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Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Colston Avenue, Bristol, BS1 4ST Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contact us on Facebook and Twitter
Frisky Sargent
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 musical. I then came to the Beethoven expecting the same. But again, the BBC Symphony is on great form, and although the recording shows its age,
I’m sure Ludwig van B would approve – had Flash Harry been listening to Toscanini? Philip Chant, via email
Sax education
In Roger Thomas’s review of Fergus Mccreadie’s Cairn
( Jazz, March), he refers to a reeds/bass/drums trio and ‘…original pieces inspired by the folk music and rural environment of the saxophonist’s native Scotland’. I’ve enjoyed listening to this ‘sprightly and compelling’ album a couple of times now, and it is indeed a great album of ‘finely developed interaction between the leader and his rhythm section’. But the leader is a ‘wunderkind pianist’, not a throaty reed to be heard blown on the entire album. You might like to sample Mccreadie’s keyboard playing for yourself. David Green, Ampney St Mary Roger Thomas replies:
Please allow me to provide a much-needed correction to my review of Fergus Mccreadie’s excellent album Cairn in the March issue. I apologise unreservedly to this fine jazz pianist, to Edition Records and to readers for inadvertently submitting a thoroughly garbled early draft in which I bafflingly refer to him as a saxophonist. Fortunately, my description of the music as an elegant, spirited, sprightly and compelling fusion of jazz with traditional Scottish music survived this (possibly lockdown-induced?) brainstorm, and very much stands, as do its five stars.
Woolly thinking
In your March Déjà vu column you refer to bassoon chuntering in Nyman’s Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds. I think you’ll find it’s saxophones doing the chuntering – no less than John Harle on the top line, supported by Andy Findon and Ian Mitchell of the Michael Nyman Band. The soundtrack’s music consultant, one H Purcell, would be amused at your ‘fold’-pas...
Kim Sargeant, High Wycombe The editor replies:
We are feeling suitably sheepish about this error.
Happy memories
In response to the comments about the use of music in TV programmes (Letters, February), anyone who, like me, grew up in the 1940s
and ’50s will remember with gratitude the use of classical music on BBC Radio’s Children’s Hour. Adding atmosphere to so many dramatisations or serialised stories, it provided my first introduction to, among many others, Holst’s The Perfect
Fool (The Hobbit), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 (Tarka the Otter), Respighi’s Ancient
Airs and Dances for the Lute (The Barque of the Brothers), Walton’s Façade Suite (Said the Cat to the Dog), Dvo ák’s Symphony No. 7 (Nicholas Nickleby), the Intermezzo from Wolf-ferrari’s The Jewels of the Madonna (Ballet Shoes) and Hely-hutchinson’s Carol Symphony (The Box of Delights). Valerie Willsher, Borough Green
A Proms occasion
I was interested to note that your February CD (below) of Mahler’s Das klagende Lied had been recorded at the
BBC Proms – a quick search through my diary and my collection of programmes reminded me that we had been in the Arena at the Royal Albert Hall on that occasion (7 August 2005). The diary also told me that we had been round to see conductor Donald Runnicles afterwards and that he had been rather cross that someone had applauded prematurely at the end of Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra which had ended the first half. Peter Avis, New Malden
Windy Sibelius
I was intrigued by Barry Valentine’s comments about the power of Sibelius’s music to evoke visions (Letters, Februrary). I once had such an experience listening to his Seventh Symphony when I saw a wild landscape with a pine forest, the trees bending violently in a gale which came from the left, the sky wild and grey. On a more flippant note, I always feel that if it isn’t actually raining at any particular point in a Sibelius symphony, then it soon will be – but I love the Finnish composer’s music nonetheless. Edwin Baker, Farnham
A viola request
I play the viola, so naturally
I’d like to suggest more pieces about viola, please! How about profiles of high-flying British violists currently performing, recording and teaching? Two in particular have been esteemed teachers of mine: Helen Callus, currently professor of viola at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (where I live), and Roger Chase, who lived and taught in Chicago but is currently back in London, his home town. There are many others. And how about articles about great viola works, such as Benjamin Britten’s profound Lachrymae and other British viola works. And, finally, let’s hear about great contemporary British viola makers, of which there are many.
Les Jacobson, Illinois, US
We are always keen to hear suggestions of features from readers. And, while we may admittedly have made the occasional viola joke in the past, we promise that we do value it at its true worth! Watch this space, as they say.