Our Choices

The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites

Oliver Condy Editor I’ve long been a huge fan of guitarist Pat Metheny’s music, but a new album of two chamber suites, Road to the Sun, sees him take a back seat as a player for the first time, relinquishing performance duties to Jason Vieaux and the LA Guitar Quartet. The two suites are everything I’d been hoping: full of wonderful tunes, those trademark Metheny harmonies and a pervading sense of joy.

Jeremy Pound Deputy editor

Though I originally intended to mark the beginning of Lent by listening to various settings of Psalm 51, the haunting beauty of SS Wesley’s Wash Me Throughly had me abandoning that plan and instead sticking with the rest of St John’s College, Cambridge’s 2013 disc of the English composer’s choral music. Yes, there is plenty of galumphing Victoriana in there, but at his best Wesley wrote music that is deeply moving and hugely uplifting.

Freya Parr

Digital editor and staff writer Having only really flirted with the music of Amy Beach, I’ve made an effort to get to grips with her work this month. Seemingly, Petroc Trelawny read my mind and played her ‘Hermit Thrush at Morn’ on Radio 3’s Breakfast. One of two piano pieces by Beach recreating the call of a hermit thrush, it’s both ethereal and melancholy. For five minutes, I was utterly transported. Until a car alarm went off.

Michael Beek Reviews editor

I enjoyed the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Icons on Inspiration virtual fundraiser on Youtube recently. Raising funds for the orchestra and its outreach work, the audience-less Hollywood Bowl performances featured a diverse programme. I particularly loved Duke Ellington’s Martin Luther King and Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst. The works were chosen by special guests such as Katy Perry and Julie Andrews, who discussed their choices on video with conductor Gustavo Dudamel.

Alice Pearson Cover CD editor

It being that time of year, I’ve been listening to settings of the Stabat mater. I haven’t heard Pergolesi’s famous and profoundly beautiful setting for a long time. The piece was written in the last few months of the Italian’s life, which of course gives it extra poignancy, but it is also a work of great craftmanship – from the breathtaking melismatic melodies and word painting to the expressive chromatic harmony, it’s ahead of its time.