BBC Music Magazine

In September 1992, 30 years ago this month, the first issue of BBC Music Magazine was published. Celebrating that magnificent milestone, some 377 issues later, presents the perfect opportunity to take stock of how far the classical world has come – from the streaming revolution to welcoming a more diverse and gender-balanced cohort of composers and performers. Underlying these developments has been a continued commitment to creativity and excellence on the part of musicians and composers – and how better to recognise that achievement than to celebrate some of the very best recordings of the past three decades. To that end, we’ve asked 30 of our reviewers to choose a personal favourite from the period, and the resulting list on page 26 is a fascinating snapshot of the great wealth of…

LETTER of the MONTH Doubly important One influential practitioner of the double bass (Déja vu, July) was Paul Simon’s father, Louis. When the future pop star was growing up, Louis was a professional musician, playing double bass in nightclubs and in the studio during the taping of TV variety shows like The Garry Moore Show. Paul and his brother Eddie would stay up past bedtime and watch, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of their dad in the background. Louis grew disenchanted with the lot of a freelancer, so went back to school, eventually becoming a professor of education. He is no longer with us, but his double bass stands in the corner of Paul Simon’s office. Paul’s path took a different direction, but having a musician for a father was…

Anna Netrebko slammed for blackface Aida in Verona Fellow soprano Angel Blue cancels her debut performance at the Arena in protest The Arena di Verona has come under fire from the press and performers alike after Anna Netrebko sang the title role in its production of Verdi’s Aida wearing blackface make-up. Among those voicing their dissatisfaction at the Russian soprano’s appearance was African American soprano Angel Blue, who promptly cancelled her upcoming performances as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata at the Italian venue. Writing on Facebook after seeing pictures of Netrebko on Instagram, Blue described the use of blackface make-up as ‘a deeply misguided practice based on archaic theatrical traditions which have no place in modern society. It is offensive, humiliating and outright racist. Full stop.’ She then went on to say that,…

‘A queer, mad work by an odd fellow from Chelsea.’ Herbert Brewer’s comment on hearing the premiere of Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis undoubtedly ranks as one of the more flippantly dismissive put-downs in music history. Brewer was the organist at Gloucester Cathedral, where the Fantasia was first performed on 6 September 1910 as part of the Three Choirs Festival. The new work was a Festival commission, and a large audience of 2,000 was present, mainly because Elgar was conducting his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius in the second half of the concert. While Elgar drew heavily on the orchestral palette of 19th-century composers such as Wagner and Richard Strauss, Vaughan Williams looked much further back in time for his inspiration. As co-editor of The English Hymnal…

With Covid continuing to create havoc in China, the organisers of the 2020 Shanghai Isaac Stern International Violin Competition have finally given up on trying to find a winner. Two years on, the six players who reached the final will instead share the prize money and take part in a special concert. It is not the first time a well-known competition has ended in a draw… Probably the most famous contest in classical music history took place in Vienna on 24 December 1781, when Joseph II of Austria challenged Mozart, the home favourite, to take on the visiting Italian virtuoso Clementi in a keyboard duel. But evidently, the Emperor was all mouth and no trousers, as when it came to naming a winner, he declined to do so. Nearly two centuries…

Stories and notions of identity are at the heart of prize-winning composer’s Gabriela Lena Frank’s music. Born in Berkeley, California, she is currently composer-in-residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra, which performs her 2001 work Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout at the Edinburgh Festival on 26 August. I was 16 when I took my first formal music composition programme. I was fortunate that my first teacher at the San Francisco Conservatory, Dan Becker, had a deep love both of classical music and of music from non-western cultures and popular idioms. This, combined with my lifelong enjoyment of music as a young piano student and improviser plus my exposure to South American folkloric styles, paved the way for me to choose composition the following year when I enrolled as a freshman at Rice University. Imposter syndrome…