The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites...
Charlotte Smith Editor
In March, Bang & Olufsen hosted a celebration in Mayfair of the 2024 BBC Music Magazine Awards nominees. Performing at the event was last year’s Premiere Award winner Fenella Humphreys, who charmed the audience with solo violin works by Bach, Debussy, Peter Maxwell Davies and, to finish, a dazzling account of Seonaid Aitken’s The Mad Piper – a wistfully beautiful Scottish tune that becomes a whirling, fizzing reel. The gathering’s spontaneous cheer following the final flourish said it all.
Jeremy Pound Deputy editor
Good things came to those who wait at this year’s Royal Philharmonic Society Awards in Manchester. A speech of Mahlerian length from the BBC Singers – six movements plus coda – was followed by Jasdeep Singh Degun’s closing performance of his Veer for sitar, tabla and strings. The haunting, lyrical beauty of this fusion of Indian and western classical styles had us all mesmerised, and I’ve since been reliving the magic via his album, Anomaly.
Steve Wright Acting reviews editor
I have a penchant for tangy, vigorous early-20thcentury orchestral music, and recently the works of Bloch have been hitting that sweet spot. There’s a wonderful album on CPO featuring Bloch’s two Concerti Grossi and the Concertino for Flute and Harp. The former manage a thrilling balance of neo-classical rigour and Romantic lyricism, while the Concertino makes full use of the flute’s otherworldly sonorities.
Freya Parr Content producer
While Jeremy (above) has been singing the praises of one sitarist, I’ve been turning to another: the brilliant Anoushka Shankar, who has been drip-feeding us a couple of new tracks from the forthcoming second album in her minilp trilogy. ‘New Dawn’ has provided the perfect backdrop to mornings with coffee and a book. To call it ‘ambient music’ is underselling it: jangly sitar floats among ethereal electronic textures.