Have your say… Complete collection
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Dead good
I enjoyed Jeremy Pound’s recent article on Requiems and your (very fun) rating system (May issue). However, to not include Ligeti’s Requiem is a certain misstep, as it is, arguably, the most famous requiem written in the last 60 years (admittedly due to a certain movie). I was very much looking forward to seeing how you rated this piece. Mike Caparula,
Manteno, IL, US
The editor replies:
Ligeti’s wonderful Requiem is a truly unsettling beast. On our Blood and Thunder scale, we’d give it the full five-flame ‘Be very afraid’ rating.
Having just opened the latest milestone issue (No. 400; May), I’d like to use this momentous occasion as an excuse to share my own journey with you since 1992. I subscribed for the first few years and have taken out further subscriptions on and off over the years. I also bought other issues as and when I saw them on the newsagents’ shelves, always enjoying the included CDS long after having finished the magazines. Once I retired a few years ago, I started hunting down those CDS I had missing from my collection. By regular visits to charity shops – some of which even took my contact details and alerted me when they had new stock in – together with judicious purchases from the likes of ebay, I finally managed to complete the collection just last month! I’ve even dedicated a single CD storage unit to BBC Music CDS and am happily working my way through listening to both old and new performances in my increased leisure time. Many congratulations, and here’s to the next 400 issues!
Peter Draper, Malvern, Worcestershire
Oboe opportunities
As a fellow oboist, I am writing in response to Ian Kemp’s letter on the ‘Dartington
Effect’ (April). Over the years I have belonged to various orchestras, chamber music groups and formed my own wind quintets, often with piano. One of the organisations that I find most inspiring is Contemporary Music for All (coma.org) who have many groups all over the British
Isles and beyond. It is open to any instrumentalist or singer. There are also many creative composers in these groups who write music appropriate to the instrumentation available. You can find details of orchestras, wind groups and bands at amateurorchestras.org.uk. The British Double Reed Society (bdrs.org.uk), meanwhile, provides a brilliant way of contacting other double reed players, and I have found it very productive to go to local concerts and talk to the players
in order to find out about any vacancies or forthcoming opportunities. It is amazing playing the solo repertoire with a pianist. The more people you know, the more likely you are to find opportunities. And above all, keep practising and be prepared to travel.
Jane Carrington-porter, via email
Deller tribute
I much enjoyed Rebecca Franks’s profile of Jakub Józef Orliński (March), and I was particularly interested in the side article on the rise of the countertenor, in particular the mention made of the late Alfred Deller. Arrangements are being made by the Margate Civic Society for a plaque in Deller’s memory to be erected in St John’s Church, the parish church of Margate in Kent where he was born – it will commemorate the fact that he was a chorister at the church for many years, thus commencing his long and splendid career in music, promoting the countertenor voice both in the UK and internationally and founding the Stour Music Festival. There will be a simple ceremony later this year to unveil the plaque. Colin Whyman, Roquetas de Mar, Spain
How low can you go?
In Steve Wright’s 15 musical works to study to feature (March), he states in his Number 9 recommendation – Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto – that the tuba and double bass play their lowest notes at about 40 Hz. Note that the contrabassoon plays lower. The lowest note for contrabassoons vary; most go down to B flat, at about 29 Hz, many only go down to C, at about 32 Hz, and a few go down to A, at 27 Hz. Also note the current development of the subcontrabassoon by Richard Bobo in Arkansas, US – still in prototype, it’s built to play an octave lower than the contrabassoon.
Doug Moran, Denver, CO, US
Exam notes
I was surprised that Steve Wright didn’t mention studying to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, about which there was an experiment a couple decades ago showing that listening prior to an exam actually improved performance. I gave my son a recording of the concerto after reading a report of that research and before his finals. His Oxford degree is all the confirmation of the experiment I need!
Laz L Schneider,
Fort Lauderdale, FL, US
Timing is everything
The cover discs included with every issue of BBC Music Magazine are very welcome and have introduced me to many composers and works that were new to me and new takes on familiar repertoire. There is, however, one minor niggle with the timings on the disc liners. Timings are given for single movement works and for the disc as a whole but, for multi-movement works, timings are given for individual movements but not for the work as a whole. Perhaps it’s just me, but I usually listen to whole works rather than individual movements and it’s a faff cracking open the jewel case, adding up the movement timings and writing the total on the liner before reinserting it. Could you also include the totals, as is usual with most record labels?
Bob Humphrey,