Welcome

How (and why) does a piece of music become a classic? My hunch is that it can be harder to secure a second performance than a first, even harder to reach the recording studio. Yet a great performance on disc can make all the difference to a piece’s reputation – both for new music and for forgotten music of the past. Take, for instance, the Silesian Quartet’s series of Bacewicz chamber works (see p88). This group’s brilliant playing is helping put the 20th-century Polish composer’s music on the map, although her music is not yet often heard in the concert hall. Our Recording of the Month features not the first, but the second, recording of Adams’s Naive and Sentimental Music.

Less newsworthy, but perhaps even more interesting. Could Adams’s haunting 1999 score be on its way to classic status?

Rebecca Franks Managing editor