On this day in 1918, the composer Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry died. Parry is best known today for his sacred music, and in particular the rousing tune to William Blake’s text for Jerusalem, and the anthem I Was Glad, used in many a royal service.
by Ben Hogwood. Photo of Mstislav Rostropvich in 1959 by RIA Novosti archive, courtesy of Wikipedia
On this day in 1959 the premiere took place in Leningrad of Shostakovich‘s Cello Concerto no.1. The soloist was Mstislav Rostropovich, to whom the concerto was dedicated. Here he is as soloist, an indomitable force:
Steve Reich: New York City, May 2005 Credit: Jeffrey Herman
by Ben Hogwood
Steve Reich is 90.
Steve Reich is 90 and I’m listening…
Steve Reich is 90 and I’m listening to everything…
Steve Reich is 90 and I’m listening to everything he’s published.
Steve Reich is 90 and I’m listening to everything he’s published. Join me
Steve Reich is 90 and I’m listening to everything he’s published. Join me on the journey!
That’s right – one of the most original and influential composers of the second half of the twentieth century – and the first quarter of the twenty-first – has reached his 90th birthday. I’m intending to listen to everything he has had published in a series called ‘Pulse Music’ – a label Reich decided fitted his musical approach rather well.
I’ll begin with the tape pieces – It’s Gonna Rain, Melodica, Come Out…and wind up with the recent compositions Traveler’s Prayer, Jacob’s Ladder and In All Your Ways.
It promises to be an inspirational and fun experience…so please do come along for the journey!
In the last few days we have heard the very sad news of the death of electronic musician Martin Wheeler at the age of 57. Perhaps best known under his alias of Vector Lovers, Martin was a prodigiously talented musician who made some of his very best albums for the Glasgow-based label Soma Records.
One of these, IPhonica, was completed in 2013 on an iPhone, using just a pair of Sennheiser HD-25 headphones and Blip Interactive’s first Nanostudio app. I was fortunate to review it for DMC World
I also had the pleasure of reviewing two of Wheeler’s very best albums under his Vector Lovers pseudonym. The first, Capsule For One, was released in 2005, and featured the coldly beautiful City Lights From A Train, an example of his ability to capture the weird feeling of detachment often felt in a busy city. Here are my thoughts for musicOMH on a rather special album
Next up, two years later, was Afterglow, where Wheeler successfully blended his descriptive sound as a hybrid, moving from instrumentals to vocals such as Crash Premonition, an unexpectedly emotive song with the author as vocalist. My review is here, with both key excerpts available to listen to below:
Capsule for One was re-released in 2022, with remixes by Wheeler himself. You can explore it at the Bandcamp link below:
Published post no.3,026 – Wednesday 23 September 2026
On this day in 1874, composer Gustav Holst was born. Holst is of course widely celebrated for his dazzling and colourful orchestral suite The Planets, a favourite among many 20th century music collections (including my own!). However that piece – brilliant though it is – has overshadowed some of Holst’s radical compositions that combine Western and Eastern musical thinking, the latter shaped by his travels.
One of Holst’s landmark pieces, the opera Sita, has not even seen the light of day in recorded form…until now. For Sita is about to see its first release on the enterprising EM Records label, who take up the story in the following press release:
“It…almost beggars belief that Sita, Holst’s operatic masterpiece and the largest-scale work he ever composed, had not been published, recorded or even performed until 2024.
All that changed when a German opera company — the Saarländisches Staatstheater — undertook the mammoth task of transcribing and setting the manuscript and staging the work; and we at EM Records are absolutely delighted and proud to announce the World Première recording of this magnificent and captivating work, made in collaboration with the Staatstheater.
Sita took Holst seven years to compose, from 1899 to 1906, and is a substantial three-act opera based on the Hindu epic The Ramayana, telling the dramatic story of Sita’s abduction by the Demon King Ravana and the heroic efforts of Rama and his brother Lakshman to defeat the demon army and rescue her. While showing influences of Wagner and even, at times, Verdi and Mahler, it nevertheless has distinctively Holstian fingerprints, with tantalising foreshadowings of The Planets. It is a deeply moving and thrilling opera of immense beauty, poignancy and tenderness.
The new double-disc set from EM Records is issued with a separate 120-page book including full libretto, essays, composer profile and artist biographies, presented in both English and German.”
More details (and a review) will follow on Arcana in due course!
Published post no.3,023 – Monday 21 September 2026
