BBC Music Magazine

Welcome to this special 2023 BBC Music Magazine Awards issue, celebrating the best and boldest recordings of the past 12 months. Here we reveal the winners of the nine categories put to our record-breaking public vote, and those who have taken the coveted Personality and Recording of the Year accolades. This last year has been one of variety and innovation, reflecting a vibrant, resilient and increasingly diverse classical music industry. On page 26, Recording of the Year winner Rachel Podger speaks about Tutta sola, a fascinating insight into the works that came before Bach’s monumental Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. The product of intense research and collaboration, the album places Bach in much-needed context, recognising the great skill and innovation of his forebears and contemporaries, yet also reinforcing how…

Gayle Wood Journalist and author ‘A wooden boss on the ceiling of Truro cathedral set me off on a journey around Cornwall. There, I discovered the story of Joseph Emidy, a slave who overcame all obstacles to become a celebrated violinist-composer.’ Page 50 Andrew Stewart Music journalist ‘While listening again to William Byrd’s Latin sacred music, I sensed more than ever the connection between its transcendent beauty and the unshakeable strength of his faith as a Roman Catholic in a Protestant land.’ Page 60 Rebecca Franks Music journalist ‘I first got to know Rebecca Clarke’s Viola Sonata when I was an amateur viola player at university. My love and admiration for this passionate piece, which I write about in Building a Library, has only grown since.’ Page 64…

Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contact us on Facebook and Twitter Sergei the Great Unlike Richard Morrison (April), my music tutor wasn’t at all scathing about Rachmaninov. He simply never mentioned him – the true successors of Tchaikovsky and The Five were Scriabin, Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Why? I can only suggest that in terms of the development of musical composition they offered something completely new, especially in terms of structure, rhythm, language and tonality. Yet Rachmaninov was far from being the only 20th-century composer whose music was arguably rooted in 19th-century Romanticism. Richard Strauss, for example, was the absolute master of the big heart-rending tune. He developed German opera post-Wagner into a new world of musical and theatrical drama…

Puccini from the past Here is some information for reader Geoff Woodcock and his Bohème search (Letters, March). He is probably thinking of a very popular release on Columbia Masterworks of the orchestral La bohème played by Andre Kostelanetz and His Orchestra. I remember it well and it had me searching for other orchestral arrangements of operas. Kostelanetz followed up with a Madam Butterfly, a Traviata and a Rigoletto. At about the same time – mid-1950s – there was a longer series of similar recordings done for Kapp Records (in the US, London Records in the UK) by the Rome Symphony under the direction of Domenico Savino. They were not as well recorded, the sound being somewhat boxy. Most of the series are still available at reasonable prices, as are…

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Stasevska and Alsop to conduct First and Last Nights Yuja Wang and Simon Rattle’s farewell Mahler among other BBC Proms highlights Women are set to lead this year’s BBC Proms from gun to tape, with Dalia Stasevska conducting the First Night and Marin Alsop taking the baton for the Last Night. The Finnish Stasevska, recently named BBC Music Magazine’s Personality of the Year (see p38), picks up from where she should have left off last September – she was due to conduct 2022’s Last Night of the Proms, only for it to be called off following the death of the Queen. Alsop, meanwhile, will be making her third Last Night appearance, having previously conducted the big finale in 2013 and ’15. At the season’s launch in late-April, Proms director David…