Our Choices
The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites
Charlotte Smith Editor
I was in Philadelphia for a Curtis Symphony Orchestra concert in November, featuring the talented and enthusiastic students of the Curtis Institute. Conducted by an equally exuberant Yannick Nézet-séguin, the programme of French music showcased the school’s opera students alongside indefatigable bass-baritone Eric Owens, followed by Ravel’s Mother Goose and Daphnis et Chloé suites. A special shout out goes to the sterling double bass section, all of whom played their hearts out.
Jeremy Pound Deputy editor
Some people use SAD lamps to get them through the darker months; I turn to music that depicts sunrises. My favourite is the opening to Haydn’s Symphony No. 6, ‘Le Matin’. We begin in the semi-darkness, feeling our way forward in the company of just the violins, before the lower strings, horns and winds join in, leading us
towards a gloriously bright A major chord. Morning has broken, and I am now in a good mood.
Michael Beek Reviews editor While in Lisbon recently, I enjoyed an evening of fado music from two singers and a pair of guitarists. It’s an atmospheric, spine-tingling musical tradition, steeped in nostalgia, some melancholy and no small amount of passion. On my return, I sought out classical recordings influenced by it and fell in love with Brazilian guitarist Plínio Fernandes’s album Saudade. Muito lindo!
Steve Wright Content producer
As a human being, Gesualdo (above) is hard to admire – he murdered his first wife and her lover – but I find his music bewitching. That crime haunted Gesualdo for the rest of his life and you can hear the mental discomfort in his six books of madrigals, a highlight being the increasingly anguished ‘Mercè grido piangendo’ (‘“Mercy”, I cry, weeping’). Les Arts Florissants convey the restlessness and unease of these songs perfectly.
Alice Pearson Cover CD editor For some intense sparkle and total escapism to fill the long winter evenings, I’ve been indulging in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. The plot is a bit daft, but music of great charm and beauty is sprinkled all over the libretto, alongside stylish orchestral waltzes. Youtube can throw up some gems and I found a wonderful, classic performance of the whole opera with soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in the cast, accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic under Herbert von Karajan, no less.