Our Choices The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites

Oliver Condy Editor Hooray for the Cbeebies Proms this year which enabled me to take my four year-old to her very first concert. And what a cracker it was, too. The combination of her favourite TV presenters (including Justin Fletcher and Maddie Moate) and doses of Adams, Copland and Britten left her grinning from ear to ear, and the sight of a space rocket emerging from the arena was the icing on the cake. Jeremy Pound Deputy editor Though I rarely listen to TV soundtrack albums, the death of composer Barrington Pheloung (right) has had me heading back to 1980s and ’90s Oxford in the company of The Essential Inspector Morse Collection. Pheloung was masterful at capturing in music the detective’s morose outlook and the dark shadows cast, in

Morse’s world, by those famous dreaming spires. And, with its brilliant use of a motif based on ‘Morse’ spelt out in Morse Code, the theme tune is, in my opinion, the finest ever to grace our screens. Rebecca Franks

Managing editor

The first Riga-jurmala Music

Festival got underway this summer in the Latvian capital’s fairytale opera house, in the midst of a weekend heatwave. I loved hearing the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Susanna Mälkki, who stepped in for indisposed local hero, Mariss Jansons. Best of all were their sensuous Strauss Rosenkavalier Suite and a gutsy Beethoven Second, an energetic reminder of the brilliance of one of the composer’s earliest symphonies. Michael Beek Reviews editor

I was delighted to have caught the Vienna Philharmonic’s annual Sommernachtkonzert on BBC iplayer before it disappeared from view. Having enjoyed the disc (see Brief Notes, p116), it was great to be able to watch Gustavo Dudamel conduct, see the always-beautiful Schönbrunn Palace, spy audience members waltzing and marvel at pianist Yuja Wang’s very high heels (and a quite remarkable outfit). Freya Parr Editorial assistant

The last few weeks have featured endless train trips to and from the Royal Albert Hall. One particular standout night was a BBC Prom in which Public Service Broadcasting were joined by the London Contemporary Voices and the Multi-storey Orchestra, in an atmospheric arrangement of their studio album The Race for Space. The dancing astronauts were an unexpected yet delightful addition.