Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Oboe Concerto – Programme Note & Profile (LSO)

Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Oboe Concerto – Programme Note & Profile (LSO)

After a period of relative neglect, the oboe re-emerged in the 20th century as a fashionable solo instrument. The decade from 1945 to 1955 saw a glut of new oboe concertos from Richard Strauss, Jacques Ibert, Lukas Foss, Malcolm Arnold and Bohuslav Martinů – as well as Bernd Alois Zimmermann …

Wynton Marsalis: Tuba Concerto – programme note & profile (LSO)

Wynton Marsalis: Tuba Concerto – programme note & profile (LSO)

The tuba’s origins can be traced back to the development of the brass band in the early-19th century. Since then, it has found a permanent home in orchestral brass sections, as well as in other musical cultures. But it wasn’t until 1954 that the first tuba concerto was written …

Dani Howard: Trombone Concerto – programme note & profile (London Symphony Orchestra)

Dani Howard: Trombone Concerto – programme note & profile (London Symphony Orchestra)

When Dani Howard first mooted the idea of a concerto to Peter Moore, LSO Principal Trombone, Covid-19 was yet to strike. By the time she began writing the piece, in the summer of 2020, concert halls were silent and many of Howard’s musician colleagues had doggedly set up shop online …

House Music: What Our MPs Really Like Listening to (The i)

House Music: What Our MPs Really Like Listening to (The i)

When Sir Keir Starmer sat down with Lauren Laverne to talk through his Desert Island Discs last month, the Labour Party held its breath. Would its leader flaunt phoney indie credentials, as David Cameron did in 2006? Surely it couldn’t be worse than Ed Miliband in 2013, his top choice of Robbie Williams’s Angels tickling the nation’s gag reflex.

Four Times You Should Have Been at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (BBC Radio 3)

Four Times You Should Have Been at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (BBC Radio 3)

‘For me, Huddersfield is about all sorts of music, but it’s not about the mainstream.’ Graham McKenzie, Artistic Director of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, is scrupulous in his pursuit of the obscure. Since its conception in 1978, the festival has hosted the full spectrum of musical experimentation, from acoustic reinterpretations of Kraftwerk tracks to a concert given entirely on half-cooked vegetables (the instruments were later served to the audience as soup).

Joan Tower: America’s Best-Kept Secret (BBC Radio 3)

Joan Tower: America’s Best-Kept Secret (BBC Radio 3)

Joan Tower is not a name you hear very often this side of the pond. The New York-based composer’s music has featured just once at the BBC Proms – her Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 1, conducted by its dedicatee, Marin Alsop, in 2012. A smattering of broadsheet reviews acknowledge Tower’s status as a ‘senior figure’ in the contemporary American scene but rarely do they unpack why that might be.

Stephen Cleobury: A Life in Music (BBC Radio 3)

Stephen Cleobury: A Life in Music (BBC Radio 3)

To the outside world, the conductor and organist Stephen Cleobury could come across as reserved, stoic – unassuming. But his singers knew better: ‘You have to be in partnership with him to see an entirely different world of emotions revealed,’ one of his young choristers told the journalist Richard Morrison. It was through music that Cleobury best expressed himself, and if his many recordings are anything to go by, he had a lot to say.

Holst's Sāvitri at Lauderdale House (Bachtrack)

Holst's Sāvitri at Lauderdale House (Bachtrack)

Cracks of thunder, road rage, intermittent sirens and a barking dog: the brave members of HGO faced stiff competition during last night’s performance of Sāvitri. And that was before it started to rain. Lucky, then, that the prospect of a living, breathing opera – experienced without the pallid glow of a computer screen – was too enticing for such trifles to matter.

19 COVID Theses (VAN)

19 COVID Theses (VAN)

By Jeffrey Arlo Brown, Timmy Fisher and Hartmut Welscher

Not long after the last global pandemic, in which some 50 million people died from Spanish flu, a social change began to take place in living rooms across the world. With the dawn of radio, and later television, the parlor gatherings and upright pianos that had once been the focus of evening entertainment were gradually phased out. A century later, with a new pandemic sweeping the globe, classical music has never felt more under threat …

Read the article on VAN