Corona Island Discs: The Long List (actually a very long list…)
Rosalind Hall:
Corona Piece 1: Bach: B Minor Mass
Just the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7obnfrlP0s
Corona Piece 2: Mozart The Marriage of Figaro
Figaro encompasses all things, all human emotions and through those reaches the other parts. Figaro himself is the best, most lovable person, angry, tender, passionate, doubting, canny, silly, honourable, weak, strong, funny – in no particular order. The Count’s humility at the end of the opera when he apologises to his wife, the Countess, in front of the whole cast for his misdemeanours is one of the great moments in opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IugFH6PxeMQ
Corona Piece 3: Beethoven: Quartet Op. 130 incl. slow movement Cavatina
What can I say? you have to hear it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIn3ictF9SA
Corona Piece 4: Schubert Schwanengesang
Contains some of Schubert’s greatest songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yACwUGcHXM
Corona Piece 5: Parry Songs of Farewell
Choice of poems ending with Donne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW8M5KOvsF0
Steven Thorpe:
Corona Piece 1: Bach St John Passion
I’ve always preferred Bach’s St John Passion to the St Matthew; it was the first I sang as a boy soprano. It’s on my bucket list to sing it as an alto, the only part I haven’t sung so far. The video link I have included is the self-isolating version performed in Thomaskirche Leipzig this Good Friday … very different! The Passion starts after 4 minutes 20 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP0C2hy2XVg&t=830s
Corona Piece 2: Allegri Miserere mei, Deus
Just beautiful! Thank you Amadeus for liberating it from the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican. For the video I was torn between King’s College Choir and Tenebrae, but went with King’s because you can’t beat a version with a boy soprano.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX1zicNRLmY
Corona Piece 3: Jocelyn Pook Blow the Wind
There’s just something about this piece. A beautiful treatment of a sampled Kathleen Ferrier track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOsHJ3TtN-Y
Corona Piece 4: Peter Gabriel Don’t Give Up
Two of my favourite performers feature in this song – Peter Gabriel (post-Genesis) and Kate Bush in one of their many collaborations. They were in a relationship after Peter Gabriel let Kate play with his Fairlight!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjEq-r2agqc
Corona Piece 5: Elton John Rocket Man
My ‘go to’ karaoke song. I’ve made many friends in karaoke bars over four continents singing this. I’ve included a karaoke track in case you fancy a go!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXPEvbK8fIM
Jenny Thorpe:
Corona Piece 1: Bach St Matthew Passion – Aria Erbarme dich, mein Gott
Ideally, I would choose the whole of Bach’s St Matthew Passion; however this aria, Have Mercy Lord on Me sung by the countertenor, is my absolute favourite which I could listen to many times over! Indeed, I have been known to do so whilst sharing a bottle of wine!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zry9dpM1_n4
Corona Piece 2: Flor Peeters Lied to the Flowers
This is a movement from Flor Peeters’ Lied Symphony Op. 66 for organ, chosen because I remember hearing the composer play the whole work back in the ’70s in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and I particularly noted this movement as beautiful, as the evening sunlight shone through the west end window shedding a kaleidoscope of colours throughout the building. I have a recording of Caleb Jarvis playing the work on the great organ in St George’s Hall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfK4TrdTh0E
Corona Piece 3: Vivaldi Gloria in D (RV 589)
This was the first choral piece I learnt and performed after leaving home to study at St. Katharine’s Teacher Training College in Liverpool. Having since performed it several times with different choirs, including BFC, I enjoy singing along.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgaOVV4JQHA
Corona Piece 4: Boellmann Suite Gothique
A majestic work played on played on the Makin Westmorland Custom Organ at Holy Trinity Church, Southport, by Professor Ian Tracey – not as good as hearing it live on the monster instrument of Liverpool Cathedral.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItkZr55f1NQ
Corona Piece 5: The Beatles In my life
From the album Rubber Soul, the only Beatles album owned by my family; this was the sing-a-long accompaniment to my job of doing the ironing as a teenager and as I love ironing (yes I do) this track was always my best!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqpysaAo4BQ
Cherry Smith:
Corona Piece 1: JS Bach St.Matthew Passion – Opening Chorus
One of my earliest musical memories is singing the Chorale in the opening chorus of a performance at St Paul’s Church, Durban, South Africa. I must have been 9 or 10 and I will never forget the excitement and thrill of singing with an adult choir, orchestra and soloists.
https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=bach+st+matthew+passion+prologue#id=9&vid=0deac6edcabac05585427a5c0962a223&action=view
Corona Piece 2: Mozart Requiem – Dies Irae
I first sang the Mozart Requiem at school (jointly with the Boys’ Grammar School) and the enjoyment was twofold – the music itself and the chance to meet eligible young men! I loved the sound of the male voices and the passion with which they sang. The orchestral accompaniment in the Dies Irae expresses the wrath and fury of God on the Day of Judgment and the voices paint a picture of the trembling of mankind about to be judged. I love it!
https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=AwrJS5iqE6teyRgA9Q8M34lQ;_ylu=X3oDMTBybDA1bGNhBGNvbG8DaXIyBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw–?p=mozart+dies+irae&fr=mcafee#id=20&vid=68e0690c380ab41ae3627c1fcf0cf30a&action=view
Corona Piece 3: Elgar Cello Concerto – slow movement
The work is wonderfully melodic and brings out the mellifluous quality of the cello to perfection. I heard Jacqueline du Pré play the concerto in Birmingham Town Hall with the CBSO conducted by Daniel Barenboim – an unforgettable experience. I also heard Sheku Kanneh-Mason play it in the Bridgwater Hall in November 2018 – an intensely moving experience and very impressive from one so young.
https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=sheku+kanneh-mason+elgar+cello+concerto#id=15&vid=03154b95d9dd56ed828fe24bc3d0bc9e&action=view
Corona Piece 4: Benjamin Britten Hymn to the Virgin
My attitude to Britten is a bit like my attitude to Marmite: I quite like it but it depends on the context. I have sung his Hymn to the Virgin several times and I think it achieves a satisfying blend of harmony, melodic interest, word setting and vocal challenge. It is sheer perfection – and staggering to know that he wrote it when he was only 16.
https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=voces8+britten+hymn+to+the+virgin#id=1&vid=77dc265b346414442524d3a91bc18562&action=view
Corona Piece 5: Paul McCartney Blackbird arr. Daryl Runswick
Daryl Runswick’s arrangement of Blackbird for the King’s Singers is a particular favourite though the tenors complain that they get to sing only one note (G) for the whole piece. It sticks quite closely to the original and captures its wistful and haunting longing for freedom. It may, or may not, have been inspired by the civil rights movement but it resonates in the current lockdown!
https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=blackbird+mccartney#id=3&vid=71de107be90291192fc773e6d63684ff&action=view
Ian Ray:
Corona Piece 1: Bach Cantata 140 Wachet Auf
To wake up to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkSK9tEUTxU&t=37s
Corona Piece 2: Schumann Piano Quintet in E minor
To sustain me in the morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU97k1_K3SE&t=1s
Corona Piece 3: Clyde Valley Stompers Peter and the Wolf
To give me a lift late afternoon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9k1VRuil4Q
Corona Piece 4: Mozart Mass in C minor
For a more contemplative moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsiP4-mCnQ0
Corona Piece 5: Brahms Opus 117 Intermezzo number 1
To make me restful before I go to bed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Ao5cbSzq4
Donald Judge:
Corona Piece 1: Leos Janacek Sinfonietta
This knocked me out when I played this piece by a composer virtually no one in Britain had heard of on my viola in Cambridgeshire Schools Holiday Orchestra, c 1966, and it never fail to do so now. Stunningly original and life affirming. And a reminder of Czechia, the country I’ve come to love as much as my own; I’m uncertain when I’ll next be there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAmuvFglu0g
Corona Piece 2: Arthur Honegger King David
I’ve only included the final chorus, but the whole piece is a favourite. Bach for the 20th century. I once woke up to this when the radio mysteriously came on in the middle of he night and wondered if, like King David, I’d died and was on my way to Heaven. BFC performed the entire masterpiece not long after I took over as conductor. The counterpoint is thrilling and the final added sixth chord magnificent and so typical of its greatly under-rated composer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3lNZALPz1c
Corona Piece 3: Claudio Monteverdi L’incoronazione di Poppea Pur ti miro, pur ti godo
The magnificent conclusion to a magnificent opera. Even though some say it’s not actually by Monteverdi, it has all his hallmarks, the simplicity of the bass line and the weaving and dissonances above it. What makes if so bewilderingly moving is that Nero and Poppea are vile villains who have spent the opera scheming, murdering and lusting their way to power. But here they’re just two human beings head over heels in love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_isL0E-4TsQ
Corona Piece 4: Peter Rose and Anne Conlon The Jaguar from Yanomamo
From an astonishing song cycle about the Amazon commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, that came out in the early 1980s, and was followed by another – African Jigsaw. The composer was the uncle of a pupil at my school at the time. Not only did we go to the Free Trade Hall to see his amazing choir and band from the secondary school in Blackburn where Peter and Anne taught, the younger kids at my school performed selected numbers including this. The Hallé youth and children’s choirs are superb ad they represent the future of quality music making.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa1V21qPUb0
Corona Piece 5: Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer Jeepers Creepers
This is one of my favourites. If there’s a greater piece, a greater arrangement, or a greater performance, please tell me about it. Karin Krog and Bengt Hallberg are jazz singer and pianist par excellence and perfectly matched. Anyone not smiling at this is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGtImKyxJgw
Liz Goodwin:
Corona Piece 1: New Radicals You Get What You Give
My favourite track on my self-made compilation tape that I used to play whilst driving to one of my first jobs, in my first car (a white Renault Campus called Malcolm). Still my go-to track for a happy upbeat song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPAEFnVZVOs
Corona Piece 2: Ennio Morricone Gabriel’s Oboe
Played by a friend on her French horn at our wedding. We were struggling to decide/agree on a piece; this was her suggestion and it was a yes by the time we were about 20 seconds into listening to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lArnKBTe82I
Corona Piece 3: Abba Dancing Queen
An essential song for dancing on any island, I would not be without it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFrGuyw1V8s
Corona Piece 4: Edward Elgar Nimrod
My Dad’s favourite composer and a regular inclusion in childhood Sunday afternoons when he would play us selections of his favourite tracks. Also a piece played often in my youth orchestra days when an amazingly enthusiastic conductor would manage to inspire us to give relatively spine tingling performances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhnMd1Jl7SA
Corona Piece 5: John Williams Somewhere in my Memory
A difficult choice but I can’t be on an island without a Christmas song and this one is unashamedly twee with twinkly bells, big rich harmonious chords and sentimental choirs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE3rqdjHP3U
Lynn Kendrick:
Corona Piece 1: Mikel Laboa Baga Biga Higa
This a Basque piece sung by the composer. It means a lot to the Basque people and I loved it the first time I heard it. When I asked what it meant I was told the nearest equivalent in English was Hubble Bubble toil and trouble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYv5svv7efU&list=RDuYv5svv7efU&start_radio=1
Corona Piece 2: Antonio Carlos Jobim Girl from Ipanema
Girl from Ipanema is a song I never tire of. I like the work of the Gilbertos and maybe that was one of the factors in attracting me to the samba band which I played with for seven years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5QfXjsoNe4
Corona Piece 3: Steven Sondheim Being Alive
I’m a big Sondheim fan so choosing one song was difficult. This is a particularly poignant piece at the moment. Everybody ought to have a maid from the same prom is a lot of fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JrRGcu-I5k
Corona Piece 4: Bob Chilcott A Little Jazz mass
One of my current favourites and they all look so smart is this recording — not like us at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV3QnubMWZI&list=RDBV3QnubMWZI&start_radio=1
Corona Piece 5: Lin Manuel Miranda Alexander Hamilton
Hamilton was such an original piece of work. I prefer this version of the opening song to the recording from the musical. The Obamas seem to be enjoying themselves so much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8_ARd4oKiI
Mary Halloran:
Corona Piece 1: Beethoven Mir ist so wunderbar (Fidelio)
The loveliest quartet in the whole of opera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSjG5g0kHfU
Corona Piece 2: Mahler’s Blumine, the original slow movement of his first symphony
Heartstopping melody and I love the solo instrument. Cornet? Flugelhorn?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Odyiaw3Cw
Corona Piece 3: Saint-Saens Carnaval des animaux
Everything from boisterous to tranquil and huge fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L993HNAa8M
Corona Piece 4: Arlen/Harburg Over the rainbow
Made my performing debut with this, aged 6!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSZxmZmBfnU
Corona Piece 5: Jocelyn Pook How sweet the moonlight…
From her incidental music to the film of The Merchant of Venice – lovely setting for counter-tenor and lute (?).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxGVZ5xiqNs
Val Cutter
Corona piece 1: Mozart Requiem
It gives me a tingle down my spine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjiMQbLheLE
Corona Piece 2: William Walton Crown Imperial
Stirring, thrilling piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WMrQe87gRk
Corona Piece 3: Procul Harum A Whiter Shade of Pale
A song I loved as a teenager. I still find the organ solo at the start moving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3iPP-tHdA
Corona Piece 4: Barbarini’s Tambourine from the fourth book of John Walsh’s Caledonian Dances
A folk dance. Very melodious (and the dance is fun as well).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB40AvJnMUY
Corona Piece 5: Mozart, arr Flanders and Swann Ill-wind
Music is Mozart’s Horn Concerto and the words and the way they fit the music (like all Flanders and Swann) are most entertaining .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHWnFJ4_61U
Dot Graham
Corona Piece 1: Arcangelo Corelli Concerto Grosso in G minor (Christmas) no. 3
My first ever CD was of Corelli Concerto Grossi, and this is my favourite – this particular movement is just melting, and I still love it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJDtLGkc-2A&list=RDaJDtLGkc-2A&index=1
Corona Piece 2: Johann Sebastian Bach Der Geist Hilft
Bach is my favourite composer, so it’s hard picking just one piece. I love all the motets, as well as the Concerto for 2 violins. But I remember singing this motet in Italy with Stephen Wilkinson conducting, and being completely lost in the music, a very emotional experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGnNNbOTjF4
Corona Piece 3: Georg Phillipp Telemann Concerto for four violins
I just love this piece ever since I first heard it. I like most things by Telemann, who was also one of my Dad’s favourite composers, but this is the one I like best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZIRE-9EL-E
Corona Piece 4: Carlo Gesualdo Responses for Good Friday
I remember doing these nine responses interspersed with Haydn’s string quartet Seven Last Words from the Cross, a number of times with the William Byrds Singers, most memorably in Ripon Cathedral (when John Coope was in the choir). A spine-tingling concert. The video is with music to sing along of no 9, Caligaverunt oculi mei.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGofX7nYxaE
Corona Piece 5: Hector Berlioz The Trojans
I sang in the chorus for the first concert performance of this huge opera in the US, in Carnegie Hall in New York. It was quite an undertaking, and an amazing experience. A few years ago I saw it staged at Covent Garden, and it was just fantastic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVuj-b0zXVE
Steve Kleiser
Corona Piece 1: Mahler Symphony no. 2.
Goosebumps every time. It was also the first classical music concert I attended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MPuoOj5TIw
Corona Piece 2. Mozart Mass in C
Just a wonderful piece to sing with the finest Kyrie ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsiP4-mCnQ0
Corona Piece 3. Beethoven piano sonata (Moonlight)
Beethoven piano sonatos are the very essence of Beethoven’s troubled life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0UrRWyIZ74
Corona Piece 4. Shostakovich Symphony no. 7 (Leningrad)
It just sums up mans fortitude under intolerable strain and pressure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z8TZjcqYhY
Corona Piece 5. Bach B Minor Mass
Just the greatest piece of choral music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7obnfrlP0s
David Ward
Corona piece 1: Berlioz Harold in Italy
One day after school when I was about 16, I was with myfriend Brian in his bedroom above his dad’s off-licence in Walthamstow when he gave me a Harold recording, with Yehudi Menuhin as the viola soloist. Instantly, I became Harold, the romantic hero, represented in the score by the wonderful melody that ambles throughout the piece. “There are musicians and music lovers who are drawn to Berlioz’s music irresistibly and for whom its idiosyncrasies of style are no barrier; in their deepest being, it sounds a note of instant recognition.” (David Cairns, biographer of Berlioz)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y78AtV4RKvM
Corona piece 2: The Banks of Green Willow
Not George Butterworth’s Idyll for orchestra but the traditional song on whose melody it is based. I love the tune, I love the story (though quite why the poor mother and child have to be chucked overboard remains a mystery) and I love this version sung by Tony Rose, a fine singer who died too young; I wrote his obituary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoMMyHB0PT8&t=1460s The song starts at 23.34
Corona piece 3: Lloyd by Raymond Hamrick
I first heard and sang this Sacred Harp tune in 1996 in a clapboard church on the border between Georgia and Alabama. The words by Isaac Watts are set to a tune so powerful in its contemplative simplicity that I had to stop singing and just listen. Hamrick, who was sitting near me in the basses, had woken one night in the middle of a dream in which he heard angels singing. He grabbed pen and paper, noted the tune and went back to sleep. He later harmonised the melody. Hamrick and I stayed in touch and he sent me the tune known as Bollington; it was given its first performance at the Festival in 2005.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io_vtBt0rVI
Corona disc 4: Mauthausen Mikis Theodorakis
Four poems, by a Greek poet who was in the Mauthausen wartime concentration camp, set by Theodorakis in 1965. I found the LP in WH Smith’s in Harlow when I was about 21 – it was in a sale for a quid. I was and am gripped by the sound, the music and especially the singing of Maria Farantouri. I heard the cycle live much later when she and Theodorakis performed it in Oxford; I even reviewed it for the Evening Advertiser in Swindon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvNm0F8L96Q&t=415s
Corona disc 5: Thomas Tallis Spem in Alium
Prompted by hearing and watching 12 singers from Stile Antico double and treble up for a lock-down YouTube version. Eight minutes of transcendent glory. It begins with Spem – a good word for these times. I once went to a workshop with a friend, neither of us realising that there would be only 40 singers. Neither of us knew when to come in, what note to come in on and what to sing once we had come in. It was awful. Later I learnt and sang it in a single day with 699 others in the Bridgewater Hall, the eight choirs divided between stalls and circle. The day was filmed for a Channel 4 documentary in which a couple of cutaway shots show me looking perplexed and anxious. They missed the times when I looked very happy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfnEbwcLq0E&t=11s
Now, after I have gone on too long (but, hey, this was my idea; indulge me), we come to Mike Bell’s choices. He has taken the Corona Discs far more seriously than I could possibly have imagined, going into great depth to explain with extraordinary passion what his pieces mean to him. He should win new fans for all five.
Corona Piece 1: Van Der Graaf Generator – Still Life
In 1978, when I was 16, I discovered Van Der Graaf Generator and their front man Peter Hammill through a friend of mine Griff who had the Still Life album which he’d nicked from his elder brother. Throughout my late teens and twenties, VDGG and Peter Hammill became pretty much an obsession for me, as it did for Griff, although we had missed VDGG’s heyday as they split up in the year we discovered them.
On moving from Leeds to Harrogate I made a friend, Martin and he too became a PH disciple. We would have regular Hammill sessions when we would listen to VDGG and Peter Hammill solo albums for many consecutive hours at a time. On returning home from shelf-stacking at Tesco on Friday evening, I would lie on the floor with my earphones on and listen to this album – often twice consecutively. It’s deep stuff for rock music and the title track is an examination of the meaning of immortality.
In the days before the internet, information on such obscure artists – and VDGG were obscure – was extremely difficult to find. There was just the odd article in Melody Maker or Sounds and there was absolutely no video of them performing. It was sometimes difficult to imagine that they actually existed. On one bizarre occasion I sat down to watch Playaway (a children’s TV programme with Brian Cant) with my nine-years-younger brother Stephen. During the intros, a caption appeared: “with special guest Peter Hammill”.
That’s a coincidence I thought – can’t be – can it? But sure enough, after 20 minutes he popped up dressed in a cape singing a song about a parrot in a Cornish village. Scarcely able to believe my eyes I leapt out of the house and sprinted the three hundred yards to Martin’s house, banged on the door, pushed him into the living room and turned his telly on just in time for him to see Hammill sing the last verse of the song.
He would never have believed me if he hadn’t seen it himself. And despite my swearing on Hammill’s life, Griff would not believe me and was convinced it was a wind-up until he became a theatre manager, happened to meet Peter Hammill’s wife and asked her.
Martin and I finally got to see Peter Hammill performing in 1983, twice on the same tour in Sheffield and Bradford, when he was supporting a band named Marillion (as they were fans of his). This was a rather surreal experience and after Hammill left the stage on both occasions we left too as we both felt that there was nothing that could possibly follow it. VDGG have since reformed and now tour occasionally and I saw them in the first reunion concert in 2005 at the Royal Festival Hall and since then at Manchester University and at the Bridgewater Hall.
VDGG and PH are like Marmite and if you are reading this I can pretty much confidently say that you won’t like them – but you might. For me Still Life is their most influential album. Each note and word is ingrained in my mind and a fantasy of mine is for PH to fall mildly ill at one of his concerts and for me to get up on stage and take his place to perform the title track with the band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dM9uujpGkc
Corona piece 2: Beethoven – Piano Concerto No 4
My Dad had a vinyl box set of Wilhelm Kempff playing Beethoven’s piano concertos. When I was 25 I started my first job at an engineering company in Keighley and was living on my own in a granny flat of a colleague’s house. I’d borrowed a few of my Dad’s records and would listen to them occasionally but found these piano concertos quite difficult to listen to. So I set myself the task of grasping or understanding them – not in technical sense – but in the sense that they would be familiar enough for me to enjoy them.
For a couple of weeks I played then them over and over, while I read or ate my tea, until eventually they lodged themselves into my sub-consciousness. And boy, was it worth the effort. They are all brilliant pieces but the fourth is my favourite; I feel it was the pinnacle of Beethoven’s piano writing. I do like the fifth, but to me it’s rather too grandiose, similar to the ninth symphony. The next year I moved to Manchester and would go and watch Hallé concerts, often on my own, at the Free Trade Hall. There was a triangle of seats in the balcony and there was a lone seat at the point of the triangle, right at the front, which I couldn’t afford but which was often empty. If it looked as if no-one was taking it I would sneak down from the balcony and sit in it. It was a glorious place to be and I remember one concert where Kathryn Stott, filling in for another pianist who was ill, played Beethoven’s fourth concerto in an incredibly sensitive performance. What a magical evening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRQaViIjFHk
Corona piece 3: Shostakovich Symphony Number 5
All musical geniuses have a trademark sound. You know it’s them and Shostakovich’s music has an unmistakeable signature. Russians certainly know how to do history and they know how to reflect it in their music and Shostakovich, living through the days of Stalin, was the master of reflecting the zeitgeist in his symphonies. He wrote the fifth symphony under the threat of death, having had his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk slated by Stalin. This was his chance to redeem himself by writing an heroic piece to the glory of the Soviet Empire, palatable to Stalin and which would save his life. Composers, I’ve heard, like restrictions to give them a focus to their writing and Shostakovich had the task of writing a symphony in which he could express himself and yet appear to be glorifying the Soviet regime.
Shostakovich achieves this brilliantly with rousing tunes and beautiful haunting melodies but all set against a backdrop of deep unease. It may be apocryphal but Shostakovich was quoted as saying that the rousing finale evokes someone telling you “Rejoice, rejoice”.
I can’t remember how I started listening to Shostakovich. I think I just bought some CDs to see what it was all about. I’m somewhat of an intellectual lightweight choosing the fifth as it’s certainly the most popular of them all but it’s the one that I am drawn back to listening to time and again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJaWGQr3cNY
Corona piece 4: Mozart – Solemn Vespers de Confessore K. 339
Although named Solemn Vespers, there is nothing solemn about this piece, one of the most glorious pieces of music that I have sung. I sang this with Bollington Festival Choir some years ago (8?) and it returned to the programme in the 2018-2019 season (I’m on the programming committee!) and coincidentally was on the KEMS programme that year, prompting me to join KEMS to sing it along with the Requiem. It is just a fantastic joy to sing from start to end and also has one of the most beautiful soprano solos that I have ever heard – Laudate Dominum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0fjpIwk55M
Barbara Bonney (my favourite soprano) singing the Laudate Dominum –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7yHCsYusDM
Corona Piece 5: Schubert Winterreise
If you know me, there’s no surprises here as this is a piece very close to my heart having performed it twice myself. I’d listened to quite a lot of Schubert and loved the string quartets and piano sonatas. When in my late forties and having heard that Winterreise was regarded as a masterpiece, I bought a CD, with Alfred Brendel at the piano and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing.
I began listening to it, not understanding the words and found the music quite difficult at first but there was something about it which just kept drawing me back and I played it again and again until, as with the Beethoven piano concertos, it began to sink in. The mark of a masterpiece to me is something that you can keep listening to, keep finding surprises within and never get bored of. Also, it’s something that you know that, even in an infinity of time, you could never have dreamed up yourself. Winterreise is like that.
At the outset, I had no intention to perform it but having been singing with BFC for a number of years, I decided to buy a copy of the score to do a bit of singing along. So, either listening to the CD or bashing out bits on the piano, I began learning each song in turn so I could sing them reasonably accurately. Having done that for a while I met up with Sally Smith, a stalwart of the choir and who was my son’s piano teacher, and we had a few practices together, which was a lot of fun.
Next I decided to see if I could possibly remember the words and sing each song from memory. I don’t speak German and it was the only O level that I failed, so maybe I had something to prove. So for the next year, with lyric sheet in hand whilst I walked the dog each day, I had just about managed to do that. So what’s the next step? In a night in the pub with my friend Richard I told him what I’d been doing. He convinced me that I should do a performance. Crazy idea. However, his daughter Emma is a violinst and had an accompanist Martyn Parkes who lived in Bollington and he could put me in touch. Ok, go on then.
In a nervous first meeting around the piano with Martyn, after half an hour he says ‘Yes, I think you can do this’ and agreed to perform it with me. No going back now. So, the Arts Centre was booked, invitations sent out and I gave a very nervy first ever solo performance of a work which few professionals ever take on in its entirety. I’m sure that it left a lot to be desired, but I got through it and only had one or two lapses of memory. Complete madness.
So that was the start of my solo recital performances, of which I have now done about six over the years. The second Winterreise I did with Bollington Art Group whose members provided a backdrop of art works, each inspired by the 24 songs of and also had a very informative introductory talk by a certain David Ward. It was undoubtedly my finest musical moment.
Fischer Dieskau & Brendel – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PQtpc_5QHI
Dramatic Video version with Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLsaSm5iG9o&list=PL2FEA1645BA0A5D3B