Category Archives: News

Out today…Emily Howard’s Torus

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Emily Howard‘s new album, Torus – as reviewed on Arcana – is released today.

When I spoke to Emily about the piece itself back in 2018, she said, “When I created Torus, I imagined I was on the surface of the shape, travelling around and around in one direction, and encountering different landscapes as I went. Around 14 minutes into the work, there is a significant shift and a complete change of musical soundworld, and this is where I had instead imagined a rotation in the other direction. So considering mathematical shapes in this way does help me to define musical shapes and structure in my compositions”.

You can explore buying options for Torus at the NMC website, and watch a short video about it below:

In appreciation – Ryuichi Sakamoto

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This was the image posted on Ryuichi Sakamoto‘s Twitter account earlier today, confirming the sad news many had been dreading – the Japanese composer and instrumentalist had sadly died of cancer, aged 71.

Sakamoto’s career began in the Yellow Magic Orchestra, whose drummer Yukihiro Takahashi passed away only three months previously. He then went on to a long and illustrious career that included numerous memorable collaborations, solo albums and film scores.

Yet a single tribute would seem to sum him up best at this point, before a full appreciation. Here is the composer himself at the piano, playing one of his most enduring and emotional pieces:

Playlist – Christophe Rousset & Les Talens Lyriques

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by Ben Hogwood

Christophe Rousset is a long-admired exponent of music from the Baroque period – but as this playlist shows, he should not be pinned down to that one era!

This year marks 30 years of his pioneering group Les Talens Lyriques, and the playlist below draws on recordings made in that period for the famous Universal imprint L’Oiseau Lyre, Decca and more recently the Bru Zane and Aparté labels. For the former Rousset conducted a landmark recording of Gounod’s Faust, released in 2019, while the latter are releasing three new albums this autumn.

Excerpts from the trio can be heard below, along with a celebration of Rousset’s contribution both as conductor and harpsichordist. There is much to enjoy here!

In Appreciation – Ned Rorem

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by Ben Hogwood

In the last week we have learned of the sad news of the death of Ned Rorem, albeit at the wonderful age of 99. The American composer was much loved for his insistence on sticking to a style of music that he ‘wanted to hear’, as this excellent obituary from Guy Rickards for The Guardian states.

The Indiana-born Rorem leaves us with a good deal of vocal and instrumental music, much of it in a short form and with over 500 songs. Yet he showed himself more than capable of mastering longer forms too, with three symphonies, numerous concertos and a number of stage works. The playlist below draws from all corners of his compositional output, showing his way with a tune, his ability as a fine orchestrator and the way he wrote so winsomely for the human voice. There are two concertos here – for violin and for mallet instruments, a recent concerto recording with Dame Evelyn Glennie as soloist. Hope you enjoy the music!

In Appreciation – Libor Pešek

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by Ben Hogwood

Today we learned of the sad news that conductor Libor Pešek has died at the age of 89.

A tribute to him has been posted on social media by his management company IMG, while the artist page they held for him contains details on his conducting career.

Libor Pešek made some particularly fine recordings with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra when Virgin Classics was in the ascendancy in the 1990s. They include a cycle of the symphonies of Dvořák but also a rather wonderful disc introducing us to the music of Vítězslav Novák, and in particular his Slovak Suite. The recording became extremely popular with Classic FM listeners, and has led to something of a revival for the composer.

The playlist enclosed here is almost exclusively of Czech music, including works by Suk and Smetana, but we also include a nod to some extremely fine recordings of British music the conductor made, notably Britten’s Young Person’s Guide.

Any listener to classical music from the 1980s onwards will surely have encountered Libor Pešek’s art, and we can appreciate it here: