BBC Music Magazine: March 2024

GAMBLING WITH TCHAIKOVSKY ACADEMIC OVERTURES Which recording of The Queen of Spades trumps all the others?

The world’s best-selling classical music magazine

Jakub Józef Orliński

We suggest the best classical music to study to

Full March listings inside See p100

The star countertenor on dancing into the underworld with Gluck

Also in this issue…

From Mozart to Megadeth with Rachel Barton Pine The radical composer who dragged Italy into the 20th century How to get back into practice… in 100 days

100 reviews by the world’s finest critics Recordings & books – see p70

Thefull score Music to my ears

Right up there: Janine Jansen dazzles in Sibelius

The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites...

Charlotte Smith Editor Inspired by the Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall’s 15th-anniversary broadcast in January, I’ve been delving into its archives to unearth a wealth of performances. First up was Martha Argerich in Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto under Daniel Barenboim – a magnetic display of athleticism belying her 82 years.

Janine Jansen in Sibelius’s Violin Concerto under Sakari Oramo also had me transfixed.

ANDREW WILKINSON, BENJAMIN EALOVEGA, LUKAS BECK/WIENER KONZERTHAUS, STEWEN QWIGLEY, GERARD COLLETT

Jeremy Pound Deputy editor As most of March falls in Lent, I plan to spend it teetotal, accompanied by some alcohol-free listening. As far as I’m aware, no-one has ever written a piece inspired by lime cordial or zero per cent IPA, so I’ll head instead for JS Bach’s Coffee Cantata BWV 211. Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan’s 2004 recording is a wonderfully aromatic blend, ideal for kicking me into action first thing in the morning.

Steve Wright Acting reviews editor I’ve been revelling in a 2023 release from the Orchestre Pasdeloup, featuring works by female composers from across the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C is a superb distillation of Classical grace and Romantic excitement; Tailleferre’s Petite suite pour orchestre shimmers, meditates and gladdens; and Anna Clyne’s Restless Oceans packs bags of excitement into just four minutes.

Freya Parr Content producer While our reviews editor Michael Beek takes a well-earned sabbatical, I’ve returned to the BBC Music Magazine fold this month and have traded in my Japanese punk and acid house for some delightful new treats from the classical music world. Sean Shibe’s latest album Profesión sees the guitarist at his most lyrical, with a vibrant and colourful recording quality that stopped me in my tracks. Even on the tinniest headphones, Shibe’s playing sparkles.

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A joyful jigsaw: Christopher Glynn records Mozart sonata fragments with Rachel Podger; (opposite) with soprano Claire Booth

REWIND

Great artists talk about their past recordings This month: CHRISTOPHER GLYNN Pianist MY FINEST MOMENT Schubert in English, Vol. 4 Roderick Williams (baritone), Rowan Pierce (soprano), Christopher Glynn (piano) Signum Classics SIGCD770 (2023)

The Schubert in English series is a project I set up to present Schubert’s songs in English, which hadn’t been done before, or at least not for a long time. It was really about finding new audiences for lieder, because I’m very aware that only a small sub-set of the classical music audience

goes to song recitals, which is quite a sad thing. So I commissioned Jeremy Sams to create translations of The Winter Journey and other Schubert song cycles and started experimenting with performing them – and this series with Signum came out of it.

Volume four is a miscellany – lots of very storytelling songs like ‘The Trout’ and ‘The Wanderer’ – with two wonderful singers: Roderick Williams, whose way with the English language is second to none, and Rowan Pierce. I had a hunch Rowan would be a wonderful Schubert singer and I think that turned out to be the case.

Thefull score and in the end we really had no choice because it was virtually impossible to rehearse them.

We got together in November in a very cold church in Upper Norwood, with a very unhappy fortepiano which kept sticking and going out of tune; but luckily the recording came out really well. When I play it back I can hear how happy we were to just be making music. It was emotional, because we’d had so many concerts cancelled – it had been going on for almost a year at that point. So it’s a very fond memory, because we loved the material and we were so happy to be able to do it.

I’D LIKE ANOTHER GO AT… Grainger Folk Music Claire Booth (soprano), Christopher Glynn (piano) Avie AV2372 (2017)

We had a great time, and I think of all the recordings I’ve made this is the only time that the first edit came through and I thought it was exactly what we were trying to do. It had a naturalness to it that felt precisely what we were aiming for, so I was really pleased with how it came out. That naturalness and directness feel such a big part of Schubert.

MY FONDEST MEMORY Mozart Violin Sonata Fragments (completed by Tim Jones) Rachel Podger (violin), Christopher Glynn (piano) Channel Classics CCSSA42721 (2021)

This recording nearly didn’t happen because it was scheduled just as Covid hit, and I think we rescheduled it about four times. We ended up recording it in the middle of the second or third lockdown.

It was completions of fragments of Mozart violin sonatas that Tim Jones made, and it was just fascinating because he would take 16 unfinished bars of Mozart and make not only one completion but multiple completions, and we chose two of each one to record. He tried to work like Mozart worked: very fast, very spontaneously, not giving himself too much time to revise. I wanted to bring that spontaneity into the performance,

I was just reflecting that often it’s performing the repertoire that gives you the chance to make a recording, but sometimes it’s the other way round. This was very much the case here. I’ve always loved the music of Percy Grainger, but trying to get concert promoters to take it before it was on disc was almost impossible. It tended to be quite a hard sell! Then Claire Booth and I made this album and it did well; suddenly, we were being asked to do it in all directions. So as a result we did lots of performances after we made the recording, and although I’m very proud of the recording – I think it works really well – we’ve changed the way we do the music quite a lot.

I learned some of the Grainger piano solos for the project, and I’m proud of what they sound like, but I play them very differently now. Playing live, you realise how bold you can be with the music, and understand its eccentricity; until you do it in front of an audience, you don’t realise how far you can go.

Grainger was a total one off, but you don’t realise just how much he was until you play his music. I’d definitely go back and do it with Claire and it would be wonderful to do a live recording.

Christopher Glynn’s ‘Schumann in English, Vol. 1’ is out on Signum Classics on 8 March

Strong character: composer Dorothy Howell

MyHero Conductor Rebecca Miller salutes the neglected genius of Dorothy Howell My love of Dorothy Howell’s music started accidentally. I had a recording of femalecomposed piano concertos scheduled with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, but the recording rights for one work were suddenly withdrawn. Enter Dorothy.

Permission from the Howell Estate required a visit to meet and convince Merryn and Columb Howell (Dorothy’s niece and nephew). So we trotted off to Bewdley, Worcestershire, and shared an afternoon of affectionate anecdotes of ‘Auntie D’.

After recording her stunning Piano Concerto, I returned to Bewdley, seeking more of Dorothy’s orchestral creations.

Merryn unearthed several brown paper packages wrapped in string, and beneath the dust lay wonderful treasures – scores with Henry Wood’s original blue pencil and notes from Dorothy stuck inside! Some hadn’t seen the light of day for 80 years.

Her music jumped off the page: oozing vibrant colour and strong character.

Dorothy Howell’s career rocket-launched in 1919 when her tone poem Lamia so dazzled Henry Wood that he programmed it five times that Proms season – she was promptly acclaimed as ‘the English Strauss’. But the press subsequently turned vicious, weighing heavily on her.

She eventually abandoned orchestral composition, and her reputation faded. On her deathbed, surrounded by her scores, she said to Merryn, ‘just burn all of this, no one is interested’. Thankfully, he didn’t.

I’m overjoyed to have finally recorded her orchestral works. I hope it will help revive her reputation, talent and story.

Miller’s Dorothy Howell: Orchestral Works is out this month on Signum Classics

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Man of the moment: countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński has the world at his feet

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Jakub Józef Orliński

Dancing with the Devil Star countertenor, breakdancer and model Jakub Józef Orliński enjoys a challenge – and he’s now applying his boundless commitment and energy to the role of artistic director on his new recording of Gluck’s Orfeo, as he tells Rebecca Franks PHOTOGRAPHY: JOHN MILLAR

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FIFTEEN OF NOTE

15 musical works to study to What is the best music to aid a little learning? Steve Wright takes a break from his maths homework to make an at-desk listening list ILLUSTRATION: DAVID LYTTLETON

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s music a useful study aid? It’s by no means a given: for every fan of background sound, you’ll find a refusenik who insists on complete silence. The right sort of music, though, really can prove useful in ushering in a calm, contemplative atmosphere that helps even the most fiendish French verb to percolate the brain. Here are some study soundtracks you might like to consider…

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Bach: Goldberg Variations

‘Bach is best’, runs the old adage, and you could probably tack the phrase ‘…for studying to’ on the end. Much of the great man’s output is excellent for swotting to, with its rigorous internal discipline and precision-tooled structures. But which of his many works to choose? We’ll go for the much-loved Goldberg Variations for piano, reasoning that solo instrumental work – without the attention-grabbing clamour of multiple voices – makes the ideal companion to a long, book-bound evening.

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Chopin: Etudes

Clue’s in the name, perhaps? Well, yes and no: Chopin’s Etudes are not so much music to study to (étudier) as actual proper ‘studies’ for pianists to hone their skills on. However, they also make a fine sonic backdrop to a long session with, say, complex cell structures or the imports and exports of Argentina. There’s something about those nimble, keyboard-spanning arpeggios, as heard in Op. 10 No. 1 or Op. 25 No.11, that shakes off the cerebral cobwebs and gets the brain fired up for 56

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action – the aural equivalent of a double espresso shot, if you like.

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Debussy: Images

More solo pianism: this time, though, from the more serene end of the spectrum.

Debussy’s six Images are glorious examples of musical scene-painting, depicting (among others) the play of sunlight on water and the sound of church bells through the trees. This is music at its most gently contemplative, ushering in a mood of receptive quietism.

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Philip Glass: Music in Twelve Parts

Glass’s music, concentrating as it does on repetition and slow build-up of drama and narrative, can make for a perfect study soundtrack. There are many options, but we’ll suggest Music in Twelve Parts – and not just because this monumental, 12-movement work clocks in at around four hours, so you won’t get those jarring gear changes every few minutes as your music player seeks something ‘similar’.

This is the piece in which Glass’s musical signatures – minimalist soundscapes, slow but inexorable momentum, almost imperceptible changes in the musical argument – are heard most eloquently. It all plays off as one immense intellectual exercise in sonic, motivic possibility.

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Bruckner: Symphony No. 5

If we’re talking about music that builds its drama steadily and inexorably, Bruckner’s monumental, slow-burn

symphonies are fine examples. The Fifth’s gradual accretion of tension, and the vast sonic edifices it crafts so imperturbably, are highly satisfying on both an emotional and an intellectual plane.

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Ludovico Einaudi: Le Onde (The Waves)

If it’s meditative, evenly paced music that you’re after, few composers come more highly recommended than Ludovico Einaudi. Cohesion, simplicity and optimism are the prevailing moods in the Italian’s music: all fine accompaniments to an afternoon of calm, focused study.

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Beethoven: Diabelli Variations

There’s something intellectually satisfying about the theme-and-variations form.

A theme is laid out, and then worked on methodically and painstakingly – mined for possible combinations, alternate modes of expression. There are many themeand-variations examples, but as an aid to creative thinking Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations works a treat. Beethoven takes a simple waltz by the 19th-century composer Anton Diabelli, then proceeds to harvest it for no fewer than 33 interpretations, each one as ingenious and satisfying as its neighbours. The miracle here is how Beethoven seizes upon some of the waltz’s simplest patterns and motifs, and from these basic kernels constructs music of huge imagination and ingenuity.

Any Diabelli-inspired study session should find you in similarly fertile form.

Fifteen works to study to

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Composer of the month Composer of the Week is broadcast on Radio 3 at 12pm, Monday to Friday. Programmes in March are: 26 February – 1 March Smetana 4-8 March Johanna Senfter 11-15 March Morricone 18-22 March Mozart 25-29 March Stanford

Luigi Dallapiccola Misha Donat charts the life of a composer whose 12-note explorations were never made at the expense of his natural Italian lyricism ILLUSTRATION: MATT HERRING

GETTY

Dallapiccola’s style 12-note technique Dallapiccola was the first important Italian composer to embrace Schoenberg’s (pictured left) 12-note method of composition, and it became fundamental to his way of thinking. Even the shapes of the 12-note rows he used could carry symbolic meaning – as for instance, in the opera Ulisse, with their wave-like formations suggesting the sea.

Canons Dallapiccola was fascinated by canons of every kind. They permeate his music, their intricacy often lending it a seemingly metaphysical layer.

In the Sonatina canonica for violin and piano even Paganini’s solo violin Caprices are subjected to canonic treatment in a sort of black humour.

Self-quotation Continuity of thought and subject matter in Dallapiccola’s output is underlined by quotations from one work to another. The Canti di liberazione quote from both the Canti di prigionia and the opera Il prigioniero; and at the end of Ulisse, a string of self-quotations passes across the music’s surface, as though in summation of the composer’s life’s work.

‘Eye’ music In Dallapiccola, the look of the music on the page sometimes tells its own story: as it does in Sicut umbra…, where the shapes of the stars are ‘drawn’ into the score; or in the Christmas Concerto of 1956, whose spherical phrase-markings suggest the ‘round circle’ of divine love in the work’s 13th-century text.

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ne hundred years ago, on 1 April 1924, Schoenberg arrived in Florence to direct his Pierrot lunaire – one of the seminal works of early 20th-century modernism – at the Palazzo Pitti. Most of the audience had never been exposed to contemporary music, and to them the event seemed like no more than an elaborate April Fool; but at least two of those present sat listening intently.

One of them was Italy’s most famous living composer. Although terminally ill with throat cancer, he had driven in his brand new Lancia all the way from his home in Torre del Lago, some 50 miles away, and after the performance asked to

Dallapiccola was the first significant figure in his country to adopt the 12-note method of composition Schoenberg had formulated in the early 1920s, as a means of binding together music that no longer relied on the traditional major and minor keys. (In Schoenberg’s scheme, a single ‘row’ containing all 12 notes of the chromatic spectrum acts in various permutations as a sort of matrix, governing the music.) In so doing, he may be said to have dragged Italian music belatedly into the 20th century.

At the time that Dallapiccola was finding his feet as a composer, Italy was going through its darkest period. At

Dallapiccola may be said to have dragged Italian music belatedly into the 20th century be presented to Schoenberg. The other was a 20-year-old music student named Luigi Dallapiccola. Not for a further 25 years did Dallapiccola summon up the courage to contact Schoenberg and explain how that evening had been a defining moment in his life. In reply, Schoenberg regretted that Dallapiccola had not come to see him, as he always liked meeting young musicians; but, he admitted, he had been particularly proud that the composer of La bohème had taken the trouble of coming to hear Pierrot.

There is something symbolic about the way the paths of Puccini, Schoenberg and Dallapiccola crossed for that brief moment in 1924. Not that Puccini’s operas held much interest for either later composer, but it is in Dallapiccola’s music that Italianate warmth and lyricism find common ground with the rigorous musical language of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern.

first, even Dallapiccola was a fervent admirer of Mussolini, but his eyes were soon opened. On 1 September 1938, Mussolini announced in a radio broadcast that henceforth Italy would embrace Hitler’s racist agenda. ‘I wanted to protest,’ Dallapiccola later said, ‘but I wasn’t so naïve as not to know that in a totalitarian regime the individual is impotent. Only through music could I express my indignation.’ Dallapiccola’s wife was Jewish, and the couple found themselves having to take refuge for a while in the hills outside Florence. On the very day of Mussolini’s proclamation, Dallapiccola began work on his Canti di Prigionia (‘Songs of Imprisonment’) – the first of three ‘protest’ works concerned at a fundamental level with ideas of captivity and freedom. The one-act opera Il prigioniero (‘The Prisoner’) followed

COMPOSER OF THE MONTH

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Reviews Recordings and books rated by expert critics Welcome This month’s reviews feature an inviting mix of new discoveries and fresh takes on enduring favourites. We’ve worldpremiere recordings of Elena Firsova’s 2020 Piano Concerto and Edmund Finnis’s first solo piano cycle, plus compelling new-work compilations for both violin and voice. Elsewhere, much-loved works emerge in fresh colours. Two Nordic masterpieces, Sibelius’s Symphony No. 4 and Grieg’s Symphonic Dances, both get thrilling new readings, while the inimitable spirit of Venice is evoked in a captivating album of music from across the centuries. Lully’s opera Atys enjoys a new benchmark recording, while Lionel Tertis, who did so much to bring the viola centre stage, is beautifully celebrated in our Recording of the Month.

Steve Wright Acting reviews editor

This month’s critics John Allison, Nicholas Anderson, Michael Beek, Terry Blain, Kate Bolton-Porciatti, Geoff Brown, Michael Church, Christopher Cook, Martin Cotton, Christopher Dingle, Misha Donat, Jessica Duchen, Rebecca Franks, George Hall, Malcolm Hayes, Claire Jackson, Stephen Johnson, Berta Joncus, John-Pierre Joyce, Nicholas Kenyon, Ashutosh Khandekar, Erik Levi, Andrew McGregor, David Nice, Roger Nichols, Ingrid Pearson, Steph Power, Paul Riley, Anne Templer, Roger Thomas, Sarah Urwin Jones, Kate Wakeling, Alexandra Wilson

KEY TO STAR RATINGS

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RECORDING OF THE MONTH

A master violist salutes his legendary forebear Paul Riley applauds a handsome tribute to Lionel Tertis, the performer and teacher who brought the viola out of the shadows

A Lionel Tertis Celebration Works by Tertis, Bowen, Brahms, Bridge, Schumann, Vaughan Williams et al (trans. Tertis et al) Timothy Ridout (viola), Frank Dupree, James Baillieu (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMM905376.77 128:00 mins (2 discs)

If violists owe Lionel Tertis an inescapable debt of gratitude, with this release Timothy Ridout repays those dues handsomely. Inspired by the violinist Fritz Kreisler – and arguably doing for the viola what his contemporary Casals, also born in 1876, was accomplishing for the cello – Tertis set about raising the instrument’s profile, in the process tackling the problem of solo repertoire head-on through

commissioning, composing, and arranging. Self-taught and a latecomer (he didn’t take up the instrument until he was 19), Tertis’s achievement is roundly celebrated across two discs, each with a stand-out pianist.

Bookending the tribute are two landmark sonatas: one premiered in 1905 and dedicated to Tertis by the young York Bowen, the other by Tertis’s sometime pupil Rebecca Clarke, who composed it at the end of the First World War. Other original compositions include Frank Bridge’s haunted Pensiero and a substantial, big-boned Rhapsody by Elgar’s friend and confidant WH Reed.

Then there’s First Meeting: Souvenir, Eric Coates’s tender pen portrait performed in a new transcription by conductor John Wilson – who restores the original key, thereby accentuating its smouldering, dark-hued nostalgia.

A few interlopers aside, the programme in effect takes the temperature of early 20th-century English chamber music, admitting miniatures

by Wolstenholme and Tertis to

Recording of the Month Reviews Performer’s notes Timothy Ridout

ICE CHO

TING RU LAI, JIYANG CHEN

A continuing legacy: Timothy Ridout and Frank Dupree pay tribute to Lionel Tertis

broaden the scope. Toothsome arrangements muster an affectionate, schmaltz-light account of Kreisler’s Liebesleid ahead of a stylish performance of Praeludium & Allegro – a flamboyant injection of Baroque ‘pasticherie’ to end disc one on an ebullient note.

Irresistible, too, is the stoic nobility conjured by Fauré’s Elégie, in which Ridout’s colours are wonderfully nuanced, and his careful restraint allows Frank Dupree’s pianism to shine with translucent luminosity at the start of the middle section.

The two sonatas, however, steal the show, Ridout surrendering to their indefatigable underpinning volatility. And together with Frank Dupree in the Bowen,

and James Baillieu who shoulders the Rebecca Clarke, Ridout nurtures readings that seethe with fiery, dramatic insight, voluptuous passion and ear-grabbing empathy.

C minor turbulence is met with protean resolve as Bowen,

The readings seethe with fiery, dramatic insight and eargrabbing empathy fresh out of music college and filled with the intoxicated ardour of a young composer flexing his muscles, makes bedfellows of Grieg, Brahms and Elgar, as he wrestles to forge his own voice. In the Finale – broached with unstoppable aplomb by Ridout and Dupree

– the music husbands its most intense resources for a passage resolutely marked fff molto vibrato. Rebecca Clarke, meanwhile, whips up a scherzo of impishly teasing vivacity; and while never losing sight of the bigger picture, Ridout and Baillieu boldly interrogate every shifting refinement of the first movement’s complex skein of introspection, ruggedness and gossamer solo asides.

From imposing sonatas to salon bonbons, these recordings constitute a deft salute not just to Tertis the man and multifaceted musician, but also to his enduring legacy which lives on in distinguished successors – not least among them Timothy Ridout himself.

PERFORMANCE RECORDING

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Just how important is Lionel Tertis in the story of the viola?

Tertis is the father of modern viola playing. There were pieces written for viola before him – but in the late-19th century, while the piano, cello and violin all had their great virtuosos, the viola was left behind. He was the first viola professor at the Royal Academy of Music – before him, the role didn’t exist. He commissioned so much, and encouraged people to think of the viola as a solo instrument.

How did the project come about?

As well as commissioning, Tertis produced many arrangements for viola, and as a student at the Academy I wanted to record an album of these. A couple of years ago, the Tertis Foundation asked if I would be interested in recording some pieces connected with him.

So this was a golden opportunity.

What are your memories of the recording sessions?

We recorded in Wyastone Concert Hall in Monmouthshire in January. So my memories are of the wonderful space – and of the cold! Our producer Andrew Keener helped me so much with pacing and giving the right attention to different elements.

Does the viola enjoy the prominence it deserves?

Thanks to players like Tertis, William Primrose, Yuri Bashmet, Tabea Zimmermann and Lawrence Power, it does enjoy more prominence now. There is still more to be done, though. I have a litmus test for this: when I take my instrument through airport security and I tell staff it’s a viola, I am still greeted by baffled faces. So there is more awareness to be raised! It’s such a beautiful instrument, and we should see and hear more of it.

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