Music to my ears
What the classical world has been listening to this month
At this year’s BBC Proms, I went to hear mezzo Catriona Morison and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales perform This Frame is Part of the Painting, a new piece by Errollyn Wallen. The work was inspired by the artist Howard Hodgkin, whom Errollyn knew personally, and she wanted to capture something of the colour and energy in his painting. I think she did fantastically well in that respect – it was a beautifully striking piece that was very well received.
At that same Prom was Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, a work with which I am closely connected. Two of my children have played it in youth orchestras, and my youngest son, who is a budding composer, has actually been inspired by it to write a similar sort of narrative piece, based on his visits to Greggs the bakers. His work has a promenade that comes back between the visits, each of which depicts a different product. It’s quite 1920s Stravinsky in style, and is sounding rather good!
In a few weeks’ time I’m going to be conducting a performance of Bruckner’s Mass in E minor, which is an amazing piece. There’s an archaism to it, but it is tied in with radical turns of phrase and sonorities. I think it’s possibly my favourite 19th-century mass. Because it’s some years since I last worked on it, I’ve been listening to a recording of it – in my opinion, Polyphony under conductor Stephen Layton are absolutely ideal for this sort of music. For some years, I’ve been planning to write a book on film director Alfred Hitchcock. For this, I’ve recently been focusing on his Rear Window, watching it several times. It’s a fantastic film, and one of the things that particularly interests me about Hitchcock is how he works almost like a composer in terms of balancing, pacing and giving motivic structure to the film. And, by confining himself to showing the action from just a single viewpoint, he gives the film a real tautness.
John Butt and the Dunedin Consort’s recording of Handel’s Samson will be reviewed in a future issue
Tessa Lark Violinist
I adore Paolo Pandolfo’s 2001 recording of the Bach cello suites. Pandolfo’s approach to performing Bach has been a primary reference for me for years, and his arrangements for the viola da gamba are a revelation. On a technical level, the performance is pristine, yet at the same time his interpretation manages to be so resplendent, playful and free that it never fails to make me wiggle with joy.
A more recent record I’ve been wearing out is The Butterfly, Irish fiddler Martin Hayes’s latest album with the Brooklyn Rider quartet. I play lots of styles of music, and know from experience how tough it can be to find a natural sound when mixing different styles together. All the tracks on this album are
There’s an archaism to Bruckner’s Mass in E minor, tied to radical turns of phrase
timeless yet wholly original; and, although the fiddle-and-quartet arrangements of the traditional Irish tunes are sophisticated, they’re presented in a way that preserves the style’s simplicity.
With this year being the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, I’ve been thinking about the wonders of outer space. Pair that with Beethoven’s
250th birthday next year and I immediately think of the last track on the Voyager spacecraft’s Golden Record: the Budapest
String Quartet playing Beethoven’s Cavatina from Op. 130. This piece really is one of mankind’s finest feats, and the Budapest Quartet’s breathtaking performance pays the greatest respects to the music’s incredible beauty.
And also…
This summer I spent hours in front of one of Francis Bacon’s ‘screaming’ pope paintings. I’m not usually interested in anything grim, but over time my reaction to the painting changed from horror to complete awe. It reminded me what you can learn when you spend time alone.
Fantasy, Tessa Lark’s debut album on First Hand Records, will be reviewed in a later issue Leon Bosch Double bass Whenever I go to a concert, I like to prepare by listening to various recordings of the work I’m going to hear. So, for instance, before Yuja Wang’s performance of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at the BBC Proms this year, I got to know various iconic interpretations, including the one by Rachmaninov himself – not to make comparisons as such, but simply to see what has happened to this piece over the years.
For the same Prom, I also listened to Brahms’s Second Symphony, a work that also has a great emotional significance for me as I played it on tour with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra shortly after my father died in 1990. Although I’ve enjoyed many famous recordings, I keep returning to Neville Marriner’s with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. It’s very good in terms of tempos and orchestral balance, and the slow movement is emotionally very powerful.
I must have been negligent all my life, because until recently
I’d never really heard violinist Rachel Podger playing before. Her magnificent recording of Bach’s Partitas was such a refreshing discovery. This led me to her new disc of transcriptions of
Bach’s cello suites, which again I thought was unbelievably good. I’d recommend it to anyone.
And also…
In the summer, I went to the
Casals Festival in Prades, Spain, partly to fulfil a wish that my father was never able to do. While there, I went to the Salvador Dalí Museum in nearby Figueres. It made me realise just how little I knew about Dalí, and I spent the better part of half a day there, delving into his life and work. It was fascinating.
Leon Bosch’s new recording,
21st Century Double Bass, will be reviewed in a future issue