Music to my ears
What the classical world has been listening to this month
Tippett Quartet
John Mills (violin): My choice is from a collection of historical broadcasts by violinist Oscar Shumsky: the Grand Adage by Glazunov (arr. Zimbalist) and ‘Yesterdays’ from Roberta by Jerome Kern. Shumsky’s playing showcases a style that has all but disappeared. The height of style, charm and colour, his focussed but beautiful vibrato combines with a bow stroke that punctuates while creating a seamless line. The virtuosity goes without saying.
Jeremy Isaac (violin): Listening is essential to good music-making and I love discovering all sorts of performances, old and new. One of my favourite LPS is the 1972 recording of Rimsky-korsakov’s Scheherazade by the London Philharmonic under Bernard Haitink. It is full of colour, energy and old-school character. Rodney
Friend’s violin solos are exquisite, and his artistic licence a few minutes into ‘The Young Prince and Young Princess’ never fails to bring a smile to my face!
Lydia Lowndes (viola): I continually return to Mitsuko Uchida playing Mozart’s Piano
Concerto No. 17 in G major with the English Chamber Orchestra under Jeffrey Tate. Not only is the music sublime – my favourite among Mozart’s piano concertos – but what always makes me beam with pleasure is when the inevitable circle of fifths makes its appearance. Uchida’s lightness of phrasing and rhythmic integrity is a delight, and the ECO accompany her with such delicate detail.
And also…
Bozidar Vukotic (cello): I recently rewatched Stanley Kubrick’s stunningly beautiful and mesmeric film Barry Lyndon.
Shot entirely using natural and candle light, every scene is set up like a painting, each one a masterclass in classical elegance and refinement. Kubrick models his scenes on Hogarth’s paintings and the soundtrack is filled with music by the old masters: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Vivaldi and, most notably, Schubert – the ominous theme of the slow movement of his E flat major Piano Trio echoes throughout to serve as a portent of Lyndon’s eventual comeuppance. The Tippett Quartet’s recording of Korngold’s String Quartets is reviewed on p124.
Lara Downes Pianist
I’ve been working with Florence Price’s music for 15 years now, and I’ve really been enjoying the Philadelphia Orchestra’s recent recording of her symphonies. I have a special fondness for the symphonies’ slow movements plus the ‘juba dance’ third movements. I got to play her Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia last year, and this orchestra just gets this music. It was so nice to see them pick up a Grammy for the symphonies.
Making my new album has led me down some fascinating rabbit holes. I have been especially enjoying the Iranian composer Hooshyar Khayam and in particular his piece Bright Night. Khayam has emigrated to Canada, so we got together in Montreal and just connected. A few days later he told me he was writing a piano concerto inspired by our conversation, and about going back and finding connections between Iranian music and jazz.
Milhaud’s jazz-inspired ballet
La Création du Monde turns 100
‘Bernard Haitink’s Scheherazade is full of colour, energy and old-school character’
this year. I’m fascinated by that time when European composers went mad for jazz and tried to incorporate it into their music. Milhaud wrote a version of the ballet for piano and string quartet, and I’m making a new recording with the Miro Quartet. I’m fascinated by 100-year cycles, and there are so many things happening right now that evoke that same spirit of innovation and cross-pollination.
And also…
I was trying to think of something clever, but honestly… my passion is clothes, especially vintage clothes. That’s one great thing about all the travelling I do. Browsing for clothes in Nashville will turn up something very different from, say, Paris or Brooklyn. One of my favourite designers is the British designer Alice Temperley, whose clothes evoke old-school glamour. Lara Downes’s new album, Love at Last, is out now on Pentatone
Kathryn Lewek Soprano
I have recently just revived my love of bel canto and I’ve been listening to the old, great recordings – especially Beverly
Sills, Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas. I tend to become addicted to whatever it is I’m singing in the moment, and because I just did Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in Nice, I’ve been pretty obsessed with listening to all the greats. I’m married to a tenor, so we go down these rabbit holes of listening to old recordings.
I have sung so much French stuff this season and I just can’t get enough of it. We’ve been listening to a lot of Édith Piaf – simply because, the way she sings, her French diction is far more impeccable than any classical singer, I think. She’s not afraid of it messing with her technique or anything; she’s just so expressive and the way she sings the words is so inspiring to me.
We take our little mini Homepod with us everywhere we go, and ‘Hey Siri, play “She Loves You” by The Beatles’ is the first command Siri has actually understood my four-year-old daughter saying. So, we’ve been listening to that a lot lately, and dancing to it. It’s also really adorable because my one-year-old son, who is non-verbal for the most part, sings the ’yeah, yeah, yeah’ part and is quite accurate. He’s a budding talent.
And also…
I’m reading an impossibly thick paperback by Margaret George about Henry VIII. It’s like 1,000 pages long or something ridiculous – as if I have time to read these days! But I’m halfway through.
It’s a novel, so it’s fiction, but it’s sort of a fake journal from Henry’s point of view – like a cross between very well researched historical fiction and a smutty romance novel. So it’s ticking all my boxes at the moment.
Kathryn Lewek appears as Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, 19 May – 10 June