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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 1093 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 EDITOR IN CHIEF James Jolly THANKS TO Hannah Nepil, Francesco Burns, Marija uric´ Speare, Keith Parish and Rachel Coombes
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The February issue of Gramophone is on sale from January 30, the March issue will be on sale from February 26 (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. © 2013, Haymarket Media Group Ltd. 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.
THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS
‘I really wanted to bring Verdi’s creative process to life,’ says Gramophone features editor JAMES McCARTHY, who curated our anniversary feature. ‘And here’s a thought: Verdi wrote nine operas before his first undoubted masterpiece, Macbeth. How many of today’s composers will be afforded a similar opportunity to find their voice?’
There could not have been a more enjoyable start to the Britten centenary year for critic RICHARD FAIRMAN than working on his Peter Grimes Collection. ‘Here is a powerful reminder of why Britten’s opera was such a sensation,’ he says, ‘and also, thanks to new CD and DVD recordings, why its international reputation is still on the up.’
It was ‘an especial pleasure’ for DUNCAN DRUCE to revisit his selected recordings for this month’s Specialist’s Guide on forgotten 19th-century violin concertos. ‘The music depends to a great extent on the performers’ input,’ says the Gramophone critic, ‘and in each case I was struck anew at the individuality of the playing.’
Founded in 1923 by Sir Compton Mackenzie and Christopher Stone as ‘an organ of candid opinion for the numerous possessors of gramophones’
Verdi: a great dramatist of operatic history
It isn’t every month that we decide to devote – and indeed expand – the entire section of the magazine dedicated to features to one particular composer (we last did it with Mahler, to which you responded warmly). Few listeners, singers or conductors would argue with our decision to do this for Verdi, whose bicentenary is being marked this year. In fact all three are represented in our special 17-page feature; singers in the form of
Renée Fleming and Bryn Terfel, conductors by way of Gianandrea Noseda and Sir Mark Elder, and listeners via our opera experts, whose deep knowledge of the works and interpretation tells the story of Verdi and his compositional process. It’s this aspect – how Verdi wrote the works he did – that we’ve decided to explore
‘When ref lecting on Verdi’s Macbeth, conductor Gianandrea Noseda said: “There was nothing that anticipated it, and nothing followed it for a while”’
through the prism of four of his major operas from different eras of his life. We hope it enriches your enjoyment of performances you are bound to hear this year of one of the great dramatists of operatic history, one capable of music both profound and populist, and which continues to engage, enthral and entertain audiences today. When reflecting on Macbeth for our celebratory issue, Noseda said: ‘There was nothing that anticipated it, and nothing followed it for a while’ – and in this he compared it to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. It’s a theme we’ll follow up next month when we explore the impact – then and now – of this groundbreaking work which, a century on, still retains its ability to shock and sound thrillingly contemporary.
Verdi, The Rite of Spring…composers and compositions that changed music (to which we’ll add of course, later on in the year, Wagner). In 2012 we launched the Gramophone Hall of Fame, into which we welcomed 50 artists, producers and executives who, like Verdi and Stravinsky, left legacies that became an integral part of all that followed. We’ll be welcoming in another set of names later this year and, while we draw together our longlist, please do email me with suggestions for people you’d like to see celebrated.
FOR THE FULL LIST OF GRAMOPHONE REVIEWERS TURN TO PAGE 55
martin.cullingford@haymarket.com gramophone.co.uk
GRAMOPHONE FEBRUARY 2013 3
