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GRAMOPHONE is published by Haymarket Consumer, Teddington Studios, Broom Road, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 9BE, United Kingdom. gramophone.co.uk email gramophone@haymarket.com Volume 90 Number 1092 EDITORIAL Phone 020 8267 5136 Fax 020 8267 5844 email gramophone@haymarket.com EDITOR Martin Cullingford DEPUTY EDITOR Sarah Kirkup / 020 8267 5829 REVIEWS EDITOR Andrew Mellor / 020 8267 5125 FEATURES EDITOR James McCarthy / 020 8267 5954 PRODUCTION EDITOR Antony Craig / 020 8267 5874 NEWS EDITOR Charlotte Smith / 020 8267 5155 SUB EDITOR David Threasher / 020 8267 5135 ART EDITOR Lynsey Row / 020 8267 5091 AUDIO EDITOR Andrew Everard / 020 8267 5029 PICTURE EDITOR Sunita Sharma-Gibson / 020 8267 5861 EDITORIAL AND PUBLISHING COORDINATOR Sue McWilliams / 020 8267 5136 GRAMOPHONE SECRETARY Libby McPhee LIBRARIAN Francesco Burns EDITOR IN CHIEF James Jolly THANKS TO Hannah Nepil, Keith Parish and Marija uric´ Speare
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THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS
‘Prolonged exposure to Mahler can trouble and oppress as much as uplift the spirit. Not so in the case of the Rückert-Lieder,’ says RICHARD WIGMORE, who considers the cycle in this month’s Collection, ‘the most tender, un-neurotic and spiritually serene of his songs. Living with them intensively has only increased my love and admiration for Mahler.’
In his interview with James Ehnes for The Musician and the Score, ROB COWAN was fascinated by the violinist’s attitude to the varying textures in the great Solo Sonata. ‘Ehnes views Bartók’s music from numerous perspectives, but how best to approach what is surely the greatest unaccompanied violin work since Bach?’
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The January issue of Gramophone is on sale from December 28; the February issue will be on sale from January 30 (both UK). Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of statements in this magazine but we cannot accept responsibility for errors or omissions, or for matters arising from clerical or printers’ errors, or an advertiser not completing his contract. Regarding concert listings, all information is correct at the time of going to press. Letters to the editor requiring a personal reply should be accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope. We have made every effort to secure permission to use copyright material. Where material has been used inadvertently or we have been unable to trace the copyright owner, acknowledgement will be made in a future issue. Printed in England by Wyndeham Heron. ISSN 0017-310X. © 2012 haymarket consumer. All rights reserved North American edition: Gramophone ISSN number 74501X, is published 13 times a year by Haymarket Media Group, Teddington Studios, Broom Road, Teddington TW11 9BE, United Kingdom. The US annual subscription price is $89. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named Air Business Ltd, c/o Worldnet Shipping Inc, 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA. Periodicals postage paid at Jamaica NY 11431. Subscription records are maintained at Haymarket Media Group, Teddington Studios, Broom Road, Teddington TW11 9BE. Air Business Ltd is acting as our mailing agent.
‘In 1972 in Llandaff Cathedral I sat a few feet away to Boult’s left,’ says GERAINT LEWIS, who this issue considers the conductor’s influence on British music. ‘I have never forgotten his hawk-eyed control of the orchestra and the hypnotism exerted by his unique use of the baton – all to serve the composer and not himself.’
FOR THE FULL LIST OF GRAMOPHONE REVIEWERS TURN TO PAGE 43
Founded in 1923 by Sir Compton Mackenzie and Christopher Stone as ‘an organ of candid opinion for the numerous possessors of gramophones’
And a one, two, three…
What does the waltz mean to you? For most, when listening to its more familiar manifestations – Strauss’s Blue Danube, for example – it epitomises elegant civility, an untroubled charm and order, gowns and gilded ballrooms, men in tails. The connotations it conjures up – not necessarily wrong but, like most things, coming with a caveat – have offered inspiration to creative minds as diverse as Ravel, Schoenberg and film director Stanley Kubrick, while the music itself continues to intrigue and fascinate conductors from Nikolaus Harnoncourt to Franz Welser-Möst. All play a part in Philip Clark’s engaging exploration of the musical form’s history for this month’s cover story.
Every year Viennese society – and millions of music lovers worldwide, via the traditional broadcast – gravitate towards the waltz for the annual New Year’s Concert. And thus begins another year of music-making. The slightly arbitrary nature of a calendar flipping over doesn’t inform musical life as much as many other ‘years’, be
‘Every year Viennese society, and music lovers worldwide, gravitate towards the waltz for the New Year’s Concert. Thus begins another year of music-making’
they concert seasons or academic or liturgical ones, but it does usher in the anniversaries and this year is rich in them – Verdi, Wagner and Britten chief among them (though I hope also to hear some additional Dowland and Gesualdo programmed). We begin our own 2013 composer celebrations in this issue with a feature about the Polish composer Witold Lutosπawski, born, like Britten, in 1913.
Anniversaries at their most imaginative can encourage an evaluation and advocacy of composers perhaps lesser known or lesser understood. The mighty statures of Verdi and Wagner are secure, though that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t grab at any extra excuse to revel in their mastery (as we shall certainly be doing in these pages). Britten is a different story: here is the chance, seized upon by the Britten-Pears Foundation and Aldeburgh Music, to make the case once and for all for the British composer as one of the most most the of one as composer British the for all century. 20th the of internationally, important,
important, internationally, of the 20th century. All those who love Britten’s music should do everything they can to enthuse, argue and explore do should music Britten’s love who those All explore and argue enthuse, to can they everything over the next 12 months, in the hope that both both that hope the in months, 12 next the over they and the wider artistic world will, in different ways, gain a better appreciation of his work. See you on the Suffolk coast.
martin.cullingford@haymarket.com gramophone.co.uk
GRAMOPHONE JANUARY 2013 3
