Music to my ears
What the classical world has been listening to this month
Anna Lapwood
Organist and conductor
My listening tends to go in weekly cycles with my radio show on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. The Sarabande from Caroline Shaw’s Partita is a recent obsession, and the recording by Roomful of Teeth is extraordinary. I’m always surprised by how the piece, which features indigenous throat singing and overtones, changes my perception of choral performance while it still strikes me as beautiful. I keep listening to it over and over again.
I recently heard Ian Bostridge sing Schubert’s Winterreise. I’ve heard his recordings many times, but to hear the cycle live was completely bonkers. He goes into an almost trance-like state and brings everyone in the audience with him. At the end he stayed perfectly still and held us for three minutes of silence; no one dared applaud. I went backstage and spoke to him afterwards, and he told me that he doesn’t remember
Ian Bostridge goes into a trance-like state and brings everyone with him
anything about what he did in the performance. It just happens.
A new discovery is Barbara Hannigan’s recording of Gershwin’s Girl Crazy Suite. She conducts, sings and also did the arrangement. It’s on an album with music by Berg and Berio, so in her arrangement of the suite she’s
inflected Gershwin with bits of orchestration that are reminiscent of Berio. It’s really contradictory, but it shows off what she can do and how flexible she is. I happened upon it the other day and ended up down a rabbit hole, exploring her recordings. And also…
I’ve just read War Doctor by David Nott, a moving account of his work on the front line in Syria. It’s a very human portrayal of what it’s like having to deal with these people’s lives, not really knowing which side they’re on, or what they’ve done. It’s incredible. Christopher Glynn Pianist Pianist Federico Colli’s recently released second volume of Scarlatti’s Piano Sonatas is such red-blooded music-making. It has conviction, colour and such a sense of adventure – he really does make the music leap out of the speakers in quite an exceptional way. I also love the way he has organised the order of them. As a song pianist and a concert programmer, I spend a lot of time working out how to group together lots of small pieces to tell a bigger story, and Colli does this brilliantly.
Conductor Paul Mccreesh’s recording of Purcell’s King
Arthur is wonderful. Purcell is a composer very close to my heart and I thought I knew this piece well, but this recording has made me realise that I really don’t.
What I love about it is that it is so theatrical and feels so alive – you can almost see what’s going on. Mccreesh’s brilliance lies in how he plans everything minutely for a recording but still manages to create a sense of energy.
I come back almost on a monthly basis to my BBC Legends disc of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears performing Schubert, Britten and Wolf. I listen to Britten’s playing all the time to remind me of what’s possible as a duo pianist. He has a sense
of timing and colour and, above all, a sense of story-telling – he’s alive to every mood. He starts with what I’d say is a composer’s understanding of the music but uses it as a springboard for his spontaneity. And also… The Poetry Pharmacy is a collection by William Sieghart (above) that prescribes poems for life’s conditions. There’s one section about mental and emotional wellbeing, another about motivation, self-image and so on. It’s an anthology done in a new way, and I love how it puts poetry at the service of helping us to live and work in everyday situations. Christopher Glynn is artistic director of the Ryedale Festival, which plans to run 10-26 July Sharon Bezaly Flautist
Being in selfisolation during the coronavirus pandemic has definitely influenced my musical choices. I’ve returned to old favourites like Mahler’s Sixth
Symphony performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Georg Solti.
Solti really gets the spirit of it. For my taste, it’s perfect – it’s really emotional but not overly so. You hear so many recordings that don’t quite bring across Mahler’s music in the right way: it’s important that it taps into all the folkloric elements but without being too kitsch.
I also can’t stop listening to Bach Collegium Japan’s new recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion with Masaaki Suzuki. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate this work – it helps you to contemplate the universe with a broader perspective, forcing you to look outside of yourself. It’s such a magnificent piece in and of itself, and if you listen in the context of this weird world we are now living in, it has added meaning. Great art is always relevant: it says just as much today as it did when it was written.
As a bit of light relief, I’ve been listening to Ella Fitzgerald’s
Mack the Knife: Ella in Berlin. It’s a beautiful disc, and because I find it difficult to listen to big classical works while I’m out walking and running, this is the perfect album. And also…
I’ve been rereading Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the
Time of Cholera, because it is such a symbol of the fortitude of love during a time like this. He writes with such colourful description and you feel immediately transported to Colombia.
Sharon Bezaly’s new recording of José Serebrier’s Flute Concerto with the Australian Chamber Orchestra is out now on BIS.
Read our review on p70