Our Choices
The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites
Oliver Condy Editor
Back in June I had the privilege to guide 13 fans of JS Bach around the composer’s Thuringian churches. And it was beyond a thrill to perform for them some of the organ works where they were written, including the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor BWV 582 at the Divii Blasi church in Mühlhausen and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565 at the Bachkirche in Arnstadt.
Jeremy Pound Deputy editor
I hadn’t expected the highlight of a trip to the Classiche Forme festival in Lecce to be Xenakis’s Rebonds B for solo percussion. But then, I’d never heard Simone Rubino play before. With his bass drum reverberating around the Chiostro Antico Seminario courtyard, this brilliant young Italian wowed the audience with his virtuoso display on bongos, tom-tom and woodblocks. And he clearly loved every minute of it. Rebecca Franks Managing editor
What’s not to like about a saunter through landscaped gardens before a beautiful recital of Brahms, Liszt and Beethoven by pianist Imogen Cooper? That was the start of a wonderful day at Buxton International Festival this summer, topped off by a trip to the gorgeous opera house for Tchaikovsky’s passionate Eugene Onegin. Michael Beek Reviews editor
On a recent trip to the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch-partenkirchen, Germany, a truly memorable highlight was a concert with oboist François Leleux. Standing centre-stage, in front of the Camerata Salzburg, he danced his way through concertos by Strauss and Mozart and conducted when not playing. Their connection and resulting performance was one of the most joyful I’ve witnessed.
Freya Parr Editorial assistant
I was one of the smug bunch getting burnt to a crisp at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, where the British jazz scene came up trumps for me. The young London five-piece Ezra Collective drew me in with an eye-wateringly dynamic rhythm section, and I also spent an hour in open-mouthed glee at a set by The Comet is Coming, a sax/synth/drums trio that introduced me to a totally new, transcendental soundworld.