People often ask me to recommend good modern music, accessible but not cheesy or playing to the gallery; interesting and thoughtful, with rich ingredients and a kick to its step. People like Steve Reich, John Adams, Michael Torke, Arvo Pärt, Gavin Bryars and the Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova (born 1980) are invariable answers, the ultimate proof in Tabakova’s case being a new Hallé CD (CD HLL 7562, released 6th Oct 2023) where Delyana Lazarova conducts the Orchestra for Tabakova’s Earth Suite, Viola Concerto (with Maxim Rysanov), Cello Concerto (soloist Guy Johnston) and to start with, Orpheus’s Comet, a sort of road runner with the opening of Monterverdi’s Orfeo its ultimate – and thrilling – final destination.  The nature-inspired Earth Suite has a topical connection in its busily upbeat finale, ‘Timber and Steel’. Sir Henry Wood’s orchestral players affectionately nicknamed him “Timber” and Tabakova invests her music with an excited sense of Wood’s wide-ranging hobbies as well as hinting at elements of industrialisation, still fresh when Wood was born in 1869. Her own creative industriousness audibly brims over. The Cello Concerto is often soulful, even when the music is mostly mobile (as in the first movement) though the Viola Concerto’s ‘passionate and nostalgic’ second movement goes that extra mile in terms of deep expression. If Tabakova is at the moment but a name on your musical horizon, here’s your chance to do some exploring.

Violist Maxim Rysanov offers a compelling performance of Tabakova’s Viola Concerto and his presence on the Hallé disc gives me an opportunity to plug an important older release, Romanian Rhapsody featuring the pianist Mihaela Ursuleasa with violinist Gilles Apap on Berlin Classics 0016642BC, c£12.75. In 1995 Ursuleasa won the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition but was tragically found dead from a cerebral hemorrhage  in her Vienna home on 2 August 2012. She was just 33. Rysanov paid homage to Ursuleasa with his 2012 album “PAVANE” (BIS BIS1773) and reckoned her as both a wonderful musician and a very special person. ‘Romanian Rhapsody’ is simply stunning. It opens with Enescu’s First Romanian Rhapsody in the sort of solo virtuoso piano performance that years ago would fan the flames of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody. Schubert’s Three Piano Pieces D.946 offer us some idea of Ursuleasa as a lieder accompanist (a role she apparently relished). There’s locally flavoured music her compatriot Paul Constantinescu and works by Bartók, the two spicy Romanian Dances (very different to the less playful Six Romanian Dances) and the Second Violin Rhapsody, which is where Apap comes in (the two players append a Gipsy-style prelude before the piece gets going). Ursuleasa was one on her own, a true original, unpredictable, dazzlingly brilliant but also capable of poetic flights of fancy (as in the Schubert). If you can find this CD (Presto list it at https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7997323–romanian-rhapsody#reviews), then take the plunge. You won’t regret it, I promise you.

Two aspects of Bartók’s three piano concertos that tend to get lost in translation are lightness and a sense of play. Maurizio Pollini (DG) is celebrated for his brilliant performances of, in particular, the often belligerent Second Concerto, driving the first movement as if it’s a pantechnicon in the fast lane. Turn to Géza Anda with Ferenc Fricsay in Berlin (DG) or, from June last year, Pierre-Laurent Aimard with the San Francisco Symphony under Esa-Pekka Salonen (on Pentatone PTC 5187 029, c£13.00) and there’s elegance and poetry as well as energy, strongly projected rhythms and a teeming cloud of colour, as if petals had blown in from near-by fields (Bartók is always outdoors). In the slow movement mystery alternates with rustling activity (Aimard’s fast repeated notes are miraculous) while the finale finds us confronting big drums for a real romp. Salonen and his players also have the full measure of the piece and Pentatone’s recording is spectacularly good, dynamic as well as transparent (thank you recording producer James O’Connell).  The Third Concerto’s central Adagio religioso conjures more sounds of nature, prayer among birdsong this time you might say, whereas the more angular First Concerto opens with a primitivistic war dance before shedding seven veils – or more – in the hypnotically twirling second movement. This for me is the best set of Bartók piano concertos we’ve had in a very long while, much to be recommended.

If Ursuleasa’s album ‘Romanian Rhapsody’ takes us on a bold journey along fronts that are either folkish or songful, a somewhat different route is taken by Alpha Classics’ ‘Infinite Voyage’, ALPHA1000, c£12.75 where the Strad-like soprano Barbara Hannigan weaves seamlessly in and among the tonally seductive players of the Emerson String Quartet, who sadly are due to disband in the Autumn. The programme opens with Hindemith’s haunting Melancholie, one of the composer’s most melodically appealing works, heartfelt and heart breaking and that according to Hannigan’s own admission she’s carried around with her for years. I couldn’t imagine it being more compellingly performed than here, nor Arnold Schoenberg’s quietly revolutionary Second String Quartet – which even after the passage of well over a century seems perennially new. The texts set (in the last two movements) are by the German symbolist poet (and translator of Dante) Stefan George. Though the work bears the dedication “to my wife”, it was written during Mathilde Schoenberg’s affair with their friend and neighbour, artist Richard Gerstl, in 1908.

Chausson’s deeply sensual Chanson perpétuelle (1898) finds that fine pianist Bertrand Chamayou enriching the ensemble further. The work’s text comes from a poem by Charles Cros that describes the suffering of an abandoned woman. And although the Emersons have previously recorded Alban Berg’s emotionally absorbing and musically inventive Lyric Suite (for DG), the more overtly romantic String Quartet Op. 3 (shades of the similarly demonstrative Piano Sonata) has up until now been absent from their discography. Better late than never is what I say, the work’s discordant closing chord delivered with unchecked ferocity. A most absorbing programme, superbly recorded.

I’ve often wondered about the validity of ‘authentic performance’ as a principle. Much as we well-meaningly try to recreate a St Matthew Passion along performing lines that Bach might have recognized (library shelves creak with scholarship relating to the relevant whys and wherefores), the all-too-obvious lack of sound sources is massively significant. We simply don’t know for sure how a Bach St Matthew, or cantata, or Brandenburg Concerto, might have come across in Bach’s day. It’s all hugely informed guesswork, no more than that.

Scroll forwards to the late Nineteenth Century and beyond, and with the advent of recording the situation changes dramatically. Elgar’s major works shine resplendently under his own baton, and so do Strauss’s. The violinists Adolf Busch and Bronislaw Huberman treat us to authoritative performances of the Brahms Concerto that recall Brahms’s violinist friend Joachim. Pupils of Clara Schumann (Fanny Davies for example) hint at the playing style of the century’s greatest piano teacher and we can hear Verdi’s Otello conducted by a man who played cello in the work’s 1887 world premiere at La Scala, Milan (Arturo Toscanini). Rachmaninov plays and conducts his own music with sovereign command, as does Stravinsky, while Bartók recorded significant portions of his piano music. All these documents are currently available either on CD or online, or both.

ENTER JOHN WILSON

Living performers ignore these models at their peril. Take John Wilson, one of the most remarkable conductors currently treading the international boards. Fans of the light music master Eric Coates, who recorded virtually all of his own major works, often more than once, will thrill to the composer’s brisk, newsreel-style of conducting, something Wilson has taken on board and that informs his numerous Coates CDs.

And there’s American showtime music, musicals and songbook showstoppers, that rely as much on the backing band as on the fronting singer.  Some 20 years ago Vocalion released a Wilson album of classic ballad arrangements by the American pianist, composer and conductor Paul Weston (CDSA 6808, c£11.00). They also had some Weston originals on their books so as I was at the time presenting morning programmes for BBC Radio 3 I was thrilled at the prospect of alternating a Weston ‘original’ with a Wilson/Weston ‘re-visit’ (using a quality ballad as played by both orchestras) just to prove the extent of Wilson’s achievement, its low-key intensity, the smoothness and expressivity of his string sound (slides in all the right places and never overdone), the ebb and flow of the musical line and a blend that never ironed out the music’s emotional message.

All was well until I received the nastiest email ever posted to me by a listener. The gentleman concerned spat his objection that I, a Radio 3 presenter, should inflict this ‘garbage’ on a cultured audience, that I should betray Reithian values in this way and that I should under no circumstances be allowed to continue. I was both flabbergasted and deeply hurt and concocted a reply which my producer (rightly) stamped on, insisting that such disrespectful rudeness should not be acknowledged, let alone graced by a personal reply. The gist of my answer would have been that if the BBC could tout ‘period performances’ of folk songs and dances, old popular ballads and the like, then why shouldn’t I do the same with the Great American Song book, illustrating how a skilful musician like Wilson could present a ‘period’ performance based on the precious recorded evidence at his disposal.  

A FABULOUS NEW OKLAHOMA!

With me no longer broadcasting and Wilson now rated a major talent, posterity has already proved my curmudgeonly correspondent wrong. The ultimate proof is The World Première Complete Recordings of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! starring Nathaniel Hackmann (Curly), Sierra Boggess (Laurey), Rodney Earl Clarke (Jud Fry), Jamie Parker (Will Parker), Louise Dearman (Ado Annie), Sandra Marvin (Aunt Eller), Nadim Naaman (Ali Hakim), Leo Roberts (Andrew Carnes), with the Oklahoma! Ensemble, Sinfonia of London, Wilson conducting on Chandos CHSA 5322 (2 SACDs) c£24.75, due for release on 15^th September.

Right from the Overture you’re catapulted in time, the medium-size orchestra here sounding even more ‘authentically American’ than it did on the Weston CD (I kept on imagining a Sinfonia ‘of New York’ rather than ‘of London’!), the acoustic of the Susie Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music embracing Wilson’s expert players and singers like an intimate hug, the sound (producers Ralph Couzens, Jonathan Allen) immediate in the way that the Capitol Oklahoma! soundtrack was though with added presence and, this being a ‘complete’ edition, with plenty of music that will be unfamiliar to most listeners. Nathaniel Hackmann and Sierra Boggess are perfectly suited to the lead rôles, sincerity personified in both cases.

Readers whose knowledge of the Musical is based on LP editions of the soundtrack and its first CD edition might be surprised by an extended ballet sequence (only the latest 78-minute Capitol soundtrack CD reissue includes it) which Wilson also features as well as scene changes and other additions (including a longer Overture). And there’s the ingenuity of Rodgers’s music, at its height ‘Lonely Room’ (dramatically sung by Rodney Earl Clarke), a brief if haunting premonition of the ‘Soliloquy’ from Carousel.

And on it goes, stitched together with an inborn understanding of pace, texture, the shape of a phrase and what that phrase means in both emotional and musical terms. The work’s close is miraculous. Beam up from disc 2 track 11, a sassy brief instrumental version of ‘The Cowman and the Farmer’ (with banjo) then follow through as one tenderising hit follows another. Suddenly I imagine myself leaving the theatre under a starry night sky, my head full of music perfectly realised, my heart simultaneously happy and sad. Happy because of an elevating musical experience, sad because what I’ve just experienced is more to do with my past than with my future. But that’s nostalgia for you. I’m grateful all the same. So here’s hoping that Wilson and his gifted line-up will soon treat us to what in my book is the greatest musical of them all, Carousel.

I’ve often wondered about the validity of ‘authentic performance’ as a principle. Much as we well-meaningly try to recreate a St Matthew Passion along performing lines that Bach might have recognized (library shelves creak with scholarship relating to the relevant whys and wherefores), the all-too-obvious lack of sound sources is massively significant. We simply don’t know for sure how a Bach St Matthew, or cantata, or Brandenburg Concerto, might have come across in Bach’s day. It’s all hugely informed guesswork, no more than that.

Scroll forwards to the late Nineteenth Century and beyond, and with the advent of recording the situation changes dramatically. Elgar’s major works shine resplendently under his own baton, and so do Strauss’s. The violinists Adolf Busch and Bronislaw Huberman treat us to authoritative performances of the Brahms Concerto that recall Brahms’s violinist friend Joachim. Pupils of Clara Schumann (Fanny Davies for example) hint at the playing style of the century’s greatest piano teacher and we can hear Verdi’s Otello conducted by a man who played cello in the work’s 1887 world premiere at La Scala, Milan (Arturo Toscanini). Rachmaninov plays and conducts his own music with sovereign command, as does Stravinsky, while Bartók recorded significant portions of his piano music. All these documents are currently available either on CD or online, or both.

ENTER JOHN WILSON

Living performers ignore these models at their peril. Take John Wilson, one of the most remarkable conductors currently treading the international boards. Fans of the light music master Eric Coates, who recorded virtually all of his own major works, often more than once, will thrill to the composer’s brisk, newsreel-style of conducting, something Wilson has taken on board and that informs his numerous Coates CDs.

And there’s American showtime music, musicals and songbook showstoppers, that rely as much on the backing band as on the fronting singer.  Some 20 years ago Vocalion released a Wilson album of classic ballad arrangements by the American pianist, composer and conductor Paul Weston (CDSA 6808, c£11.00). They also had some Weston originals on their books so as I was at the time presenting morning programmes for BBC Radio 3 I was thrilled at the prospect of alternating a Weston ‘original’ with a Wilson/Weston ‘re-visit’ (using a quality ballad as played by both orchestras) just to prove the extent of Wilson’s achievement, its low-key intensity, the smoothness and expressivity of his string sound (slides in all the right places and never overdone), the ebb and flow of the musical line and a blend that never ironed out the music’s emotional message.

All was well until I received the nastiest email ever posted to me by a listener. The gentleman concerned spat his objection that I, a Radio 3 presenter, should inflict this ‘garbage’ on a cultured audience, that I should betray Reithian values in this way and that I should under no circumstances be allowed to continue. I was both flabbergasted and deeply hurt and concocted a reply which my producer (rightly) stamped on, insisting that such disrespectful rudeness should not be acknowledged, let alone graced by a personal reply. The gist of my answer would have been that if the BBC could tout ‘period performances’ of folk songs and dances, old popular ballads and the like, then why shouldn’t I do the same with the Great American Song book, illustrating how a skilful musician like Wilson could present a ‘period’ performance based on the precious recorded evidence at his disposal.  

A FABULOUS NEW OKLAHOMA!

With me no longer broadcasting and Wilson now rated a major talent, posterity has already proved my curmudgeonly correspondent wrong. The ultimate proof is The World Première Complete Recordings of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! starring Nathaniel Hackmann (Curly), Sierra Boggess (Laurey), Rodney Earl Clarke (Jud Fry), Jamie Parker (Will Parker), Louise Dearman (Ado Annie), Sandra Marvin (Aunt Eller), Nadim Naaman (Ali Hakim), Leo Roberts (Andrew Carnes), with the Oklahoma! Ensemble, Sinfonia of London, Wilson conducting on Chandos CHSA 5322 (2 SACDs) c£24.75, due for release on 15^th September.

Right from the Overture you’re catapulted in time, the medium-size orchestra here sounding even more ‘authentically American’ than it did on the Weston CD (I kept on imagining a Sinfonia ‘of New York’ rather than ‘of London’!), the acoustic of the Susie Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music embracing Wilson’s expert players and singers like an intimate hug, the sound (producers Brian Couzens, Jonathan Allen) immediate in the way that the Capitol Oklahoma! soundtrack was though with added presence and, this being a ‘complete’ edition, with plenty of music that will be unfamiliar to most listeners. Nathaniel Hackmann and Sierra Boggess are perfectly suited to the lead rôles, sincerity personified in both cases.

Readers whose knowledge of the Musical is based on LP editions of the soundtrack and its first CD edition might be surprised by an extended ballet sequence (only the latest 78-minute Capitol soundtrack CD reissue includes it) which Wilson also features as well as scene changes and other additions (including a longer Overture). And there’s the ingenuity of Rodgers’s music, at its height ‘Lonely Room’ (dramatically sung by Rodney Earl Clarke), a brief if haunting premonition of the ‘Soliloquy’ from Carousel.

And on it goes, stitched together with an inborn understanding of pace, texture, the shape of a phrase and what that phrase means in both emotional and musical terms. The work’s close is miraculous. Beam up from disc 2 track 11, a sassy brief instrumental version of ‘The Cowman and the Farmer’ (with banjo) then follow through as one tenderising hit follows another. Suddenly I imagine myself leaving the theatre under a starry night sky, my head full of music perfectly realised, my heart simultaneously happy and sad. Happy because of an elevating musical experience, sad because what I’ve just experienced is more to do with my past than with my future. But that’s nostalgia for you. I’m grateful all the same. So here’s hoping that Wilson and his gifted line-up will soon treat us to what in my book is the greatest musical of them all, Carousel.

A very special forthcoming ICA Classics release devoted to live performances under Sir Adrian Boult (ICAC 5173, 2 cds,) includes the conductor’s last performing appearance at a public concert, the music by Vaughan Williams, his Seventh Symphony, or Sinfonia antartica, recorded at the Royal Festival Hall on 12^th October 1977. ICA’s excellent annotator Martin Cotton quotes a contemporary review by Anthony Payne (later celebrated for his performing version of Elgar’s unfinished Third Symphony), published in The Daily Telegraph, that relates “a quite magnificent interpretation in which the BBC Symphony Orchestra played magnificently … this performance proved once again how un-programmatic [the Symphony] really is, and despite sectional forms and picturesque texture [including a wind machine, RC], how organic as pure music and emotional experience.” The point worth making here is less that ‘antartica’ is un-programmatic than while listening you can append to it whatever programme you like, whether arctic, Cumbria, the Highlands, the further reaches of England or Wales, in fact anywhere. The important thing is not to feel guilty because the music’s title and your imagination don’t match.  

The blindingly vivid tam-tam and organ at 7:09 into the ‘Landscape’ third movement could as well be taking you into outer space, much as Boult’s 1973 BBC SO Proms performance of Holst’s The Planets does (here it’s admittedly more difficult to avoid inter-galactic associations), though war being war ‘Mars’ could mark an invasion from almost any location. There are numerous Boult versions of this unforgettable music, but none that (in my view) tops this concert rendition for drama. ‘Saturn’ ‘the Bringer of Old Age’, although bent and weary to start with, reaches a point (from 4:01) where it flatly refuses to “go gentle into that good night” (Dylan Thomas).

Other Holst masterpieces programmed are Hammersmith (BBC SO, 1973) and A Fugal Overture (LPO, 1971) which opens to the sort of jittery ebullience that anticipates John Adams’s ‘The Chairman Dances’ (Nixon in China) while the first CD concludes with an atmospheric 1969 LPO performance of The Banks of Green Willow by the World War One casualty George Butterworth (shot by a sniper at the Battle of the Somme in August 1916). I can never hear this lovely music without thinking of the tragedy of Butterworth’s death and what we as a nation lost, especially as Boult and his players empathise so strongly with the music.

And then there’s Walton First Symphony (BBC SO, 1975), a far cry from André Previn’s pile-driving LSO recording (RCA), no-nonsense Boult opting for transparency though those trilling horns that fill the air as the first movement climaxes still make their full effect. Certainly this is an admirable memorial to a great British conductor, some would say the greatest. But do you trust what I’ve just written? Can you trust critics at all, especially when they write a rave review then top it with another review of the same piece (in a different performance) that goes that extra mile? Viewed from this end, you just never know what’s around the corner. On July 20 on this blog, I rated a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony by Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg under their current music director Aziz Shokhakimov (Warner Classics 5054197538513) as ‘great’. But then I tend to like my Tchaikovsky untarnished by affectation, and by ‘great’ I mean fired straight from the hip by a conductor who rarely misses his target.

On the face of it, Manfred Honeck takes the same view on his new Reference Recordings CD with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, on FR-752SACD, c£13.50. His extraordinarily detailed notes for the release leave no stone unturned to the extent of giving you disc timings for everything that happens, though he sometimes fights shy of annotating minor dynamic tweaks (ie, at 4:15 into the first movement, for example). The recorded sound is magnificent – rich (especially at the bass end of the spectrum), luminous and detailed at midrange and upwards …. and the playing, well by June last year (when these ‘live’ recordings were made) Honeck had built his Orchestra to a level that at its best sidles alongside orchestras from New York, Boston and Philadelphia. So why do I fight shy of awarding this remarkably assured production top marks? Maybe Honeck’s tendency to lecture extends beyond his pen to his baton and I too often find that he’s making points that are better left ‘unsaid’. In the face of such magnificent playing this is a relatively small point. Most punters will rejoice in a performance that is so powerful, so impassioned and so knowing. And Shokhakimov? Where does this leave him? With the windows wide open I’d say, the blackboard wiped clean of chalk and a lighter heart. But you may well disagree. There’s a fill-up, too, an orchestration, by Honeck and the orchestra’s arranger Tomás Ille, of five varied pieces (originally for string quartet) by the Prague-born Jewish composer Irwin Schulhoff.

…… Sherban Lupu, who took lessons and master classes with such legendary violinists as Yehudi Menuhin, Henryk Szering, Nathan Milstein, Norbert Brainin and Sandor Vegh, has just died at the age of 71. His discs of works by fellow-Romanian George Enescu (especially on Electrecord and Toccata Classics) had a rightness about them, an authentic ‘Gipsy’ feel, that brought the music fully to life. Whenever I heard – or hear – his superb Electrecord recording of the Enescu Third Sonata (Electrecord EDC 324/325) with pianist Valentin Gheorghiu, not to mention Impressions d’enfance (see/hear below) I want to pick up a fiddle myself (terrible though I am as a player). Only Huberman, Dinicu and, at his best, Menuhin have that same effect. Sherban was great company too, warm, funny, interesting and interested. One of my very best friends Trevor Jenkins, also now passed, met Sherban with a view to a collaboration. He phoned me afterwards with the priceless description of a character who was ‘half Vic Reeves, and half Dracula’! I’m sure that Sherban would have had a good chuckle at that.

George Enescu – Impressions d’enfance Op. 28 – YouTube Sherban would often signal on my Facebook page (last re my Klemperer/Ansermet ‘Baby boomers’ review) and I always loved seeing him there. God rest him, though fortunately his memory will live on through his many marvellous recordings (and not only of Enescu).

prepared especially for this blog by the distinguished writer and broadcaster Jon Tolansky

As a directionless school-leaver who had been an academic disaster, I was immensely fortunate that my father, the most deeply generous and loving man I ever knew, was tough with me on this one and only occasion in the summer of 1966.  I had set my heart on going to study music at Trinity College of Music in London (now Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) as I had heard that a distinguished celebrity who had inspired me as I watched his television programmes was going to take up a post there as Conductor of the Orchestra.  But I wouldn’t stand a chance of being admitted unless, for the first time in my life, I worked very hard and achieved a sufficiently acceptable standard of piano playing and also general theoretical musical ability to pass the audition.  My father’s great generosity meant that he would pay for an intensive crash course – provided I was to show genuine signs of application.  Otherwise………     His condition saved my life – and the following year I was at Trinity College of Music, studying timpani and percussion with the outstanding Lewis Pocock of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and fulfilling my dream of playing in the Trinity College Symphony Orchestra under Bernard Keeffe: the artist who had galvanised me and countless other music lovers in his groundbreaking television series “Workshop”, in which he compellingly introduced, discussed and conducted music with a full symphony orchestra in the studio.  For three years I received unprecedented education in my life playing under his direction (which he continued at Trinity until 1988) and, in my final year, participating in conducting master-classes that he inaugurated there.  Little could I know then that decades later I was to have the privilege of working again with this inspirational and exceptionally erudite artist when I became a documentary producer and he contributed to my features with the kind of colour, dynamism and polymath scholarship that appealed so strongly to so many television viewers and also radio listeners for such a long period of time.

“The first movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony is explored with the help of the composer’s notebooks, which provide a unique and fascinating insight into the mind of a revolutionary genius.
Introduced and conducted by Bernard Keeffe who has orchestrated some of Beethoven’s early sketches.  With the London Philharmonic Orchestra, leader Rodney Friend”.

The singer, conductor and broadcaster Bernard Keeffe (born, 1^st April 1925 in Woolwich; died, 27^th November 2022 in King’s College Hospital) began his musical life in Hiroshima in 1945, not long after the city had been ravaged by the detonation of the “Little Boy” atomic bomb.  He had been sent there as an Intelligence agent, as he had been a code-breaker in the war-time Japanese section at Bletchley Park.   In Japan he met the pianist Marcel Lorber and sang with him on tour.  On his return to England he began his professional career as a freelance actor and singer, and in 1951 he was a member of the extra chorus in the Covent Garden Opera when Sir Thomas Beecham conducted Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg  – an experience that made a profound effect on him, notably in respect of Beecham’s conducting.  A few years later he was singing in a film – the Royal Albert Hall sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.  By the time that it was released he had married the soprano and actress Denise Walker, in 1954.  The following year he joined the music staff of the BBC, starting a long relationship that included a position as Head of Opera, during which time he was responsible for commissioning Britten’s revised two act version of Billy Budd, which aired in November 1960.  For many years he was both a presenter and a producer for the BBC Third Programme (later BBC Radio 3), and for BBC World Service music programmes.  In 1961 he was appointed the Head of Planning at what was then the Covent Garden Opera Company, which post he relinquished before long in order to pursue his conducting career, which had begun in the late 1950s and now developed notably: after a two year period as Assistant Conductor at the BBC Scottish Orchestra he was conducting most of the London orchestras.  His television fame began early in 1965 – he had already appeared on screen, but it was when BBC Two launched its ‘Music on 2’ slot that his “Workshop” series was the first of its kind in the United Kingdom to attract a large and regular audience.  In fact there had not been anything like this on television in Britain before, when a conductor introduced and discussed music in depth and illustrated everything by actually conducting it – and did so with a winning combination of high expertise and relaxed informality.  I so well remember the first programme.  It was called “Eroica” – and this was the Radio Times entry:

It was received with these reviews: “One of the best music programmes I ever saw” (The Guardian);
“A riveting display of television…. the kind of nerve-tingling success that tops up all one’s faith in television”.” (Daily Mail)

That programme was a pilot and it was so successful that a long-ensuing series followed.  They were wide-ranging, including programmes on Berlioz, Mahler, the latest contemporary music, and Elgar, among others.  “Elgar and the Orchestra” was hailed by the celebrated film director Ken Russell as a “marvel”, and the entire series was so popular that the Eroica feature was repeated twice – once later in 1965 and then again in 1967.  Leonard Bernstein, pioneer of televised music discussion, was so impressed that he sent Bernard Keeffe a telegram of congratulation and said that he would be adopting some of his methods in his own world-renowned programmes.

In 1976 Bernard Keeffe was at the helm for a programme that would be timely to see again in the upcoming year if the BBC might have it in its Archive and might wish to reshow it, as it featured the art of a great giant composer whose death will be the subject of widespread centenary commemoration in 2024.  Puccini was one of his very favourite of all composers, and in “The Lively Arts” slot he introduced, discussed and conducted extracts from his operas in his feature that he called “Giacomo Puccini, Master Craftsman”.

As well as devising, presenting and conducting television features about music, Bernard Keeffe made three programmes for BBC Two’s history and archaeology series “Chronicle”, including notably “The Coming of the Black Ships”,  which related the opening up of Japan to the West in 1853.  He also turned his maverick talents to acting on television when, together with Dudley Moore and Antony Hopkins he “aided and abetted” Peter Ustinov in his unscripted impromptu send-up music magazine programme “Ustinov Ad Lib” which aired on BBC 1 on a, in those musical days, daring occasion in April 1966.  On a more and customary serious and scholarly note, from 1955 he sat on the board of the Anglo-Austrian Music Society, of which he eventually became the Chair.  In 2015, he was invited to become its President, and the following year the Republic of Austria invested him with the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art.     

For many decades, Bernard Keeffe strove to bring the compositions of his long time friend Berthold Goldschmidt to the attention of musical authorities that had neglected his works ever since he had been forced as a Jewish subject to leave Nazi Germany in 1935.  As a result of his initiative in 1983 to mount a run-through of scenes from Goldschmidt’s opera Der gewaltige Hahnrei at Trinity College of Music, the musicologist David Drew took up the composer’s cause to the extent that his music was signed for publication by Boosey & Hawkes.  This was a landmark for Goldschmidt and the start of an Indian summer of international recognition at last, reaching its climax when the Decca producer and scholar Michael Haas arranged a series of recordings of his works.

As an epitaph to Bernard Keeffe, extraordinary artist and friend who is now deeply missed, his letter to The Independent newspaper published on the 26^th of January 1998 epitomises the idealistic cultural values he so inspiringly and influentially brought to so many people with his brilliant gifts:

“Sir: In his review of the BBC2 programme about Gustav Mahler (“Great composers? You bet!”, 23 January), Robert Maycock suggests that two decades ago such a programme would have been unthinkable.

Three decades ago I wrote, presented and conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in a BBC2 examination of Mahler’s music under the title “The Vision of Gustav Mahler”.  It was one of the magnificent Workshop series which was such an imaginative feature of the first years of BBC2 under the guidance of Humphrey Burton.

Such programmes were not rarities; before the surrender to ratings it was quite usual for there to be two or three music programmes each week – operas, masterclasses, documentaries, recitals, films, interviews.  The recent series, admirable though they were, were oases in a desert compared with the glorious landscape that BBC2 once presented.”

A few years ago, I visited one of my local libraries to collect a set of The New Grove Dictionary of Opera that I had on reserve, the Chief Librarian having promised me their copy as soon as it became available for sale. At the time the reference Library was transferring to ‘online’ wherever possible, so sales of this sort were becoming fairly frequent. ‘Is there anything else of interest up for grabs?’ I enquired. ‘Well, there’s John Ruskin,’ replied the librarian, ‘… come upstairs and I’ll show you.’ The visit therefore proved doubly fruitful. I was presented with a number of boxes that contained, between them, 39 individually numbered volumes of the virtually complete works by the 19^th century artist, critic and social reformer John Ruskin (over 9 million words), clothbound save for their leather spines and in pretty good condition. Leafing through just a few pages was enough to arrest my interest. I rushed home to reference the original novella-length Ruskin article in The Dictionary of National Biography (or ‘DNB’, another library acquisition) by one of the editors of the Complete Works, E. T. Cook, so that I could ponder my potential purchase. Having genned up and been duly satisfied that Ruskin, his life and works, warranted the necessary space and outlay, I bought the books and commenced what has so far proved a five/six-years period of absorption and study. I’ve had a ball.

So where’s the parallel with Maria Callas? In terms of the two characters, dedication is a common keyword. Ruskin was a devoted scholar, unstinting with his work ethic, creatively productive and tirelessly in search of a truthful art. Ditto Callas, who was less a singer than an artist whose vocal attire took on the very soul of whoever she was portraying at the time. She didn’t song Tosca, she became Tosca, or Carmen, or Violetta, or Norma or any of the 74 roles she graced with her presence. The voice was often far from lovely (Elly Ameling recently re-released on Decca Eloquence would be a better bet if that’s what you’re after, albeit in very different repertoire). Renata Tebaldi, Callas’s (sometimes wrongly) perceived nemesis was also less the virago than a true opera Diva, Joan Sutherland too – and that’s just among singers from the relatively recent past. In Italian opera the American soprano Rosa Ponselle (Rosa Melba Ponzillo) was the queen of ‘beautiful voices’ from an earlier generation. Callas was a fiery force of nature and time and again when you listen to her ‘live’ recordings, audiences erupt into paroxysms of wild enthusiasm at the mere sight of her. Listening to her, even through compromised sound (as is sometimes the case on disc), is seeing as well as hearing: Callas’s singing and acting leave nothing to the imagination.

Some years ago Warner Classics released their collection ‘Maria Callas live – Remastered Recordings 1949–1964, 9029584470 (42 CDs + 3 Blu-rays)’. Up until then my exposure to her work covered one or two recitals, the benchmark Victor de Sabata Tosca and the Georges Prêtre Carmen, and that was just about it. The ‘live’ recordings released a level of electricity that I was not prepared for. Prior to my purchase I’d interviewed Michael Tilson Thomas and we touched on the issue of ‘pirate’ recordings. He laughed knowingly: ‘it seems ironic that the most pirated of all singers on disc should appear on a bootleg recording of Bellini’s Il Pirata, [The Pirate]’ a work I’d only ever heard mentioned by opera buffs in specialist record shops.

So, my curiosity whetted, I was eager to hear music that in the last scene (Act 2, scene 3) sounds nothing like the Bellini I’d so far experienced, more like Boito (ie, the Prologue to Mefistofele, composed many years later), what with its explosive orchestral climaxes and a devastating use of the tam-tam that for effect rivals its use in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. At this point in the libretto, the Knights condemn former Count of Montalto Gualtiero to death and, as the scaffold is erected, the Duke of Caldora’s wife Imogene [Callas] is raving: Oh, sole! ti vela / “Oh sun, veil yourself / in darkest gloom / hide the cruel axe / from my sight”. Her ladies lead Imogene from the courtyard. The words ‘shivers’ and ‘spine’ hardly do justice to the effect that these recordings, either in concert in Amsterdam or as part of a New York performance of the complete opera from the same year (1959).

The complete opera appeared in the ‘Maria Callas live’ set and reappears now in La Divina – Maria Callas in all her roles Warner Classics 5419747395, 135 CDs, c£350.00, released: 22nd Sep 2023 together with the concert performance of the last scene on its own.  As Warner Classics puts it (see Presto Classical’s site at https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9474784–la-divina-maria-callas-in-all-her-roles), ‘this is the most comprehensive box of Callas recordings ever released, presenting ‘La Divina’ in all 74 roles for which audio documents exist. It comprises her complete studio recordings, an extensive collection of her best live recordings, the masterclasses she gave at the Juilliard School, Blu-ray videos, and a bonus CD of world premiere releases: alternate takes and working sessions from studio recordings of the 1960s.’ I might also add the important DVD bonus CD that includes recorded interviews about Callas with the likes of Herbert von Karajan, Carlo Maria Giulini, Herbert Downes, Jon Vickers, Tito Gobbi and many others. The same DVD also features full libretti, sung texts (both with English translations) and liner notes. There’s additionally a 147-page hardback book crammed full of information (the Callas rôles, when she sang them, ‘live’ or studio, and a mass of unfamiliar photos – including one where she poses next to Marilyn Munroe). So, I’d say that’s about as comprehensive as you’d want. The sound too is, in many cases, better than we’ve ever known it before.

But there’s more. The previously released ‘live’ set, a handsome oblong tome, didn’t include the live recitals or the electrifying 1955 La Scala La Traviata under Giulini (although Warners/EMI had previously issued it on CD) but thankfully all is securely in place for the new collection. In recalling Callas, the distinguished writer on opera J. B. Steane noted ‘the cantilena of Norma’s invocation, the mischievous Rosina, the tormented Tosca, the arched phrases of Leonora as she sighs forth her soul outside her lover’s prison where monks chant the “Miserere”…  It is a world that draws you further in on each visit, sometimes reluctantly (so much candid emotional manipulation can be trying), but more often than not on the wings of inspiration, the like of which defies adequate description.

Few would claim that Nikolaus Harnoncourt was an incurable romantic but listen to his Mozart and you do begin to wonder. Not that I object. The ‘Jupiter’ (Symphony No. 41 in C, K.551) is my all-time favourite symphony, a majestic call to arms with an andante cantabile that equals the parallel movement in the great G minor String Quintet for pathos and expressive intensity. Under Harnoncourt, repeats are generously observed. The martial first movement on Otto Klemperer’s fine stereo ‘Jupiter’ is paced identically to Harnoncourt’s with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (in Nikolaus Harnoncourt: Mozart Symphonies, Serenades, Overtures on Warner Classics 5419736074, 15 cds, c£52.00, released on 25^th August) but because of the long exposition repeat, timings-wise, Klemperer’s first movement ratchets up a modest 9:18 as opposed to 13:21 on Harnoncourt’s version. The repeat is significant because the dramatic, pendulum-style development section (from 8:54) sounds even more like a significant musical turning point than with Klemperer.

The muted slow movement again has its first half repeated (NH’s 11:37 as opposed to OK’s 9:08) which compared with Klemperer’s seems so much more personal (certainly more dynamically shaded), those pained sforzando chords tailed by breathless semiquavers (from 1:30) truly reminiscent of the Quintet.

But it’s the finale that really benefits from the repeats (6:47/11:24), Klemperer marginally – just marginally – slower while Harnoncourt emboldens his battling brass and drums and doesn’t miss a trick when it comes to sending an added electric charge through Mozart’s dazzling contrapuntal lines. It’s a real tour de force. Try the opening: gentle at first, then wow! the initial fortissimo onslaught packs a fair wallop, and on it goes, one celebratory passage after another, and when we reach the thrilling coda at 10:22, with Mozart OD’ing on counterpoint and the superbly recorded Royal Concertgebouw playing magnificently …. nothing quite like it. Certainly not the early Classical early symphonies that follow straight afterwards (Nos. 44-46, but don’t let the ‘late’ numbering fool you), trimly played by the period-instrument Concentus Musicus Wien, appealing for sure but slim pickings after the epic ‘Jupiter’.

You’ll encounter a number of these early works throughout the set, but the pairing of the ‘Linz’ and ‘Prague’ Symphonies – total timing: 78:05 – stands alone, largely because the first movement of the ‘Prague’ falls only a few seconds short of 20 minutes. Again, Klemperer and Harnoncourt run neck-and-neck tempo-wise in the Allegro, but the repeats situation means that Klemperer’s Adagio-Allegro first movement runs to 10:54, in comparison with Harnoncourt’s more generous timing and there are parallel contrasts with the second and third movements, too. Having interviewed Harnoncourt on a number of occasions it didn’t occur to me to ask him about his views on Klemperer. Now I wish that I had.

The ‘Paris’ Symphony’s rocketing opening bars and the way the music afterwards builds are mightily impressive and yet both here and elsewhere in the set Harnoncourt virtually never rushes his fences, which benefits in particular the dramatic key change at around 3:44 into the first movement. You sense that his approach is dictated by a combination of love and respect.

And yet when urgency is required Harnoncourt delivers. His driven tempo for the molto allegro first movement of the great G minor Symphony (No.40, K. 550) is marginally more urgent than Wilhelm Furtwängler’s famously swift performance with the Vienna Philharmonic from 1948/9 though some may baulk at the way Harnoncourt controversially fragments the argument at the start of the finale’s development (3:57). Even now, after many years of listening to Harnoncourt conduct this work, I can’t quite get used to the disjointed effected of his interpretation at this point. But when it comes to the ‘Haffner’ Serenade, a sort of extended violin concerto, memorably recorded with Staatskapelle Dresden (the soloist – Thomas Zehetmair I believe – isn’t credited), all comes right again. This is one of Mozart’s loveliest large-scale orchestral works, commissioned by Sigmund Haffner the Younger for use in the course of the festivities before the wedding of his sister Marie Elisabeth Haffner and her intended, Franz Xaver Spaeth. The andante second movement vies with the best of the violin concerto slow movements for warmth and profundity while the delightful Rondo fourth movement is probably best known in Fritz Kreisler’s arrangement for violin and piano. Harnoncourt and his players do the work proud, as they do (from wherever) throughout this entire set (there are many more works included than the ones I’ve mentioned). No matter whose Mozart you have on your shelves Harnoncourt’s will be well worth adding to them. As well as being a real original he was a formidable musician with a heart, the like of which is becoming rarer with each passing day.

Where does Anton Bruckner take us at the start of his Eighth Symphony? An emergent pianissimo tremolando on violins signals an ominous first theme that rears up on the lower strings (violas and downwards). Clarinets wail in pathetic protest before the entire orchestra awakes from slumber, like disgruntled gods on Olympus, and thunders the same material across whatever mountain ranges or gravelly ravines fill your imagination. Paavo Järvi and his Zürich-Tonhalle Orchestra have the whole scenic spectrum securely within earshot (on Alpha 987, c£12.60), whether rugged rock faces or the wider skies beyond. There’s not a ‘Bruckner-cliché’ cathedral in sight. This is a magical mystery tour and make no mistake.  Fanciful? Not as played on this magnificent performance.

OK, to digress for a moment, let me ask you this. What do you do if you encounter a recording of a piece that knocks your socks off? As soon as it ends press the replay button, which is fine if it’s a Scarlatti sonata or a Beethoven overture. But a Bruckner Symphony lasting 82 minutes (Järvi’s overall timing for his presentation of Nowak’s edition of the Eighth)? I freely admit that as soon as Järvi and his players had galloped elatedly across the Symphony’s closing straight, wherever it was they’d transported me to I wanted to go there again. And I did precisely that.

Bruckner asks for his heart-warming second idea to be played broadly and expressively and Järvi takes him at his word: he coaxes the loveliest of sounds from his Zurich strings but before long we’re back in the thick of the action, most massively at the movement’s centre (8:18 here) where that opening theme is declaimed by the brass while the strings revisit the baleful theme that the clarinets had warned us about at the movement’s beginning. I point this out because aside from stressing the music’s sense of mystery, Järvi is also alive to its structural logic. And if you follow the music from there, you’re also aware of his sensitivity to the score’s quieter details, the countless poetic phrases that dovetail between smaller instrumental groups.

Heading towards the first movement’s coda who else makes you so acutely aware of a repeated three-note brass motive that edges in as the ascent is under way, or the timpani’s crucial role in this intimidating marche macabre. It’s interesting that Bruckner marks both the first and second movements allegro moderato, at least initially. Järvi’s scherzo is more a robust allegro con brio, on straight terra firma this time with rolling hills on either side until we reach the intermezzo-like trio section, which although swifter than the norm is played with the utmost elegance. Järvi judges the balance of quiet strings and brass at the great Adagio’s opening to perfection. Likewise, the way the winds intone aspects of the principal theme against ornamental violin figurations at 10:39. Both here and in the finale Järvi judges Bruckner’s imposing climaxes with a rare exactitude.

The finale itself storms in like a bat our of hell, then calms for a while before leaping into the fray again. This is one of Bruckner’s most problematic movements what with its constant shifts in tempo and changes in perspective, but Järvi takes each episode as it comes, catching a significant thematic reference on the wing here, or a tender interlude there. The Symphony’s coda becomes a ‘feelgood’ affirmation in the face of everything that has gone before, and Järvi treats it as such. He’s helped along the way by recording producer Philip Traugott, balance engineer Jean-Marie Geijsen and the rest of the team. Aside from being a musical triumph, this is also a considerable achievement from a purely audio-technical point of view. There’s a Järvi/Tonhalle Seventh out there too (Alpha 932) so I’ll need to catch up with that.

Please don’t get me wrong. I do know my favourite ‘great Bruckner Eights’- Furtwängler, Celibidache, Böhm, Szell, Rosbaud, Schuricht, Giulini, Karajan, van Beinum, and others. Can Järvi justifiably join their ranks? That’s the point I want to make. He can, well and truly. If you love this work as much as I do, Järvi’s Zurich Eighth simply has to be heard.

Good new CDs of Tchaikovsky symphonies are fairly common. Great ones are rare. Which makes an October 2022 recording of the Fifth as fired into action by Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg under their current music director Aziz Shokhakimov (Warner Classics 5054197538513, release date 25^th August), a firebrand born in Tashkent in 1988, a real find. Shokhakimov made his conducting debut at the age 13 with National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan. Not that you’ll discover those facts – or indeed any others – about Shokhakimov from Warners’ booklet, but no matter, all you need to know becomes downright obvious as soon as you place the CD in the tray and start to listen.

This is a fabulous Tchaik 5, securely placed in the Russian Yevgeny Mravinsky tradition, with superb playing, expressive surges to the string lines, artful rubato, a keen sense of play (5:24 into the first movement), winds sounding vividly in relation to the strings (8:22 into the second movement or 1:29 into the third), tough, emphatic and occasionally balletic Tchaikovsky too with, where necessary, a martial strain (ie the close of the first movement, with its clinching trumpet line). The ‘fate’ interjections in the Andante cantabile slow movement (played truly ‘con alcuna licenza’, ie “ … with some freedom”) will shake you to the core; Shokhakimov allows the tempo to ebb and flow according to the dictates of the movement’s explicit emotional moods. He secures an orchestral tone of great depth, not only in the Symphony, but also in the Romeo & Juliet Fantasy Overture, another blazing performance where the all-important bass drum rarely achieves such a joist-shaking impact.

I frequently paused to repeat this or that passage just for the joy of rehearing it. It’s all so utterly natural, a dignified, noble Fifth, detailed yet unselfconscious and performed without compromise. The main body the finale switches to the fast lane (Mravinsky’s various recordings suggest an obvious parallel, so does Kyrill Petrenko in Berlin), the playing headstrong, seemingly impatient to reach the triumphant coda where a cymbal crash signals certain triumph. Unmarked? Sure, but then if Petrenko can tweak Tchaikovsky’s dynamics (which he sometimes does in his 2020 BPO Fifth, another scorcher) surely Shokhakimov can add a cymbal to the victory parade! And next? I’d love to hear him do the 4^th, Francesca da Rimini, The Voyevoda, The Tempest and maybe Tchaikovsky’s ballet masterpiece The Sleeping Beauty, or at least a substantial chunk of it. Fingers and toes crossed.