BBC Music Magazine

BBC Music Magazine is a must for anyone with a passion for classical music. Classical music connoisseurs and new enthusiast alike will enjoy the fascinating features and reviews of over 120 new works in every issue.

THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS

Welcome

BBC Music Magazine

Have your say…

LETTER of the MONTH

Technology helps the show go on • Coronavirus shifts the landscape of live performance

Rising Stars • Three to look out for…

Sound Bites

Arturo Toscanini is beaten up by fascist Blackshirts

Also in May 1931

From cricket matches to beetle mania

Symphonic sprint

MEET THE COMPOSER Ian Venables

Studio Secrets • We reveal who’s recording what and where...

REWIND Great artists talk about their past recordings • This month: ANTJE WEITHAAS Violinist

Buried Treasure • Violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky shares three rarities from his own collection

Born to love music

FAREWELL TO…

Music to my ears • What the classical world has been listening to this month

READER CHOICE

Our Choices • The BBC Music Magazine team’s current favourites

Richard Morrison • Coronavirus will damage musical life, but we won’t let it destroy it

Life begins at 40 • Thirteen years ago, Russian violinist Maxim Vengerov hung up his bow and darted for the hills. Having now returned to playing, he celebrates 40 years on the concert stage with a renewed enthusiasm and a burgeoning conducting career. Richard Morrison meets him

From bow to baton • More violinists-turned-conductors

Maxim Vengerov • A brief biographical timeline

Barbara Hannigan

A voice to inspire • Works written for Hannigan

Indiantonic • On the 100th anniversary of Ravi Shanker’s birth, Oliver Craske looks at the sitar virtuoso’s aims to unite Eastern and Western musical worlds

Eastern strings • A quick guide to the sitar

Walk NewYork! • From Manhattan to Queens, Brian Wise takes us on a tour of The Big Apple’s finest musical locations

Out-of-town abodes • East Coast adventures

Havana good time • Jeremy Pound heads to Cuba to discover how an all-female string orchestra is leading the way in championing the country’s rich classical music heritage

Caribbean chords • Leading Cuban composers

Florence Italy • Behind the walls of a magnificent Florentine palazzo lies the perfect setting for a brand new opera festival. Oliver Condy pays it a visit

Il Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Astor Piazzolla • In reinventing the tango, says Rob Ainsley, the Argentinian may have made fans around the world but he faced biting criticism back home

Piazzolla’s style

PIAZZOLLA Life&Times

Háry János suite Zoltán Kodály • Malcolm Hayes is enthralled by a Hungarian folk hero’s swashbuckling tales as he searches out the best recordings of Kodály’s orchestral suite

The composer

A story-telling masterclass

Three other great recordings

Continue the journey… • We suggest works to explore after Kodály’s Háry János suite

Welcome

Stellar Brahms and an expressive Schoenberg • Malcolm Hayes is mightily impressed by Jack Liebeck’s performance of this pair of violin concertos with the BBC Symphony

An interview with Jack Liebeck

Orchestral

A potent and powerful pair of works • John Allison delights in this second helping of Lutoslawski from Finland’s finest

Reissues • Reviewed by Malcolm Hayes

Concerto

Sweet airs and forgotten Venetian treasures await • This trove of concertos and arias offers exciting discoveries and lively playing,...