ALEX JENNINGS

I have been passionate about the music of Britten since my university days, and in particular I like his Noye’s Fludde – I have the original recording from 1961. It is a work that I find extremely uplifting and moving, and I also rather like the slightly ramshackle nature of it in the way that it uses amateur singers and people from the local community. I have never actually seen it live on stage, though that is something that I long to do.

I love the wide open spaces of Copland’s music, which I find incredibly evocative. His Lincoln Portrait is typically lush and full of folk references. I know quite a few performances of it, but my favourite is the Cincinnati Pops one with Katharine Hepburn as the narrator. She recorded it when she was into her 80s and has this incredible fragility, and yet toughness, to her – it’s a fantastically impassioned performance, which I feel everyone ought to hear.

I’m delighted that I have tickets to see Thomas Adès’s opera The Exterminating Angel, as I find his music so thrilling. On my recording of his Asyla by the London Symphony Orchestra, I love the drama and repetition of what is both a compelling and exciting