Our Choices

The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites

Jeremy Pound Acting editor

Back in my chorister days, seeing Josquin’s name on the upcoming Evensong list would be met with, at best, an apathetic shrug. Oh, how wrong. Today, I can’t get enough of the great Renaissance composer. Listening to meticulously crafted works such as his Alma redemptoris mater and Missa l’homme armé while sub-editing our Composer of the Month piece on him (see p60) has been a treat, as was Radio 3’s recent Composer of the Week series, in which presenter Donald Macleod and art historian Andrew Graham-dixon explored his music in the context of the art of his era.

Alice Pearson Cover CD editor

Listening again to my CD of Russian pianist

Nikolai Lugansky playing Scriabin’s Romantic yet innovative Third Piano Sonata reminded me how overlooked the Russian composer’s music can be. Unlike Rachmaninov, his contemporary

at the Moscow Conservatory, Scriabin’s popularity suddenly declined after his death. The Third Sonata shines in the hands of one of his best interpreters, and hopefully the 150th anniversary of Scriabin’s birth in 2022 will inspire some similarly good concerts and recordings. Michael Beek Reviews editor Last month’s cover interview with Andrew Lloyd Webber inspired a frenzy of listening. I admit to having seen The Phantom of the Opera on stage at least 15 times, and while it is perhaps ALW’S most famous work it is – for me, anyway – now overshadowed by some later efforts. Although they didn’t perform well at the box office, both The Woman in White (2004, left) and Love Never Dies (2010) feature spectacular scores.

Freya Parr Digital editor and staff writer

Caroline Shaw really is having a moment. Nearly every concert I’ve attended since the end of lockdown has featured her music – and I, for one, am thrilled. Her new release with So¯ Percussion, Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part, shows off her versatility as a composer and performer, constantly toeing the line between melancholy and euphoria. When I reached the Bach chorale-style arrangement of ABBA’S Lay All Your Love On Me, I thought my brain was going to erupt with joy.