In appreciation – Matthias Siefert

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Today I want to use Arcana to pay tribute to a great friend, who very sadly passed away recently at the age of 63.

I first met Matthias Siefert in the year 2000. We were working at an Internet startup company, Muze UK, whose function was to supply data on music and film to the likes of Amazon and BOL. Matthias was brought in to head up the German department – and later, after the company was absorbed into what was then RED, we ended up working together at PPL for a while.

We formed a firm friendship based on humour (or lack of!), sport and music. Matthias was incredibly well connected and our musical tastes frequently coincided, him approaching from a punk direction and me as a late pop music developer in the 1990s.

Matthias’s connections came through his own love of music and his career as a manager, looking after a host of up-and-coming bands while forming connections to the well-known ones. I have put together some videos of songs we heard at Matthias’s funeral on Friday, along with choice cuts from musical people he knew and who we interacted with. The first is from a gig we went to in 2003, to celebrate the impending release of a new album from Goldfrapp, some of whom he knew well. This was when they were about to go stellar:

Matthias’s funeral began with music from The Coral Sea, the California band he managed headed by Rey Villalobos:

A particularly beautiful moment in the ceremony combined a meaningful montage of photographs and this beautiful early Elton John song, previously unknown to me:

Matthias was good friends with Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith from Tears For Fears – and it was wholly apt that the shuffle function brought this song up to head the playlist in the pub where we had gathered to celebrate his life:

Another connection that Matthias had was with the duo Yello, with both Boris Blank and Dieter Meier. The obvious choice here is one of their stand-out tracks:

One of the many new bands Matthias introduced me to in the noughties was The Infadels, and to this day I am surprised they didn’t make it big, because the songs are brilliant! We went to an old-school, sweaty gig at the Water Rats, King’s Cross, where they dazzled with their special mix of electronic and pop. This song was a particular highlight for me!

There is only one place to finish, however…and it’s with the final song from the funeral ceremony, The Black Keys’ Little Black Submarine. Again this is a song I was not familiar with, but it struck deep with its deceptively pastoral opening and its uncanny resemblance to Led Zeppelin. Listen to the full song, though – especially if you don’t know it, and revel in the moment where the drums kick in!

Rest well, Matthias. We’ll miss you greatly, and our condolences go to your special family and friends in their shock and sadness. I will miss our chats about music and football, more recently from afar, but thanks so much for the music and the memories!

Ben Hogwood

Published post no.2,785 – Sunday 1 February 2026

On Record – Cast: Yeah Yeah Yeah (Scruff Of The Neck)

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Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Cast are celebrating 30 years as a band by building up an impressive momentum. Fresh from the high of supporting Oasis on their UK tour, the Liverpool band follow up Love Is The Call from 2024 by renewing their acquaintance with Youth, who produced that album.

What’s the music like?

Affirmative, upbeat and positive! There is a swagger to John Power and his band that really suits them, and Youth has added a low-slung funk that they rarely had even in their mid-1990s heyday. Now they have gone with both barrels on production, adding spiritual undertones to the early Primal Scream groove of 2, then packing in the harmonies and distortion on single Poison Vine, where P. P. Arnold adds a thrilling top line and Jay Lewis a fulsome bass.

John Power’s vocals are also a strong feature, lending songs like Free Love an extra dash of feeling. Say Something New is typical cast – straight to the point, but with the added bonus of one of the many catchy melodies this album holds. At the other end, Way It’s Gotta Be is entirely bass-driven, reeking of Second Coming-era Stone Roses – in a good way. As if that isn’t enough, Weight Of The World has an excellent chorus and Birds Heading South is a warm-hearted closing track.

Does it all work?

It does. Yeah Yeah Yeah is no-frills and all the better for it!

Is it recommended?

If you like Cast, then this is a no-brainer, and if you’re approaching from the direction of early 1990s Manchester, then it’s also a recommended stopping point. John Power sounds more confident than ever, and the ten songs here are guaranteed to raise the mood, as Cast continue to strengthen their hand.

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Published post no.2,784 – Saturday 31 January 2026

On Record – BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Michael Seal – Bliss: Miracle in the Gorbals, Metamorphic Variations (Chandos)

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BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Michael Seal

Bliss
Miracle in the Gorbals, F6 (1944)
Metamorphic Variations, F122 (1972)

Chandos CHSA5370 [79’57”]
Producer Brian Pidgeon Engineers Stephen Rinker, Owain Williams (Miracle in the Gorbals), Amy Brennan (Metamorphic Variations)

Recorded 27 February 2025 (Metamorphic Variations), 1 March 2025 (Miracle in the Gorbals), MediaCity UK, Salford, Manchester

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Chandos issues the most important release of music by Arthur Bliss for the 50th anniversary of his death – coupling the second of his four ballets, in its new critical edition, with the last as well as the most ambitious of his orchestral works in what is its first complete recording

What’s the music like?

With its striking choreography from Robert Helpmann (after the story by Robert Benthall), Miracle in the Gorbals was initially even more successful than its predecessor Checkmate – being revived annually between 1944 and 1950. Other than a 1958 revival, however, there was no more stagings until that by Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2014; not least because the magic realism that transcends an otherwise grimly realistic scenario and struck a resonance in wartime Britain became passé soon afterward. Yet the quality of a score as finds Bliss at his most populist but also most uncompromising cannot be denied, and this new recording conveys these extremes in full measure. Hearing sections III (The Girl Suicide), X (Dance of Deliverance) and XV (The Killing of the Stranger) ought to banish any lingering doubts.

Premiered at Croydon’s Fairfield Halls during April 1973, Metamorphic Variations is Bliss’s lengthiest orchestral work. Shorter than intended, even so, with two sections being omitted at its first hearing and subsequently. This recording sees their belated and rightful reinstatement.

The three primary ideas are outlined in Elements: an oboe cantilena, a phrase for horns then strings, and a cluster from woodwind – melodic, rhythmic and harmonic possibilities that are explored intensively in what follows. The additional sections are an atmospheric Contrasts, whose absence has been to the detriment of overall balance, then a Children’s March which pivots from innocence to experience. Highlights include an increasingly animated Polonaise and Funeral Processions with its anguished culmination. Towards the close, a proclamatory Dedication duly underlines the inscription to artist George Dannatt and his wife Ann, then Affirmation draws those initial elements into a sustained peroration that pointedly subsides into a return of the oboe cantilena which, in turn, brings the closing withdrawal into silence.

Do the performances work?

Although the concert suite from Miracle in the Gorbals has received persuasive accounts by the composer (EMI/Warner) and Paavo Berglund (Warner), the complete ballet has only been recorded by Christopher Lyndon-Gee with the Queensland Symphony (Naxos) – compared to which this latest version, aside from its using the critical edition by Ben Earle, is superior in playing and recording. Here, as in Metamorphic Variations, the BBC Philharmonic responds assuredly to Michael Seal whose interpretative stance is distinctively his own. This latter has been recorded by Barry Wordsworth (Nimbus) and David Lloyd-Jones (Naxos), along with a broadcast from Vernon Handley (BBC Radio Classics), but the newcomer’s conviction gives it an advantage apart from those variations whose reinstatement enhances the work’s stature.

Is it recommended?

Very much so, not least given the spaciousness and realism of its SACD sound, together with informative notes from Ben Earle and Andrew Burn. Is it too much to hope Chandos will yet tackle either of Bliss’s operas which, along with The Golden Cantata, are his only significant works still to be commercially recorded? Michael Seal would be the ideal candidate to do so.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Chandos website, or you can listen to the symphonies on Tidal. Click on the names to read more about the Arthur Bliss Society, conductor Michael Seal and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Published post no.2,783 – Friday 30 January 2026

On Record – BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Kenneth Woods – Christopher Gunning: Symphonies nos. 8 & 9 (Signum Classics)

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BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Kenneth Woods

Christopher Gunning
Symphony no.8 (2015)
Symphony no.9 (2016)

Signum Classics SIGCD949 [67’33”]
Producer Phil Rowlands Engineer Mike Hatch

Recorded 11-13 March 2024, Hoddinott Hall, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Signum Classics continues its coverage of the late Christopher Gunning with this coupling of two symphonies, a genre that dominated the composer’s thinking in later years, and which get the advocacy they deserve from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales with Kenneth Woods.

What’s the music like?

Although he studied at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama with early ambitions as a symphonist, Gunning’s subsequent career was centred on scores for film and television with successful excursions into popular music. Not until 2001, when he was nearing 58, did he complete his First Symphony that was followed by a further 12 over the next two decades, along with several concertos and other orchestral pieces, in what is among the more notable instances of a composer moving between very different disciplines with comparable success.

Written for modest and what might be called ‘late-Classical’ forces, both symphonies are as integrated formally as they are resourceful motivically while, in both instances, movements are merely numbered rather than designated by tempo or expression. The Eighth Symphony consists of three movements unfolding from a sonata design of deft formal proportions with a slower introduction, via a slow movement whose ruminative cast is enhanced by plaintive contributions from flute and cor anglais, to a finale whose scherzo inclinations afford it an impetus and lightness maintained through to the decisive close. An earlier era of American symphonism (ostensibly that of Walter Piston or Randall Thompson) can be detected in its harmonic colouring and melodic contours, but Gunning’s personality is audible throughout.

Scored for slightly larger forces and with four movements, the Ninth Symphony feels no less focussed formally while admitting a wider range of or, at least, of more ambivalent emotions. Thus the opening movement again adheres to sonata design, with a more discursive (though never rhapsodic) take on its primary ideas. This is followed by a speculative or even fugitive scherzo, then a slow movement whose sustained eloquence arguably makes for the highlight of either symphony. It only remains for the finale, its progress as purposeful as it is eventful, to afford a conclusiveness that feels not at all premeditated, let alone predictable. If, in both these works, there is a tangible inner drama which is being played out, Gunning is first and foremost a symphonist for whom abstract concerns override any more subjective tendencies.

Does it all work?

It does indeed – thanks, above all, to Gunning’s unstinting focus on what symphonic form is and can be. Those familiar with any of his other symphonies will know that there is nothing anecdotal or half-baked about his handling of the genre, which emerges as the self-sufficient concept it ideally should be. It helps, of course, that Woods renders both these works with the insight expected from a conductor whose 21st Century Symphony Project has been crucial in rehabilitating the symphony in the UK, and who secures committed playing from BBCNOW.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. Recorded with all the necessary definition, and informatively annotated, this is well worth acquiring by those who are not yet acquainted with Gunning’s symphonic odyssey. Only recordings of the 11th, 13th and the revised First remain to complete an important cycle.

Listen / Buy

You can hear excerpts from the album and explore purchase options at the Signum Classics website, or you can listen to the symphonies on Tidal. Click on the names to read more about composer Christopher Gunning, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Kenneth Woods

Published post no.2,782 – Thursday 29 January 2026

In Concert – Simon Wallfisch & Joseph Middleton @ Wigmore Hall: Voices of Terezin

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Simon Wallfisch (baritone, above), Joseph Middleton (below)

Ullmann Beryozkele from 3 jiddische Lieder Op. 53 (1944); Lieder der Tröstung (1943): Tote wollen nicht verweilen, Erwachen zu Weihnachten; From Drei chinesische Lieder (1943): Wanderer erwacht in der Herberge; Der Müde Soldat
Taube Ein jüdisches Kind (1944)
Haas 4 Songs on Chinese Poetry (1944)
Leo Strauss arr. Iain Farrington Als Ob! (c.1942-4)
Brahms 4 Serious Songs Op.121 (1896): Ich wandte mich und sahe an alle
Ullmann From Der Mensch und sein Tag Op. 47 (1943): Heimat, Der Liebsten, Verdämmern, Nacht
Brahms 4 Serious Songs Op.121 (1896): Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete
Ullmann Stille from Der Mensch und sein Tag Op. 47 (1943)
Ilse Weber Wiegala (1944)
Ravel Kaddisch from 2 mélodies hebraiques (1914)

Wigmore Hall, London
Tuesday 27 January 2026, 1pm

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

This remarkable concert, given on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, took the form of a wholly appropriate tribute to the musicians, writers and academics assembled by the Nazis in the Ghetto Theresienstadt. This was based at Terezin, the small town near Prague, and used as a propaganda tool to present Jewish prisoners as thriving artists, in spite of them being held prior to being sent to the Auschwitz or Treblinka concentration camps.

German-English Baritone Simon Wallfisch is a member of a deeply musical family, with his grandmother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor from the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Together with pianist Joseph Middleton he presented music from four composers held in the ghetto, part of a sequence intertwined with diaries, poems, essays, pictures and musical excerpts. They gave the Wigmore Hall a deeply moving period of contemplation, their consummate artistry and control ensuring that a celebration of the creative spirit ultimately won through.

Wallfisch and Middleton (above) used the music of Viktor Ullmann as reference points. A principal focus was the composer’s settings of German haiku equivalents by the Czech poet Hans Günther Adler, a Holocaust survivor whose son Jeremy addressed the audience before the concert began. Ullmann’s music found a blend of touching simplicity and harmonic daring, pulling against tonal confines to give increased tension but in a way bringing the music closer to Berg than Schoenberg.

His word settings were particularly vivid in the first song, Beryozkele (Little birch tree), especially the line Jedes Bletele ihr’s Scheptshet schtil a t’rile (Each little leaf whispers quietly its own prayer), a parallel for each of the souls held captive in the town.

Meanwhile the crumpled harmonies of Tote wollen nicht verweilen (The dead do not want to linger) contrasted with the eerie purity of the fragment Erwachen zu Weihnachten (Awakening at Christmas), while in the Adler settings we heard the concentrated Heimat (Home) and the shafts of hopeful light offered by Der Liebsten (The loved one). The cold bell of Verdämmern (Twilight) rendered by Middleton offered beauty but also fear, before the pair achieved a remarkable stasis during Stille (Stillness).

The music of Carlo Sigmund Taube was similarly moving, through the innocence of Ein jüdisches Kind (A Jewish child), but was a wild contrast to the approach of Leo Strauss, whose cabaret scene Als Ob! (As If!) was deadpan, its humour brilliantly done but cold in the extreme.

The music of Czech composer Pavel Haas continues to make a striking impact, and his 4 Songs on Chinese Poetry were prefaced by a video clip (above) of the tensile Study for Strings from Theresienstadt itself. The songs were dramatic, particularly The moon is far from home, where the bare bones of Middleton’s left-hand line supported the powerful vocal. The discomfort and distorted imagery of A sleepless night were similarly vivid.

Finally Ilse Weber, the nurse who opted to travel with her young children to Auschwitz, was represented by Wiegala (Cradle Song), a touching sweetness lent to the upper piano part and a moving simplicity to Wallfisch’s reading.

Complementing the four Terezin composers was the music of Brahms, whose last work for voice, the 4 Serious Songs Op.121, were heard in a concert in the ghetto. Their gravitas here was only enhanced by the composer’s sense of mortality, Wallfisch singing with poise and power. The final word, however, was left to Ravel, whose Kaddisch was a potent memorial, Wallfisch commanding through his intonation and ornamentation.

A prolonged silence followed; the only appropriate response to a deeply moving concert. Here, in spite of the horrors suffered by the composers and the subjects of the readings, it was possible to appreciate their resolve and enduring talent, their lights somehow undimmed. Here they were remembered with the utmost respect and appreciation, and I for one shall never forget it.

Published post no.2,781 – Tuesday 27 January 2026