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Founded in 1923 by Sir Compton Mackenzie and Christopher Stone as ‘an organ of candid opinion for the numerous possessors of gramophones’
The focus, and fun, offered by music festivals
Such are the long lead times of monthly magazines – and, more to the matter, the vagaries of the weather – that we completed our annual festival guide this year while snow fell steadily and travel was generally discouraged. Never has reading about interval picnics on countryhouse lawns, let alone hikes up to mountainside sculptures for late-night solo Bach, seemed so far removed from the reality outside.
course – we all go on holiday to enjoy new locations, whether walking in hills or exploring unfamiliar urban architecture – but why not combine that with some world-class music-making? Everything you need to know about what’s on offer this summer is in our 26-page guide: we hope you enjoy it, and most importantly enjoy wherever it takes you!
But, in a strange way, what makes music festivals so special is, indeed, that sense of being removed from reality. We all have our own favourite memories of music festivals – what are yours? I’d hazard a guess that landscape, setting and even weather are as integral to those evocative recollections as the musicmaking. From one festival alone – Aldeburgh – I can recall both the powerful tranquillity of stepping from a concert to see the summer sun setting scenically over the Suffolk reed beds, and on another occasion our car needing to pull in to the side of the road when an unseasonal deluge made driving impossible, straight after hearing Britten’s Four Sea Interludes. These experiences are an inseparable part of the overall memory, though that’s as it should be: great art is never meant to exist in abstract isolation, but to be experienced within the context of our lives and the world around us. So it’s about more than simply enjoying pretty scenery. The focus that can be achieved by removing oneself from the chaos of a city, or the crowded commute, or the juggling of commitments, can make us listen differently and more reflectively. Not to knock the attraction of scenery of
Also this month, you’ll see that we’ve further increased our focus on reissues. Everyone (except perhaps Gramophone’s postman) is impressed by the dedication and care currently being lavished on box-sets, whether in remastering, or the invariably beautifully presented packages themselves, full of both written and visual context. We’ve tried to keep up to date with these through our Reissues pages, but from this month you’ll find a new monthly column by Rob Cowan devoted to box-sets. Together with the familiar Reissues pages, with Rob’s long-running Replay column devoted to historical issues and our Classics Reconsidered feature – in which two critics reassess the status of a ‘classic’ recording of the past – we hope our new section will encourage you to spend some time thinking about, and listening to, the artists and recordings of the past.
Speaking of which, next month we’ll be celebrating an extraordinary artist from the past century, the great Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson. And for those not familiar with her legacy, we’ll be bringing readers a free CD featuring tracks from a forthcoming celebratory box-set from Sony Classical and the Birgit Nilsson Foundation. martin.cullingford@markallengroup.com
THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS
‘Visiting Berlin’s Philharmonie is always a joy,’ says JAMES JOLLY ‘and sitting through a performance
‘The inest recorded performances remind us that Handel composed Saul in a state of feverish
under Robin Ticciati of Bruckner’s Sixth in the empty hall was the cherry on the cake. Afterwards, I caught up with him, a conductor I’ve long admired and have been following for quite a while.’
excitement,’ writes our Collection author RICHARDWIGMORE . ‘Prolonged immersion only enhanced my passion for a work whose range and depth merit the over-used adjective Shakespearean.’
‘Pierre-Laurent Aimard could not have been a more charming and helpful guide through a masterpiece that
had always intimidated me,’ says PETER QUANTRILL of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux. ‘The Musician and the Score is a perfect title for the synthesis I saw between man and music.’
THE REVIEWERS Andrew Achenbach • David Allen • Nalen Anthoni • Tim Ashley • Mike Ashman Richard Bratby • Edward Breen • Liam Cagney • Alexandra Coghlan • Rob Cowan (consultant reviewer) Jeremy Dibble • Peter Dickinson • Jed Distler • Adrian Edwards • Richard Fairman • David Fallows David Fanning • Andrew Farach-Colton • Iain Fenlon • Neil Fisher • Fabrice Fitch • Jonathan Freeman-Attwood Charlotte Gardner • David Gutman • Christian Hoskins • Lindsay Kemp • Philip Kennicott • Richard Lawrence Andrew Mellor • Kate Molleson • Ivan Moody • Bryce Morrison • Hannah Nepil • Jeremy Nicholas Christopher Nickol • Geo frey Norris • Richard Osborne • Stephen Plaistow • Mark Pullinger • Peter Quantrill Guy Rickards • Malcolm Riley • Marc Rochester • Patrick Rucker • Julie Anne Sadie • Edward Seckerson Hugo Shirley • Pwyll ap Siôn • Harriet Smith • David Patrick Stearns • David Threasher • David Vickers John Warrack • Richard Whitehouse • Arnold Whittall • Richard Wigmore • William Yeoman
Gramophone, which has been serving the classical music world since 1923, is irst and foremost a monthly review magazine, delivered today in both print and digital formats. It boasts an eminent and knowledgeable panel of experts, which reviews the full range of classical music recordings. Its reviews are completely independent. In addition to reviews, its interviews and features help readers to explore in greater depth the recordings that the magazine covers, as well as o fer insight into the work of composers and performers. It is the magazine for the classical record collector, as well as for the enthusiast starting a voyage of discovery.
gramophone.co.uk
GRAMOPHONE APRIL 2018 3
