Our Choices

The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites

Oliver Condy Editor

Sometimes we dwell rather too much on neglected music, and not enough on beloved classics. I’d never learned to play Debussy’s Clair de lune, for instance, but this month I’ve spent many happy evenings getting it underneath my fingers. Debussy writes extraordinarily well for the piano – it’s a joy to pop the right fingering into the score and to find the notes practically sitting underneath your hands. Now I just need somewhere to perform it… Jeremy Pound Deputy editor I’ve often read about the Finnish composer Robert Kajanus (right), but largely just in the context of Sibelius, whose music he championed as a conductor. Time, then, to investigate Kajanus’s music in its own right, by way of a Lahti

Symphony Orchestra disc under

conductor Osmo Vänskä. I’m particularly taken with his Finnish Rhapsody Op. 5, a folky, dancing piece with a gorgeous central section based on the Finnish song ‘En voi sua unhottaa poies’. Alice Pearson Cover CD editor

This month’s cover disc features a concerto for two oboes by Albinoni, and I can highly recommend all 12 of his Op. 9 oboe concertos, every one of which is a perfectly crafted

Baroque masterpiece. I have been listening to them all with great pleasure as I work. Albinoni was an early master of the oboe concerto and his most famous is Op. 9 No. 2, which has an exquisitely beautiful slow movement often referred to as the rightful ‘Adagio’.

Michael Beek Reviews editor

I caught The Song of Names on Netflix recently; I’d wanted to see it for ages. It’s a film about the disappearance of a young Jewish virtuoso violinist who, as a child, was sent to London to escape the Nazis. The brilliant Ray Chen is the musician actually performing for the character on the soundtrack, which features music by JS Bach and Paganini. There’s a wonderfully sensitive score from Howard Shore, too.

Freya Parr Editorial assistant

In the absence of Bristol’s usual vibrant nightlife, I’ve been spending my evenings during lockdown running around the city’s darkened streets armed with suitably thrilling music. When I’ve completed The Prodigy’s back catalogue, I turn to Emmanuel Pahud’s stellar recording of CPE Bach’s Flute Concerto in D minor. Not only is the pace of the final movement perfect for racing up Gloucester Road and dodging wayward students, Pahud’s playing is vibrant and exciting – a worthy substitute for a night on the tiles.