Music Matters

Recent highlights...

JOHN ADAMS: THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER – 4th February 2012

John Adams's 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer is based on the hijacking of the cruise ship the Achille Lauro and murder of the Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer. The piece has proved highly controversial – it’s been accused of being anti-semitic and has been heavily criticised by Klinghoffer's surviving family. It's only now, in February 2012, receiving its first production in London. John Adams and Alice Goodman, the opera’s librettist, told Tom Service their intention was to view the horrifying events on the Achille Lauro from both sides . Meanwhile director Tom Morris and conductor Baldur Brönniman shared with Tom their vision for Klinghoffer in its new production at English National Opera.

Photo: Death of Klinghoffer © ENO

A BRAHMS DISCOVERY – 21st January 2012

András Schiff gave the first broadcast of a new piece by Johannes Brahms in a soon to be published edition by Christopher Hogwood. Tom Service heard the fascinating provenance and re-discovery of this little piece written by the 20 year-old Johannes. Written in 1853, the work - that Hogwood has called 'Albumblatt', (sheet from an album) - is a fabulously enchanting melody in A minor. But it's more than that: it's a proper piece with a beginning, middle, and end – and it also has more than a few secrets to give up!

Photo: Copy of Christopher Hogwood’s edition of Albumblatt © BBC

ANDREAS STAIER – 17th December 2011

Tom Service interviewed harpsichordist and pianist Andreas Staier about how Bach’s gigantic, complex, playful, cosmic work, with its Aria and 30 variations, has been giving him sleepless nights for the whole of his life in music. He only recorded the piece a couple of years ago, and plays it at Wigmore Hall in London this weekend, and for Staier, the Goldbergs are simply the summit of the repertoire – not just Bach’s, but for the keyboard as a whole.

Photo: Andreas Staier © Eric Larrayadieu for Harmonia Mundi

RENEE FLEMING - 10th December 2011

Suzy Klein interviewed soprano Renée Fleming. She is famed for her limpid voice, beautiful diction and stagecraft. But more than that, she has crossed over from the operatic stage, forging a wider kind of stardom as America’s favourite soprano - even appearing on the David Letterman show! She sang at President Obama’s inauguration and was the voice of America's commemoration of 9/11 at Ground Zero. In an exclusive interview Fleming talks about her determination and single-mindedness, and how singing for her is a ‘personal form of validation’. She spoke frankly about coping with the pressure of performance and how she wishes she were ‘more of a diva’.

Photo: Renée Fleming © Jonathan Tichler

GUNTHER SCHULLER – 15th October 2011

Tom Service interviewed American composer, conductor, writer, publisher, record producer and horn player Gunther Schuller, ahead of the release of the first volume of his memoirs.

Born in New York in 1925 Gunther Schuller has had a varied career. By the age of 16 he was already a French horn player of a professional level and his first concert was the American premiere of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony with Arturo Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic. Before he was 21 he had been principal horn of both the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, playing with conductors such as Fritz Reiner and Leopold Stokowski. But it wasn’t just the classical scene that Schuller catalysed. He also became enraptured with jazz. After playing at the Met, he and his wife Marjorie would stay up till 4 in the morning going to hear the best that New York’s clubs had to offer. He befriended the great jazz musicians, like Duke Ellington, and was a horn player on Miles Davis’s legendary Birth of the Cool sessions. He went on to make his love for jazz, for Ellington, Charlie Parker, and Bill Evans and many others, part of his creative universe, composing jazz pieces as well as works for classical musicians. Schuller invented a whole new genre of music: Third Stream, a fusion of these two genres.

Gunther Schuller talked to Tom Service about the challenges of trying to harness the best of both the jazz and classical worlds, about the legacy of the Third Stream, about how conductors couldn’t play his music properly, how the famous maestros desecrate and dishonour the great composers, and how his love for music just goes on and on.

Photo: Gunther Schuller aged 17 as the new principal horn of the Cincinnati Symphony. Courtesy of Gunther Schuller.

PIERRE BOULEZ – 1st October 2011

Tom Service travelled to Switzerland to meet one of the most influential musicians and composers in the world, Pierre Boulez.

Born in 1925 in Montbrison, France, he first studied mathematics, then music at the Paris Conservatory, studying with Olivier Messiaen and René Leibowitz. He went on not only to dominate the Parisian musical avant-garde with works like Le Marteau sans Maître and Pli Selon Pli, but to run the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), and found Ensemble Inter Contemporain. Also one of the twentieth century’s most influential conductors, he is acclaimed for his interpretations of wide-ranging repertoire, from Edgard Varèse and Frank Zappa, to Wagner and Mahler.

Boulez's name used to strike fear into the heart of the musical establishment, whether the composers, the orchestras, or the opera houses. In Paris in the late 40s and 50s, he was a brilliant provocateur as well as composer: a scourge of mediocrity and anything less than full-blooded experimentation. But times have changed. Now aged 86, he reflected on the central themes of his life and work, and explained that just like the Mahler symphonies he conducts around the world, his own music moves him deeply, expressing his emotions, intellect, and view of the world.

Photo: © A Warme-Janville

CHRISTOPHER HOGWOOD – 17th September 2011

One of the most influential exponents of the early-music movement, Christopher Hogwood’s work as a conductor, critic, and musicologist challenged what the world thought it knew about music from Monteverdi to Beethoven. Since founding the Academy of Ancient Music in 1973 Hogwood has worked with several of the world’s great orchestras and opera companies and his vast discography includes a pioneering cycle of the complete Mozart symphonies. His interests also range to the neo-classical music of Martin?, Stravinsky, Britten, Copland, Tippett and Honegger.

Having recently celebrated his 70th birthday Christopher reflected on whether or not the battle for historically informed performance has been won, and assesses where the next horizon of musical radicalism might be.

Photo: Christopher Hogwood © Marco Borggreve

TERRY GILLIAM – 7th May 2011

Terry Gilliam - former “Python”, cartoonist and film director – is one of the world’s most vivid creative minds. As a member of the legendary Monty Python’s Flying Circus, his unique animations defined the iconic look of some of the most celebrated comedy ever created. Later, the sheer scale and ambition of Gilliam’s cinematic vision gave birth to film classics like Brazil, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the Oscar-nominated Twelve Monkeys, among many others. In May Gilliam made his operatic directorial debut at English National Opera with a production of Berlioz’ The Damnation of Faust.

Sara Mohr-Pietsch met him after the dress rehearsal at the Coliseum and found out that irony is the key word in setting his Faust in Nazi Germany.

Photo: Terry Gilliam © Rankin

LANG LANG – 21st May 2011

Superstar pianist Lang Lang began playing the piano at the age of 3, and by the age of 5 had given his first public recital. At age 17 he made his dramatic debut on the world stage stepping in at the last minute to perform Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and since then his fame has inspired over 40 million children in his native China to take up piano lessons. The ‘Lang Lang effect’ led to his inclusion in Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009. Still just 28 he balances an international concert schedule with numerous master classes, global advertising campaigns, media appearances, ambassadorial roles and high profile performance events such as the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics and the 2008 Grammys.

Tom Service met Lang Lang at Steinway Hall in London and talked about his iconic status, inspirations and future plans.

Photo: Lang Lang © Philip Glaser

SIR HARRISON BIRTWISTLE – 19th March 2011

Tom Service travelled into the creative universe of one of the most original, uncompromising, and elementally powerful musical imaginations in the world: Sir Harrison Birtwistle.

Born in Accrington, Lancashire in 1934 his musical career began with clarinet and composition studies at the Royal Manchester College of Music where his contemporaries included Peter Maxwell Davies and Alexander Goehr. In 1965 having travelled to Princeton as a Harkness Fellow he completed the opera Punch and Judy which firmly established his reputation as a leading voice in British music.

His latest work is a Violin Concerto - the first piece he has ever called 'concerto', and his first for solo string instrument and orchestra. In March it received its premiere in Boston with soloist Christian Tetzlaff and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Tom met Sir Harrison or Harry as he’s better known at his home – a converted silk factory in a Wiltshire village, complete with composition hut and fastidiously beautiful garden – where they discussed the composer’s whole creative life, which began as a clarinettist for variety shows and comedians in Lancashire.

And a fortnight later they met again at rehearsals at Boston’s Symphony Hall where Harry talked candidly about what drives his music and his hopes for the concerto. As the orchestra and soloist get to grips with the work and ultimately deliver its thrilling first performance, we experienced the process of Birtwistle’s ideas being realised in sound.

Harrison Birtwistle © Hanya Chlala / Arena PAL