Proms. The
Colin Currie Group is now internationally
acclaimed as a Reich specialist and has
performed Drumming around the world.
Percussion and pianos feature
prominently in Reich’s paint box. Music
for 18 Musicians (1974-6) – scored for
violin, cello, voice, piano, clarinets,
marimba, maracas, metallophone and
xylophone – established a distinctive
tonal palette. When, in 1986, the St Louis
Symphony Orchestra commissioned
Three Movements, the largest-scale
piece Reich had written at that time, he
added two pianos, two vibraphones and
two marimbas, citing Bartók’s Music
for Strings, Percussion and Celesta as
his inspiration. Subsequent ensemble
pieces follow a similar instrumentation:
Variations for Vibes, Pianos and Strings
(2005) is scored for three string quartets,
four vibraphones and two pianos; and
Pulse (2015) is for winds, strings, piano
and electric bass. In 2006, BBC Music
remarked that Reich’s collaborations with
orchestras were ‘a passing phase’. The
composer, perhaps reading these hallowed
pages, has recently returned to the larger
format: Music for Ensemble and Orchestra,
the 2018 piece commissioned, premiered
and recorded by the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, foregrounds multiple
soloists in a nod to the Baroque concerto
grosso. It is a companion piece to 2016’s
Runner; both follow the arching structure
heard in earlier works.
Meanwhile, Reich explored various
offshoots to what might be reductively
described as his rhythm-driven works.
‘The Desert Music was a conscious
thickening of the plot harmonically,’ he
says in Conversations. ‘It pushed me to
think about darker subject matter which
called forth more non-scale tones as part
Applause for thought: (left) Steve Reich discusses
Clapping Music with percussionist Colin Currie
at Zankel Hall, New York, 2014; (far left) Reich’s
teacher Luciano Berio, 1966; (bottom) with Sonny
Rollins at the Polar Prize in Stockholm, 2007
of the harmony’. That subject matter
was the biblical associations of the Sinai
peninsula and sinister modern activities
carried out in Alamogordo in New Mexico,
pegged onto texts by the American poet
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963).
The resulting work for chorus and large
orchestra bears the Reich hallmark –
quadruple woodwind and large percussion
section plus two pianos – with a marked
difference in style facilitated by the
requirements of writing for voice.
The Desert Music opened up an altered
version of the Reich soundworld. Together
with his partner, artist Beryl Korot, he
went on to co-create The Cave (1990-
93), a three-act opera that reveals the
importance of the Cave of the Patriarchs
– a location cited in both the bible and
the Koran – to different groups of people.
While many productions now use video
installations and digital art, The Cave was
one of the first projects to do so, leading
Reich and Korot to describe the piece as
‘audio-visual music theatre’.
The ostinato-led, propulsive melodies
that so offended the Carnegie Hall
audience are now firmly embraced by
the establishment. In 2009, Reich was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for
Double Sextet, a chamber piece driven
by pianos and vibraphones (of course).
To mark his 85th birthday in 2021, the
Southbank Centre hosted the Colin Currie
Group in the UK premiere of Traveler’s
Prayer, a work that sets text from the
Old Testament. The ensemble recently
gave the first US performance of the
same piece as part of a much-anticipated
commemorative concert in Reich’s honour.
The venue? Carnegie Hall.
STEVE REICH Life&Times
1936
LIFE: Steve Reich is born on 3 October
in New York. When his parents
separate, his life is divided between
New York and California, necessitating
long train journeys between the two.
TIMES: In the US presidential election,
Franklin D Roosevelt enjoys a landslide
victory over Alf Landon, who wins just
eight electoral votes out of 531.
1965
LIFE: Following studies in New York
1970
LIFE: He travels to Accra for five weeks
and California, he produces his first to study at the University of Ghana with
major composition, It’s Gonna Rain for the drummer Gideon Alorwoyie. The trip
magnetic tape, in which he breaks new inspires his 90-minute work Drumming
ground with the following year.
his ‘phasing’
technique. TIMES: Protests against the Vietnam
War increase when, having previously
TIMES: Soon stated his aim to de-escalate the conflict,
after releasing President Nixon orders US forces to begin
his Bringing It operations in neighbouring Cambodia.
All Back Home
album, Bob
Dylan finds himself booed by some of
his fans at the Newport Folk Festival,
Rhode Island, when he performs with
2002
LIFE: Co-written with his wife, the visual
an electric band for the first time. artist Beryl Korot, his science-based
opera Three
Tales focuses
1988 LIFE: His
the Hindenburg
explosion, nuclear
testing on Bikini
Different Atoll and the
Trains development of
for string Dolly the Sheep.
quartet TIMES: The American journalist Daniel
and tape Pearl is kidnapped by Islamist jihadists
contrasts his on his way to an interview in Karachi,
childhood Pakistan. He is later beheaded by his
journeys captors, who claim that he is a spy.
in the US
with those
of Jewish
children
under
2013
LIFE: The London Sinfonietta gives the
the Nazis. The Kronos Quartet’s world premiere of his Radio Rewrite, a
recording of it wins a Grammy. work inspired by British group Radiohead’s
TIMES: At the Summer Olympics Kid A and In Rainbows albums.
in Seoul, US sprinter Florence TIMES: Daniel Day-Lewis’s
Griffith Joyner sets a new portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in
world record in the 200m Lincoln wins him the Academy
as she wins gold medals Award for Best Actor, making
in the 100m, 200m and him the first person to win the
4x100m relay. category on three occasions.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 63
 Building a library
Sergei Rachmaninov
All-Night Vigil (Vespers)
The composer’s love of the music and rituals of the Orthodox Church
were distilled in this masterpiece; Daniel Jaffé finds the best recording
The composer
Aged 41 at the time of the All-
Night Vigil’s first performance,
Rachmaninov’s life had by this stage
encompassed significant peaks and
troughs. The deepest trough had come
in 1897 when, conducted by a possibly
drunk Alexander Glazunov, his First
Symphony had suffered a disastrous
premiere, leading to three years of
depression and writer’s block that
was only remedied by psychotherapy.
Among the highs were the huge
success of his Second Piano Concerto
in 1901, his marriage to Natalia Satina
and the birth of their two daughters,
and the adulation that accompanied
him on tours to Europe and the US.
Building a Library
is broadcast on Radio 3
at 9.30am each Saturday
as part of Record Review. A highlights
podcast is available on BBC Sounds.
64 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
The work
World War I had been raging for less than
a year when Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil
was premiered on 23 March 1915 (or 10
March, according to the pre-Revolutionary
Russian calendar) . The all-male voice
Moscow Synodal Choir, presenting a
charity concert in aid of the war wounded,
had been given special permission to
perform the work in Moscow’s Great Hall
of the Noble Assembly. With nationalist
feelings running high and the public’s
appetite for Orthodox Church music
growing, Rachmaninov’s a cappella
He desired to create a work true to the spirit
of the services he recalled from childhood
masterpiece was a hit; within a month,
the choir gave four further performances.
As Rachmaninov confessed some
years afterwards, the Synodal Choir’s
performance ‘gave me an hour of the
happiest satisfaction… the magnificent
Synodical singers produced any effect I
had imagined, and even surpassed at times
the ideal tone-picture I had had in my
mind when composing this work.’
Rachmaninov had loved Orthodox
Church music since his visits, aged about
ten, to the churches of St Petersburg
accompanying his devout maternal
grandmother. As he later recalled, he
often made his way beneath the gallery
to relish ‘singing of unrivalled beauty’ by
the cathedral choirs. While a student at
the Moscow Conservatory, he composed
a choral concerto which was noticed by
Stepan Smolensky, the formidable scholar
of ancient znamenny chant and Orthodox
Church traditions. As director of the
Synodal School, Smolensky was already
instigating a glorious renaissance in
Orthodox music, largely fulfilled by such
pupils of his as Alexander Grechaninov,
Pavel Chesnokov and Alexander
Kastalsky. Recognising Rachmaninov’s
talent, Smolensky encouraged him to write
further liturgical works, one suggestion
being the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom;
Rachmaninov eventually composed this
in close consultation with Kastalsky,
completing it the year after Smolensky’s
death in 1909.
During the winter of 1914-15, following
Russia’s disastrous Battle of Tannenberg,
Rachmaninov was filled with a desire
to create a work true to the spirit of the
Orthodox services he fondly remembered.
A recent performance of his Liturgy had
left him dismayed by the work’s apparent
inadequacy, and he now wished to write
something more authentically Russian,
using ‘the magnificent melodies’ he
recalled from childhood.
Kastalsky, told of his latest ambition,
promptly sent Rachmaninov the Obikhod,
the collection of venerable chants used by
the Russian Orthodox Church. In all, ten
of Rachmaninov’s 15 movements are based
on ancient chants from that collection,
the remainder (movements 1, 3, 6, 10 and
11) being based on melodies of his own

invention – ‘a conscious counterfeit of the
ritual’, as he himself described them.
Dedicated to Smolensky’s memory,
Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil (also known
in English, misleadingly, as his Vespers)
is essentially a concert work rather than
one for liturgical use. Lasting just over an
hour – or rather longer if including optional
liturgical chanting – it falls broadly into
two sections. First, the Vespers (Nos 1-6),
involving hymns which recall the world’s
history from its Creation leading to
Christ’s birth. This includes a movement
particularly close to Rachmaninov’s heart,
the Song of Simeon, which ends with the
basses descending to a tenebrous low B flat,
a sonic parallel to the sun descending
beyond the horizon in the course of the
service. Matins (Nos 7-15), the work’s more
lively and dramatic half, anticipates dawn,
symbolic of both the birth and resurrection
of Christ. Its highlights include No. 8,
‘Praise the name of the Lord’, with its
dramatic change of mood as the church,
having been in near darkness, is fully lit,
and the royal doors are opened. Then
follows the most dramatic movement,
recalling Christ’s resurrection (and
GETTY
including a passage Rachmaninov quoted
decades later in the climax of his final
orchestral work, the Symphonic Dances).
Rachmaninov’s attempt to better his
earlier Liturgy succeeded magnificently.
While the Liturgy is very much a
late-Romantic creation, the All-Night
Vigil appears almost timeless with its
harmonic restraint and clear roots in the
old chants; yet it also shows a remarkable
sophistication, through Rachmaninov’s
use of long-term harmonic tension allied
with some audacious masterstrokes
involving his dramatic use of entries by
different combinations of voices.
BUILDING A LIBRARY
Historic tradition:
St Petersburg Chamber Choir
sings the All-Night Vigil;
(below) Russian prisoners
after the Battle of Tannenberg
The Vigil’s score offers fairly sparse
tempo directions, Rachmaninov having
assumed that his performers would be
familiar with how its various liturgical
hymns were traditionally sung. However,
after the Russian Revolution of 1917, that
Orthodox tradition was soon repressed,
and the All-Night Vigil was scarcely
heard until Alexander Sveshnikov’s
pioneering complete recording of 1965
(then available strictly for export or
educational purposes). Unfamiliar with
the tradition Rachmaninov had taken for
granted, Sveshnikov and his successors
were faced with sometimes gnomic tempo
indications: the instruction Ne skoro (‘Not
hurried’) that heads the joyous movement
No. 8 has prompted a range of tempos from
Sveshnikov’s very slow and stately 70 beats
per minute (bpm) to the quite brisk and
exuberant 120 bpm of Nikolai Korniev’s
1993 recording. Arguably, such problems
raised by the score have only been solved
since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Turn the page to discover our
recommended recordings of
Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 65
BUILDING A LIBRARY
The best
g Faithful to the letter and the spirit
recordin
Peter Jermihov (conductor)
Gloriae Dei Cantores
Paraclete Recordings GDCD 063
It’s been often claimed that Sveshnikov’s
1965 recording – considered by many the
best all-round among Soviet and Russian
productions – is somehow ‘authentic’.
Which is remarkable, since his USSR State
Academic Russian Choir was essentially a
radio ensemble that regularly performed
Soviet mass songs and opera choruses
rather than liturgical music. While there’s
no denying the impressive sound and
heft of its basses, in several respects the
choir’s sound and style – with its often
woeful, wavering tenors, and its sopranos
66 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
A powerful sound:
Peter Jermihov’s
combined choirs
provide plenty of heft
over-sentimentalising the music with
‘expressive’ scoops between notes – would
have dismayed leading choir trainers of
Rachmaninov’s time.
Today, thanks to scholars such as
Vladimir Morosan, we know a great deal
more about the choral style Rachmaninov
expected. Meanwhile, several recent
The warm and rich-toned
choir gives an engaging
and uplifting performance
recordings match the best Russian choirs
for vocal heft and outclass them in accurate
pitching and ensemble while also showing
a greater awareness of the performance
tradition Rachmaninov wrote for.
Best of these is Peter Jermihov’s 2017
recording, involving the combined
forces of the American Gloriae Dei
Cantores and voices from Saint Romanos
Cappella, Patriarch Tikhon Choir and
Three other
great recordings
Matthew Best
(conductor)
The Corydon Singers’
chant-free 1990
recording was the
first by a Western
choir to match significantly the heft of
Russian choirs while trumping them
in accuracy of tuning and ensemble.
Despite initial disappointments – the
opening chorus, though glorious, sounds
a touch stilted, while the alto soloist in
the second movement is accurate but
lacking in character – this becomes a
compelling account, particularly through
the dramatic Matins sequence, thanks
to Matthew Best’s superb direction and
his instinct for the right tempo, as in the
joyous No. 8. (Hyperion CDA 30016)
Risto Joost (conductor)
Those attuned to
the wilder sounds
of Russian choirs
may be suspicious of
Leipzig’s MDR Radio
Choir’s highly polished singing. Yet
this consummate account, recorded
in 2016 under Risto Joost’s direction,
scrupulously follows Rachmaninov’s
score, and although the singers’
expressiveness is understated, the
sense of joy at No. 8 is palpable, the
rhythms dance-like and infectiously
pointed. There is also a strong sense of
cumulative drama through the Matins
section, and a suitably awestruck quality
the Washington Master Chorale. The
resulting choir is a bit smaller than what
Rachmaninov had in mind, yet the
sopranos and altos’ relatively powerful
adult voices easily balance the superb
lower male voices, of which the bass
section includes no fewer than seven basso
profundos (or ‘octavists’), far more than
were available for the work’s premiere.
The performance’s authentic Slavic
flavour is further enhanced by the
impressive bass of Vadim Gan singing the
Deacon’s part, and by two soloists from the
National Opera of Ukraine, mezzo Mariya
Berezovska and tenor Dmitry Ivanchenko.
 in the penultimate movement before the
final celebratory hymn. (Genuin GEN 17476)
Steven Fox (conductor)
Endorsed by Morosan,
no less, this recording
– made in 2020 but
only just released – is
exceptionally fine
in many ways. Steven Fox’s long and
empathetic relationship with the work
tells throughout, and his Clarion Choir,
relatively small but exceptionally well
balanced, has a very fine complement
of low basses and a particularly fine
tenor soloist in John Ramseyer. There’s
just one blemish: the choir loses
pitch through the long Resurrection
sequence (No. 9), so the next movement,
supposedly in the same key, starts a
semi-tone higher. (Pentatone PTC5187019)
And one to avoid…
Valery Polyansky’s
live 1986 recording
with the USSR
Ministry of Culture
State Chamber Choir
used to be regularly
recommended ‘for a performance that
comes from the centre of the tradition’.
The choir certainly sounds focused
and sings reliably in tune – unlike any
other 20th-century Russian recording
of the work – and its contralto soloist
is the legendary Irina Arkhipova,
albeit rather past her prime. Alas, the
choir’s performance sounds dutiful yet
dispirited throughout, and apparently
quite disengaged with the text.
In the generous resonance of Orleans’s
Church of the Transfiguration – captured
in atmospheric sound, particularly on
SACD – the choir sounds warm and
rich-toned, yet with the altos summoning
a clarion edge for their first entry in
the dramatic Resurrection sequence
(No. 9). The practicalities of performing
in such an acoustic means that some of
Rachmaninov’s dynamic contrasts can
appear rather muted; and tempos are a
SIM CANNETTY-CLARKE
touch on the stately side, though in No. 8
this accentuates the bell-like accents.
Altogether, this is an engaging and
uplifting performance.
Continue the journey…
We suggest five works to explore after Rachmaninov’s All-Night Vigil
F
or more choral
Rachmaninov, try
his earlier Liturgy of
St John Chrysostom.
Although he eventually
dismissed it as unworthy
of the Russian Orthodox
services of his childhood, it
is a fine work whose main sin
is to sound obviously a work
of the late-19th century in its
expressive harmonic style.
(Flemish Radio Choir/
Kaspars Putniņš Steinberg composed
Glossa GCD 922203).
Russian Orthodox
Passion Week while
music’s turn-of-the- war convulsed Russia
century renaissance
would have been impossible without
the precedent of Tchaikovsky’s setting
of the St John Chrysostom Liturgy. It is
often said to be more of historic than
of musical importance – his publisher
won the court case against the Imperial
Chapel who had insisted on its right to
oversee and censor all music performed
in the church – but one has only to
hear the magnificent choral outburst of
‘Come, Let Us Worship’ to appreciate
Rachmaninov’s debt to this earlier
work. (USSR Ministry of Culture State
Chamber Choir/Valery Polyansky
CDK Music CDK0085).
An important mentor for Rachmaninov
while he composed his major liturgical
settings was Alexander Kastalsky
Unearthing choral gems:
Tenebrae sings works
by Chesnokov; (below)
Maximilian Steinberg
(1856-1926), himself a
highly regarded and prolific
composer of church music.
His settings of the Great
Doxology (which form part of
the hymns of the Orthodox
Vigil), composed 1904-05,
offer several pre-echoes of
Rachmaninov’s Vigil, and
are among his many fine
works worth getting to know.
(Conspirare/Craig Hella
Johnson Harmonia
Mundi HMU 807526).
A close colleague
civil of Kastalsky’s and
like him a pupil of
the great Smolensky,
Pavel Chesnokov (1877-1944) in his 500
or so religious choruses uses a harmonic
restraint similar to Rachmaninov’s Vigil
yet distinctly his own. His ‘Gentle Light’
and ‘Cherubic Hymn’ well exemplify his
understated, succinct yet effective style.
(Tenebrae/Nigel Short Signum SIGCD 900).
Finally, a surprising and long-buried
work by a teacher of Shostakovich’s,
Maximilian Steinberg (1883-1946) –
furthermore, composed between 1920-
23, largely while civil war convulsed
Russia after the Revolution. Not heard
in full until 2014, his Passion Week, like
Rachmaninov’s Vigil, makes extensive
use of Orthodox chants with masterful
use of a richly divided choir. (The Clarion
Choir/Steven Fox Naxos 8.573665).
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 67
 Reviews
Recordings and books rated by expert critics
Welcome
Who is your favourite
conductor? Some
of mine are in the
following pages. There’s
something about the
great baton wavers, isn’t
there? Is it their power,
personality, or their way with, well,
the waving? This month John Wilson
delivers stunning Vaughan Williams
(our Orchestral Choice), Marin Alsop
conducts Kevin Puts, Rattle brings
Beethoven, Muti mulls over Mascagni,
and Mehta offers a slice of Strauss. We’ve
also a last recording with the RLPO from
Vasily Petrenko and a first from his new
home at the RPO.
Plus, there are fine discoveries
from composers Lotta Wennäkoski,
Pamela Harrison, Margaret Bonds and
the Boulanger sisters, as well as our
occasional trip around the globe in the
World music round-up.
Michael Beek Reviews editor
This month’s critics
John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Terry Blain,
Kate Bolton-Porciatti, Geoff Brown, Michael
Church, Christopher Cook, Martin Cotton,
Christopher Dingle, Misha Donat, Jessica Duchen,
Rebecca Franks, George Hall, Malcolm Hayes,
Julian Haylock, Claire Jackson, Daniel Jaffé,
Erica Jeal, Stephen Johnson, Berta Joncus, John-
Pierre Joyce, Erik Levi, Natasha Loges, Andrew
McGregor, David Nice, Roger Nichols, Freya Parr,
Ingrid Pearson, Steph Power, Paul Riley, Jan
Smaczny, Sarah Urwin Jones, Kate Wakeling
KEY TO STAR RATINGS
+++++ Outstanding
++++ Excellent
+++ Good
++ Disappointing
+ Poor
68 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
RECORDING OF THE MONTH
A rewarding finale to
this reimagined Bach
Phantasm’s revelatory The Well-Tempered
Consort trilogy of recordings comes to an
oustanding close, says Ingrid Pearson
JS Bach
The Well-Tempered Consort
III – Fantasia in G major
‘Pièce d’orgue’, BWV 572;
plus selections from The
Well-Tempered Clavier,
Books I & II, Clavier-Übung
III and Inventions and
Sinfonias (arranged for
three, four and five viols by
Laurence Dreyfus)
Phantasm
Linn Records CKD708
65:14 mins
The Well-Tempered Consort
III marks the completion of
Phantasm’s triptych in which
selections of keyboard music
by Johann Sebastian Bach
are recast as chamber music
for a consort of viols. Since
the ensemble was founded by
Laurence Dreyfus in 1994 it
has garnered a well deserved
international reputation both
on the concert platform and in
the recording studio. Recent
projects include The Art of
Being Human, an acclaimed
interdisciplinary collaboration
combining 16th- and
17th-century music with dance
and fine art, conceived for and
realised in the Pierre Boulez
Saal of Berlin’s Barenboim-
Said Akademie.
JS Bach played the viol, his
affection for the instrument
permeating both sacred and
secular works. The viol was
also held in high esteem by
his contemporaries Johann
Christoph Weigel and Johann
Philipp Eisel, who recognised
the sweet pleasure it brings the
listener, according it a status
as one of the most delicate
instruments when played well.
The 27 tracks on this album,
Phantasm’s seventh for Linn,
are drawn primarily from
the two books of Bach’s Well-
Tempered Clavier, and the third
volume of the Clavier-Übung
where Lutheran doctrine is
manifest in music. We are also
treated to two of the sinfonias
and the Gravement section
from the G major Fantasia

Authority and elegance:
Phantasm performs
these Bach redressings
with complete convicition
or ‘Pièce d’orgue’, BWV 572.
Dreyfus’s arrangements of this
music, variously for three, four
or five viols, bear testimony
to the fluidity of a musical
work, an aspect which Bach
himself exploited. Judiciously
chosen tempos, elegant
melodic inflection, delicate
tempo rubato and textural
sensitivity combine to showcase
the acoustics of Berlin’s
Altglienicke Evangelical
Church. Dreyfus’s programme
notes are characteristically
erudite and informative.
Reimagined for a trio of viols,
the F major Prelude and Fugue
from the second book of the
Well-Tempered Clavier conveys
the tender melancholy of this
MARCO BORGGREVE
key noted by 18th-century
writers. Arranged for four viols,
three Kyries from the Clavier-
Übung blend the sacred and
the profane. Their harmonic
ingenuity is here revealed anew
through the timbre of bowed
string instruments, especially
in the two chorale prelude
fughettas, BWV 672 and BWV
674. Sixteen numbers celebrate
Bach’s harmonic
ingenuity is revealed
anew through the
timbre of strings
Bach’s command of fugal
writing, including the sprightly
B minor Fugue from WTC,
Book II and the D major Fugue
(WTC, Book I) with its synthesis
of the French overture. Of three
fugues from the Clavier-Übung,
the complex counterpoint in
the monumental Fuga super
Recording of the Month Reviews
CHOIC
E
Jesus Christus, unser Heiland,
BWV 689 achieves a profound
clarity in this version for four
viols. The album’s absolute
zenith is the final track, where
we hear all five players in the
middle Gravement section of
the G major ‘Pièce d’orgue’.
Coupled with an authority
and conviction one rarely
encounters, this intensely
moving and highly intimate
music-making reduced me to
tears on my first hearing.
This is a truly outstanding
album, which rewards the
listener with profound aural
pleasure. Through the intimacy
of the viol consort these
keyboard works are clothed in
a new timbral mantle, equally
sumptuous and revelatory.
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Performer’s notes
Laurence Dreyfus
What do you feel now, looking
back at this project?
It has been an incredible journey.
At the very beginning I didn’t really
have a clue how deeply we were
going to get into this whole idea
of transforming Bach. The more
we enriched ourselves in this
amazing world, all of a sudden
these links, together with the
older English traditions and the
way that we’ve developed ways
of playing them, came together in
the most extraordinary way.
Have you discovered more about
Bach as a result?
Absolutely. For one thing, I love
organ music but I didn’t really
have an intimate relationship
with a lot of the repertoire. The
discovery there was that these are
some of the most harmonically
adventurous pieces that Bach
ever composed, and he was able
to do this by going back to the
16th-century traditions and at the
same time modernise them in his
own very peculiar way. As soon
as you start untangling these
strands and start playing them as
chamber music, you feel you are
with him on the compositional
page on some level.
What were the biggest
challenges in this third volume?
The B minor Fugue has wild string
crossings that do appeal to the
idea of a sort of Bariolage violin
effect; it was an unbelievable
challenge to get it together.
Other pieces had little filigree,
quick, scary things going on,
with Bach emerging almost as
an expressionist composer – as
in the A minor Fugue. That was
a challenge, too, and I thought,
‘Are these really going to work?!’
I’m thrilled we were able to
surmount some of the challenges,
technically and musically.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 69
Orchestral
ORCHESTRAL CHOICE
Resplendent English works
in truly magnificent sound
John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London have taken
VW’s Tallis Fantasia to a new level, says Terry Blain
Delius • Elgar • Howells
• Vaughan Williams
Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas
Tallis; Howells: Concerto for String Orchestra;
Delius: Late Swallows; Elgar: Introduction and Allegro
Sinfonia of London/John Wilson
Chandos CHSA5291 (CD/SACD) 65:33 mins
Sixty years ago the Sinfonia of
London under John Barbirolli The Sinfonia of London’s dividends. Howells’s less
released a recording of Vaughan
strings bristle with
Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme
by Thomas Tallis which rapidly vitality and definition
gained classic status. John
Wilson’s new version with that revived orchestra sets
a stunning benchmark for the digital generation.
The sound, engineered by Ralph Couzens, is
magnificent. Catching the full resplendency of
CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU, WOUTER JANSEN
Vaughan Williams’s multi-part string writing, it also
vividly defines the acoustic spaces occupied by the
solo quartet and two string orchestra groups. For
those listening in stereo or surround-sound to the
high definition SACD layers, the dramatic advantages
accrue further. While fully relishing the at times
dreamy polyphony of Vaughan Williams’s textures,
70 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
A talent for texture:
John Wilson’s Vaughan
Williams has great form
Wilson’s Fantasia has sharp, impassioned edges too,
and a telling poignancy in leader John Mills’s solos.
Barbirolli’s LP also contained a vintage account
of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for Strings, and
Wilson’s surging new recording at least matches
it. The Sinfonia of London’s string playing bristles
with vitality and definition, and Wilson’s slightly
more urgent tempos also reap
familiar Concerto for String
Orchestra consciously channels
the influence of both Vaughan
Williams and Elgar. Those
who know Howells only by his choral works may
be surprised by the biting angularity in much of
the concerto’s string writing realised by Wilson’s
thrillingly incisive performance. Delius’s Late
Swallows is a warmly affectionate bonus track.
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
You can access thousands of reviews from our
extensive archive on the BBC Music Magazine
website at www.classical-music.com
JS Bach
Organ works (arr. for orchestra
by Judith & Tineke Steenbrink)
Holland Baroque
Pentatone PTC 5186 971 (CD/SACD)
56:42 mins
Violinist Judith
Steenbrink and
her harpsichord
and organist
sister Tineke
have assembled
and transcribed for strings and
woodwind several pieces from
Bach’s treasury of organ music.
In doing so, they have avoided
previously well-aired items in favour
of less familiar music. Best known
in the programme are Nos 2 and 5
of the Organ Sonatas Bach allegedly
wrote for his eldest son, Wilhelm
Friedemann, as part of his organist’s
training. Their texture lends itself
to sympathetic transcriptions,
reminding us that, perhaps, not all
the music was originally intended
for solo organ. Oddly, though, the
centrally placed Largo of the C minor
Sonata, BWV 526 has been omitted.
Also of interest is the Concerto,
BWV 592, transcribed by Bach for
solo organ after a violin concerto
by the young Prince Johann Ernst
of Saxe-Weimar. Here we have a
chamber orchestra version, based
on the two scores, though with a
different slow movement, taken
from the D minor Oboe Concerto by
Alessandro Marcello, which Bach
transcribed for solo organ, BWV 974.
Of the remaining pieces, the
most substantial are the celebrated
Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582,
and the Fugue associated with the
‘Great’ Fantasia, BWV 542. The
menu is rounded off with a lively
arrangement of the vibrant New
Year Fantasia, In dir ist Freude,
BWV 615. Nicholas Anderson
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Bartók
The Wooden Prince; Dance Suite
WDR Sinfonieorchester/
Cristian Măcelaru
Linn Records CKD 714 74:14 mins
Though The
Wooden Prince,
the second of
Bartók’s three
stage works to
be composed,
may be the least known of these,
that is no reflection of its musical

strengths. Cristian Măcelaru’s
new recording with the WDR
Sinfonieorchester, of which he is
chief conductor, is vividly appealing
and captured in sound of great
warmth, even lushness. But then the
score is more lush than its sometime
companion piece, the opera Duke
Bluebeard’s Castle.
First heard in 1917 in Budapest,
The Wooden Prince was repeated
the following year in a double bill
when Bluebeard was premiered,
and the two works share a librettist
in Béla Balázs. Unlike the opera,
however, the ballet has a happy end,
yet that does not preclude some
dark psychologising along the way,
and Măcelaru’s interpretation has
a drive that captures the obsession
of the prince for a seemingly
unattainable princess.
Debussy and Wagner cast
shadows over this rich score, and
though the Dance Suite dates from
only a few years later (1923), it
already shows the composer much
more deeply immersed in folk
music. Indeed, it draws inspiration
from Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak
and even Arabic sources.
Here the Romanian conductor
and his Cologne orchestra could
perhaps be just a little spikier:
these fine musicians produce
a tremendous sound, but this
music surely calls out for a greater
astringency of the sort heard in
such recordings as that of Zoltán
Kocsis. On its own terms, this is still
an exciting performance, one that
builds through the Dance Suite’s six
movements towards an invigorating
and typically Bartókian finale.
John Allison
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Bruckner
Symphony No. 9 (Nowak edition)
Vienna Philharmonic/
Christian Thielemann
Sony Classical 19658729902 57:38 mins
Christian
Thielemann’s
Bruckner 9 is not
for those who
like a patient
monumentalism
in this composer. Its opening
movement, while never rushed,
keeps edging anxiously forward,
with frequent tempo tweaks
suggesting existential unrest and
an underlying emotional febrility.
The Vienna Philharmonic strings
are especially impressive, incisively
nuanced in the tremolandos of the
Symphony’s opening paragraph,
and scarifying in the heavy-booted
brass episode mid-movement.
Unusual amounts of piquant
woodwind detail surface in
Thielemann’s fleet-footed
Scherzo, especially in a virtually
frolicsome account of the Trio. And
while there’s trenchancy in the
movement’s outer sections, there’s
also a nimble, Mendelssohnian
lightness which keeps the music
refreshingly aerated.
At 23:40 Thielemann’s finale
is significantly quicker than his
video recording of the Ninth with
the Dresden Staatskapelle (on
C Major), and some may prefer
a greater spaciousness in this
deeply consequential movement.
The orchestral playing is, though,
extraordinarily eloquent, powerful
where necessary but infused with a
rare tenderness.
For Thielemann the Ninth is, it
seems, less a universal theological
meditation on last things and more
a highly personal quest for spiritual
quietude. His interpretation has
intimacies hard to find in other
versions, and a vulnerability
movingly communicated in the
Vienna Philharmonic’s super-
empathetic playing. Terry Blain
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Mozart
Symphony No. 1 in E flat;
Symphony No. 41, ‘Jupiter’;
Piano Concerto No. 43 in A,
K488
Il Pomo d’Oro/
Maxim Emelyanychev (piano)
Aparté AP 307 78:15 mins
This is the first
volume of a
project to record
Mozart’s complete
symphonies
alongside a choice
of his other works – here, one of the
piano concertos, showcasing Maxim
Emelyanychev’s skills both as pianist
and conductor. Imaginatively,
rather than working through the
symphonies in chronological order,
each programme will explore
different stages of the composer’s
development. The presence here of
Mozart’s first and last creations in
the genre highlights the vast musical
journey he travelled in the 24 years
between them.
Symphony No. 1, written by the
visiting child prodigy in London
in 1764, follows the example of a
prominent local resident, Johann
Christian Bach; the three-movement
result shows astonishing technical
command and, understandably,
little individuality as yet. Il Pomo
d’Oro’s period style and approach
suits a work which, like this one,
perches on the cusp between
the Baroque and Classical eras.
Whether or not something warmer-
toned would bring out more of the
Classical-age musical riches of
the ‘Jupiter’ Symphony is a matter
for debate. Given the underlying
premise, the orchestral playing
here has a panache and high-speed
accuracy whose impressiveness
can’t be argued with. More eyebrow-
raising is Emelyanychev’s way
with the A major Piano Concerto,
K488. He performs this on a replica
1823 Graf fortepiano whose dry
tone comes across as artistically
constricting. And while his
Orchestral Reviews
Bach bedecked:
Holland Baroque plays
lively arrangements
instinct to search out his solo part’s
expressive detail by drawing out its
phrasing is compelling in itself, it too
often feels at cross-purposes with
the more tight-reined orchestral
accompaniment. Malcolm Hayes
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
R Strauss
Symphonia Domestica
Munich Philharmonic/Zubin Mehta
Munich Phil MPHIL0026 48:12 mins
This is a 24-hour
saga of family
life as seen
through the eyes
of a constantly
nodding great-
grandfather. Fair enough, Zubin
Mehta was 85 when he made this,
his second recording of Strauss’s
much-maligned symphonic
metamorphoses on a handful
of themes; but the composer as
conductor had just turned 80 in his
own very impressive interpretation
recorded in Vienna 1944 – and that’s
a good six minutes quicker. ‘Lebhaft’
(lively) doesn’t seem to be a word
in Mehta’s lexicon here. Taking it
slowly allows for clarity of textures
in Strauss’s spider-web of sound
– and the Munich Philharmonic,
especially translucent woodwind,
do it proud – but I gave up when
the final romp (marked ‘very lively
and cheerful’, complete with horns
whooping up to near-impossible
notes which don’t matter at a fast
speed) continued to stagger home.
The best stretches are in the very
extended, four-part slow movement:
an exquisite solo-woodwind weave
at the start of the ‘composer at work’
sequence, a grand if not exactly
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 71
Orchestral Reviews
orgasmic climax for the lovemaking
scene, and wistful trills in the
Debussyan dream sequence. Lovers
of the score might also find it of
interest to be able to hear everything
in a carefully-taken family quarrel/
double fugue, but this performance
simply doesn’t bring enough to life
of a vivid strip-cartoon. Get hold
of Marek Janowski’s recording,
and you can have the rarity Die
Tageszeiten as well. The hybrid title
Strauss chose, with ‘Symphonia’
rather than ‘Sinfonia’, should always
be preferred, and I’ve no idea what
the cover art is supposed to convey.
David Nice
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
Vaughan Williams
Sinfonia antartica (Symphony
No. 7); Symphony No. 9
Elizabeth Watts (soprano); BBC
Symphony Orchestra & Chorus/
Martyn Brabbins
Hyperion CDA68405 78:42 mins
Slowly but
appreciably,
perceptions
of Vaughan
Williams’s
Seventh and
Ninth symphonies have been
changing. Well, an age that has no
difficulty accepting the symphonic
credentials of Mahler’s Third or
Strauss’s Alpine Symphony has no
credible excuse for ruling Sinfonia
antartica out of court. There have
been recordings, Haitink’s for
instance, that have stressed the
purposeful evolution that holds
everything together, possibly at the
expense of atmosphere and sound
imagery. But Martyn Brabbins, fresh
from the experience of conducting
the film score that grew alongside
this symphony, strives for a bold
balance: cohesion, yes, but with each
musical ‘scene’ given the time and
loving attention it needs to open out
like a cinematic vista. The result is
music which, like the Mahler and
the Strauss, creates vivid pictures but
within the context of a compelling,
ultimately moving macro-narrative.
The superb recording helps, as do
some wonderful solo performances,
not least soprano Elizabeth Watts
leading a truly chilling pack of
ice-sirens.
The Ninth, in its very different
way, is just as magnificent, its
soundworld sombre, moody and
granitic as the Antartica is extreme
in its dark-bright contrasts. What
72 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
the two works have in common,
Brabbins shows, is that sense of very
slow background momentum, like
the movement of giant ice sheets
or tectonic plates. Then there are
those saxophones: warmer and
more teasing than the Antartica’s
inhuman human voices, but voices
all the same, which likewise seem
to connect in some mysterious way
with the essence of the landscape
which, Vaughan Williams half-
revealed, inspired the music.
This could be just the recording
both these symphonies need.
Stephen Johnson
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Lotta Wennäkoski
Flounce; Sigla*; Sedecim
*Sivan Magen (harp); Finnish
Radio Symphony Orchestra/
Nicholas Collon
Ondine ODE 1420-2 47:12 mins
Back-to-back
centenaries
helped prompt
two of the pieces
on this life-
affirming release
of recent orchestral music by Lotta
Wennäkoski (b1970). 2017 marked
the centenary of her native Finland’s
independence – an anniversary
noted by the BBC Proms, who
commissioned the composer’s
action-packed Flounce. Here, with
an adroitness matched in each
work by Nicholas Collon’s Finnish
Radio Symphony Orchestra, it
Life-affirming music:
composer Lotta
Wennäkoski
makes a big impression
opens proceedings with far more
than the bang its title suggests:
as well as describing gestural
dramatics, ‘flounce’ is a tailoring
term for a decorative hem, and
Wennäkoski artlessly weaves the
dual implications through five short
yet intricately detailed minutes.
Now powerfully extrovert, now
light and airy – and everywhere
vibrant with colour – the contrasts
offer a compressed template for the
work’s beguiling lengthier siblings.
Sedecim (‘Sixteen’), was composed
in 2016 to celebrate 100 years of
the Sibelius Academy Symphony
Orchestra. Its three movements stem
from very different aspects of 1916,
with homages to Edith Södergran’s
poetry and Erkki Melartin’s
music framing a harrowingly
eerie picture of poisoned WWI
‘red zones’. Together they form a
substantial triptych, the orchestra
explored with tremendous verve in
a modernist idiom distinguished by
its invigorating lightness of touch.
The 2022 harp concerto Sigla
was written for its superb soloist,
Sivan Magen. By turns buzzing,
skittering, delicately pointillist
and richly luminous, it plays on
the title’s various meanings as
jingle, enthusiasm – and sailing.
Wennäkoski’s succinct description
of the harp as the ‘motor that brings
the colours of the orchestra to life’
barely hints at the brilliance of her
soundworld. Steph Power
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Atmosphere and
Mastery
Brahms: Symphony No. 3;
C Schumann: Piano Sonata*; Piano
Trio in G minor**; Three Songs†;
Quatre pièces fugitives, Op. 15**;
R Schumann: Symphony No. 3
†Adrianne Pieczonka (soprano),
Yōsuke Kawasaki (violin), Rachel
Mercer (cello), *Gabriela Montero,
**Stewart Goodyear, †Liz Upchurch
(piano); Canada’s National Arts
Centre Orchestra/Alexander Shelley
Analekta AN 2 8882-3 131:38 mins (2 discs)
The story of
Robert and Clara
Schumann and
their relationship
with Johannes
Brahms provides
the central force of this superb
collection. It has the air of a festival,
with music in a variety of formats.
What’s more, it demonstrates
palpably the impact of their human
relationships on their compositions.
Alexander Shelley places at its
heart the third symphonies of Robert
Schumann (the ‘Rhenish’) and
Brahms; hearing the two together
points up just how far the latter
pays tribute to the former. The main
theme of Brahms’s first movement
comes from a little closing motif
in the Schumann; and matching
hemiolas swing through the rhythms
of both opening allegros. In clear-as-
daylight booklet notes, Jan Swafford
demonstrates the palpable presence
of the Schumanns in Brahms’s work
which, far from being as ‘pure music’
as was once believed, is chock-full
of musical references to the beloved
couple who set him upon his path.
Shelley and the orchestra respond
to this emotional world with suitably
impassioned accounts, using tempos
that are energetic yet spacious
enough to steep us in, for instance,
the full effect of the extraordinary
juxtaposed harmonies in Brahms’s
third movement.
With the symphonies, there’s a
feast of Clara Schumann: her Piano
Sonata, played with sensual relish
and gleaming tone by Gabriela
Montero, three great songs with
full-blooded singing from Adrianne
Pieczonka, and the fabulous Piano
Trio of 1846 in the expert hands
of Stewart Goodyear, Yōsuke
Kawasaki and Rachel Mercer. If
only she had written a symphony or
three. Jessica Duchen
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING ++++
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Concerto
CONCERTO CHOICE

Arabella Steinbacher’s treasurable Bach

Julian Haylock basks in the glow of the violinist’s performance of the concertos

the orchestral lines through. This is

especially revealing in the E major
Concerto (No. 2), where the masking
Bach • Arvo Pärt of important leading voices often
JS Bach: Violin Concertos Nos 1 & 2; creates the strange impression of
Concerto for Two Violins*; Bach marking time while he ambles
Arvo Pärt: Fratres; Spiegel im Spiegel through harmonic transitions. Not
Arabella Steinbacher, here, however, as Steinbacher nimbly
*Christoph Koncz (violin); keeps everything fresh and vibrant,
Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra shaping her phrases in the timeless
Pentatone PTC 5187 017 68:56 mins central Adagio with a captivating
Bach’s three surviving violin inner glow that is unforgettable.
concertos (two solo, one double) have And in the Double Concerto there
been recorded by the most illustrious is absolutely no sense of ‘star’ and
names, but with ‘guest’ players, but
the exception of Steinbacher shapes a true collaboration
Alina Ibragimova that in the famous
(whose sensational
her phrases with a slow movement
Hyperion disc captivating inner glow finds both
exchanges the violinists musically
Double Concerto for three expert entwining with a naturalness that
solo reconstructions), I can’t recall captures the music as if spellbound
them being played so sensitively as by its radiant genius.
here by Arabella Steinbacher. Steinbacher bookends the Bach
Where Menuhin, Oistrakh and concertos with Pärt’s Fratres (with
Szeryng (all outstanding exponents strings and percussion) and Spiegel Sensitive approach:
of the post-Romantic tradition) view im Spiegel (with piano), in which she Arabella Steinbacher
has a radiant tone
the solo line as being of prime interest demonstrates the same hypnotic
throughout, Steinbacher weaves voicing of cantabile lines that makes
in and out of Bach’s contrapuntal her Bach so treasurable.
You can access thousands of reviews from our extensive archive on
textures, occasionally reducing her PERFORMANCE +++++
the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
tone to a radiant pianissimo to allow RECORDING +++++

those well-worn phrases with
yearning intensity and a sense of
introspective awe. Then, as the
movement proper gets underway,
Vasily Petrenko rightly plays
down the cello and bass pizzicatos
to a true piano un poco marcato
– comparison with Isaac Stern’s
music-in-meltdown classic with
Eugene Ormandy (CBS/Sony) finds
the ‘fabulous’ Philadelphian lower
strings relishing those ominous
descending minor thirds with full-
throttle forte abandonment.
Similarly, Yoo floats the aching
phrases of the slow movement
with a moving tendresse that
subtly pulls the listener into a
magical world of half-whispered
correspondences, whereas Stern at
his most incandescent plays every
note with a pulsating longing that
exerts irresistible pressure on the
tear ducts. Interestingly, in the
Adagio appassionato, comparison
with Salvatore Accardo (Philips/
Decca) reverses the situation, in
that it is the Italian (with the Leipzig
Gewandhaus and Kurt Masur)
who is the more introspectively
inclined, whereas here Yoo is at
her most emotionally compelling,
imparting a heart-warming
radiance to this neglected gem that
is utterly captivating.
In the Barber Concerto, Stern
(with Leonard Bernstein and
the New York Philharmonic for
CBS/Sony) is overwhelmingly
charismatic, whereas Yoo is
more poetically resourceful and
thoughtful, making the work feel
more emotionally wide-ranging
than usual – and the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra play for
their new music director with
glowing finesse and suppleness,
combined with nimble virtuosity in
the finale.
Yoo finally really lets her hair
down in the Vieuxtemps Variations
on Yankee Doodle with some
deliciously indulgent portamentos,
although in the last resort it is Itzhak
Perlman (in the piano version with
Samuel Sanders for EMI/Warner)
who really sets the pulse racing.
Julian Haylock
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++

74 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


Bartók • Beethoven •
John Casken
John Casken: That Subtle Knot –
double concerto for violin and viola;
Bartók: Viola Concerto;
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5
Ruth Killius (viola); Royal Northern
Sinfonia/Thomas Zehetmair (violin)
ECM ECM 2595 77:38 mins
This well-
proportioned
programme
captures Thomas
Zehetmair’s
2014 farewell
concert as music director of the
Royal Northern Sinfonia, with his
wife, viola player Ruth Killius, in
the Bartók, and a double concerto,
That Subtle Knot, written for them by
John Casken.
The title of Casken’s double
concerto, taken from The Ecstasy
by John Donne, is mirrored in the
intertwining of the solo lines, which
develop from the spare, modally
inflected, folk-like beginning. Much
of the music is slow and meditative,
interrupted by a few more rhythmic
sections, where textures are fuller
and more acerbic, but it rises to
passionate climaxes, and is given a
performance to match.
It’s not a great leap to the
autumnal world of Bartók’s Viola
Concerto, where the soloist’s
opening line is a close cousin to the
Casken. Again there’s passion in
the music, especially in the central
Adagio religioso, even though it’s
more restrained here. Killius finds
the right internal warmth, but is also
skittish in the helter-skelter finale.
The orchestra shows off its own
credentials in Beethoven’s Fifth
Symphony, which starts at a terrific
lick, and is incredibly exciting.
It takes a little while to settle in
rhythmic detail, but Zehetmair
encourages the longer melodic lines
to bloom without losing impetus.
There’s more flexibility in the
Andante, although it never hangs
about, and the textures are clean
and bright. The Scherzo surprises
with its accents and wide range of
dynamics, before the release of the
finale, controlled, but rushing to a
thrilling conclusion.
The recording could have more
presence, but this is very much a
document of a live event. It’s a pity
CO MERZ, JE WON KIM
that they edited out the applause.
Martin Cotton
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING ++++
Beethoven
Piano Concertos Nos 3 & 4
Boris Giltburg (piano); Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/
Vasily Petrenko
Naxos 8.574152 69:59 mins
In the sleeve note,
Boris Giltburg
writes that he
felt electrified
by hearing
Beethoven’s
Piano Concerto No. 3 as a child,
grabbed by its darkness and drama,
but later came to realise that it
was mostly a lyrical work. His
performance on this release – which
completes a rewarding Beethoven
concerto cycle with Vasily
Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic Orchestra – holds
these aspects in perfect balance, as
two stages on a continuum rather
than flipside opposites.
Giltburg doesn’t deal in pianistic
thunder but in long phrases and in
unsignposted details of articulation,
and in both concertos he and
Petrenko generally draw out the
contrasts and drama with a certain
amount of subtlety. It’s a striking
moment, therefore, when in the slow
movement of the Concerto No. 4 the
orchestra’s strings sound suddenly
so belligerent, the piano floating
serenely above them. The cadenza to
this movement, with its chromatic
gestures around a sustained trill,
registers as jarringly as Giltburg
intends, yet even here he doesn’t
resort to harshness of tone for effect,
or even to a real fortissimo.
Petrenko has the orchestra
sounding rich and substantial
but that doesn’t preclude some
crisply exuberant playing in the
finales, or some appealingly open-
sounding woodwind, especially
the clarinet and bassoon solos in
the last movement of No. 3. This
solid recording may not be quite
distinctive enough to stand out in a
crowded field; but if it were the only
one in your collection you wouldn’t
be doing at all badly. Erica Jeal
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Beethoven
Violin Concerto, Op. 61 (cadenza
Widmann); Violin Concerto in C,
WoO 5 – fragment
Veronika Eberle (violin); London
Symphony Orchestra/Simon Rattle
LSO Live LSO 5094 (CD/SACD)
60:59 mins
A major point
of interest in
Veronika Eberle’s
performance of
the Beethoven
Violin Concerto is
the new cadenzas written for her by
the clarinettist and composer Jörg
Widmann. Beethoven didn’t leave
any himself, but when he hurriedly
transcribed the concerto’s solo part
for piano he added some truly wild
and wacky cadenzas. In the case of
the first movement, he even had the
pianist joined by timpani, echoing
the drum-taps which famously
begin the work. Beethoven’s piano
cadenzas plainly won’t work on the
violin, but Widmann seems to have
taken his cue from them, and he has
the soloist accompanied not only by
timpani, but also by a double bass.
His cadenzas mainly use material
from the Concerto as though
refracted through the distance
of time, and he draws all three
movements together by quoting
material from each in each cadenza.
Eberle plays these new contributions
with dazzling virtuosity, and her live
performance of the Concerto itself
with Simon Rattle and the LSO has
just the right amount of warmth and
expressive freedom.
As a bonus, Eberle offers
an incomplete violin concerto
movement which probably dates
from the tail-end of Beethoven’s
Concerto Reviews
Intense introspection:
Esther Yoo compels in
Barber and Bruch
early period in Bonn. His surviving
manuscript (its continuation, if
there was one, has been lost) breaks
off midway through the opening
movement, and although one or
two attempts at a completion have
been made since its discovery in
the late 19th century, Rattle and
Eberle present the fragment as it
stands, breaking off mid-phrase.
Misha Donat
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Nimrod Borenstein
Piano Concerto*; Light and
Darkness**; Shirim
Clélia Iruzun (piano); *Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra/Nimrod
Borenstein; **I Musicanti
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD281
70:58 mins
Notes fall like
raindrops,
dripping
delicately, later
torrentially,
before returning
to a light shower –pianist Clélia
Iruzun allows the percussive
phrases to splish and splash. It’s a
surprise after the regal opening to
the second movement of Nimrod
Borenstein’s Piano Concerto, where
expansion disappears into pizzicato
strings and staccato bassoon. ‘I
strongly believe that contrast is
one of the most important aspects
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 75
Concerto Reviews
of art,’ writes the composer (and
in this piece, conductor) in the
accompanying note. Stark evidence
of that conviction is heard in this
2021 work; the Adagio is bookended
by flurrying outer movements,
both featuring a Faustian virtuosic
solo part, expertly played by the
work’s dedicatee.
Light and Darkness, as the title
suggests, continues in a similar
vein, this time in a one-movement
work for piano quintet. Borenstein
takes inspiration from Schubert’s
‘Trout’ Quintet; the neo-Romantic
lush strings often seem at odds
with the shimmering piano part.
Shirim, a set of 18 characterful piano
miniatures, fares better: some of
these solo works are intended for
experienced amateurs to learn at
home (the accidentals in ‘Jeux dans
le jardin’ sound fun). More complex
pieces, such as ‘La forêt’, are given
an aspirational reading by the ever-
reliable Iruzun. Claire Jackson
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING +++
Durante
Concerti per Archi; plus works
by Fiorenza and Porpora
Marcello Scandelli (cello); Accademia
dell’Annunciata/Riccardo Doni
Arcana A540 116:41 mins (2 discs)
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
pronounced
the Neapolitan
composer
Francesco
Durante (1684-1755) the ‘greatest
harmonist in Italy, that is to say in
the world,’ and certainly this album
reveals a composer of thrilling
versatility and inventiveness.
His Concerti a quattro, written
around 1730-40, bring together
the grace and sobriety of the old-
style Corellian concerto with the
sizzling virtuosity of the modish
Vivaldian model.
Among the highlights is the
A major Concerto ‘La Pazzia’
(Madness), whose fluctuating
tempos and vacillating moods turn
from ruminative to frenzied, and
whose haunting slow movement
has all the lyricism of a Neapolitan
opera aria. Also lovely is the
G minor Second Concerto; you
can hear Durante’s influence on
Pergolesi in the galant melody of
the Largo affettuoso. To the breezy
Ninth concerto, Durante adds some
unnerving dissonances, disquieting
the felicitous key of B flat. Indeed,
76 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Dazzling virtuosity:
violinist Veronika Eberle
shines in Beethoven
his style is never merely frothy:
he adds weight to the lyrical and
virtuosic Italian style with some
rigorous contrapuntal writing.
Fleshing out the album and setting
Durante in context are two works
by his Neapolitan contemporaries:
a pathos-laden Sinfonia by Nicola
Fiorenza and a recently discovered
cello concerto by Nicola Porpora.
The Accademia dell’Annunciata
are passionate advocates of these
shadowy works. Their sound is
warm and resonant yet musical
textures remain transparent;
ensemble and intonation are
generally well controlled. Director-
harpsichordist Riccardo Doni coaxes
rhetorical articulation and dramatic
contrasts of colour and dynamic,
throwing the musical antitheses into
high relief. Above all, the players
relish the propulsive rhythms that
lend these works their infectious
energy. Kate Bolton-Porciatti
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Kapustin
Piano Concerto No. 5; Concerto
for Two Pianos and Percussion*;
Sinfonietta
Frank Dupree, Adrian Brendle
(piano), Meinhard Jenne, Franz Bach
(percussion); Berlin Radio Symphony
Orchestra/Dominik Beykirch
Capriccio C5495 58:44 mins
‘I wish I could
rewrite my past
and make it
perfect like the
music I compose.’
Kapustin’s
plaintive comment rather suggests
that his brilliant yet anything-
but-improvised jazz compositions
represented for him a retreat into an
idealised alternative world. His Fifth
Piano Concerto, though written in
1993, sounds as if Gershwin might
have written it in the 1930s as a
sequel to his own Concerto.
This is not the first recording,
though the only other version –
performed by Masahiro Kawakami
(on Exton) – is hard to purchase
outside Japan. In any case, this
new recording displaces that
version, played as it is with more
idiomatic zest both by the soloist
Frank Dupree and the Berlin Radio
Symphony Orchestra conducted
by Dominik Beykirch. Kapustin,
himself an orchestral pianist, made
full use of his insider’s knowledge,
adroitly mixing big band jazz style
with virtuosic orchestration worthy
of Ravel or Strauss.
The lively Concerto for two
pianos and percussion of 2002 at
first hearing sounds undemanding,
though darker emotional
undercurrents are suggested by its
harmonic drift and the way each
movement abruptly ends. The
Sinfonietta, yet to be recorded as far
as I know in its original orchestral
guise, appears more often in the
piano duo arrangement heard
here. The ‘Overture’, here sounding
rather hard-edged in its rhythmic
excitement, could have been played
with a little more charm, but there’s
welcome relief in the more mellow
‘Slow Waltz’ and ‘Intermezzo’
that follow before the effervescent
‘Rondo’ finale. Daniel Jaffé
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Mozart
Piano Concertos, Vol. 7:
No. 24 in C minor, K491;
No. 25 in C, K503; Le nozze di
Figaro – Overture
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (piano);
Manchester Camerata/
Gábor-Takács Nagy
Chandos CHAN 20192 67:11 mins
‘Mozart, made
in Manchester’
is the title of this
ongoing project
to perform and
record Mozart’s
complete Piano Concertos in the
Stoller Hall of Chetham’s School,
involving string students alongside
the Manchester Camerata; this
release is Volume 7 in the series.
Bavouzet uses a modern concert
grand, with the orchestra avoiding
excessive vibrato but otherwise
playing in today’s mellow-toned
instrumental style. The superlative
collective result shows that period
performance issues need not be an
overriding concern, if the feeling for
the idiom itself is so engagingly right.
Bavouzet’s scintillating delivery
of the quick movements reaches
a peak in the finale of the C major
Concerto, K503, which comes
across as a display of musical and
technical mastery that amazes
even by Mozart’s standards. The
unaffected warmth of expression
in the central slow movements is
equally convincing. Shifts of pace
are slight and subtle, as in the piano’s
first entry in the C minor Concerto,
K491; a shade more hesitant than the
orchestra’s forthright introduction,
this creates a beautifully judged
option, allowing the music’s
development then to open out in a
swirl of pacey invention. Mozart’s
own first-movement cadenzas for
either work, if he ever wrote them
down, have not survived. Bavouzet
plays Hummel’s Beethoven-

Concerto Reviews
imitating example for K491, and a
finer one by Kenneth Broberg for
K503, which keeps much closer to
Mozart’s own style. It also fits in a
witty reference to La Marseillaise,
whose opening notes resemble one
of the first movement’s main themes;
the composer, you feel, would have
enjoyed the joke. Malcolm Hayes
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING ++++
Philip Sawyers
Double Concerto for Violin and
Cello; Viola Concerto; Octet;
Remembrance for Strings*
Daniel Rowland (violin, viola), Maja
Bogdanović (cello); *English String
Orchestra; English Symphony
Orchestra/Kenneth Woods
Nimbus NI 6436 71:26 mins
Kenneth Woods’
passion for the
independent-
minded music
of the British
composer
Philip Sawyers (now in his early
seventies) has resulted in four
previous albums. Overall, the new
arrival isn’t the most persuasive.
The opening moments of the 2020
Double Concerto – questing melodic
gestures unfurling over a gentle bass
pulse – are immediately striking,
though future pleasures become
complicated by murkier harmonies,
fragmentary structures and a
recording balance that puts Daniel
Rowland’s thin violin in second place
behind Maja Bogdanović’s warmly
throbbing cello. Ruling over both,
often, is the orchestra: you wouldn’t
guess from this that Sawyers spent
24 years experiencing an orchestra’s
sound from within as a violinist in
the Royal Opera House pit.
Similarly swirling and overloaded
textures make life difficult for
Rowland and the listener in the
Viola Concerto, written the same
year. Reduced forces during the slow
movement bring some relief, along
with the finale’s bustling writing for
the viola and the rushing, chattering
woodwinds. The 2007 Octet is
even more action-packed, writhing
around so much within Sawyers’s
usual expanded tonality that it feels
as if the piece is trying to match the
compact density of Schoenberg’s
Chamber Symphony No. 1, written a
century before.
The best piece is the simplest
and shortest: Remembrance, again
from 2020, a memorial for a friend
and colleague’s late parents, but
OU
TO
NN
A XO
S
eloquent enough to serve us all well
in dark times. It’s a final justification
for Woods’ devotion to the cause
and his orchestra’s skill and gusto.
Geoff Brown
PERFORMANCE +++
+++
PETRENKO
RECORDING
Telemann
Violin Concertos, Vol. 8:
& GILTBURG
Concerto-Suite, TWV 55:g8;
Double Violin Concertos,
NEW ALBUM ON NAXOS
TWV 52:B2 & 52:G2; Double
Violetta Concerto, TWV 52:G3; BRAND NEW
Triple Concerto in F
Susan Carpenter-Jacobs, Asako
Takeuchi, Naomi Burrill (violin),
Raquel Massadas (violetta);
The Wallfisch Band/Elizabeth
Wallfisch (violin, violetta)
CPO 777 882-2 60:44 mins
This volume of
the Wallfisch
Band’s survey
of Telemann’s
violin concertos
maintains the
high level of the previous releases.
As sometimes previously the album
features an ouverture-suite, in which 8.574152
two violins play a solo part, as well
as three concertos for two violins
and a fourth for three violins. This
last-mentioned is the best-known
item here coming from the second
production of Telemann’s ambitious
instrumental anthology Musique AVAILABLE TO BUY NOW
de Table. Handel was among the
publication’s subscribers, as listeners
may surmise from passages in this
concerto. Elizabeth Wallfisch,
as ever, gives a lightly bowed and
warmly coloured performance.
CELEBRATING RACHMANINOV ON NAXOS
The concertos for two violins
possess attractive features, even if
NEW
they do not qualify for positions
YEARS
on the highest Parnassian slopes. S E RG E Y
RACH MA N INOV
18731943
An interesting departure from
the instrumental norm lies in the
scoring for two solo violettas in the
second of the G major concertos.
They are thought to correspond
with the small French violas of the
time. The most arresting moments
8.574528
8.109001
of the B flat Concerto occur in its
dissonant opening chord, and
ensuing solo violin recitative.
The Ouverture-Suite in G minor
offers the listener a wealth of
variety in a sequence featuring a AVAILABLE THIS MONTH
finely sustained Passacaglia. The
ornaments and carefully crafted
inflections demonstrated by these
players are a delight. Warmly
commended. Nicholas Anderson Distributed by Naxos UK: www.naxosmusic.co.uk
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING ++++
Opera
Berta Joncus
OPERA CHOICE Handel
Semele (DVD)
Emma Pearson, Amitai Pati, Sarah
This Saint-Georges opera Castle, Paul Whelan, Stephen Diaz,
Chelsea Dolman, Sashe Angelovski;

is anonymous no more New Zealand Opera Chorus; Holy

Trinity Cathedral Choir; New Zealand
Opera Baroque Orchestra/Peter
Walls; dir. Thomas de Mallet Burgess,
The first complete recording of L’Amant Anonyme Jacqueline Coats (Auckland, 2022)
does its composer proud, says Christopher Dingle Opus Arte DVD: OA1362D;
Blu-ray: OABD7309D 146 mins
Semele has a
curious history.
Handel may have
performed it ‘after
the manner of
an oratorio’, and
even today there
are critics who
like to describe it as a ‘near-opera’.
Its Covent Garden reception in
1744 was so lukewarm that Handel
gave up promoting it, and until
1959 British performances were
restricted to amateurs. Yet it’s now
agreed to be one of the finest works
of Handel’s maturity, combining the
dramatic strengths of opera seria
with the oratorio device whereby the
chorus comments on the action.
Filmed three years ago in Holy
Trinity Cathedral in Auckland,
New Zealand, this production was
rapturously hailed on its release,
Effortless range: despite the fact that the building
Nicole Cabell is a has a poor acoustic: a measure,
superb Léontine perhaps, of the desperation people
felt at a time when lockdowns had
temporarily killed concert life.
The staging really is a one-off, with
Saint-Georges with prominent ballet interludes and music that’s the action set entirely in a church,
L’Amant anonyme (The Anonymous Lover) inventive, spirited and frequently touching. and presented as a wedding book-
Nicole Cabell, Geoffrey Agpalo, David Govertsen, Erica Drawing on Chicago-based Haymarket Opera ended by champagnes all round;
Schuller, Michael St. Peter, Nathalie Colas; Haymarket Company’s 2022 production, this presents a strong the congregation are simply the
Opera Company/Craig Trompeter cast and an incisive period instrument ensemble with assembled guests.
Çedille CDR 90000 217 170:31 mins (3 discs) finely judged pacing from Craig Trompeter. Nicole Within its self-imposed
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Cabell is superb as Léontine, limitations, the production directed
Saint-Georges, the bi-racial This production presents a floating effortlessly upward in by Thomas de Mallet Burgess and
18th-century composer,
violinist, champion fencer and
strong cast and an incisive ‘Son amour’ as she recollects
her anonymous suitor’s gifts
Jacqueline Coats necessarily relies
heavily on lighting and camera
much else, has finally started period instrument ensemble before recalling her fearsome work, and it has to be said that the
to gain due recognition – albeit, anger at his impudence. latter sometimes perversely fails
almost exclusively through his instrumental works. Geoffrey Agpalo is thoroughly engaging as Valcour, to honour the beauty of the music,
With this first complete recording of L’Amant anonyme, David Govertson is sympathetic as Ophémon, while being itchy with jump-cuts even
his only opera to survive largely intact, we get a more Erica Schuller’s crystalline clarity conveys Jeannette’s in the middle of great arias like
rounded sense of this remarkable composer. youthful joy matched by Michael St. Peter’s spritely ‘Endless pleasure’ and ‘Where’er you
First heard in 1780, L’Amant anonyme centres around Colin. In all, this set does Saint-Georges proud. walk’. But led by Emma Pearson’s
Léontine and Valcour. The latter makes anonymous PERFORMANCE +++++ moody Semele and Amitai Pati’s
advances, so a ‘love triangle’ forms between just the RECORDING ++++ burly Jupiter (doubling as Apollo),
two of them. Each has a confidante, Ophémon and with fine support from countertenor
Dorothée respectively, while two villagers, Jeannette You can access thousands of reviews from our
extensive archive on the BBC Music Magazine Stephen Diaz as Athamas and Sarah
and Colin, provide an exemplar of pure love. It is a
ERIKA DUFOUR

website at www.classical-music.com Castle’s fire-cracker Juno (doubling

prime exemplar of French galant opera, complete as schoolma’am Ino), the young
cast perform heroically, while Peter

78 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


Walls extracts lovely sounds from
the New Zealand Opera Baroque
Orchestra. Michael Church
PERFORMANCE ++++
PICTURE & SOUND +++
Mascagni
Cavalleria rusticana
Anita Rachvelishvili, Piero Pretti,
Ronnita Miller, Luca Salsi, Sasha
Cooke, Alessandra Visconti; Chicago
Symphony Chorus & Orchestra/
Riccardo Muti
CSO Resound CSOR 901 2201 76:54 mins
A fine
performance
of Mascagni’s
one-act wonder
can singe
your soul, but
when it fails to ignite, as it does in
this 2020 recording, the libretto
seems detached from the score.
The repetition of the melodies is
dramatically less effective and the
orchestration, even in the celebrated
Intermezzo, sounds borrowed and
at a tangent to this story of jealousy
and revenge.
In this concert performance
from 2020 by Riccardo Muti and
the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
you rarely share Santuzza’s anguish
at being jilted by Turiddu, nor his
acceptance that the price of a liaison
with Lola is death in an orchard on
an Easter evening, nor even Mama
Lucia’s stoicism in the face of a
Sicilian tragedy.
The singers are not to blame.
The Georgian mezzo Anita
Rachvelishvili banishes any thought
that the role is better taken by a
dramatic soprano. She brings a
desperate warmth to ‘Voi lo sapete,
o mamma’, and struggles to ride the
crest of the wave that is the Easter
Hymn. Her Turiddu, Piero Pretti,
sounds youthful and confident
and for once Mama Lucia is not
an ancient mezzo rescued from an
agent’s back catalogue but full of
vocal purpose.
No, the problem is Riccardo
Muti. The overture lingers with a
lack of purpose and the brass after
the Siciliana is strident. Orchestral
climaxes seem arbitrary and
pianissimos from the strings almost
mannered. Just once Muti and his
singers convince when Santuzza
spills the beans in her duet with
Alfio. But one hot day doesn’t
make a blazing operatic summer.
Christopher Cook
PERFORMANCE ++
RECORDING +++
Porpora
L’Angelica (DVD)
Teresa Iervolino, Paola Valentina
Molinari, Ekaterina Bakanova, Gaia
Petrone, Sergio Foresti, Barbara
Massaro; La Lira di Orfeo/Federico
Maria Sardelli; dir. Gianluca Falaschi
(Martina Franca, 2021)
Dynamic DVD: 37936;
Blu-ray: 57936 147 mins
In his day the
Neapolitan
Nicola Porpora
(1686-1768) was
an important
figure, pursuing
an international
career with
periods in Venice, London (as a rival
to Handel in 1733-36), Dresden and
Vienna. This lightweight serenata
filmed at Martina Franca over
performances in August 2021 was a
success at a private palace in Naples
in 1720 and repeated both there
and in Vienna over the next couple
of years. The text – derived like
many others from Ariosto’s poetic
epic Orlando furioso – is one of the
first written by the leading librettist
Metastasio, while the subsequent
star castrato Farinelli (Porpora’s
pupil) made his debut in the
premiere as the shepherd Tirsi.
Graced by the participation of
dancers, director/designer Gianluca
Falaschi’s attractive staging mixes
ancient and modern with wit;
intelligently acted, it is also very
capably sung. Teresa Iervolino’s
mellow mezzo proves ideal for the
larger than life, latterly deranged
hero Orlando, who on this occasion
ends the piece still deranged: a
final section paying compliments
to the Holy Roman Empress on her
birthday is omitted despite being
mentioned in the synopsis.
Russian soprano Ekaterina
Bakanova brings lyrical charm
and impressive technical skills to
Orlando’s errant beloved, Angelica.
She is more interested in the Medoro
of Paolo Valentina Molinari,
who delivers Orlando’s rival with
virtuoso command. The secondary
roles are all well done, especially
Sergio Foresti as Medoro’s servant,
Titiro, and the period-orchestra La
Lira di Orfeo reaches an admirable
standard under conductor Federico
Maria Sardelli, who articulates with
care and attention a score packed
with good things. George Hall
PERFORMANCE ++++
PICTURE & SOUND ++++
Amir Mahyar
Tafreshipour
The Doll behind the Curtain
Jonathan von Schwanenflügel, Per
Bach Nissen, Signe Sneh Durholm,
Maria Dreisig, Elenor Wiman,
Thomas Storm, Jacob Bloch
Jespersen; Athelas Sinfonietta/Eirik
Haukaas Ødegaard
BIS BIS-2596 (CD/SACD) 68:42 mins
Widely celebrated
as one of Iran’s
first modernist
writers, Sadegh
Hedayat (1903-
1951) struggled
with alienation amidst the social
problems benighting his native
land. Eventually returning to Paris,
his student home, he committed
suicide aged just 48. In The Doll
behind the Curtain (2015), Iranian-
Danish composer Amir Mahyar
Tafreshipour (b1974) explores
through his own, distinctive
modernist idiom the still-pertinent
cultural clashes depicted in
Hedayat’s Persian short story of that
title, Arusake pošt-e pardeh.
The succinct English libretto is
by Dominic Power: Mehrdad is due
to return to Tehran and his long-
arranged marriage to Bita following
studies in Paris. However, caught
between east and west, tradition and
modernity, honour and immorality,
he becomes obsessed by a female
mannequin clothed in green silk and
a blonde wig. As the psychosexual
crisis deepens, Jonathan von
Schwanenflügel proves vocally
supple as the conflicted student,
supported by a committed cast and
11-piece Athelas Sinfonietta under
Eirik Haukaas Ødegaard.
Yet the journey is uncomfortable
for more reasons than Tafreshipour
might intend. It portrays a literal,
toxic male gaze solely as a symptom
of male trauma; the objectification
of women seems merely incidental
to the agonies of a protagonist whose
freedom to question his identity
would be inconceivable were
he female.
Of course Mehrdad’s life – and his
family’s – is ruined in the process.
But it’s Bita (the excellent Signe Sneh
Durholm) who pays the ultimate
price; an outcome which today feels
all the more horrifically ironic in
light of current Iranian crackdowns
on women who fail to observe male-
prescribed dress-codes. Steph Power
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
Opera Reviews
Verdi
Nabucco – ‘Gli arredi festivi’;
‘Va, pensiero’; I Lombardi
– ‘Gerusalem!’ etc; Ernani –
Prelude; ‘Si ridesti il Leon di
Castiglia’; Don Carlo – ‘Spuntato
ecco il di d’esultanza’; Macbeth
– ‘Che faceste? Dite su!’; ‘Patria
oppressa’; Il Trovatore – Anvil
Chorus; La forza del destino
– ‘Nella guerra, è la follia’;
Aida – ‘Gloria all’Egitto’; Simon
Boccanegra – ‘Viva Simon’
Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla
Scala/Riccardo Chailly
Decca 485 3950 62:59 mins
La Scala has
enjoyed a special
relationship with
Verdi ever since
his first opera
– Oberto – was
premiered in Milan in 1839. Six of its
successors – not to mention various
revisions – also received their first
stagings at the theatre up to Falstaff
in 1893. As music director, Riccardo
Chailly has maintained the high
profile the theatre has traditionally
accorded Verdi’s operas. This release
celebrating the conductor’s 70th
birthday offers extracts from nine
works, running from his first major
success – Nabucco – in 1842, up to
the Italian premiere of Aida nearly
30 years later.
Chorus and orchestra are both
on their mettle here: the orchestral
playing is clean and brilliant, the
choral tone full and healthy. The
range of tone and dynamics available
is well displayed in the famous
‘Va pensiero’ from Nabucco, where
Verdi’s markings, and especially
his frequent sotto voce instructions,
are carefully observed. When more
than one group of people is involved
– as in the opening of Nabucco, or
the substantial scenes from Don
Carlo and Aida – each is given
careful characterisation and clear
dramatic motivation.
Verdi’s earlier scores such as
I Lombardi are delivered with
dignity – in the decorative writing
for flute and piccolo in ‘O signore dal
tetto natio’, for instance. The witches
in Macbeth supply a touch of the
comic-grotesque. The Aida Triumph
scene is stirring, yet also contains a
slightly intimidating quality – state
power at its most crushing – while
its spatial elements are vividly
presented. George Hall
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 79
Choral & Song
CHORAL & SONG CHOICE

Fire and flair in this best ever Solomon

Berta Joncus is bowled over by Namur Festival’s recording of Handel’s oratorio

in picking out moods implied by the

music: regal or tender for Solomon’s A solid Solomon:
numbers, pastoral for his wife’s countertenor
Handel love vows, brash for choral praises, Christopher Lowrey
is bold in the
Solomon feverish for the moralising priest title role
Ana Maria Labin, Gwendoline Zadok. The band thrills to Alarcón’s
Blondeel (soprano), Christopher gestures, delivering crisp rhythms,
Lowrey (countertenor); Chœur de furious tempos – the Arrival of the
Chambre de Namur; Millenium Queen of Sheba is not to be missed
Orchestra/Leonardo García Alarcón – and languorous lines. The soloists
Ricercar RIC449 152:08 mins (2 discs) plumb their characters: Christopher
This is the best-ever recording of Lowrey’s Solomon boldly tosses off
Solomon, and runs and swells
a highpoint This is a highpoint in sustained pitches;
for conductor
Leonardo García
conductor Leonardo Gwendoline Blondeel as his
Alarcón’s career. García Alarcón’s career consort heightens
Organised for the eroticism through
2022 Namur summer festival, the the colours and timbres of her
performance re-assembled artists sighing passion; Ana Maria Labin’s
who had worked together in Handel Queen of Sheba is serenely radiant.
oratorios at previous festivals. But the chorus is the star of this
Drama is telescoped into scenes show. Handel reserved his most
depicting the biblical Judgement ingenious writing in Solomon for
of Solomon, with the real mother’s his world-class choristers, and the
horror at his ruling that the child at Namur chamber choir is their match.
issue be cut in two. The text otherwise In intricate choruses, the singers
celebrates God, monarch, nation and channel their gorgeous vocalism
(very earthly) love. Action resides in into a thrusting execution of darting
the score, crafted by Handel to match fugues and towering homophony.
You can access thousands of reviews from our extensive archive on
the wordbook’s flowery images and PERFORMANCE +++++ the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
exalted declarations. Alarcón excels RECORDING +++++

JS Bach
Cantatas: Ich habe genug,
BWV 82; Vergnügte Ruh,
BWV 170; plus arias from Mass
in B minor, St Matthew Passion,
St John Passion etc
Barnaby Smith (countertenor),
Katie Jeffries-Harris (mezzo-
soprano); Illyria Consort
Voces8 Records VCM152 72:16 mins
Following his
all-Handel debut
solo album, the
artistic director
of Voces8 turns
his attention to JS
Bach, and to a trajectory spanning
Christ’s presentation in the Temple,
REBECCA FAY
to camouflage what amounts to
a project cherry-picking some of
Bach’s choicest alto arias, but Smith
sidesteps the charge by including
two complete cantatas: Vergnügte
Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust, BWV 170,
and Ich habe genüg, BWV 82 –
the latter in its less familiar alto
incarnation dating from the 1730s.
From the B minor Mass comes an
artfully floated Agnus Dei, plus
one of the album’s highlights, an
intimate, enchanting account of the
Credo’s ‘Et in unum Dominum’ for
which he’s joined by mezzo Katie
Jeffries-Harris. It’s beautifully done,
the voices entwining and soaring,
the echo effects ricocheting joyously.
cultivated an approach that the Easter Oratorio’s ‘Saget, saget mir
sometimes prizes beauty of line Geschwinde’ injects an invigorating
and colour above all else, so that counterbalance. Paul Riley
the exquisite ‘finish’ communicates PERFORMANCE ++++
only a part of the story. And while RECORDING ++++
the opening of Cantata 170 exudes
a beguiling easefulness, and Ich Bonds
habe genüg’s ‘Schlummert ein’ Credo; Simon Bore the Cross
gently caresses, the wretchedness Janinah Burnett (soprano), Dashon
enshrined in the ‘Erbarme dich’ Burton (bass-baritone); The Dessoff
from the St Matthew Passion is Choirs/Malcolm J Merriweather
somewhat circumscribed. Avie AV 2589 62:58 mins
Particularly rewarding is the Born in 1913, the
attentive support of the Illyria Black American
Consort which fields especially composer
eloquent obligato contributions Margaret Bonds
from oboist Leo Duarte and organist studied with
Steven Devine. For all the seductive Florence Price

through the anguish of Passiontide, Smith studied with Andreas swaddling the album nonetheless and went on to forge a powerful
to Easter. It could seem like a ploy Scholl and like his mentor he’s ends on a cheerfully upbeat note as compositional voice that blended

80 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


African-American idioms with
Western classical forms. Beautifully
performed here, these two late
choral works encapsulate both the
warmth of Bonds’ musical language
and her passionate advocacy for
racial justice.
Credo draws on a fiercely political
text by the poet and civil rights
activist WEB Du Bois. Each of the
work’s seven movements opens
with a statement of belief, set to
Bonds’ richly-orchestrated score,
which ranges from the menacing
timpani and bassoons of ‘I Believe
in the Devil’ to the lush and lyrical ‘I
Believe in the Prince of Peace’. The
Dessoff Choirs give a nuanced and
committed performance throughout
and solo soprano Janinah Burnett
brings terrific vibrancy to the hymn-
like melody of her solo movement.
Completed in 1965, Simon Bore
the Cross sets a stirring text by
Bonds’ long-standing collaborator,
Langston Hughes, which tells the
story of Simon of Cyrene, the North-
African man who carried Jesus’s
cross on the way to Calvary. Among
many highlights, Bonds’ stately
setting of the African-American
spiritual ‘Crucifixion’ chimes with
special force, as does bass-baritone
Dashon Burton’s gravely powerful
voicing of Pontius Pilate in ‘I Find
no Fault’.
Writing to Du Bois’ widow,
Bonds once declared she ‘looked
forward to a time when Credo will
move all over the world’, but sadly
Bonds did not hear a complete
performance of either work in her
lifetime. This landmark recording
offers worthy fulfilment of that
hope. Kate Wakeling
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING ++++
L Boulanger •
N Boulanger
Les heures claires:
complete songs
Raquel Camarinha (soprano),
Lucile Richardot (mezzo-soprano),
Stéphane Degout (baritone),
Anne de Fornel (piano)
Harmonia Mundi HMM902356.58
189:29 mins (3 discs)
Not long after Lili
Boulanger died in
1918 aged just 24,
her harshly self-
critical and grief-
stricken sister
Nadia stopped composing, declaring
she lacked Lili’s talent. Lili may have
been more harmonically daring, but
both Boulanger sisters could hold
their heads high among their peers.
This treasure trove of two discs
devoted to Nadia and a third to Lili
brings together their complete songs
periodically punctuated by violin,
cello and piano works.
Pianist Anne de Fornel is the
impressive constant factor, capturing
the refined emotional nuances of
these exquisite works, while mezzo-
soprano Lucile Richardot takes the
lion’s share of the 55 songs. Beguiling
from her first entry in Nadia’s
‘Mon coeur’, she is convincing
throughout, burning with controlled
passion in Poeme d’amour, playful
in ‘Chanson’ and desolate in ‘Soir
d’hiver’. Stéphane Degout is equally
mesmerising, joining Richardot for
‘Allons voir sur le lac d’argent’, the
only duet and one of several first
recordings. Appropriately, Richardot
and Degout share the songs of Les
heures claires, an unusual cycle in
being jointly composed by Nadia
and Raoul Pugno.
Sarah Nemtanu is a strong
advocate for Lili’s violin pieces,
while cellist Emmanuelle Bertrand
reveals Nadia’s Trois Pieces to be
a miniature gem. Sadly, it is hard
to warm to Raquel Camarinha’s
constricted tone and mannerisms
in Clairières dans le ciel, the most
substantial of Lili’s works presented
here. There are strong alternatives
for this cycle, though, and the rest
of this set gives unalloyed pleasure.
Christopher Dingle
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Duruflé • Martin
Duruflé: Requiem;
Martin: Mass for Double Choir
Juliette Mey (mezzo-soprano), Alain
Buet (baritone), Jérôme Cuvillier
(cello); La Maîtrise de Toulouse;
Conservatoire de Toulouse/Mark
Opstad; William Fielding (organ)
Regent REGCD 557 67:08 mins
Founded within
the Toulouse
Conservatoire in
2006, La Maîtrise
de Toulouse
is a choir of
children and young adults, who
offer fresh voices and sing Latin
texts with French vowels – as is
entirely appropriate, of course, for
this repertoire. The child singers,
unlike those of English cathedral
choirs, take both the treble and alto
lines, which again is appropriate for
both the works programmed here,
Choral & Song Reviews
The beauty of Bach:
Barnaby Smith offers
up a rich programme
particularly the Martin in which
those upper two voices are often
musically closely related.
Under their founder-director,
Mark Opstad, the choristers give
a fleet performance of Martin’s
Mass for Double Choir, the
trebles relishing their moments of
coloratura figuration for the ‘cum
sancto spirito’ of the Gloria, or
their joyous proclamation of the
Resurrection in the Credo. Yet the
choir’s performance doesn’t quite
sweep the board. Listeners may
miss a certain gravitas, more readily
found in Westminster Cathedral
Choir’s acclaimed recording under
James O’Donnell (Hyperion), who
also offers a slight but significant
improvement in vocal clarity and
precision in tuning.
The emotionally less complex
Duruflé Requiem is perhaps an
even better fit for La Maîtrise, albeit
they sing the oft-recorded reduced
version with organ accompaniment
(the composer himself preferred
the original full orchestral version)
plus cello solo for the Pie Jesu. The
mezzo soloist is a remarkably fine
match for the choir, and the baritone
almost as good, though forgivably
he shows some strain at the high
tessitura of his solo in ‘Domine, Jesu
Christe’. Daniel Jaffé
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Schubert
Schubert Revisited – Lieder arr.
Alexander Schmalcz
Matthias Goerne (baritone); The
Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie
Bremen/Florian Donderer
DG 483 9758 70:07 mins
Composers have
always reinvented
Schubert for their
own purposes,
and sometimes in
their own image
– Liszt and Brahms to name but two.
The virtue of the pianist Alexander
Schmalcz’s orchestrations for
baritone Matthias Goerne, his
regular recital partner, is that he
strives to hold faith with what he
reads as Schubert’s intentions,
even if there are beguiling hints of
Mahler and Wagner to be heard
– and Berlioz too in the three
Harper’s songs from Goethe’s
Wilhelm Meister.
Still, when Schmalcz does wander
it’s always for good reason. So, a flute
drifts like mist across the water as
the fisherman embraces his lover
in ‘Des Fischers Liebesglück’, and
Death is given a trombone calling
card in ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’.
Matthias Goerne, who
effectively leads the Deutsche
Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
from the platform, is in fine
form. ‘Erlkönig’ here becomes a
chilling one act opera, while the
voice is lightened to great effect
in ‘Pilgerweise’ as another of
Schubert’s wanderers trudges across
the landscape.
It’s the painterly colours that
Goerne finds in the voice which
makes him such an expressive artist
in a song like ‘Abendstern’. And
who can resist the final orchestral
sigh at the end of Alexander
Schmalcz’s version of that song?
Christopher Cook
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 81
Choral & Song Reviews
Befreit: A Soul Surrendered
Mahler: Kindertotenlieder; plus
songs by Müller-Hermann,
Schweikert and R Strauss
Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano),
Joseph Middleton (piano)
Chandos CHAN20177 68:19 mins
The mood
is distinctly
sombre as Befreit
(Released) charts
a journey that
culminates in
Kindertotenlieder, Gustav Mahler’s
setting of Rückert’s poems written
in response to the deaths of two of
his infant children.
While Mahler and Richard
Strauss provide the starting point for
Whately’s latest collaboration with
pianist Joseph Middleton, typically
the pair have contextualised the
journey with songs by two lesser-
known figures: Johanna Müller-
Hermann, a doyenne of Mahler’s
Vienna whose teachers included
Zemlinsky; and, her junior of nearly
ten years, the Karlsruhe-based
Margarete Schweikert.
Judging from the songs given here
(five apiece), Müller-Hermann’s is
the stronger musical personality.
The moonbathing of ‘Wie eine
Vollmondnacht’, sultry and
irresistible, draws highly-charged
rapture from singer and pianist, and
Whately finds the coyness as well
as the pathos in ‘Der letzte Abend’.
Her easy rapport with the sounds
of sung-German – matched by
Middleton’s silky pianistic sorcery
– illuminates at every turn. Strauss’s
‘Morgen’ is gorgeously enrapt, its
serene introduction exquisitely
poised And shorn of orchestral
sonorities, Kindertotenlieder insists
that with an adroit pianist Mahler’s
often sparse yet translucent piano
writing can be equally affecting.
Together Whately and Middleton
tap the second song’s Tristan-esque
intensity, whose shafts of major key
benediction are consummated in the
luminous D major transcendence of
the cycle’s close. Paul Riley
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
NYCGB Young
Composers 4
Works by Sun Keting, Thomas
Metcalf, Ben Nobuto and Claire
Victoria Roberts
CAROLINE DEBON
NYCGB Fellowship; National Youth
Choir of Great Britain/Ben Parry
NMC NMCDL3051 41:21 mins
82 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Painting with his voice:
Matthias Goerne creates
vivid scenes in his new
Schubert selection
In an era fraught
with argument
over the climate
crisis, you might
imagine an album
themed on ‘the
environment’ might be a little one-
note, focusing on death, destruction
and the end of humanity as we know
it. Thankfully, the NYCGB Young
Composers from the scheme’s 2022
cohort have responded to the topic
here in a much more nuanced way.
Some celebrate the majesty of
the natural world: Sun Keting’s
Máng gŭ explores the sonorities
of Chinese mountains, while Ben
Nobuto’s Sol pays tribute to the sun
gods. Claire Victoria Roberts sets
music to poems by Emily Dickinson,
using aspects of the natural world
as metaphors for love and hope.
Thomas Metcalf, meanwhile, feeds
words like ‘environment’, ‘climate’
and ‘endangered’ into an AI poetry-
writing application to create the text.
The nonsensical results suggest the
limits and fallibility of technology
in providing a ‘solution’ to the crisis.
The National Youth Choir of
Great Britain and its Fellowship
Ensemble rise to the challenges of
exposed lines, vocal drones and
extended techniques, delivering
superb dynamic control and
ensemble tuning. While many
of these new works share similar
soundworlds, the range of concepts
explored makes this a dynamic and
engaging collection. Freya Parr
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Visions Illuminées
Britten: Les illuminations;
A Holmès: Sérénades; plus songs
by Debussy, Duparc, Chabrier,
Chausson, Fauré and Ravel
Mary Bevan (soprano),
Joseph Middleton (piano);
12 Ensemble; Ruisi Quartet
Signum Classics SIGCD735 74:58 mins
Mary Bevan’s
affinity for
French song
was apparent
in her debut CD
recital, Voyages.
With Visions illuminées, Bevan
draws on an additional palette of
instrumental colours, being joined
not just by regular partner Joseph
Middleton, but also 12 Ensemble
and the Ruisi Quartet. Despite the
title, much is dark in hue, the music
exploring shade amidst the light.
Rarely heard chamber and
ensemble settings by Holmès,
Chausson, Chabrier, Duparc and
Fauré are supplemented by Robin
Holloway’s masterfully idiomatic
arrangements of songs by Ravel and
Debussy. The aching remembrance
of Chabrier’s magical Tes yeux bleus,
in the composer’s own beautifully
understated arrangement for
strings (recorded here for the first
time), is worth the price of the disc
alone. Bevan and the conductorless
12 Ensemble move as one organism
as she glides mesmerisingly over
their ebbing and flowing pulse.
The heart of the recital, though, is a
radiantly searching performance of
Britten’s Les illuminations.
Middleton and the Ruisi Quartet
underpin the recital’s final third.
Bevan’s ability to combine warmth
with refreshing vigour is to the fore
in Chausson’s Chanson perpétuelle
and the Debussy songs grouped
by Holloway as Quatre mélodies
de Verlaine. Her effervescence
in Augusta Holmés’s delectable
Sérénades, another first recording,
provides a sunny conclusion that
perfectly balances the opening
luminous nocturne of Fauré’s Clair
de lune. Christopher Dingle
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING ++++
Voyage intime
Songs by L Boulanger, Duparc,
Liszt, Schubert, C Schumann
and Wolf
Sandrine Piau (soprano),
David Kadouch (piano)
Alpha Classics ALPHA911 61:19 mins
This voyage hops
the short stretch
from Germany
to France via
a selection of
famous and
lesser-known songs. Possibly these
are the musicians’ favourites – I
could see no other thread, nor the
‘new horizons’ mentioned in the
album interview. Still, there is much
to admire (if not move).
The recital starts with
Liszt’s ‘Die Fischerknabe’, its
programmatic piano prelude
eliciting some beautiful colours.
The approach to the lieder,
however, is unsentimental, almost
austere. I would have loved more
indulgence, more vulnerability,
more peeling back of layers in
this often-magnificent music and
poetry. That said, though Piau takes
few risks with colour and time, her
sound is always brilliant. Kadouch,
too, is strict with tempo but superb
with colour. The French songs are
more imaginative, from the deep
knell which opens ‘L’invitation au
voyage’ to the expansive Debussy-
Baudelaire settings to songs from
Lili Boulanger’s increasingly
famous Clairières. Both the solo
piano numbers – Clara Schumann’s
Scherzo and Lili Boulanger’s
Cortège – reveal a different pianist
in Kadouch. The Scherzo has depth,
elasticity and colour, and ironically
is more sung than the actual songs.
Cortège, later on, is sparky, witty and
rhetorical. Natasha Loges
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
 Chamber
CHAMBER CHOICE

Masterful playing ‘on the edge of utopia’

John Allison is impressed by Quatuor Diotima’s deft handling of Ligeti’s works

these players justifiably describe as

‘on the edge of utopia’. Dating from Formidable talent:
1953-54, the String Quartet No. 1 Quatuor Diotima’s
Ligeti (‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’) is the specialism in modern
music is acclaimed
String Quartet No. 1, first work in which Ligeti’s own voice
‘Métamorphoses nocturnes’; is truly heard, though its style and
String Quartet No. 2; Andante nocturnal atmosphere have led to
and Allegretto it being nicknamed ‘Bartók’s 7th’.
Quatuor Diotima Opening with a quiet gathering up of
Pentatone PTC 5187 061 53:54 mins sound, it is a work in which rapturous
Though not extending to the late musing contrasts with virtuosic
style of György Ligeti – a phase outbursts and fierce folksiness; these
that opened with his only opera, contrasts, not to say ruptures, are
Le Grand Macabre, but included no handled brilliantly by the Diotimas.
string quartets And then there’s
– this thrilling Rapturous musing the avant-garde
new release of the classic that is the
Transylvanian
contrasts with String Quartet
composer’s music virtuosic outbursts No. 2, composed
for string quartet in 1968 after
embraces three contrasting periods Ligeti had escaped communist
of his output. The earliest work, Hungary. Its different soundworld,
sensibly placed here between his abstract and ephemeral, is
String Quartets Nos 1 and 2 as a sort encapsulated in the mesmerising
of palette cleanser, is the Andante and middle movement’s ‘meccanismo
Allegretto for string quartet – written di precisione’. These players, who
in 1950 when he was still under the have specialised in modern music
influence of his teachers Ferenc since forming their ensemble at the
Farkas and Zoltán Kodály – warmly Paris Conservatoire 27 years ago, are
played by the Quatuor Diotima. formidable throughout.
You can access thousands of reviews from our extensive archive on
But the real achievement lies PERFORMANCE +++++
the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
elsewhere of course, in music that RECORDING +++++

A case in point: there’s a delicious of 26 to 41, and even if there’s Biber

shared buoyancy in the bold
gestures that open the First Sonata
in D major, followed by a subtle
shift in focus as the violin sings
long-breathed lines over the more
prominent piano part. Throughout
the set, the conversation between
the two musicians is nuanced and
engaging. Yet there’s never a let up in
energy or vivacity: it bubbles away in
the Second Sonata’s first movement,
for instance, and nervily fizzes in
the Fourth Sonata.
There’s a big heart to these
performances, and a sense that
whatever struggles the music
goes through there’s always hope
at the end. The ten sonatas span
Beethoven’s life from the age
evolution in his style from the
elegant Classicism of the First
to, say, the unpredictability of
the Ninth Sonata, Midori and
Thibaudet approach each with
equal commitment. The ‘Spring’
Sonata (No. 5) has an irresistible
ease and charm, while they lean into
the turbulent drama of the C minor
No. 7. Just one quibble – could they
have brought out the distinctive
character of each sonata even
more? Perhaps. But the Tenth and
final Sonata in G major is an ideal
showcase for two players whose
virtuosity and warmth are never in
question. Rebecca Franks
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Mystery Sonatas Nos 1-16
Amandine Beyer (violin);
Gli Incogniti
Harmonia Mundi HMM902712.13
105:30 mins (2 discs)
Biber’s so-called
Mystery Sonatas
are a series
of musical
meditations,
probably
inspired by the tradition of rosary
processions in which 15 stages in the
life of Christ and the Virgin were
the focus for devotional prayers and
Biblical readings. Mirroring the
rosary cycle, Biber’s 15 sonatas are
divided into the Joyful, Sorrowful

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 83

Chamber Reviews
and Glorious Mysteries, with a final
Passacaglia – a tour de force for solo
violin – to close.
The works span the gamut of
musical styles: plangent laments
and ruminations give way to lyrical
‘arias’, lilting dances, virtuosic
display pieces and dazzling
variations. Biber – the Paganini
of the Baroque – exploits fiery
passagework, improvisatory
flourishes, daredevil leaps, bariolage
and multiple stoppings, not to
mention scordatura – tuning the
violin differently for each of the
sonatas, creating, by turns, muted
shades and bright sonorities.
French violinist Amandine
Beyer’s technical prowess makes
light work of all these challenges:
her playing throughout remains
poised, graceful and ever alert to
the all-pervasive dance rhythms.
She conveys the kaleidoscopic
moods of the sonatas, enhancing
their distinctive colours and
effects by using four different
instruments (modern copies of
Baroque violins). The continuo
players of Gli Incogniti respond
with beautifully stylish realisations,
exploiting the variegated timbres of
bowed and plucked strings, organ
and harpsichord.
The 2004 recording of these
works by Andrew Manze and
Richard Egarr (Harmonia Mundi)
remains a benchmark – spare,
intimate, prayerful – but it’s
hard to resist Gli Incogniti’s
more richly textured sound
and the sheer joie-de-vivre they
bring to these remarkable, and
ultimately mysterious, works.
Kate Bolton-Porciatti
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Brahms
Violin Sonatas Nos 1-3;
Sonatensatz
Ning Feng (violin), Zee Zee (piano)
Channel Classics CCS43423 73:00 mins
The Brahms
violin sonatas,
at least for me,
never grow stale.
Despite their
luscious beauty,
they are sparely written, tightly
constructed, with never a bow-hair
out of place, and poetry in every bar.
They are late works – Brahms did
not set about the first until 1878-79,
OSCAR VAZQUEZ
despite having worked with the
great violinist Joseph Joachim since
he was barely 20; his only earlier
84 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
surviving effort is the Scherzo from
the ‘F-A-E’ Sonata, co-created for
Joachim with Robert Schumann
and Albert Dietrich. Brahms is
also not above basing elements of
the first two sonatas on some of his
Lieder. ‘Regenlied’ – Rain Song – is
mirrored in the finale of the G major;
its flowing, longing atmosphere
permeates the whole work. The
Second Sonata is haunted not only
by Brahms’s own ‘Wie Melodien’, but
also the Prize Song from Wagner’s
Meistersinger (that’s another story…).
Ning Feng and Zee Zee join an
inevitably gigantic cavalcade of
recordings and there is a great deal
to enjoy in their playing. From the
beginning there’s a superb rapport
between them; they create rapt,
almost candlelit atmospheres that
can pull you in and hold you through
to the end.
This rarified air has one
downside: Brahms’s reuse of his own
lieder suggests that he is possibly
thinking of a singer’s voice, but Feng’s
sometimes slightly over-precious
sound leaves room for a more direct,
firm-centred and quasi-vocal
approach. The sonatas’ different
characters are also not wholly clear;
they come across almost as one work
in nine movements (ten with the
‘F-A-E’ Scherzo) instead of three
distinct universes. Jessica Duchen
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
Haydn
Piano Trios, Vol. 2: Nos 7, 21,
33, 35 and 45; plus Leonid
Gorokhov: For Gaspard
Trio Gaspard
Chandos CHAN20270 80:49 mins
The earliest
work in this
instalment of the
Trio Gaspard’s
complete
Haydn cycle is
a four-movement divertimento
composed in the early 1760s,
several years before Haydn took up
employment with Prince Esterházy.
It’s fairly innocuous stuff, but its
slow movement is an expressive
keyboard solo with a rudimentary
accompaniment for the violin and
cello; in an imaginative touch the
Gaspard string players change
to pizzicato for the repeat of the
opening section.
The Trio No. 21, dating from the
mid-1780s, does without a slow
movement. The opening Allegro
sounds a little conventional until
Haydn throws in a chromatic
syncopated passage, which returns
later in an intensified form.
The remaining pieces here were
composed ten years later, around
the time of Haydn’s London visits.
They have deeply expressive slow
movements, and exceptionally
lively finales (the finale of the Trio
Technical prowess:
Amandine Beyer is
dazzling in Biber’s
Mystery Sonatas
No. 45, a work actually composed
in London, is a Presto assai ‘in the
German Style’). Liveliness and
spontaneity are admirable qualities
of the Trio Gaspard’s performances,
though the spur-of-the-moment
ornaments they add to the repeats
sometimes sound a little fussy.
A feature of this series is the
inclusion of short commissions
from contemporary composers in
response to Haydn. On this occasion
the Russian cellist and composer
Leonid Gorokhov has contributed
an appropriately witty piece which
he’s called simply For Gaspard. It’s
skilfully written in mock-Haydn
style, incorporating snatches of his
D major Cello Concerto, but the joke
wears a little thin. Misha Donat
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Schubert
Piano Trios Nos 1 & 2;
Notturno; Rondo, D895;
Arpeggione Sonata
Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Tanja
Tetzlaff (cello), Lars Vogt (piano)
Ondine ODE 1394-2D 136:45 mins (2 discs)
These Schubert
performances
were among the
last recordings
Lars Vogt made
before his
untimely death last year, and his
regular chamber music partners

Christian and Tanja Tetzlaff have
dedicated the album to his memory.
It provides a moving testimonial to
his exceptional musicianship and
pianism, and the radiance of his
pianissimo playing is particularly
striking in such moments as the
opening of Notturno for piano
trio, and the slow movement of
the E flat Trio, D929. Schubert is
surely the only composer who could
simultaneously write pianissimo
and appassionato, as he does in both
these instances, to indicate a kind of
sublimated expressive intensity.
When Schubert submitted
the manuscript of the E flat Trio
for publication in his last year he
marked substantial cuts in the finale
that were, he said, scrupulously to be
observed. The piece is nearly always
heard in its shortened version, but on
this recording the players restore the
deletions (though without observing
the first-half repeat which Schubert
originally indicated), offering a rare
opportunity of hearing a powerful
passage setting off in the dark key of
F minor, as well as a reappearance
of the slow movement’s theme in
combination with one of the finale’s
important subsidiary subjects.
Also included are the haunting
Arpeggione Sonata (transcribed, as
usual, for cello and piano) and the
Rondo in B minor, D895 for violin
and piano. The latter is a virtuoso
piece, taken here at a slightly hectic
tempo. This very well recorded
collection is one to treasure.
Misha Donat
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Stravinsky
The Soldier’s Tale
Richard Katz, Martins Imhangbe,
Mark Lockyer (speakers); Musicians
of the Hallé/Mark Elder
Hallé CD HLL 7560 58:12 mins
Lockdown’s two
major phases saw
quite a few filmed
performances of
The Soldier’s Tale
in its original
form, by virtue of its limited
numbers and a drama that doesn’t
necessarily require physical contact.
The problem is the hybrid itself: a
lopsided imbalance of so-so text
adapting various Russian-folk
Soldier and Devil tales by the
Swiss writer Charles-Ferdinand
Ramuz, and the composer’s
gallimaufry of styles past and
present ingeniously resonating on
a mere seven instruments (it often
sounds like more). The set pieces
don’t amplify the text as the best
incidental music does, but have a
life of their own, so it needs a very
charismatic mix of actors and
musicians. One performance was in
a class of its own, from the Scottish
Chamber Orchestra with Matthew
McVarish taking all the speaking
roles brilliantly. This one is better
than many by virtue of Jeremy
Sams’s creative ‘translation’, but of
the three speechifiers, only Martins
Imhangbe’s Soldier really carries the
beacon. It might have been better
if the release had been a DVD, for
clearly the dramatic scenes were
filmed at various locations around
Manchester; the radio-play sound
effects just about work, but we
need more.
The more lurid strains from the
Royal March onwards could do with
a bit more guiding panache from
the conductor, Mark Elder. All the
Hallé players are first-rate, with
notable singing tone from bassoonist
Emily Hultmark, and leader Peter
Liang holds the spotlight in the court
dances compellingly. But by then the
dithering narrative has long ceased
to interest. David Nice
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
British Cello Works,
Vol. 2
Britten: Cello Sonata;
Delius: Cello Sonata; Gibbs: Cello
Sonata; Smyth: Cello Sonata
Lionel Handy (cello),
Jennifer Walsh (piano)
Lyrita SRCD412 67:58 mins
Ethel Smyth’s
Cello Sonata
dates from 1887,
and though it’s
possible to hear
Brahms in it –
Smyth had met the composer in
Leipzig – it’s certainly a distinctive
piece. The slow movement is
especially impressive, cellist
Lionel Handy and pianist Jennifer
Walsh catching effectively its air
of intimate introspection. The
recorded balance favours Handy, to
the occasional detriment of Walsh’s
delicately expressive playing.
The pair make cogent sense of
the jittering rhythms in the opening
movement of Britten’s Cello Sonata,
though the cello detail can be
smudgy in multi-stopped passages.
Close miking again handicaps
the ‘Scherzo pizzicato’, Handy’s
Chamber Reviews
cello making a dry and airless Taylor Perkinson (1932–2004), an
impression. Both players react eclectic spirit who was happy to
quick-wittedly to the tricky ‘Marcia’ hop between classical and popular
and ‘Moto Perpetuo’ movements music, jazz and the adjacent worlds
concluding the Sonata. of ballet, television and films.
The inclusion of Armstrong Haunted by the rising and falling
Gibbs’s 1951 Cello Sonata fills a opening phrase of the spiritual
gap in the recording catalogue, String Quartet No. 1, ‘Calvary’,
and its pithy, economical opening this tautly argued early work from
movement has a pleasing fluidity 1956 is rhythmically ebullient and
and momentum in Handy’s and lyrically graceful, and pursues
Walsh’s performance. Some of both moods in a forthright manner
Handy’s phrasing here and in admirably complemented by the
the more boisterous finale seems Catalyst players’ full-blooded tone.
effortful, an impression possibly Arriving after this vibrant
magnified by the cramped acoustic. attraction, the Lyric Quartette by
Delius’s single-movement Cello William Grant Still (1895–1978)
Sonata is an easy work to overheat strikes the ear by comparison as the
emotionally, but Handy and Walsh musical equivalent of limp celery.
balance out the rhapsodising with Composed it seems in the 1940s, the
a clear-eyed overview of how piece adopts a ‘universal’ melting
the piece is laid out structurally. pot of styles, variously depicting
The central section has a wistful a gently euphonious Southern
nostalgia, while the conclusion plantation, a pioneer settlement’s
sensibly avoids overplaying a sense barn dance and a mountain vista
of bounding exuberance. Paul in the Incas’ Peru, all in pretty pale
Conway’s booklet notes are excellent, colours that the players can’t do
and those interested in British cello much to amend.
repertoire will find the Gibbs and Vigour and rigour happily return
Smyth recordings here particularly in George Walker’s String Quartet
useful. Terry Blain No. 1, written when still a student
PERFORMANCE +++ in 1946, and the most abstract piece
RECORDING +++ here. The central movement has
long been famous in its orchestral
Uncovered, Vol. 3 arrangement (the Lyric for strings),
Perkinson: String Quartet No. 1, but its simple lamenting mood
‘Calvary’; Grant Still: Lyric Quartette; hits home all the more when the
G Walker: String Quartet No. 1, ‘Lyric’ varied and emotionally complex
Catalyst Quartet outer movements are placed on
Azica Records 71357 55:00 mins either side. Whatever the mood,
Third in the Walker’s craftsmanship ensures
Catalyst Quartet’s clean lines and immediate impact,
series devoted and the Catalyst Quartet pitch
to repertoire by into the work’s beauties with
Black American equal craftsmanship and love.
composers, this Geoff Brown
album (a digital-only release) begins PERFORMANCE ++++
with the first quartet by Coleridge- RECORDING ++++
BACKGROUND TO…
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s
String Quartet No. 1 ‘Calvary’
Based, to an extent, on the spiritual of the same
name, ‘Calvary’ (or String Quartet No. 1) was
completed by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932-
2004, named after Samuel Coleridge-Taylor)
when he was in his early twenties and fresh out of
his Masters studies at the Manhattan School of
Music. The very first performance of the work was
undertaken by the Cumbo Quartet, and took place at Carnegie Hall in 1956
as part of a memorial concert organised by the Margaret Bonds Chamber
Music Society for baritone-composer Harry T Burleigh.
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 85
Instrumental
INSTRUMENTAL CHOICE

Lugansky bewitches in Rachmaninov

The pianist delivers a truly transcendental Études-Tableaux, says David Nice

but the classical balance only makes

the biggest climaxes hit all the harder.
From the opening march-stalking
Rachmaninov of Op. 33, he clarifies through
Études-Tableaux, Opp 33 & 39; careful pedalling – dry to begin
Three Pieces (1917) with, carefully more sustained when
Nikolai Lugansky (piano) lyricism unfolds, transcendentally
Harmonia Mundi HMM902297 73:34 mins beautiful in No. 4, Moderato. Every
Both sets of Études-Tableaux are staccato or accented note throughout
consistently enthralling, especially in has its proper weight, with an
these performances, but the second elasticity that reaches its apogee
sequence, along with the Op. 32 in the penultimate Étude-Tableau.
Preludes, includes the most profound The supreme test, though, and a
music Rachmaninov ever composed summary of everything we’ve heard,
for solo piano. is the terrifying and
When I reviewed Even the shortest rests profound Op. 39
all available No. 7, Lento lugubre.
recordings of
between notes are Even the shortest
Op. 39 for Radio pregnant with tension rests between notes
3’s Building a are pregnant with
Library, Nikolai Lugansky had only tension; the central build towards
recorded some of the numbers; the terraced bellsong is spellbindingly
complete set, further enriched by sustained. This is a great overall
perspectives from Op. 33, establishes interpretation of one (or two, if you
a golden mean in Rachmaninov prefer) of the monuments of the Performer prowess:
Nikolai Lugansky
interpretation, somewhere between piano repertoire, where Lugansky,
is confident and
my top choices back then, the robust like the composer, knows perfectly uncompromising
and springy Rustem Hayroudinoff how to achieve each and every effect,
and the more mystically inclined and doesn’t flinch from a ruthlessly
Alexander Melnikov. clear recording.
You can access thousands of reviews from our extensive archive on
Many have mistaken Lugansky’s PERFORMANCE +++++
the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
meticulous objectivity for coldness, RECORDING +++++

JS Bach – Clavichord
Capriccio, BWV 992; Two-part
Inventions, BWV 772-786; Duets
Nos 1-4, BWV 802-805; Musical
Offering, BWV 1079; Three-
part Inventions, BWV 787-801;
Chromatic Fantasia & Fugue in
D, BWV 903
András Schiff (clavichord)
ECM 485 7948 80:37 mins (2 discs)
JS Bach’s favoured
keyboard
instrument,
according to his
son Carl Philipp
Emmanuel,
was the clavichord. That relatively
inexpensive instrument was to be
found in many a German organist’s
home for regular practice; with
its simple action in which a metal
tangent strikes the string, the
clavichord is, in András Schiff’s
words ‘… a most gentle creature, ideal
for playing alone’. The instrument
used for this recording is a copy of a
clavichord by Jacob Specken, a pupil
of Silbermann, one of the finest
makers of the early 18th century.
The close recording in a modestly
reverberant acoustic reveals
an instrument of considerable
expressive range. At its best, Schiff’s
playing is exquisitely controlled,
as in the Adagiosissimo of the early
‘Capriccio on the departure of his
most beloved brother’, and well
balanced with infectious humour
in the concluding ‘post horn’
Fugue. The mature Inventions
and Sinfonias blend insight, as in enjoyable guide to Bach at the
the elusive, chromatic Sinfonia clavichord. Jan Smaczny
in F minor, with a beguilingly PERFORMANCE ++++
carefree approach in the more RECORDING ++++
relaxed numbers such as the
E major Sinfonia. As impressive Frescobaldi
is the coherence Schiff brings to Fiori Musicali – Organ Masses
the counterpoint in the three-part Richard Lester (organ); The
Ricercar from the Musical Offering, Greenwood Consort/Mark Bennett
and the Fantasia of the Chromatic SOMM SOMMCD 0661 79:53 mins
Fantasia and Fugue has a brilliance Girolamo
surpassing many a harpsichord or Frescobaldi was
modern piano performance. a key figure in
Less convincing is the succeeding late-Renaissance
Fugue which feels hard driven and early-
in its latter stages, an occasional Baroque music
tendency surfacing elsewhere, for whose influence as a composer and
example in the D minor Invention. keyboard player spread beyond
Nevertheless, Schiff’s playing his native Italy and continued well
overall is an illuminating and into the 17th and 18th centuries.

86 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE


This new recording of his set of
liturgical organ pieces, published in
1635 under the title Fiori Musicali
(Musical Flowers), offers a fresh take
on his last completed work.
Organist Richard Lester is joined
by four singers from the Devon-
based choral and instrumental
group The Greenwood Consort
– Liam Fleet, Eden Bishop, Joshua
Thomas-North and director Mark
Bennett – who provide plainchant
and obligato voice for five of
Frescobaldi’s Kyrie settings. Lester
himself tackles Frescobaldi’s eclectic
and at times fiendishly complex
keyboard writing on the double-
manual organ of St John’s Church,
Bridgetown in Totnes. The dignified
gravitas of the ricercar movements
and the song-like buoyancy of the
canzoni sections are well captured,
as is the wistful cheekiness of
the two capriccios based on folk
melodies that conclude the third
mass. But it is in the mystical and
astonishingly chromatic toccatas (to
be played during the elevation of the
host) that Lester excels.
Although the three organ masses
(for some reason ordered on this disc
as numbers 2, 1 and 3) were probably
written for Venice, there is no
attempt to reproduce the ambience
of St Mark’s, or of St Peter’s in
Rome, where Frescobaldi worked
as organist. The recorded sound is
warm and close, and the odd click
and scrape of the organ stops only
add to the sense of personal and
reflective intimacy. John-Pierre Joyce
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
Kabeláč • Smetana
Kabeláč: Eight Preludes; Motifs from
Exotic Lands; Smetana: Dreams
Jan Bartoš (piano)
Supraphon SU43242
70:25 mins
The piano
miniature is
an enduring
presence in Czech
music from early
pioneers like
Tomášek and Voříšek, through
Smetana and Dvořák to the
mid-20th century with Miloslav
Kabeláč. Persecuted by the Nazis
MARCO BORGGREVE, NADJA SJÖSTRÖM
and sidelined by the Communists,
Kabeláč’s great qualities as a
composer, over 40 years after his
death, are at last being recognised.
His refreshing approach to tonality,
unashamed lyricism and formal
clarity are evident throughout his
Clavichord control:
András Schiff offers
illuminating Bach
superb Eight Preludes from the mid-
1950s and the captivating Motifs
from Exotic Lands of 1961 celebrating
his fascination with non-European
music. Jan Bartoš’s playing of the
preludes is magnificent, both in
projecting the mesmerising impetus
of the opening and closing numbers
and in realising the delicately
reimagined Impressionism of the
third and fifth.
For all his renown as the father of
Czech opera, Smetana’s first love was
the piano and he had a formidable
reputation as performer and teacher.
The cycle, Dreams, is from the latter
part of his career when deafness
had reduced him to a shadow of his
former combative self. While these
pieces offer plenty of the bracing,
nationalist Smetana, nearly all tend
toward wistful reflection. Bartoš is
an ideal interpreter here, providing
abundant brilliance without
sacrificing poetry, notably in the
two examples of rural merrymaking
where plentiful Lisztian exuberance
is balanced by skilful rhythmic
pointing and a subtle rubato
revealing the heart of these deeply-
felt works. Beautifully recorded,
this is one of the best and certainly
most stimulating recordings of
Czech piano music of recent years.
Jan Smaczny
PERFORMANCE +++++
+++++
RECORDING
Mozart
Piano Sonatas Nos 13 & 14;
Fantasies in D minor & C minor;
Six Variations
Elena Bashkirova (piano)
Avi-music AVI 8553498 78:27 mins
Instrumental Reviews
Elena Bashkirova
conjures clear,
beautifully
phrased
sounds from
her Steinway,
with dynamics that never become
overbearing and discreet ornaments
in the repeats of the first movement
of K333. Though she has a tendency
to rush, the arch of the music always
has shape and direction. She spins
an eloquent line in the Andante
cantabile, sustaining a relatively
slow tempo with ease and subtly
changing colour in the minor key
section. The swagger in the final
Allegretto comes across with a real
sense of fun.
The dark world of the D minor
Fantasia suits Bashkirova well, and
she conveys the ebb and flow of
tempo which lie at its heart, together
with timbral variety and its dramatic
contrasts in dynamics. The C minor
Fantasia has a yet greater range
of tonality, mood and speed, and
Bashkirova encompasses all these
from the tender to the violent.
In the opening movement of
K457, she avoids the trap of playing
as if it were by Beethoven, but
doesn’t shirk at conveying its innate
turbulence through her incisive
fingerwork and tight rhythms. The
Adagio brings another well-judged
change of mood – warm but firm –
before the ambiguity of the finale.
The Variations on the theme from
the final movement of the Clarinet
Quintet make a delightful encore.
Martin Cotton
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING +++++
Ryuichi Sakamoto
12
Ryuichi Sakamoto (piano)
Milan Records G010004936240G
61:06 mins
Ryuichi
Sakamoto’s liner
note to 12 is slight
and pared back,
like the music
itself. ‘There are
no adornments,’ he writes of the self-
described sketches drawn during
rehabilitation after a significant
operation. That’s not strictly
accurate: while the intriguingly
coded miniatures – each identified
by an eight-digit title, presumably
the date of composition – are
structurally and melodically clean,
some additional effects are used
during these otherwise solo piano
works. An expanse of ethereal
electronica opens the album; there
are several minutes of what feels
like white noise before the piano
begins its slow, methodical plod.
It’s strangely comforting, like a
Rothko or Yves Klein painting; the
minimalism inspired by the purity
of Feldman or Cage, rather than the
pop style that infuses later tracks.
Pieces such as 20220123 and
20220214 reveal gradual melodic
development, which tends to focus
around the upper-mid-range of
the keyboard. Just one piece has a
word attached to it – 20220302, a
mysterious jazz-infused reflection, is
marked ‘sarabande’. Sakamoto sees
this music as a series of diary entries,
and it is possible to trace subtle
shifts in mood. The sarabande-like
motif appears again fleetingly in
20220404 in a more muted form; it
is followed by strange tinkling bells,
an unsettling conclusion to this
programatic release. Claire Jackson
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
Schubert
Piano Sonatas: No. 4 in A minor,
D537; No. 20 in A, D959
Garrick Ohlsson (piano)
Hyperion CDA68398 65:58 mins
If you like
your Schubert
unfussy and
unsentimental,
then this
recording from
Garrick Ohlsson might be for you.
The American pianist, who won the
International Chopin competition
in 1970, has recorded Schubert
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 87
Instrumental Reviews
once before as part of his varied
discography. Of the composer’s
21 sonatas, he appears to be
particularly drawn to those in keys
of A. On both Schubert releases, he
pairs a sonata in A minor with one
in A major. Here, he chooses the
composer’s earliest complete sonata,
written when he was just 22, and one
of the three late sonatas, composed
in 1828. Although, of course, given
Schubert’s untimely death, that puts
them only just over a decade apart.
Here, Ohlsson emphasises the
kinship between the two works,
with an interpretative approach
that remains broadly the same.
His articulation is never less than
precise, his fingers always nimble,
emphasising the horizontal lines of
the music. His touch is robust but
never overpowering, often delicate,
finding carefully judged shades of
piano and pianissimo. The A minor,
D537, though an early work, already
displays the composer’s hallmarks:
the unexpected modulations
to distant keys that transport
us to other emotional realms in
the first movement; the gently
ambling melody of the Allegretto
quasi Andantino; the stark, unison
A minor scale opening the finale.
Ohlsson’s performance of the
A major is less convincing. The
emotional range feels strangely
muted here, short-changing those
heart-wrenching bittersweet
moments Schubert does so well. In
the Andantino, which traces a sort
of crystallised madness, there is a
sense of the music’s lonely beauty
but not the inexorable power it
should unleash, and the careful
third movement and finale rather
underwhelm. Rebecca Franks
PERFORMANCE +++
RECORDING ++++
R Schumann
‘Abegg’ Variations; Papillons;
Davidsbündlertänze; Carnaval;
Arabeske; Blumenstück;
Nachtstücke
Vladimir Feltsman (piano)
Nimbus NI 6433 128 mins
Vladimir
Feltsman’s
lengthy career
is devoted to
the 19th-20th-
century Austro-
German canon. Here he collects
the early piano works of Robert
Schumann. This is much-recorded
repertoire, but he brings a reflective,
layered quality to it (as well as
88 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
some excellent liner notes) and Bright and Early
some discoveries.
Feltsman’s Schumann Works by Marchetto Cara,
is beautifully voiced and Joan Ambrosio Dalza and
rhythmically free (and he makes Francesco Spinacino
the odd un-notated change to Hopkinson Smith (lute)
the score, thickening harmonies Naïve E7545 61:14 mins
and disconnecting rhythms). Just as medieval
Though this music can be difficult, scholarship
virtuosity is the last thing Feltsman’s is no stranger
playing evokes; recalling Clara to the odd bit
Schumann’s conception of her of educated
husband’s music, he does not play guessery and
‘passagework’, but shapes each line imaginative supposition, so too with
and traces each character. Hopkinson Smith’s reevaluation of
The figures who drift and the early 16th-century lute works
dance through Papillons come to of Francesco Spinacino. The liner
technicolour life. There is something notes tell it all, of the haphazard
old-school about Feltsman’s publication of Spinacino’s Libro
conception of time as a material to Primo and Secondo by Ottaviano
be sculpted, squeezed and stretched Petrucci in 1507, the earliest-known
at will. He is a compelling storyteller, publication of European lute music,
puckish or dreamy as necessary. full of frustrating omissions and
There are exquisite beauties confused notation.
among the 28 Davidsbündlertänze; Hopkinson Smith, the American
the laconically titled No. 7 ‘Nicht lutenist, has served his historical
schnell’ is unforgettable, despite time piecing together the disparate
quite bright recorded sound. threads in convincing fashion,
Making Carnaval sound stringing his lute in an early
strange and new after countless 16th-century-type style – with
recordings is a huge challenge. reckoned embellishment – which
This performance did not offer any suits his refashionings. Like any
particularly fresh insights although foray into a somewhat nebulous past,
Feltsman’s voicing is often deeply his is the work of the conservator,
astute. I developed great affection carefully assembling the fragments
for his Brahmsian left-hand thumb, with metaphorical tweezers, but
tracing hidden tenor melodies. also that of the artist, reviewing,
Not every piece responds to remaking. It’s certainly convincing,
Feltsman’s approach, and two discs taking here the formal but loosely
of early Schumann risks overdosing; scripted recercares of Spinacino
even the most sympathetic and alternating them with some
rendering cannot relieve the of Joan Ambrosio Dalza’s good-
claustrophobia of the composer’s natured pavannes and caldibis, also
binary intro-/extroversion, so enjoy variously reassembled, and in the
this beautiful playing in smaller case of the Caldibi Saltarello, entirely
doses. Natasha Loges reconstructed. Dalza’s work was
PERFORMANCE ++++ originally published with the almost
RECORDING +++ apologetic ‘disclaimer’ that he would
BACKGROUND TO…
0LORVODY.DEHOÀËłV
Motifs from Exotic Lands
This ten-part piano cycle is born of the Czech
composer’s fascination with musical forms and
styles found outside of Europe. It was piqued by
recordings heard during his studies, plus visits to
Prague by music and dance groups from countries
like India, and led to serious study. This work,
composed in the late 1950s, is his own take on
the sounds and rhythms of far-flung cultures, from Brazil to the Asia-Pacific.
Battles, burials and lullabies are just some of the pieces of this international
puzzle, premiered on Czech Radio in July 1961 by František Maxián.
release a more complex setting of
these dances ‘to satisfy those who
are skilled in these matters’, as Smith
tells it in his notes. Another loss to
history. But the opening Saltarello
ala Ferrarese is warm and intimate,
a bright, sweet-toned entrée to
Spinacino’s more sober Recercare,
to which Smith gives space and
thought, conjuring a clarity of early
16th-century sound, exquisitely
played. Sarah Urwin Jones
PERFORMANCE ++++
RECORDING ++++
The Handel Project
Brahms: Handel Variations;
Handel: Keyboard Suites, HWV 427,
430 & 433
Seong-Jin Cho (piano)
DG 486 3018 56:46 mins
It’s hard to
imagine a more
persuasive case
being made for
the performance
of Handel’s
harpsichord suites by pianists than
the evidence of Seong-Jin Cho’s
album The Handel Project. This
draws on music composed and
published by Handel in 1720 (three
suites ‘pour le clavecin’) and 1733
(a Sarabande and Minuet from two
different suites), as well as Brahms’s
Op. 24 Variations (composed on the
Aria from another of Handel’s 1733
suites). The selection recalls András
Schiff’s Teldec release, recorded live
in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw
in December 1994. On the basis of
this, Cho’s first recorded exploration
of Baroque repertoire, the younger
pianist can comfortably take his
place among such hallowed and
distinguished company.
From the opening F major
Suite, HWV 427 each of Handel’s
movement are finely etched with
meticulous voicing and stylish
ornamentation, from the joyful
capriciousness of the F minor Gigue,
HWV 433 to the elegant tempo
rubato in the Prelude of HWV 430.
Wilhelm Kempff’s arrangement of
the G minor Minuet, however, seems
out of place amongst Cho’s decidedly
stylish but clearly 21st-century
interpretations. Cho traverses the
breadth of Brahms’s Variations with
aplomb and flair, capturing the
grandeur of 1 and 13, the elegance of
3, 18, 21 and 22, and the audacious
virtuosity of 14 and 15. The Fugue is
simply jaw-dropping. Ingrid Pearson
PERFORMANCE +++++
RECORDING +++++
Kirill Petrenko conducts
Shostakovich’s Symphonies 8–10

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Dmitri Shostakovich
Symphonies while his life was in danger. They are testimonies Symphony No. 8 in C minor op. 65
of an individual fighting against an all-powerful threat – and Symphony No. 9 in E flat major op. 70
preserving the hope of freedom. The recordings presented here Symphony No. 10 in E minor op. 93
demonstrate the depth of understanding that chief conductor
Kirill Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker have attained in Berliner Philharmoniker
their interpretation, conveying Shostakovich’s messages with Kirill Petrenko
overwhelming intensity.
2 CD + Blu-ray

berliner-philharmoniker-recordings.com
 *

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Michael Church presents our occasional look at the best world music recordings
April round-up
Ravi Shankar’s
soundtracks for
Satyajit Ray’s
‘Apu Trilogy’
are a matchless
demonstration
of how music can transform
film into something magical. Le
salon de musique: Satyajit Ray
is the soundtrack to a film which
Ray made while the trilogy was
gestating, with music by Vilayat
Khan, a sitar maestro who was more
famous than Shankar at the time.
Titled in English The Music Room,
this film depicts the final days of
a landlord whose fortunes are in
decline and who loves music above
all else, and the soundtrack runs
the gamut of the musical styles to
be found in late ’50s Bengal. This
release is a charming mishmash of
song, instrumental virtuosity and
dialogue, reflecting India’s musical
culture before Bollywood was
invented. (Ocora C 582072) ++++
There seems no end to the
sufferings of the Syrians. Maya
Youssef ’s first album was a
threnody to her lost homeland;
Finding Home, is
a new collection
of songs reflecting
the fulfilment of
that quest.
Youssef’s
instruments are her voice and her
qanun, the latter being the plucked
zither which is the Levant’s answer
to the piano. For this she’s enlisted
the support of Radio 3 and the
British Museum, and has persuaded
Opera North to lend her a chamber
group. Everything is passionately
heartfelt; all the effects in these
songs are simple, if somewhat
anodyne and repetitive. (Seven Gates
5070000485898) +++
After which, Minka comes like
a breath of bracingly fresh air. The
female singers of the Eva Quartet
are all past members of Le mystère
des voix Bulgares, the choir which
first alerted
the world to
the wonders of
Balkan folk music,
but they also draw
GETTY
sustenance from
World
the music of the Orthodox church,
as we hear in their rapt performance
WORLD CHOICE
of the thousand-year-old hymn
‘Gospodi, Pomiluy’. Their album is
musically fascinating, with subtle Cambodian treasures
harmonic games played throughout,
and much leaning on the contrast This 1960s recording made at the Royal palace
between tremulous high voices and
rock-hard low ones.
in Phnom Penh remains a vital document
But… there are no texts at all,
nothing to tell us what they are
singing about, beyond vague phrases
like ‘a deeply moving song about
the preparation
for a Bulgarian
wedding’. By
keeping their texts
secret, rather than
welcoming their
audience into the dramas they are
singing about, these talented singers
neutralise the whole effect of their
music. What a waste. (Riverboat
Records TUGCD1127) +++
Now here’s an old-style wallow,
and a recording triumphantly
reflecting the way musicians
are finding new paths to new
collaborations in response to Covid
and political turmoil. I’ve never
heard klezmer as decorous as that
in the Muir String Quartet’s
Celebration Music with their
clarinettist Alexander Fiterstein, but
it works a treat. (Big Round Records
BR8974) +++ Regal splendour: traditional music and dance has endured for centuries
Meanwhile the three musicians
who comprise Les Arrivants have Cambodia:
very different musical backgrounds:
bandoneonist Amichai Ben Shalev Music of the Royal Palace (1960s)
hails from Argentina, oud player Orchestre mohori du Palais Royal et al
Abdul-Wahab Ocora C 561034 73:38 mins
Kayyali from If ever there was a reason to cherish an
Jordan and archive recording, this one – made in 1966
hand-drummer by musicians born in the 1920s – is it. The
Hamin Honari royal music of the Khmer kingdom goes back a thousand years,
from Iran. They since when its fortunes have fluctuated wildly, reaching their nadir
met in Montreal, where they found with Pol Pot’s massacre of almost all its exponents; these tracks are
themselves during the pandemic. a vital link. The principal instruments are xylophones, flutes, drums,
The music on Home draws on fiddles and many types of gong – all the instruments carved in the
their original traditions – tango, bas-reliefs of Angkor Wat. The poetry is unchanged from ancient
classical Arab music and Persian times, and the singing has a persuasive simplicity, with much
rhythms – to create a meld of latitude given to those who want to improvise their ornamentation.
nostalgia for the past and hope for All the tracks are tied to events in the royal calendar, such as
the future. Each is a maestro in his the funeral of an old king, and the coronation of a new one, with a
own right, and they take their turns Salutation to the Moon to mark the arrival of his barge. The sculptor
to shine, and to establish their own Auguste Rodin, who witnessed these songs and dances in 1906,
native soundworld before blending was mind-blown. ‘It seemed impossible to see human nature
it into a shared one. (Analekta carried to such perfection,’ he wrote. ‘Even the children are great
AN29175) ++++ artists.’ +++++
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 91
Brief notes
This month’s selection features chapters, encores, myths, melodies and more
Boccherini Six Symphonies
Orchestra of the 18th Century/
Marc Destrubé Glossa GCD921131
Boccherini’s
affinity with Haydn
is immediately
apparent in these six
lively symphonies,
bursting with memorable melodies
and busy polyphony. The Orchestra
of the 18th Century’s renderings of
these affable, bustling works have
an attractive snap and tang to them.
(SW) +++++
Matthew Coleridge Requiem
The Choir Of Royal Holloway;
Southern Sinfonia/Rupert Gough
Convivium CR081
Like all good
Requiem masses,
Matthew Coleridge’s
reaches into the
soul and lifts it
skyward, but his prominent cello
lines throughout serve to maintain a
vital, grounding thread. Additional
works, such as the beautifully
still And I saw Heaven, make
this a recording to cherish. (MB)
+++++
P Harrison Chamber Works
Robert Plane (clarinet); Gould Piano
Trio Resonus RES10313
Here’s an important
survey of Pamela
Harrison (1915-90),
yet another gifted
woman composer
whom history has overlooked.
Unsurprisingly, these are all world-
premiere recordings; elegantly
played, each is a lyrical, evocative
and occasionally witty treat to be
discovered. (MB) ++++
Jung Jaeil Listen
Jung Jaeil (piano); Budapest Scoring
Orchestra Decca (digital only)
This doesn’t quite
measure up to Jaeil’s
first (and quite
recent) Decca release.
The plaintive piano
melodies are pleasant enough, with
some a little over-eager to tug at the
heartstrings. The shadow of Craig
Armstrong and Philip Glass lingers
and I can’t gelp but feel I’ve heard it
all before. (MB) ++
92 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Locatelli • Vivaldi Harmonic
Labyrinth; Four Seasons
Chloe Chua (violin) et al
Pentatone PTC 5187 062
There’s a palpable
energy in this
detailed live
recording, Chua’s
album debut. The
Vivaldi’s familiar characteristics
dazzle in a performance that is way
beyond the teenager’s 16 years, and
she equally navigates Locatelli’s
Harmonic Labyrinth with supreme
confidence. (MB) ++++
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto
Kirill Troussov (violin) et al
Orchid Classics ORC100214 (EP)
The first in a
series of live EPs,
the much-loved
Mendelssohn sits
well on Troussov’s
‘Brodsky’ Stradivari of 1702. To the
first movement he brings a nervy,
surging energy, while in the third he
charges ahead, almost stumbling,
but conveying the thrill of highwire
live performance. (CS) ++++
Nielsen Symphonies Nos 1 & 3
Danish National Symphony Orchestra/
Fabio Luisi DG 486 3478
In Luisi’s hands, the
Third Symphony
enthrals at every
level, from the
high-octane thrills
and spills of the opening Allegro
espansivo to the evocative distant
voices of the following Andante
pastorale. The First Symphony fares
well here too. (JP) +++++
Nielsen • Szymanowski
Violin Concertos
Anna Agafia (violin) et al Claves CD3057
Though a former
figure skater and
actor, Agafia is
nevertheless a deeply
committed violinist,
who brings her sweet tone and
dextrous technique to these highly
charged concertos. Complementing
the narrow vibrato is a steely,
sinewy quality, infinitely capable
of meeting – and matching – the
works’ myriad technical challenges.
(CS) ++++
Petersen Symphony No. 3
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Profil Medien PH22069
Wilhelm Petersen
(1890-1957) was
one of those poor
souls snubbed for
writing tonal music
in an era when critical ears were
largely turned elsewhere. This world
premiere recording of his Third
Symphony, with its Mahler-like
fanfare opening and Brucknerian
sense of scale, gives us a welcome
hint of what we’ve been missing.
(JP) ++++
Kevin Puts The City etc
Baltimore Symphony/Marin Alsop
Naxos 8.559926
The marimba
provides propulsive,
bubbling energy,
although its lack of
timbral variety can
pall. Like any great metropolis, The
City grabs your attention from the
off and doesn’t let go. The meditative
oboe concerto Moonlight seeks calm
and resolution in a divided Trump-
era US. (SW) +++
Schubert Mass in A flat, D678
Kammerchor Stuttgart et al
Hänssler Classic HC22041
Though not entirely
devoid of drama, this
is not a blood-and-
thunder affair. What
you do get, however,
is a supremely elegant performance
from Frieder Bernius and his forces,
with a delightfully light touch in
moments such as the Benedictus.
(JP) ++++
Turina Complete Piano Trios
David Mata (violin), Aldo Mata (cello),
Patricia Arauzo (piano)
IBS Classical IBS192022
Turina packed a lot
into these four works
for piano trio, from
the sophistication
of the Parisian salon
to the folky charms of his Spanish
homeland. On the one hand, these
performances don’t skip as lightly as
some; on the other, the players bring
a certain weightiness to the music’s
more cerebral moments. (JP) +++
Wellesz Chamber Music
Veles Ensemble et al
Toccata Classics TOCC0617
Wellesz matured
in the early
20th-century
Viennese world
of Schoenberg
et al, but spent his later decades
in Oxford. You can hear both
Austrian expressionism and
English pastoralism in these late
works, played with extraordinary
sensitivity by the Veles Ensemble
and friends. (SW) ++++
Big House Works by Haydn et al
Ruisi Quartet Pentatone PTC 5187 040
This album unites
works spanning
four centuries, from
Locke to Leith by
way of Haydn. The
Ruisis unify the programme with
gorgeous, historically informed
playing – delicately shaded and
minimally vibrated, yet warm and
welcoming. The new commission,
Oliver Leith’s Big House, melts the
harmonic language of his forebears
to uneasy effect. (CS) ++++
Chapters – A Double Bass Story
Works by Debussy, Ravel et al
Dominik Wagner (double bass), Lauma
Skride (piano) Berlin Classics 0302929BC
Championing
the ‘versatility’ of
the double bass,
this undoubtedly
attractive album
is nonetheless a little one note.
Wagner’s interpretations are elegant
and sensitive, betraying no hint of
his instrument’s awkward bulk,
but there are few faster or energetic
pieces to balance a programme of
unrelenting lyricism. (CS) +++
Encores Works by JS Bach et al
Arioso Quartett Wien Gramola 99274
There’s much in this
programme of post-
concert bonbons
to delight, and the
Arioso Quartet are
certainly capable and polished. A
perfunctory, almost calculated,
quality to the interpretations,
however, robs them of flexibility and
excitement. (CS) +++
 Brief notes Reviews
Folk Themes Works by Coleridge-
Taylor, Komitas, Liszt et al The month in box-sets
Karine Poghosyan (piano)
Navona NV6495
Piano music based
on folk motifs from Hollywood hero:
Britain/Sierra Leone pianist José Iturbi
was once the toast
to Hungary. The of tinseltown
music often surges
forth with a folkish zeal, and the
warm, lyrical performances reach
their expressive peak in the works
by Poghosyan’s fellow Armenian,
Komitas. (SW) +++

Mirrored in Time Works by

Dowland, Dessner, Muhly et al
Jörgen van Rijen (trombone); Alma
Quartet BIS BIS-2616
The Concertgebouw
principal trombonist
curates a selection
showcasing his
instrument’s
dynamic and emotional chamber
possibilities by pairing new works
with old. Whatever you make of the
pairings (some work, others are at
odds), it’s always a pleasure to hear
an instrument in something of a
new light and Van Rijen’s gleams.
(MB) +++

Myths and Melodies – Music

between the Wars Works by
Prokofiev, Messiaen, Ravel et al
Stefan Hempel (violin); Daniel Seroussi
(piano) Audite AUDITE97810
A nicely curated
selection of interwar
works for violin and
piano, including
soulful miniatures
from Prokofiev and a somewhat
rambling Messiaen Fantaisie.
Korngold’s beguiling incidental
pieces from Much Ado About Nothing
recall a more straightforward
prewar world. (SW) ++++
Piano Miniatures From China
Works by Tan Dun et al
Edward Han Jiang (piano)
Grand Piano GP929
Infused with the
spirit of Debussy,
Tan Dun’s delightful
Eight Memories in
Watercolor is the
highlight of this collection of short
pieces that range from sprightly to
dreamily evocative. Edward Han
Jiang’s own Children’s Corner is great
fun too. (JP) ++++
Reviewers: Michael Beek (MB),
Jeremy Pound (JP), Charlotte Smith (CS),
GETTY
Weinberg quartets and six-disc Szigeti
This month’s round-up also features José Iturbi and Bach masterworks
José Iturbi was once the toast of Katowice’s Silesian String
Hollywood and enjoyed a glittering Quartet was rather ahead of the
career as a concert pianist, game when it released its first
recording artist and conductor survey of Mieczysław Weinberg’s
when he moved stateside from chamber works in 2016. Since
Spain in the late 1920s. From then, the classical world has
Hollywood to the World (Sony cottoned on to the Polish
Classical 19439836502) is a lavish composer (1919-96) who found
set of 16 discs of remastered his voice in the former Soviet
recordings from 1933-53, Union. Complete String Quartets
originally made for RCA Victor. The (CD Accord ACD32) brings together
programme is colourful, too, all seven of the ensemble’s
ranging from Mozart concertos The Hungarian Joseph recordings in the series,
to Gershwin, arrangements by Szigeti turned his bow which was completed just last
André Previn, solo Debussy and year. The 17 string quartets,
Chopin, with Iturbi either at the to almost anything plus the Piano Quintet, are
piano or on the podium. beautifully presented and
A rather shorter period is taken into account make for a must-hear package.
in Joseph Szigeti – The Mercury Masters Just as appealing is Channel Classics’s
(Eloquence 484 3756). The six-disc set covers knockout and ultra-polished Bach set (Channel
the autumnal years of the Hungarian violinist’s Classics CCSBOX7523). It features each of JS Bach’s
acclaimed career, with London and New York major choral masterpieces, recorded and
recordings from 1959-61. Szigeti turned his bow released by the label between 2003-11. Jos van
to almost anything and the programme is typically Veldhoven’s brilliant Netherlands Bach Society
varied, with concertos and sonatas by Brahms, do the honours in front of the microphones,
Beethoven and Prokofiev topped off by a disc breathing magical life into the St John Passion,
featuring Honegger, Webern, Debussy and Ives. Magnificat, Mass in B minor, St Matthew Passion
Original jacket art is a welcome touch for this and Christmas Oratorio – great performances,

Steve Wright (SW) collection, which is on CD for the first time. brought together in one set.

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 93

Books
Our critics cast their eyes over this month’s selection of books on classical music
Enough –
Scenes from Childhood
Stephen Hough
Faber 253pp (hb) £18.99
When Stephen
Hough was at
school, creative
writing was his
favourite subject. ‘I
loved the way I could
express my inner
life fearlessly; the
smoulder of hidden homosexuality
… a desire to shock, and the
irresistibility of showing off.’ That’s
almost the manifesto for the British
pianist’s childhood memoir, which
traces his journey from the Wirral to
Carnegie Hall.
Hough was no paragon of
practice virtue growing up. Instead,
he remembers the endless hours
spent watching TV, the teenage
naked yoga in his purple-ceilinged
bedroom. He tells his story in
moreish vignettes, boasting titles
both intriguing and intriguingly
prosaic (‘Doris Cox and her
knickers’; ‘Cello, drums and flute’).
Character pen portraits are vividly
drawn, society is astutely observed.
And Hough’s material is rich,
touching on his life-changing
conversion to Catholicism, his
dark days at Chetham’s, the fluke
conversation that sent him to his
Juilliard teacher.
A complex character is revealed
with complex attitudes (an aside
on women’s fertility was bizarre).
The shock factor is gleefully high.
And if Hough sometimes averts
our gaze (‘I found a lot of time at
school traumatic for one reason
or another’), his love of the ellipsis
elsewhere gives the narrative
welcome airiness. This memoir
is a rewarding read… and that is
more than enough. Rebecca Franks
++++
French Art Song – History of a
New Music, 1870-1914
Emily Kilpatrick
Rochester 468pp (hb) £85
To attempt a book that balances
musical analysis with historical
narrative and philosophical
speculation is a tricky task and
GETTY
Emily Kilpatrick deserves the
94 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Voices to be heard:
Herbie Hancock is one
such example in Musical
Landscapes in Color
highest praise for bringing it off
so triumphantly. Singers and
accompanists will find much here
to enliven their thoughts on the
technical front:
especially valuable
are her insights into
the ways composers
of mélodies have
responded not
merely to the
sounds and colours
of the poetry, but to its structures.
On the historical front, Kilpatrick
emphasises the hitherto neglected
roles of the composer Pierre de
Bréville and his partner the tenor
Maurice Bagès, and is at her most
entertaining in describing the
arrival of Fauré as director of the
Paris Conservatoire in 1905 and
his campaign against the sloppy,
narrow-minded voice teaching he
found there, his nickname duly
morphing from ‘Archangel’ to
‘Robespierre’. Engaging with a very
wide collection of sources, this book
is a major contribution to the mélodie
literature. A paperback edition
would be an opportunity to supply
a more alluring cover, a fuller index
and portraits of more of the artists
involved. Roger Nichols +++++
In Good Hands – The Making
of a Modern Conductor
Alice Farnham
Faber 320pp (hb) £16.99
This engaging book dispels many
of the myths surrounding the
conductor’s role in today’s musical
world. Farnham offers a refreshingly
candid approach that draws upon
her own experience of establishing
a successful career in a profession
that until relatively recently was
beset with prejudice against
women. Each of her
chapters is laid out
in a clear manner,
and jam-packed
with invaluable
insights, many
of which derive
from Farnham’s
studies with the legendary Russian
conducting pedagogue, Ilya Musin.
Also included are nuggets of
down-to-earth advice from stellar
figures including Marin Alsop
and Antonio Pappano. All this
material is designed to encourage
any prospective conductor on their
journey from the first tentative
steps of rehearsing and learning
a score to the hugely challenging
multi-tasking that is required for
working productively in the opera
house or for the ballet. Finally, in
a chapter provocatively entitled
‘We need to talk about breasts,’
Farnham confronts and rebuts the
absurd gender bias against women
conductors that still persists in
some quarters, but expresses hope
and optimism for a much more
enlightened outlook in the future.
Erik Levi +++++
Musical Landscapes in Color
– Conversations with Black
American Composers
William C. Banfield
Illinois 400pp (pb) £22.99
Nearly 20 years after its initial,
hardback publication, Banfield’s
book is at last available in paperback
with a new preface and expanded
illustrations. Conceived as a sequel
to Baker, Belt and Hudson’s seminal
1978 The Black Composer Speaks,
it is itself a significant cultural
landmark, featuring an inspiring
sequence of
conversations
between Banfield
and 40 Black
American
composers at the
turn of the 21st
century.
Not just
‘unmasking the invisible identity’ of
the chosen six women and 34-plus
men – and more, even, than ‘a
recasting of the American canon’
– the book is testament to how, in
the words of Hale Smith (1925-
2009), ‘Black music is what has
given American music its identity.’
Traversing a richly diverse gamut
of Black culture and heritage across
classical and jazz – which many
here agree is in effect ‘the classical
music of America’ – the crucial
contribution of Black composers
in, and far beyond, the US becomes
clear. Wise, moving and thought-
provoking, it’s a timely reiteration of
the continued need for their wider
acknowledgement. Steph Power
+++++
 Audio choice
Chris Haslam chooses the best hi-fi equipment for your classical music listening

THIS MONTH: TRUE WIRELESS EARBUDS

Personal choice:
the Liberty 4s can
be adapted for
individual preference

Perfect touch:
the all-controlling
JBL Tour Pro 2
touchscreen

BEST OVERALL CHOICE

EXCEPTIONAL BUDGET CHOICE
Cambridge Audio
Melomania 1+ £50
An antidote to do-it-all designs, this light (4.6g
per bud) and comfortable pair does the basics
brilliantly, and puts sound quality foremost.
At £50, it’s hard to find a more professionally
tuned, enjoyable listen. The 5.8mm Graphene
drivers produce a glorious depth of detail and
clarity, with instrumentation well separated
and vivid, no matter how intense the
orchestra gets. There’s no noise cancellation,
but the payoff for finding a quiet corner is
well worth the effort. cambridgeaudio.com
Soundcore Anker Liberty 4 £140
A testament to just how far true wireless
earbud technology has come, the Liberty 4s
boast a ridiculous number of features,
BEST BUY sound great and cost considerably less than
those with similar specs. The question as
to whether you need continuous heart rate tracking, hearing tests or
360 degree Immersive Spatial Audio – essentially the sound from
your music or movies tracks the movement of your head, so you’re
always in the sweet spot – will be a subjective one, but with so many
personalisable options you can simply pick and choose the features
you need.
And for me, this means enjoying the dual dynamic drivers that
produce a richness of tone and level of detail that, when combined
with the adjustable Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), turns even the
noisiest of environments – for instance, a packed French airport
lounge – into a calm oasis. Johann Sebastian Bach should take some
of the credit, however.
LDAC codec support offers hi-res streaming over Bluetooth
connections with services like Tidal and Qobuz, there’s up to
28 hours of battery life and the fit is every bit as good as Apple AirPod
Pro2. They are, in short, impressive, even if you never download the
app and delve into all the extras. uk.soundcore.com

NEED TO KNOW
Fit: Earbuds that don’t fit are infuriating. Look
for multiple sized silicone tips for the best
possible fit; some include ‘wing tips’ that slot
into the ear’s cartilage for extra security.
Bluetooth: The most convenient way to listen
to music wirelessly, Bluetooth has improved to
offer longer range, better stability and improved
battery life. The latest 5.0 variant is twice as fast
and can handle eight times as much data as
version 4.2. For near-CD quality, you’ll need aptX
HD Bluetooth and a compatible player.
Battery life: Expect around eight hours of
continuous listening, plus up to 30 hrs in total
with the battery case. The speed of charging
has also improved – just a few minutes back in
the case can boost your listening significantly.
Noise Cancelling: Look for designs with
adjustable Active Noise Cancellation (ANC),
and ‘pass through’ modes which allow outside
sounds in while walking, talking or exercising.

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 95

From the archives
Erik Levi blows the dust off this month’s set of reissued and archival recordings
April round-up
ARCHIVE CHOICE A memorable 1972 BBC Proms
concert featuring the Munich
Faust’s Dvořák delights Philharmonic under principal
conductor
Rudolf Kempe
This reissue of the violinist’s 2004 recording features a vibrant
interpretation of
of the Violin Concerto is worth the price alone Dvořák’s Eighth
Symphony, as
well as a powerful and dramatically
compelling account of Tod und
Verklärung by Richard Strauss.
Flawed ensemble at the opening of
Beethoven’s Prometheus Overture
reflects the difficulties that faced
the German orchestra in mastering
the problematic acoustics of the
Royal Albert Hall. But the ensemble
quickly settles down in the ensuing
faster passagework. Devotees
of this charismatic conductor
will certainly want to hear these
excellently honed performances,
although the recorded sound calls
for a good deal of tolerance. (ICA
Classics ICAC5I70) ++++
Sound quality is also
unfortunately an issue in a three-
disc set featuring the complete
Virtuoso turn:
Isabelle Faust handles the recordings from the early 1940s of
solo parts with aplomb the short-lived Primrose Quartet,
a group of outstanding string
virtuosos including Scottish-born
viola player William Primrose,
Dvořák drawn from Toscanini’s NBC
Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 53; Symphony Orchestra. Yet such is
Piano Trio No.3 in F minor, Op.65 the irresistible
Isabelle Faust (violin), Jean-Guihen Queyras forward
(cello), Alexander Melnikov (piano); momentum
Prague Philharmonia/ Jiří Bĕlohlávek of the playing,
Harmonia Mundi HMM 931833 (2004) heard at its most
Over the years, Dvořák’s Violin Concerto has fleet-footed in the
garnered some truly distinguished recordings from the likes of Josef finale of Mozart’s K387 and in the
Suk, Nathan Milstein, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Christian Tetzlaff. opening movement of Brahms’s Op.
Isabelle Faust’s performance, originally released nearly 20 years 67, that the constricted dynamic
ago, is definitely on a par with these virtuosos in demonstrating a range and dryness of the recordings
supremely intelligent, imaginative and wonderfully warm approach cease to be such a problem.
to the technically challenging solo part. Jiří Bĕlohlávek and the (Biddulph 85023-2) ++++
Prague Philharmonia are highly responsive partners, delivering Austrian pianist Walter Klien
some particularly exhilarating playing in the Finale, and the sound established a formidable reputation
quality is fresh and immediate. This release would warrant a strong for his Mozart performances as a
recommendation for the Concerto alone, but the generous coupling result of extensive Vox recordings
of the undervalued F minor Piano Trio is even more enticing. Faust, of the composer’s solo keyboard
Queyras and Melnikov bring a fabulous array of colours and textures music and piano concertos made
to this dark and turbulent work, employing the widest possible range in the 1960s and ’70s. Most of the
FELIX BROEDE, GETTY
of dynamics, but avoiding any hint of self-indulgence. Especially concerto recordings were taped in
remarkable is their powerful and exhilarating projection of the catchy Austria in partnership with the
cross-rhythms in the Trio’s spirited second movement, and their Vienna State Opera Orchestra, but
deeply affecting approach to the poignant slow movement. +++++ in 1978 Klien travelled to the United
96 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
States to complete the cycle with
Concertos Nos 17 and 27 alongside
the Minnesota
Orchestra
under Stanisław
Skrowaczewski.
Working in
a relatively
unfamiliar environment seems not
to have phased Klien one jot since
he delivers wonderfully sensitive
performances of both works
supported by some particularly
sprightly solo woodwind playing.
(VOX-NX -3012 CD) +++++
Much more recent reissues
appear on In Memoriam I, a tribute
to the memory of Dutch cellist
Pieter Wispelwey’s son who died
at a tragically early age last year.
It features duo music by Schubert
adapted for cello and piano,
performed with insight and lyrical
warmth by Wispelwey and Paolo
Giacometti. It’s
a matter of great
regret that the
Austrian master
never composed
an original work
for cello. Yet although some of these
arrangements sound idiomatic
in their new instrumental guise,
not least the glorious Fantasy in C,
others such as the Rondeau Brillant
or the Trockne Blumen Variations,
have some awkwardly florid
corners that don’t entirely convince.
(Evil Penguin EPRC 5051) ++++
Shropshire-born composer
Edward German (1862-1936) is
best remembered these days for
his enchanting light operetta,
Merrie England. This enterprising
mid-1990s recording of his Second
Symphony
‘Norwich’ may
not exude the
same degree
of thematic
memorability,
but nonetheless demonstrates
his considerable mastery of large
orchestral forces. The National
Symphony Orchestra of Ireland
under Andrew Penny delivers
a fluent if not always pristine
performance of this work, but rises
to the occasion in German’s Welsh
Rhapsody. (Naxos 8555228) +++
 Orchestral pictures:
Bax was one of Britain’s
finest symphonists
Reviews Index
JS Bach Cantatas and Arias 80 Porpora L’Angelica 79
Choral Works 93 Kevin Puts The City etc 92
Concerto for Two Violins 74 Rachmaninov Études-Tableaux 86
Keyboard Works 86 Three Pieces 86
Keyboard Works (arr. viols) 68 Saint-Georges L’Amant anonyme 78
Organ Works (arr. orchestra) 70 Philip Sawyers Double Concerto for
Violin Concertos Nos 1 & 2 74 Violin and Cello 77
Barber Violin Concerto 74 Octet 77
Bartók Dance Suite 70 Remembrance for Strings 77
Viola Concerto 75 Viola Concerto 77
The Wooden Prince 70 Schubert Arpeggione Sonata 84
Bax Symphonies 97 Lieder (arr. Schmalcz) 81
Beethoven Mass in A flat 92
Piano Concertos Nos 3 & 4 75 Notturno 84
Prometheus Overture 96 Piano Sonatas Nos 4 & 20 87
Symphony No. 5 75 Piano Trios Nos 1 & 2 84
Violin Concerto and fragment 75 Rondo, D895 84
Violin Sonatas Nos 1-10 83 R Schumann Piano Works 88
Biber Mystery Sonatas Nos 1-16 83 Smetana Dreams 87
Boccherini Six Symphonies 92 R Strauss Symphonia Domestica 71
Bonds Credo 80 Tod und Verklärung 96
Simon Bore the Cross 80 Stravinsky The Soldier’s Tale 85
Nimrod Borenstein Szymanowski Violin Concerto 92
Unboxed Light and Darkness
Piano Concerto
Shirim
75
75
75
Amir Mahyar Tafreshipour
The Doll behind the Curtain
Telemann Violin Concertos
79
77
Andrew McGregor dips into the complete symphonies of L & N Boulanger Songs 81 Turina Piano Trios 92
Arnold Bax as heard in the hands of David Lloyd-Jones Brahms Sonatensatz 84 Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a
Violin Sonatas Nos 1-3 84 Theme by Thomas Tallis 70
‘I like to fancy that on my deathbed my last vision Bruch Adagio appassionato 74 Symphonies Nos 7 & 9 72
Violin Concerto No. 1 74 Verdi Opera Choruses 79
in this life will be the scene from my window…of the
Bruckner Symphony No. 9 71 Vieuxtemps Souvenir d’Amerique–
still brooding dove grey mystery of the Atlantic at John Casken That Subtle Knot 75 Variations on Yankee Doodle 74
twilight.’ Arnold Bax in 1943, thinking of the village Matthew Coleridge Requiem 92 Vivaldi The Four Seasons 92
in West Donegal that had become his spiritual Delius Late Swallows 70 Weinberg String Quartets 93
home. A Celtic wonderland, bathed in supernatural Durante Concerti per Archi etc 76 Wellesz Chamber Works 92
light, steeped in saga, folk-tale and fairy-lore, as Bax wrote; and we Duruflé Requiem 81 Lotta Wennäkoski Flounce 72
Dvořák Piano Trio No. 3 96 Sedecim 72
feel its legacy through his symphonies and tone poems from the Symphony No. 8 96 Sigla 72
Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor David Lloyd-Jones Violin Concerto in A minor 96
(Naxos 8.507014; seven discs). Elgar Introduction and Allegro 70 COLLECTIONS
Begin at the end of the set with Bax’s best-known piece: Tintagel, Frescobaldi Organ Masses 86 Atmosphere and Mastery
because the sense of timeless myth and the power of the sea German Symphony No. 2 etc 96 NAC Orchestra et al 72
Gorokhov For Gaspard 84 Befreit – A Soul Surrendered
surging below the castle on its rocky outcrop informs so much in the Handel Semele 78 Kitty Whately, Joseph Middleton 82
symphonies. A calmer seascape shimmers in the Third Symphony; Solomon 80 Big House Ruisi Quartet 92
waves crash onto the shore of the Seventh, and Bax wrote that the P Harrison Chamber Works 92 Bright and Early
entire Fourth Symphony was inspired by views across the Atlantic Haydn Hopkinson Smith 88
from Morar, his favourite Scottish escape from the bustle of London Piano Trios Nos 7, 21, 33, 35 & 45 84 British Cello Works, Vol. 2
Howells Lionel Handy, Jennifer Walsh 85
in the ’30s.
Concerto for String Orchestra 70 Chapters – A Double Bass Story
Bax wouldn’t reveal programmes for his symphonies, yet it’s Jung Jaeil Listen 92 Dominik Wagner, Lauma Skride 92
impossible not to feel the weatherbeaten coasts and mountains, Kabeláč Eight Preludes 87 Encores Arioso Quartett 92
natural history and folklore, made more explicit in tone poems Motifs from Exotic Lands 87 Folk Themes Kariné Poghosyan 93
like The Garden of Fand, The Happy Forest or November Woods. Kapustin Concerto for Two Pianos From Hollywood to the World
Lloyd-Jones’s passion for the composer reveals a great romantic, and Percussion 76 José Iturbi 93
Piano Concerto No. 5 76 The Handel Project
a master orchestrator, touched by Strauss and Mahler, Vaughan Sinfonietta 76 Seong-Jin Cho 88
Williams and especially Sibelius, yet with a highly individual Ligeti Andante and Allegro 83 In Memoriam I Pieter Wispelway,
evolution of ideas, and shaping of symphonic form. All seven String Quartets Nos 1 & 2 83 Paolo Giacometti 96
symphonies are in three movements, and from the Third Bax avoids Locatelli Harmonic Labyrinth 92 Mercury Masters Joseph Szigeti 93
the issue of crafting a separate finale by incorporating an extended Martin Mass for Double Choir 81 Mirrored in Time Jörgen van Rijen,
Mascagni Cavalleria rusticana 79 Alma Quartet 93
epilogue, which in Lloyd-Jones’s hands makes perfect sense. As Mendelssohn Violin Concerto 92 Myths and Melodies... Stefan
a conductor he’s also a traveller, not a wallower; he reveals the Mozart Hempel, Daniel Seroussi 93
beauty, detail and rich romanticism while taking Bax’s brisker Fantasies in C minor & D minor 87 NYCGB Young Composers 4
speeds entirely seriously, always ready to reveal the elemental La nozze di Figaro – Overture 76 Nat’l Youth Choir of GB et al 82
savagery that permeates the music, alongside the elegiac sense of Piano Concertos Nos 17 & 27 96 Piano Miniatures from China
Piano Concertos Nos 24 & 25 76 Edward Han Jiang 93
endless song. Piano Sonatas Nos 13 & 14 87 Primrose Quartet
One of the finest British symphonists revealed by one of his Six Variations 87 Primrose Quartet 96
greatest champions. Symphonies Nos 1, 41 & 43 71 Uncovered, Vol. 3
Nielsen Symphonies Nos 1 & 3 92 Catalyst Quartet 85
Violin Concerto 92 Visions illuminées
Andrew McGregor is the presenter of Arvo Pärt Fratres 74 Mary Bevan, Joseph Middleton 82
Radio 3’s Record Review, broadcast each Spiegel im Spiegel 74 Voyage intime
Saturday morning from 9am until 11.45am Petersen Symphony No. 3 92 Sandrine Piau, David Kadouch 82

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 97

Live choice
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
Passiontide at Merton
Merton College, Oxford,
31 March – 2 April
Web: ticketsoxford.com
Merton’s weekend of solo,
chamber and choral performances
kicks off at Friday lunchtime with
violinist Bojan Čičić and organist
François Cloete in Biber’s New
Testament-inspired Rosary
Sonatas. The King’s Singers
drop in later that evening for a
Passiontide-themed recital, while
Saturday brings organist Matthew
Owens in the world premiere of
Howard Skempton’s Preludes and
Fugues Book II.
Easter Festival
St John’s Smith Square, London,
2-7 April
Web: sjss.org.uk
St John’s seasonal celebration
includes JS Bach’s St John and
St Matthew passions, the former
reuniting Stephen Layton’s choir
Polyphony and the Orchestra
of the Age of Enlightenment.
There’s more Bach, too, as the
Tenebrae ensemble pairs three of
the motets with works by James
98 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
MacMillan, whose Kiss on Wood,
written for violinist Madeleine
Mitchell, is included in her recital
which opens the six-day festival.
Sinfonia Cymru
Riverfront, Newport, 5 April
Web: sinfonia.cymru
When it comes to its Newport
lunchtime series, the members
of Sinfonia Cymru are not ones
for reheating the over-familiar.
Slimmed down to just four players,
they crown string trios by Jean
Françaix and Dobrinka Tabakova
with Arensky’s Op. 35 String
Quartet – scored, unusually, for
violin, viola and two cellos.
Dunedin Consort
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 6 April
Web: dunedin-consort.org.uk
In the Bach household, Johann
Sebastian’s St Matthew Passion
was fondly known as the ‘great
Passion’ – little wonder, give that
it’s scored for two choruses each
with its own orchestra, plus a
boys’ choir. John Butt conducts
his Dunedin forces with Andrew
Tortise as the narrating Evangelist.
Hats off to Bach:
Mahan Esfahani
performs in Snape
Snape Easter Weekend
The Maltings, Snape, 7-9 April
Web: brittenpearsarts.org
After his solo Bach recital,
harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani
joins oboist Nicholas Daniel and
soprano Anna Davis for a concert
including Handel, Elena Langer
and a new piece by Michael
Berkeley. To end the weekend,
Solomon’s Knot perform Bach’s
St Matthew Passion from memory.
IMS Prussia Cove
Community Centre, Marazion,
8 April
Web: i-m-s.org.uk
Launching the Cornish spring tour
by participants at the International
Musicians’ Seminar, cellist Steven
Isserlis leads a concert featuring
fellow mentors in works by
Boccherini, Garth Knox and György
Kurtág, among others. Violinist
Arisa Fujita joins the ensemble for
Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2.
Ensemble Renard
St Eanswythe’s Church,
Folkestone, 13 April
Web: folkestonenewmusic.com
Ahead of appearances at Chipping
Campden and Aldeburgh, the wind
quintet enlists bass clarinettist
Luke English for a programme
that pays 80th-birthday tribute
to composer John Woolrich with
The Iron Cockerel Sings. Works
by Birtwistle, Philip Cashian,
Ligeti and Hans Abrahamsen
plus Janáček’s Mládí follow. (See
‘Backstage with…’, right).
Sestina
Fisherwick Presbyterian
Church, Belfast, 14 April
Web: sestinamusic.com
There’s Baroque pomp and
circumstance aplenty as Sestina
scours the Courts of Europe to
unearth music fit for a king – or,
in the case of JS Bach’s Cantata
BWV 29, a demanding town
council. Handel’s Zadok the Priest
and Sing unto the Lord square up
to Lully’s jubilant Te Deum.
Ludlow English Song
Weekend
St Laurence’s Church, Ludlow,
14-16 April
ludlowenglishsongweekend.com
Soprano Carolyn Sampson is
among the singers Shropshire-
bound for the annual festival
devoted to the joys of English
song. Not that interlopers are
unwelcome – Fauré, Debussy and
Duparc all gild the opening recital,
and a piano trio arrangement of
Debussy’s La mer lures pianist
and artistic director Iain Burnside
into non-vocal waters.
Apollo’s Fire
St Martin-in-the-Fields, London,
15-17 April
Web: stmartin-in-the-fields.org
Jeannette Sorrell’s Ohio-based
period instruments ensemble
undertakes a three-concert
residency that celebrates Vivaldi
and Uccellini before decamping
to St Martin’s crypt for a 17th-
century pub crawl imbibing
Sephardic love songs and Scottish
laments. The final concert
explores the Jewish and African
diasporas, including music by
Monteverdi and Salamone Rossi.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja
Barbican, London, 16 April
Web: barbican.org.uk
The violinist bids farewell to her
Barbican ‘Artist Spotlight’ in the
company of Ensemble Resonanz
and soprano Anna Prohaska. From
Hildegard von Bingen and Walther
von der Vogelweide to György
Kurtág and Crumb, ‘Maria Mater
Meretrix’ surveys nearly 1,000
years of music inspired by the
Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen.
Royal Opera House
Covent Garden, London,
17 April – 4 May
Web: roh.org.uk
Directed for its UK premiere by
Simon Stone, Kaija Saariaho’s
Innocence examines the fall-out,
ten years down the line, from a
mass killing. Markus Nykänen is
the bridegroom harbouring a dark
secret; Lilian Farahani is his bride.
Susanna Mälkki conducts.
The Sixteen
Hereford Cathedral, 19 April
Web: thesixteen.com
From Truro to Edinburgh, Llandaff
to Cambridge, Byrd’s 400th
anniversary has not escaped
the attention of The Sixteen’s
annual Choral Pilgrimage. Under
Harry Christophers, six choice
masterpieces including Ne
irascaris/Civitas sancti tui and
Vigilate are leavened with de
Monte, Clemens non Papa and
two specially commissioned
pieces by Dobrinka Tabakova.
BBC Scottish Symphony
Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow, 20 April
Web: glasgowconcerthalls.com
Hogmanay and Burns Night might
be over, but the saltire flutters
proudly over the orchestra’s
‘Sound of Scotland’ concert
conducted by Martyn Brabbins.
New works by James MacMillan
and Brabbins himself are spliced
with Judith Weir’s Heroic Stroke of
the Bow, Iain Hamilton’s Book-
of-Genesis-inspired Clarinet
Concerto and the Creation
Symphony by William Wallace. The
clarinettist is Robert Plane.
English National Opera
Coliseum, London, from 20 April
Web: eno.org
A tale of race and conflicted
loyalties featuring bass-baritone
KAJA SMITH, OLIVIA DA COSTA
Michael Sumuel and tenor
Zwakele Tshabalala as the father
and son, Jeanine Tesori’s 2019
opera Blue is directed by Tinuke
Craig and conducted by Matthew
Kofi Waldren.
Ulster Orchestra
Ulster Hall, Belfast, 21 April
Web: ulsterorchestra.org.uk
Conductor-clarinettist Michael
Collins multi-tasks in Judith
Bingham’s Clarinet Concerto
(which Collins premiered last
summer) and Lutosławski’s
Dance Preludes. They’re framed
by Ginastera’s Variaciones
Concertantes and a suite from
Falla’s El Amor Brujo.
BBC National Orchestra of
Wales
Brangwyn Hall, Swansea,
21 April
Web: bbc.co.uk/now
The orchestra is living the
American dream, what
with atmospheric Ives and
Harmonielehre, John Adams’s
fantasy-filled 1985 love letter
to tonality. They’re separated by
Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto
No. 1, with Bomsori Kim as soloist.
Ryan Bancroft conducts.
JACK Quartet
Wigmore Hall, London, 22 April
Web: wigmore-hall.org.uk
Proud champions of contemporary
music, the American JACK Quartet
doesn’t let the grass grow under
its feet. A three-concert marathon
is slotted into a single day, with
the central concert devoted solely
to US composer Catherine Lamb’s
divisio spiralis. Seventieth-birthday
nods to John Zorn illuminate
the flanking programmes,
which include works by Helmut
Lachenmann and Erin Gee.
Ruby Hughes
LSO St Luke’s, London, 27 April
Web: lso.co.uk
The Mediterranean Baroque
informs Radio 3’s current
lunchtime series at LSO St Luke’s.
Soprano Ruby Hughes teams up
with lutenist Sergio Bucheli for a
dive into Dowland and Barbara
Strozzi, as well as one of the
earliest sources for the Latin-
American baroque: the Peruvian
Codex Zuola.
Quatuor Mosaïques
Sage Gateshead, 29 April
Web: sagegateshead.com
It’s hard to believe that one of
the most influential of period
instrument string quartets turns
35 this year. An offshoot of
Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Concentus
Musicus Wien, the Mosaïques
preface Haydn’s evergreen
‘Sunrise’ Quartet with one by
his short-lived contemporary,
Hyacinthe Jadin. They end with the
last of Schumann’s Op. 41 set.
April Live
BACKSTAGE WITH…
Ensemble Renard
Winds of change:
Ensemble Renard play works
from Janáček to Woolrich
As part of your concert in Eastbourne, you are paying tribute to
John Woolrich. Is he a composer the group knows well?
George Strivens (horn player): We first met John when we were
all doing a fellowship year at the Royal Academy of Music and
were playing his second set of studies for wind ensemble. We
had a wonderful time being coached by him and going on to
perform his music. That is what sparked the idea for this concert.
The title of The Iron Cockerel Sings, the work that we will be
performing, comes from the writings of Adolf Wölfli, and John
himself describes it as ‘a short, fast, brightly coloured collage of
inventions’ – it’s a very exciting multi-movement piece.
And you’ll be recruiting an extra member to perform it…?
One of the lovely things about it is that it is for wind quintet plus
additional bass clarinet, so we will be joined for it by Luke English.
The work is intended to be an accompanying piece to Janáček’s
Mládí, written for the same instrumentation and which we will
be closing the concert with. Inspired by children – its title means
‘youth’ – Mládí is a wonderfully weird and wacky piece, but also
hauntingly peaceful at times.
Aside from John Woolrich, will you also be playing works by
other composers connected to the group?
Yes. Philip Cashian was head of composition at the Royal
Academy when we were there and we did quite a lot of work
with the students in his department, so we’re really excited to
be playing his Silent Steps. And then there’s Walden by Hans
Abrahamsen, from whom we also had coaching. That was a real
privilege, as he’s an amazing composer with an incredible mind.
Tell us a little about Ensemble Renard in general…
We are a standard wind quintet of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon
and horn, but we often join up with other instruments as well. It
was, in fact, at the Royal Academy that we first met as students
and then we did an extra year as chamber music fellows. We’ve
been lucky to be sponsored by the Tunnell Trust, which has
enabled us to do a residency on the island of Coll and, since we’ve
been able to get together again after Covid, two tours of Scotland.
This year, we are Britten Pears Young Artists in Suffolk.
And where does the name come from?
It comes from Stravinsky’s 1916 chamber opera Renard (‘Fox’). A
couple of the members of our quintet played in it while students at
Oxford and fell in love with the wind writing!
BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 99
TV&Radio
Your guide to what’s on BBC Radio 3 this month, plus TV highlights

APRIL’S RADIO 3 LISTINGS

Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see Radio Times

8.30-10pm Drama on 3 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert

Three to look out for Kafka’s Dick from Wigmore Hall. Schumann
10-11.30pm Record Review Fantasiestücke, Op. 73, Brahms
Extra Cello Sonata No. 1, Schumann
Alan Davey, the controller of 11.30-12am Slow Radio Adagio and Allegro, Brahms
BBC Radio 3, makes his final In the Temple Cello Sonata No. 2. Anastasia
pick this month of three great 12-12.30am Classical Fix Kobekina (cello), Jean-Sélim
Abdelmoula (piano).
moments to tune into this April 3 MONDAY 10-10.45pm Free Thinking
Iain Bell’s Beowulf 6.30-9am Breakfast 10.45-11pm The Essay
9am-12 noon Essential Classics New Generation Thinkers
In Concert gets the broadcast
12 noon-1pm Composer of the 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
premiere of this Radio 3 commission: Iain Bell’s Week Hildegard of Bingen &
setting of Roy Liuzza’s translation of the anonymous Isabella Leonarda 6 THURSDAY
epic poem. It’s performed at the Barbican by the 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert 6.30-9am Breakfast
BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra conducted by 2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert 9am-12 noon Essential Classics
Martyn Brabbins, with tenor Stuart Skelton. 4.30-5pm New Generation 12 noon-1pm Composer of the
Radio 3 in Concert, Tuesday 18 April Artists Week Hildegard of Bingen &
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape Isabella Leonarda
Sir John Eliot Gardiner at 80 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
Led by the man himself, the English Baroque 10-10.45pm Music Matters 2-5pm Afternoon Concert
Soloists and Monteverdi Choir join forces to 10.45-11pm The Essay 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
New Generation Thinkers 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
celebrate Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s 80th birthday
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks live from Hoddinott Hall. Rameau
with a performance of Bach’s Mass in B minor,
Chaos (Les Élémens), Purcell
broadcast live from St Martin-in-the-Fields. 4 TUESDAY Suite: King Arthur, Haydn Nelson
Radio 3 in Concert, Monday 24 April 6.30-9am Breakfast Mass. Anna Dennis (soprano),
9am-12 noon Essential Hilary Summers (contralto),
Viola: The Unsung Hero Classics Rupert Charlesworth (tenor),
Viola player Ruth Gibson explores her instrument’s 12 noon-1pm Composer of the Henry Waddington (bass-
unique voice across three programmes full of Week Hildegard of Bingen & baritone). BBC National New Generation Thinkers
intriguing musical choices. Along the way, Gibson Isabella Leonarda Chorus & Orchestra of Wales/ 11pm-1am Late Junction
introduces key viola repertoire by a wide range of 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert Christian Curnyn
2-5pm Afternoon Concert 10-10.45pm Free Thinking 8 SATURDAY
composers from Telemann to Dobrinka Tabakova.
Sunday Night Series, 9-23 April 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 10.45-11pm The Essay 7-9am Breakfast
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert New Generation Thinkers 9-11.45am Record Review
from St David’s Hall. Maconchy 11-11.30pm 11.45am-12.30pm
Nocturne, Britten Violin The Night Tracks Mix Music Matters
Concerto, Elgar Symphony No. 2. 11.30pm-12.30am 12.30-1pm This Classical Life
Simone Lamsma (violin), BBC Unclassified with Elizabeth Alker 1-3pm Inside Music
1 SATURDAY 2 SUNDAY National Orchestra of Wales/ 3-4pm Sound of Cinema
7-9am Breakfast 7-9am Breakfast Tadaaki Otaka 7 FRIDAY 4-5pm Music Planet
9-11.45am Record Review 9-11.30am Sunday Morning 10-10.45pm Free Thinking 6.30-9am Breakfast 5-6.30pm J to Z
11.45am-12.30pm 11.30am-3pm EBU Day of Holy 10.45-11pm The Essay 9-12 noon Essential Classics 6.30-10pm Opera on 3 from Met
Music Matters Week Music New Generation Thinkers 12 noon-1pm Composer of the Opera, New York. Puccini Tosca
12.30-1pm 3-4pm Choral Evensong 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks Week Hildegard of Bingen & 10pm-12am New Music Show
This Classical Life 4-7.45pm EBU Day of Holy Isabella Leonarda 12-1am Freeness
1-3pm Inside Music Week Music from Royal 5 WEDNESDAY 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
3-4pm Sound of Cinema Concergtebouw, Amsterdam. 6.30-9am Breakfast 2-5pm Afternoon Concert
9 SUNDAY
4-5pm Music Planet JS Bach St Matthew Passion. 9am-12 noon Essential Classics 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 7-9am Breakfast
5-6.30pm J to Z Sophie Bevan (soprano), 12 noon-1pm Composer of the 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert 9am-12 noon Sunday Morning
6.30-10pm Opera on 3 from Nicholas Mulroy (tenor), Matthew Week Hildegard of Bingen & live from King’s College 12-1pm Private Passions
the Metropolitan Opera, Brook (bass), Netherlands Isabella Leonarda Cambridge. Dvořák Stabat 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert rpt
New York. Verdi Falstaff Radio Choir, Concertgebouw 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert Mater. Philharmonia Chorus, BBC 2-3pm The Early Music Show
10pm-12 midnight Orchestra/John Butt 2-4pm Afternoon Concert Concert Orchestra/Daniel Hyde 3-4pm Choral Evensong
New Music Show 7.45-8.30pm Sunday Feature 4-5pm Choral Evensong 10-10.45pm The Verb 4-5pm Jazz Record Requests
12-1am Freeness Hypnotising Rachmaninov 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 10.45-11pm The Essay 5-5.30pm The Listening Service

100 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

 April TV&Radio
Heritages and heroes:
(clockwise) Beowulf features
in Iain Bell’s new work;
Sir John Eliot Gardiner turns
80; violist Ruth Gibson

5.30-6.45pm Words and Music
6.45-7.30pm Sunday Feature
Please Mr Lacey Let Me Work
your Lovely Machine
7.30-9pm Drama on 3
Bess Loves Porgy
9pm-11pm Record Review Extra
CHOICE 11pm-12am
Sunday Night Series
Viola – the Unsung Hero
12-12.30am Classical Fix
10 MONDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12 noon Essential Classics
12 noon-1pm Composer of the
SIM CANETTY-CLARKE, PAUL MARC MITCHELL, GETTY
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
11 TUESDAY
6.30am-1pm As 10 April
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
from Bridgewater Hall. Coult
Three Pieces that Disappear
(world premiere), Berg Seven
Early Songs, Strauss An Alpine
Symphony. Francesca Chiejina
(soprano), BBC Philharmonic/
Nicholas Collon
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
from Royal Festival Hall.
Wolfe Tell me Everything,
Eastman Joy Boy, Calix Nunu,
Reich Reich/Richter. London
Sinfonietta/Manoj Kamps
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
New Generation Thinkers
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
13 THURSDAY
6.30am-1pm As 10 April
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
11-11.30pm
The Night Tracks Mix
11.30pm-12.30am
Unclassified with Elizabeth Alker
14 FRIDAY
6.30am-1pm As 10 April
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 in Concert
from Wigmore Hall. Shostakovich
Piano Quintet, Franck Piano
Quintet. Belcea Quartet,
Bertrand Chamayou (piano)
10-10.45pm The Verb
3-4pm Sound of Cinema
4-5pm Music Planet
5-6.30pm J to Z
6.30-10pm Opera on 3 from
Met Opera, New York. R Strauss
Der Rosenkavalier
10pm-12am New Music Show
12-1am Freeness
16 SUNDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9am-12 noon Sunday Morning
12-1pm Private Passions
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert rpt
2-3pm The Early Music Show
3-4pm Choral Evensong

Week Sullivan
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert
4.30-5pm
New Generation Artists
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
EBU
10-10.45pm Music Matters
10.45-11pm The Essay
New Generation Thinkers
10.45-11pm The Essay
New Generation Thinkers
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
12 WEDNESDAY
6.30am-1pm As 10 April
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4pm Afternoon Concert
4-5pm Choral Evensong
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
live from Glasgow City Halls.
Beethoven Symphony No. 6,
Messiaen Saint-François
d’Assise: scene 6.
Nicky Spence (tenor), Ashley
Riches (baritone), BBC Scottish
Symphony Orchestra/Ryan
Wigglesworth
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay New
Generation Thinkers
10.45-11pm The Essay
New Generation Thinkers
11pm-1am Late Junction
15 SATURDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9-11.45am Record Review
11.45am-12.30pm
Music Matters
12.30-1pm This Classical Life
1-3pm Inside Music
4-5pm Jazz Record Requests
5-5.30pm The Listening Service
5.30-6.45pm Words and Music
6.45-7.30pm Sunday Feature
A Charlestonian Rhapsody
7.30-9pm Drama on 3
Henry IV part 1
9pm-11pm Record Review Extra
CHOICE 11pm-12am
Sunday Night Series
Viola – the Unsung Hero

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 101

April TV&Radio
10.45-11pm The Essay
An Easter treat: Reading the First Folio
Tenebrae sings Bach 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
and James MacMillan
19 WEDNESDAY
6.30am-1pm As 17 April
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4pm Afternoon Concert
4-5pm Choral Evensong
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
from Wigmore Hall. Mozart
Clarinet Quintet, Brahms Clarinet
Quintet. Leonkoro Quartet,
Martin Fröst (clarinet),
New Generation Artists
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
Reading the First Folio
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
20 THURSDAY
6.30am-1pm As 17 April
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
TV CHOICES 2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
From tavern to Tenebrae 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
The Alehouse Sessions (23 April, BBC Four) features 10.45-11pm The Essay
a group of musicians recreating the music of the Reading the First Folio
English 17th-century tavern. Curated and devised 11-11.30pm
The Night Tracks Mix
by Norwegian Baroque violinist Bjarte Eike, it
11.30pm-12.30am
is an ever-evolving insight into the music of this Unclassified with Elizabeth Alker
tumultuous period, including Purcell overtures,
English sea shanties and Scandinavian folk songs. 21 FRIDAY
Elsewhere, the award-winning choir Tenebrae 6.30am-1pm As 17 April
performs a special programme for Easter Sunday 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
from St John’s Smith Square, London (9 April,
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
BBC Four). Tenebrae brings its trademark passion 7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
and precision to this dramatic programme, 10-10.45pm The Verb
contrasting JS Bach’s iconic motets with the sacred 10.45-11pm The Essay
music of Sir James MacMillan. Reading the First Folio
The choir will perform three of Bach’s best known 11pm-1am Late Junction
motets, culminating in the joyful ‘Singet dem Herrn’. 22 SATURDAY
This is followed by MacMillan’s settings of the 7-9am Breakfast
Tenebrae responsories, which paint a vivid picture 9-11.45am Record Review
of the events of Holy Week. Written specifically for 11.45am-12.30pm
the choir, MacMillan’s ‘I Saw Eternity’ is a moving Music Matters
setting of words by Henry Vaughan. 12.30-1pm This Classical Life
1-3pm Inside Music
3-4pm Sound of Cinema
4-5pm Music Planet
5-6.30pm J to Z
12-12.30am Classical Fix 11pm-12.30am Night Tracks 6.30-10pm Opera on 3 from Met
Opera, NY. Mozart Idomeneo.
17 MONDAY 18 TUESDAY 10pm-12am New Music Show
6.30-9am Breakfast 6.30am-1pm As 17 April 12-1am Freeness
9am-12 noon Essential Classics 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
12 noon-1pm Composer of the 2-5pm Afternoon Concert 23 SUNDAY
Week Poulenc 5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape 7-9am Breakfast
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert CHOICE 7.30- 9am-12 noon Sunday Morning
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert 10pm Radio 3 In 12-1pm Private Passions
4.30-5pm New Generation Concert from Barbican. Bell, 1-2pm Lunchtime Concert rpt
Artists Iain Beowulf (world premiere), 2-3pm The Early Music Show
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape Vaughan Williams Job: A Masque 3-4pm Choral Evensong
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert for Dancing. Stuart Skelton 4-5pm Jazz Record Requests
10-10.45pm Music Matters (tenor), BBC Symphony Chorus & 5-5.30pm The Listening Service
10.45-11pm The Essay Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins 5.30-6.45pm Words and Music
Reading the First Folio 10-10.45pm Free Thinking 6.45-7.30pm Sunday Feature
CHRIS O’DONOVAN
VISIT WWW.CLASSICAL-MUSIC.COM FOR THE VERY LATEST FROM THE MUSIC WORLD
102 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Der Schvartze Khazn
7.30-9pm Drama on 3
Henry IV part 2
9pm-11pm Record Review Extra
CHOICE 11pm-12am
Sunday Night Series
Viola – the Unsung Hero
12-12.30am Classical Fix
24 MONDAY
6.30-9am Breakfast
9am-12 noon Essential Classics
12 noon-1pm Composer of the
Week Haydn
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4.30pm Afternoon Concert
4.30-5pm
New Generation Artists
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
CHOICE 7.30-10pm
Radio 3 In Concert
live from St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Bach Mass in B minor. English
Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi
Choir/John Eliot Gardiner.
10-10.45pm Music Matters
10.45-11pm The Essay
Multi-Track
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
25 TUESDAY
6.30am-1pm As 24 April
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
from Saffron Hall. Bacewicz
Concerto for String Orchestra,
Montgomery Source Code, Weir
Fresh Air, Akiho Karakurenai,
Dobson In Cadenza, Stravinsky
The Firebird. National Youth
Orchestra/Andrew Gourlay
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
Multi-Track
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
26 WEDNESDAY
6.30am-1pm As 24 April
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-4pm Afternoon Concert
4-5pm Choral Evensong
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In
Concert from St David’s Hall.
Ives Central Park in the Dark,
The Unanswered Question,
Szymanowski Violin Concerto
No. 1, Adams Harmonielehre.
Bomsori Kim (violin), BBC
National Orchestra of Wales/
Ryan Bancroft
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
Multi-Track
11pm-12.30am Night Tracks
27 THURSDAY
6.30am-1pm As 24 April
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert
2-5pm Afternoon Concert
5-7.30pm In Tune plus Mixtape
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
from Bridgewater Hall. Sibelius
Four Legends, Rachmaninov
Piano Concerto No. 3.
Garrick Ohlsson (piano), BBC
Philharmonic/John Storgårds
10-10.45pm Free Thinking
10.45-11pm The Essay
Multi-Track
11-11.30pm
The Night Tracks Mix
11.30pm-12.30am
Unclassified with Elizabeth Alker
28 FRIDAY
6.30am-1pm As 24 April
1-7.30pm As 27 April
7.30-10pm Radio 3 In Concert
live from Kings Place. ‘Light
and Shadow’. Vox Luminis/
Lionel Meunier
10-10.45pm The Verb
10.45-11pm The Essay
Multi-Track
11pm-1am Late Junction
29 SATURDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9-11.45am Record Review
11.45am-12.30pm Music
Matters
12.30-1pm This Classical Life
1-3pm Inside Music
3-4pm Sound of Cinema
4-5pm Music Planet
5-6.30pm J to Z
6.30-10pm Opera on 3 from Met
Opera, NY. Blanchard Champion.
10pm-12am New Music Show
12-1am Freeness
30 SUNDAY
7-9am Breakfast
9am-12 noon Sunday Morning
12-1pm Private Passions
1-2pm Lunchtime Concert rpt
2-3pm The Early Music Show
3-4pm Choral Evensong
4-5pm Jazz Record Requests
5-5.30pm The Listening Service
5.30-6.45pm Words and Music
6.45-7.30pm Between the Ears
Year of the Crow
7.30-9pm Drama on 3
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
9pm-11pm Record Review Extra
11pm-12am Sunday Night
Series
12-12.30am Classical Fix
10. The Talented Mr Ripley
9. Georg Solti
8. Man Ray
7. The Tempest
6. Max Reger
5. Cremona, Italy
4. Thomas Tallis
3. Tintagel
2. Franz Schubert
1. JS Bach
QUIZ ANSWERS from p104
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THE QUIZ
It’s time to put your classical
music knowledge to the test
1. Against whom, in September 1717,
was the eminent composer and
keyboard player Louis Marchand
due to compete in a harpsichord
competition in Dresden, but
instead chose to flee town?
2. ‘An die Musik’ and ‘Die Forelle’
are songs written in 1817 by whom?
3. A visit to a Cornish castle with
pianist Harriet Cohen in summer
1917 inspired Arnold Bax to
compose which symphonic poem?
4. William Byrd wrote the madrigal
Ye sacred muses in 1585 to mourn
the death of which friend and
fellow composer?
5. Which Italian city was the
home of violin makers Nicola
Amati, Antonio Stradivari and
Giuseppe Guarneri?
6. Whose Four Böcklin Tone-
Pictures of 1913 includes ‘Isle of the
Dead’, a movement based on the
same painting as Rachmaninov’s
similarly titled tone poem (see p6)?
7. Which Shakespeare play links
incidental music by Purcell, a
fantasy overture by Tchaikovsky
and an opera by Thomas Adès?
8. Whose 1924 Le Violon d’Ingres
(above) became the most expensive
photograph of all time when it sold
for $12,400,000 at auction in New
York in May 2022?
9. In winning her 32nd Grammy
award in February, Beyoncé
overtook the record of 31 held by
which conductor?
10. Which 1999 film features Jude
Law as the jazz-playing Dickie
Greenleaf, Cate Blanchett as the
opera-loving Meredith Logue and
Jack Davenport as the doomed
conductor Peter Smith-Kingsley?
See p102 for answers
104 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
The BBC Music Magazine
PRIZE CROSSWORD NO. 384
Crossword set by Paul Henderson
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Magazine, Crossword 384/Apr 2023,
PO Box 501, Leicester, LE94 0AA to arrive
by 18 Apr 2023 (solution in July 2023 issue).
Your name & address
JANUARY SOLUTION JANUARY WINNER
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ACROSS
1 Composer’s harmonic changes
covering a new version (11)
8 Unwell during broadcast of severe
morning fanfares? (9)
9 Unstable, like some popular
music? (5)
10 Look to interrupt opening dance (5)
11 Successor to Macbeth rebuilt
clan’s door (3,6)
12 Run to meet doctor into playing
piano: a Chopin prelude (8)
14 Character in Ullmann opera seria
broadcast after end of week (6)
16 A French version of Cats, with
roles to be assigned? (6)
18 A Roman Catholic Mass
unexpectedly following special
Prokofiev opus (8)
21 One checking accounts backed
excellent concert-halls (9)
22 Bass, flat, but not initially
oblique (5)
24 African guitar went down second
in WOMAD (5)
25 Minor Tosca character carries
on foolishly (9)
26 Infestation upset musical
group (11)
DOWN
1 Composer left after wild party
with music (5)
2 Choir, with unusual pride, sang
like birds (7)
3 Reed organ, peculiar model,
one that’s working (8)
4 Never perform in a choir, being
sniffy? (6)
5 Rock band’s leading position in
Iran, surprisingly (7)
6 Sings, viol cases being
misplaced (9)
7 Heroine of musical: traveller
taking tea? Not I (5,4,3)
8 French composer argued scores
should be revised (5-7)
13 Contralto and I swamped by
requisitions for events (9)
15 Violinist considered unholy
in Italy? (8)
17 Not what you’d expect the
Prommers to do? (3,4)
19 Jazz fan embracing nude in
Broadway musical (7)
20 Pause in playing during musical
work, setting up fast movement (6)
23 Six taken to initially operate the
French instrument (5)
Please note: Because of BBC Music
Magazine’s limited office access
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 Volume 31 No.7 BBC Music Magazine
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BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE 105

 Music that changed me
Leslie Howard
Having made his broadcast debut on Fox
Movietone News at the age of five, the
Australian pianist, musicologist and
composer has been breaking records
ever since. Known as a master of the
music of Liszt, he’s the only pianist to
have recorded all of the Hungarian’s solo
piano music, earning himself a place in
the Guinness Book of Records. He marks
his 75th birthday with a Liszt recital at
Wigmore Hall on 18 April.
L
ong before I learned to read music
I used to listen to the wireless and
copy what I heard on our upright
piano in Melbourne. By the time I was
presented to a music teacher I was an
absolute blighter of a child – I could play
what I thought was ‘proper’ music and was
given these terrible pieces to play. I had to
unlearn the way I played with flat fingers,
using any finger that came in handy! I was
always playing things not written for the
piano – symphonies, opera, string quartets.
As a teenager I won a scholarship to
a good school with a fantastic record
library, and that’s where I came across
RACHMANINOV conducting his Third
Symphony and playing with Fritz Kreisler
in BEETHOVEN’s Violin Sonata in G,
Op. 30 No. 3. Rachmaninov’s music was
so well put together, and when playing
his own compositions he had a way of
springing a rhythm that appealed to me
deeply. Playing with Kreisler, he is not
accompanying but he is not overpowering;
he is pointing out how the violin and
piano’s line can be played to sound
completely different, just with rhythm.
He is the disciplinarian and Kreisler is the
free spirit – they are having a conversation
but they don’t have to agree. The pair made
only three recordings but I can’t imagine
anyone playing chamber music better.
FLANDERS AND SWANN came to
Melbourne when I was 14 and I already
knew all the songs from recordings. I
loved the humour and cleverness of the
106 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Pianist
The choices
Rachmaninov Symphony No. 3
Philadelphia Orchestra/Sergei Rachmaninov
Naxos 8.111357
Beethoven Violin Sonata in G, Op. 30/3
Fritz Kreisler (violin), Sergei Rachmaninov
(piano) RCA 88843073922
Swann Slow Train
Flanders and Swann
Parlophone CDP 7974662
Mozart Le nozze di Figaro
Renato Capecchi, Irmgard Seefried, Dietrich
Fischer-Dieskau; Berlin Radio Symphony/
Ferenc Fricsay Deutsche Grammophon 437 6712
Liszt Les préludes
Berlin Radio SO/Ferenc Fricsay
Deutsche Grammophon 463 6502
poetry, but Swann’s piano playing was
magnificent. Just like Rachmaninov, he
was able to play a rhythm with such a swing
in its step, like a Viennese orchestra knows
just how to place the second beat in a bar
of a waltz. I’ve picked ‘Slow Train’ because
I’m a railway nut – I believe almost the
greatest crime in humanity is closing lines
and knocking down railway architecture.
I challenged myself to visit every place
mentioned in ‘Slow Train’ and they are
scattered all over the British Isles!
At school, we managed to do a potted
version of MOZART’s The Marriage of
Figaro using the school orchestra, choir
and child soloists, so I knew the score
pretty well at 14. Figaro strikes me as
having the best plot, the best libretto and
the best understanding of the human
condition, and it’s like a warm bath – the
music is so perfect all the way through. I
saw my first professional production at 15 –
it was one of the few operas done frequently
in Australia at that time. Sydney Opera
House wasn’t built when I left in my 20s,
but I’ve been back and played there since.
I was already lecturing at my university
at the age of 20, but when I finished my
own studies I won a TV competition and
it gave me money and air tickets. I’d heard
about Guido Agosti’s summer course in
Siena and that’s where I went, not knowing
any Italian except the Figaro libretto! I
went on to London and was introduced to
Noretta Conci and John Leech, founders of
the Keyboard Charitable Trust. I worked
with Noretta and passed a stiff audition
for the BBC. They liked the programmes
I suggested, full of music not in the BBC
library, including LISZT. He was my
specialism as a young musicologist, and I’ve
spent 30 years writing a thematic catalogue
with colleagues which is now eight volumes
and 4,000 pages long. It’s hard to imagine
one artist could manage to record more
than 300 Liszt premieres, but I have – I’ve
made 100 Liszt CDs for Hyperion and I
have the material to make it 101.
I will premiere two recently discovered
pieces at my 75th birthday recital at
Wigmore Hall. It’s an all-Liszt programme,
which on this occasion is the right thing to
do, but usually I pair Liszt with Beethoven:
it shows Liszt is worthy of being spoken of
in the same sentence, and it means people
take my enthusiasm for him seriously.
Interview by Amanda Holloway
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THE FLYING

Mélisande DUTCHMAN
Richard Wagner

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