Our Choices
The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites
Jeremy Pound Acting editor
Autumn seems not to have had the decency to wait patiently for its turn this year, pushing its way rudely into line somewhere in the middle of August. Bowing to the inevitable, then, I’ve turned to Respighi’s gorgeous Poema autunnale for violin and orchestra to set the mood for the months ahead. The work sets its seasonal stall out with a wistful opening from the violin soloist before cor anglais, bassoon and the lower strings reply in gloomy empathy. Few works capture the mood of grey skies and turning leaves so evocatively, particularly in the recording by violinist Pierre Amoyal and the Orchestre National de France conducted by Charles Dutoit. Alice Pearson Cover CD editor
Trying to listen to music while having a faulty gas hob clicking rhythmically in the background wasn’t easy, but it reminded me to check out a piece I haven’t heard for a while, Steve Reich’s
Drumming. So off to Youtube I went and found the piece on a channel devoted to the Portland Percussion Group. Seeing the performance up close and personal with excellent camera work really brought the work to life, and I’d highly recommend checking out some of the group’s other performances on that channel. Michael Beek Reviews editor I popped along to St George’s Bristol a couple of weeks ago for my first concert experience in the venue’s new performing space, the ‘Glass Studio’. It was a super-intimate performance by the string quartet Red Carousel, who performed an appealing set of their own compositions – think folk-meets-pop-meetsminimalism. We, the audience, sat surrounding them on chairs, cushions and rugs while they played, charming us with their music and occasional stories about their music-making journey.
Freya Parr Digital editor and staff writer In a quite ridiculously full week that involved going to eight concerts in seven days, it was the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s Proms performance of Dvoˇrák’s (pictured left) Ninth Symphony, From the New World, that stood out from the pack. I must have heard that piece a thousand times, but there was something about American conductor Ryan Bancroft’s elegant handling of the second movement – and most particularly that exquisite cor anglais solo, played so movingly and lyrically by Sarah-jayne Porsmoguer – that left me a snivelling mess.