Gramophone Magazine January 2020

Of all composer anniversary celebrations, Beethoven, on the surface, might be felt one of the least necessary. What new advocacy does some of the most famous music ever created need? So sniff some. The cover we’ve commissioned probably offers a hint that I don’t share that view. The greater the art, the greater the joy to be found in exploring, and re-exploring it throughout life. If it continues to inspire the most profound artists to heights and depths of insight and introspection, then it can, and should, do likewise for us too. So how to respond to Beethoven year? Might you make a personal pledge? To perhaps listen anew to the far-from-easy-listening late quartets? To compare sonatas from two pianists united by a score but separated by a century of…

‘However long one has been engaged with a subject, however knee-deep one is in annotations and files,’ writes RICHARD OSBORNE, author of our cover story, ‘a piece such as a study of Beethoven and the gramophone eventually makes its own weather. It was interesting to discover what I fondly thought I already knew.’ ‘ASMF Music Director Joshua Bell’s relationship with his orchestra began back in his teens with a high-pressure recording session,’ says CHARLOTTE GARDNER , who interviews him this issue. ‘Yet he also remembers their support, as he told me while we discussed the ensemble’s 60th anniversary.’ ‘Everyone in the world must have heard of Sheku Kanneh-Mason,’ says RICHARD BRATBY, who interviews the cellist for our feature, ‘but actually meeting him challenged my assumptions. It was a chance to get to…

CPE BACH Oboe Concertos Xenia Löffler ob Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin / Georg Kallweit Harmonia Mundi CPE Bach’s orchestral imagination and flair are given full voice here in the symphonies, while Xenia Löffler is exquisite in the oboe concertos. BRAHMS Piano Concerto No 1 Lars Vogt pf Royal Northern Sinfonia Ondine Leading his Royal Northern Sinfonia from the piano, Lars Vogt offers a bold and brilliant D minor Concerto, paired with finely detailed solo Brahms. R STRAUSS Don Juan. Don Quixote. Till Eulenspiegel Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko LAWO Excellent storytelling from Vasily Petrenko, with Oslo’s Principal cellist Louisa Tuck earning equal honours as the Knight. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Symphonies Nos 3 & 4 BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins Hyperion Martyn Brabbins’s instinctive sense of the sweep, grace and drama of Vaughan Williams’s orchestral sound-world results here in a…

Soprano Hanna-Elisabeth Müller has joined the Pentatone label on an exclusive, multi-album deal. The relationship with Gramophone’s current Label of the Year will begin with a recital of German and French song, focusing on works by Schumann, Zemlinsky and Poulenc, and performed with pianist Juliane Ruf. Released in February, the album is entitled ‘Reine de coeur’. ‘It has been extraordinary to follow her career,’ said Renaud Loranger, Vice President A&R at Pentatone, ‘from an early yet revelatory Zdenka in Salzburg, to her repeated triumphs on the most prestigious stages in Mozart and Strauss, where her exquisite, emerald-like soprano shines like few others. We look forward to documenting her exceptional artistry.’ That Zdenka, in Richard Strauss’s Arabella, had come in 2014, alongside Renée Fleming and Thomas Hampson, with Christian Thielemann conducting. Her Met…

The Estonian National Symphony Orchestra has named Olari Elts as its next Music Director and Chief Conductor, from the 2020-21 season. He succeeds Neeme Järvi, who brought the orchestra to the 2018 Gramophone Awards to mark receiving our Lifetime Achievement Award, and who will take on the title Honorary Conductor For Life. Elts, 48, is already well-known to ENSO audiences; his first concert with the ensemble was in 1998, and he has been Principal Guest Conductor since 2007. Speaking about the appointment, which is for an initial three seasons, Elts described ENSO as ‘my “home orchestra”… as its Principal Guest Conductor in the last 12 years, I have been inspired by the passionate music-making of our orchestra and I am thrilled and honoured to be taking our collaboration to another level!…

The viola player Timothy Ridout is not entirely new to Gramophone’s pages; his debut disc on Champs Hill Records, of works for viola and piano by Vieuxtemps, was warmly welcomed in June 2017. By then he had already become the first British winner of the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, and his career has since taken on a terrific momentum. Still only 24, he is now on the BBC New Generation Artists Scheme for 2019-21. He has recorded his first orchestral disc, of works by Martinu, Britten, Vaughan Williams and Hindemith with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, which will be issued by Claves in the spring. And then, later in the year, he will record transcriptions of Schumann (Dichterliebe) and Prokofiev (Six pieces from Romeo and Juliet) for Harmonia…