BBC Music Magazine

Malcolm Arnold was an extraordinary man. As you’ll read in Malcolm Hayes’s excellent survey of his greatest works and eventful life, the English composer, whose centenary we celebrate this year, was supremely adept at just about every genre of classi

Malcolm Arnold did not hold back on the percussion when writing his Fourth Symphony – alongside the usual symphonic forces, the orchestra includes bongos, tom-toms and maracas – and, as the composer himself explained in 1971, the 1960 work’s distinct

To explore Arnold’s symphonies further, head for the set of all nine recorded by the LSO and BBC Philharmonic under Richard Hickox and Rumon Gamba (Chandos CHAN10853(4)X). Barry Wordsworth and the BBC Concert Orchestra have recorded regularly togeth

Cecilia Bartoli is to be the new artistic director of Opéra de Monte-Carlo. The Italian mezzo-soprano, who has won considerable acclaim for both her immaculate scholarship and sense of adventure in her recitals and recordings, says that her new post

Plus each of us names a delightful spring-themed work Editor Oliver Condy Stenhammar’s Vårnatt (Spring Night) Deputy editor Jeremy Pound Roxanna Panufnik’s Spring in Japan Reviews editor Michael Beek Bax’s Spring Fire Digital editor & staff writ

2 …arms good, one leg bad. Russian maestro Valery Gergiev (above) has been told by doctors to take time off and avoid flying due to an injury. 37 …degrees Celsius. To prevent his precious Goffriller violin being damaged by the recent Texas freeze, A

Born: Wisconsin, US Career highlight: Performing Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra and singing the role of Jane in the world premiere of John Joubert’s Jane Eyre with the English Symphony Orchestra. She has always been one

I love the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, so was worried when I saw your March issue CD that one of true great performers on that instrument, Jack Brymer, would be weighed down by Malcolm Sargent’s stodgy conducting. Not a bit of it. The whole thing is so

10th: At the Battle of Poryk (in modern-day Ukraine), Polish forces led by General Jozef Dwernicki defeat a larger Russian army under General Theodor von Rüdiger. The Poles’ victory, however, does not help to rally local support for the November Upri

On this month’s cover disc, the BBC Concert Orchestra performs live from Malcolm Arnold’s home town of Northampton in blazing accounts of his Second and Fourth symphonies. Listening to these exuberantly inventive scores, whose unique emotional soundw

So frustrated was she by failing to get her music played on the radio that British composer Annabel Bennett (left) had a radical idea: present it as being written by ‘Arthur Bennett’ instead. The trick worked and, now that her male alter ego has star

Contrary to the review of Hahn’s opera L’îsle du rêve (January), the librettist Pierre Loti’s novel Madame Chrysanthème did not ‘eventually become Madama Butterfly’. The opera’s origins are more complex and interesting, and the main inspiration for P

The Great Music in Irish Houses Festival marked its 50th anniversary with a commission from composer Gráinne Mulvey last year. Great Women has recently been recorded in a Dublin studio by singer Elizabeth Hilliard and will be released in June on Méti

‘Malcolm Arnold’s music has never really been in fashion in our concert halls, but his centenary year has been a good time to explore the sizeable CD catalogue again. I’m more impressed than ever.’ Page 26 ‘How refreshing that Elgar’s Violin Concert

I’ve long been a huge fan of guitarist Pat Metheny’s music, but a new album of two chamber suites, Road to the Sun, sees him take a back seat as a player for the first time, relinquishing performance duties to Jason Vieaux and the LA Guitar Quartet.

LSO/Richard Hickox; BBC Phil/Rumon Gamba Chandos CHAN10853(4) Consistently high-quality performances of the essential core of Arnold’s output, split between two fine ensembles. National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland/ Andrew Penny Naxos 8.553540 Fin

Always happy to wage subversive war against the trappings of musical pomposity, Arnold was attracted to the irreverent concerts devised by his friend Gerard Hoffnung (above). For the first of these, presented at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1956,

One day last year, Sulamita Aronovsky’s phone rang with an unexpected message. A box of 1958 recordings bearing her name had been found in the Vilnius radio archives, accompanied by an instruction that they should be destroyed. That, she had thought,

From 1-21 March, spring will most definitely be in the air as Radio 3 celebrates all things vernal. Each weekday, Breakfast will be showcasing a variety of musical ‘springs’ as imagined by Vivaldi, Roxanna Panufnik, Gian Malipiero and more. And its F

Maurice Abravanel grew up in Switzerland playing four-hand piano with conductor Ernest Ansermet. Escaping Germany with his teacher Kurt Weill, at age 33 he became the youngest contracted conductor in the history of the New York Met. In 1946 he took o

Lyricism Hahn continued the tradition of Gounod and Massenet in giving voices lines that were sinuous and easy on the voice while being scrupulous in his word setting. At the same time, these lines were never left to drift, but are always imbued with

Enticing company Reynaldo Hahn with actress Sarah Bernhardt (in hat) and others at her fort in Brittany LIFE: Reynaldo Hahn is born in Caracas, Venezuela, the youngest son of a businessman. The family moves to Paris when he is still a child. TIMES:

Dvoÿák was in his late-40s when he conducted the premiere of his Eighth Symphony. By this stage, he had already composed a large body of music, including the Slavonic Dances and Symphonic Variations for orchestra, 11 string quartets and his 1879 Stri

Claudio Abbado is not necessarily the first name to come to mind where Dvoÿák is concerned. However, the Italian’s live 1995 recording of the Eighth stands out for its open-air quality and sense of adventure. The Allegretto grazioso third movement, p

There’s a glimmer of light ahead, with the promise of warmer days, the green shoots of spring and more fantastic music to enjoy. I myself have been particularly delighted by a pair of recordings that shine much-needed light on composers whose music h

Burleigh: Five Songs of Laurence Hope; Bonds: Three Dream Portraits; Kerr: Riding to Town; Leslie Adams: Amazing Grace; Damien Sneed: I Dream a World; Shawn E Okpebholo: Two Black Churches; Owens: Mortal Storm; Fariña: Birmingham Sunday (arr. Liverma

Tartini wrote his ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata for the Lipinski. It’s now played by the Milwaukee Symphony’s leader Frank Almond, from whom it was once stolen in an armed robbery in 2014. The Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe preferred to perform on his Guar

What was the starting point for this project? I wanted to start commissioning and telling new stories; I’d worked with Shawn Okpebholo before, so Two Black Churches was sort of the genesis of it. I got him to set ‘Ballad of Birmingham’ and then he h

As a keen clarinettist myself, I’ve always included Jack Brymer in my pantheon of musical heroes so was delighted to hear him performing Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto on your cover CD. Though he famously devoted himself to Mozart, it’s a shame that he d

Three to look out for Alan Davey , the controller of BBC Radio 3, picks out three great moments to tune into this April To mark the 50th anniversary of Stravinsky’s death, we’re dedicating a full day of programming to the music of this visionary com

Richard Galliano Septet Dreyfus Jazz FDM 36642-2 Martha Argerich, Lilya Zilberstein (piano) Warner Classics 2564623594 Maria João Pires, Gulbenkian Orchestra Lisbon/Guschlbauer Apex 2564604482  RCA 88985370372 Nemanja Radulovic (violin), Laure Favr

Born in Riga, Latvia, Ksenija Sidorova has been playing the accordion since childhood. Passionate about showcasing the instrument and expanding its repertoire, she performs classical music ranging from Bach and Bizet to contemporary composers such as

The value of high-quality violins has soared in recent years, especially those made by Cremonese makers Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737) and Giuseppe Guarneri (1698-1744). The latter, known as ‘del Gesù’ – due to the cross motif found on his later inst

Which living British composers will have their music played a century from now? As I type that question, I realise that answering it will bring me only scorn on social media. And to what end? The bumpy career and wildly fluctuating reputation of Malc

Few composers have truly excelled in writing music both for the concert hall and for films: among them are Walton, Britten (in his early cinema documentary scores), Korngold, Prokofiev and Shostakovich. But in terms of quality combined with quantity,

Hidden Treasure – Unpublished Lieder Christian Immler (bass-baritone), Helmut Deutsch (piano) BIS BIS-2543 (CD/SACD) 72:25 mins The Austrian Jewish composer Hans Gál was director of the Mainz Conservatory when the Nazis came to power in 1933. His j

Beethoven composed just one opera, albeit its two substantial revisions changed the character of the work. Its source was a French libretto by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal, based on a real life event in which a woman daringly re

Published in 1733, Pietro Locatelli’s L’Arte del Violino for solo violin, strings, and basso continuo introduced a new level of virtuosic violin playing within the genre of the concerto. Most notably, the end of the first and third movements of each

La Petite Band/Sigiswald Kuijken et al Accent ACC25320  It’s debatable whether one-to-apart is authentic. It can, however, be unduly thin-textured. This recording features finely defined vocal and instrumental performances, but the choruses do lack h

The conductor takes to the podium and is swiftly shot in the back. He lies motionless on the stage while the orchestra lets rip with the iconic James Bond theme. Not your average concert, then, but we’ve come to expect nothing less from the Danish Na

Clarinettist Alexander Fiterstein introduces favourite recordings from his collection  Yona Ettlinger played principal clarinet in the Israel Phil, made a number of great arrangements and was interested in Baroque music. This is the first concerto t

One musician who was of central importance to both the Violin Concerto and Violin Sonata was Elgar’s good friend, the violinist WH (‘Billy’) Reed. A founder member of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1904 and its leader from 1912, Reed was called on

Young jazz players often struggle to impose an identity on their music. Not so Matt Carmichael, the 21 year-old Scots tenorist whose debut album Where Will The River Flow immediately establishes him as an appealing and distinctive new voice in a crow