Gramophone Magazine January 2021

And a happy New Year … words sung every year with good will. But perhaps never before, for most of us, have they carried quite such a weight of feeling as now. I write this hours after Londoners learnt that they will now go into the same level of Covid restrictions that many UK cities have faced for months, with concert halls closing once again. A glance through the rules being reimposed on our friends in Europe and beyond show that this situation is shared by many. While there is cause to hope for a better 2021 than 2020, there’s still a way to go. In the meantime, I wish everyone good health. And yet far from feeling defeated, many organisations worldwide are actually planning programmes of inspiring music-making over the…

‘It was a delight, though not a surprise, to discover that Yannick Nézet-Séguin is as open-hearted and communicative in conversation as he is in his music-making,’ says ANDREW FARACH-COLTON, author of our cover story. ‘Indeed, even on the telephone, his warmth and affability still shone through.’ ‘Every review of a Howard Shelley recording I have written seems, inevitably, to include the phrase “How on earth does he do it?” or something similar,’ says JEREMY NICHOLAS, author of our feature on the pianist-composer. ‘A few months after his 70th birthday, it was an enormous pleasure to ask the man himself.’ ‘Gillian Weir opened my eyes and ears to so much that was exciting and worthwhile about the organ,’ recalls MARC ROCHESTER, author of this month’s Icons feature, which coincides with the organist’s 80th…

RECORDING OF THEMONTH MARTINU Two Violin Concertos BARTÓK Solo Violin Sonata Frank Peter Zimmermann vn Bamberg Symphony Orchestra / Jakub Hruša BIS GUY RICKARDS’S REVIEW IS ON PAGE 38 Frank Peter Zimmermann brings a beautiful, lyrical tone to bear on the two Martinu violin concertos, and is completely inside the composer’s idiom, which makes for a wonderful album. ‘PLAISIRS ILLUMINÉS’ Patricia Kopatchinskaja vn Camerata Bern Alpha A characteristically thoughtful programme from violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, which, as she puts it, also offers a showcase of the qualities of the Camerata Bern. REVIEW ON PAGE 48 JS BACH ‘Little Books’ Francesco Corti hpd Arcana ‘One of the most enjoyable Baroque recitals I’ve heard in a very long time’ – there’s not much that needs adding to reviewer Patrick Rucker’s perceptive words on this wonderfully engaging harpsichord album! REVIEW ON PAGE 64 MACHAUT ‘The Lion of Nobility’ The Orlando Consort Hyperion This ongoing…

Teodor Currentzis launches filmed series of opera scenes Teodor Currentzis is no stranger to major film projects. The haunting Plan B, which the conductor created with the film director Sergey Nurmamed back in June, addressed the impact of the current pandemic on the way artists and audiences can, and should, relate to the world – using Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as a powerful backdrop. Now, along with his musicAeterna players, Currentzis has filmed a series of iconic opera scenes in the studio at Dom Radio, St Petersburg, with each scene being given its own visualisation by a filmmaker. Collectively called ‘Fragments’, the project was unveiled in December with the first in the series: the Prelude to Act 3 of La traviata, and Violetta’s famous aria ‘Addio del passato bei sogni ridenti’, sung by…

In 2018, three musicians – all in their mid-twenties – came together in Paris to form Trio Zeliha. Violinist Manon Galy, cellist Maxime Quennesson and Cuban-born pianist Jorge González Buajasan studied together at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, where they won recognition both individually and collectively. In 2019 the Trio won the FNAPEC competition, aimed at young ensembles at the outset of their careers. In 2020 they made their first recording, of the first piano trios by Shostakovich, Arensky and Mendelssohn for the Mirare label. As Andrew Farach-Colton points out in his review of this outstanding debut album (see page 54), the sound and personality of the trio is led by the piano-playing of González Buajasan, who impressed at the Clara Haskil Competition in 2019…

Gramophone podcast Christian-Pierre La Marca releases the first of five albums for Naïve, which focuses on the solo cello. ‘Cello 360’ brings together music by Marin Marais, John Dowland and Henry Purcell alongside modern masters like Thierry Escaich, György Ligeti and Henri Dutilleux, as well as lighter fare by Charlie Chaplin and The Beatles. Gramophone’s James Jolly caught up with Christian-Pierre by video call to his house in Paris to talk about the project and how he assembled such an eclectic programme for this imaginative concept album. Also this month, Editor Martin Cullingford is joined by the founder and Music Director of the Crouch End Festival Chorus, David Temple, to explore the music of Benjamin Britten. His new album, released on the Signum Classics label, features Saint Nicolas and A Ceremony of…