On this day in 1881, Johannes Brahms took to the stage to play in the world premiere of his Piano Concerto no.2 in B flat major, Op.83, with Alexander Erkel conducting the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra.
The concerto is one of the biggest in the repertoire. Set in four movements and lasting well over 40 minutes, it is more symphonic in structure, with demands of stamina and technique for the soloist that complement the more tempestuous Piano Concerto no.1.
The Second is a more obviously graceful work, from the lilting horn theme at the start to its elegant slow movement, where a solo cello plays a particularly beautiful melody. There are moments of grandeur – especially in the first two movements – while the finale is a dance, light on its feet and brimming with good spirits.
You can listen to a performance below from Yefim Bronfman, with Sir Antonio Pappano conducting the Verbier Festival Orchestra:
Acclaimed electronic musicians, producers and sound architects Max Cooper and Rob Clouth team up for a new collaborative EP; a dark, playful four-track dive into ambient, breakbeat and techno’s subconscious flow, featuring a standout vocal performance from South London rapper FLOHIO.
Recorded over a series of spontaneous London sessions, 8 Billion Realities channels years of creative exchange between two of the genre’s most quietly innovative artists and is a result of a decision between the long time friends to refrain from conceptual overthinking in favour of instinct and joy.
As long-time admirers of each other’s audio/visual work, Cooper and Clouth collaborated in London together after both emerging from intense, idea-heavy album cycles. What followed was a series of exploratory sessions, half-improvised, half-built around half-formed thoughts. The result is a club-ready EP that feels alive and human: imperfect and hypnotically rich.
“Rob Clouth has been one of my favourite electronic music producers since I first heard his work in 2011,” says Cooper. “His work is more full of ideas and structure than anyone else.” “We were both coming from extensive conceptual studio albums and both in the mood for simplifying things and having some fun with the music, so that’s what we did”.
For Clouth, no stranger to Max Cooper’s Mesh label having previously released an array of EPs plus his 2020 debut album Zero Point this record marks a new chapter, both creatively and personally. “Something pretty new for me is collaborating,” he says. “You kind of have to know when to stop, because if you develop an idea all the way to its endpoint, the other person has nowhere to jump in.”
The first A Moment Set Aside began as a break from another idea, a live, unplanned improvisation based around arps and ambience. “The track was written in about as long as it took to play it,” says Cooper. “It was pulled from a one-hour recording session, more or less as you hear it… the energy and excitement grew as the unplanned moment bore some magic.”
“The lesson being that sometimes it’s helpful to set aside a moment without forcing results, and let the subconscious have something to say.” What followed was darker, heavier. “Asymptote” is detuned techno. Subversive and euphoric in its descent. “We found a sort of brain mangling, half consonant, half wandering detuned techno pulse, which we started chatting about being a sort of pit of spiralling body parts we were falling into,” says Cooper. “It was a lot of fun to work on and let loose with bigger kicks than I usually ever get to unleash.”
Then came 8 Billion Realities, featuring a standout rap performance from FLOHIO; an emerging figure in the UK grime and rap scene. The track was inspired by conversations about algorithmic echo chambers and hyper-personalised online worlds. Frantic, direct, and South London to the core, FLOHIO brings this tension to life. Her sharp, intense flow cuts through distortion and rhythm, landing the track somewhere between chaos and control instantly making it one of the most striking moments in either artist’s catalogue. “A different reality for all 8 billion of us,” says Cooper. “We weren’t sure if it would work… but there was something about the energy of the percussive idea and the story which felt like it might fit.” “Then FLOHIO had a play with it and straight off the bat absolutely killed it, not just with the lyrics and energy, but the harmonising too, it was a beautiful process.”
The final piece on the EP Candeleda originated from Clouth’s solo experiments with a live rig made entirely of vocals and keys, using his self-developed “cheatbox” system. “He put forward a beautiful stumbling melodic sequence which we bounced back and forth adding harmonies and synth layers,” says Cooper. “It rounds off a collection covering some of the breadth of music that we both love.”
Speaking about the video release for ‘A Moment Set Aside’, Max Cooper states: “We chatted with Dimitri Thouzery about forests as a visual counterpart for taking a moment out to be immersed in rich form. When I’m feeling stressed the forest is my favourite place to go. Dimitri collected 3D scans of nearby forest floor locations and told the story beautifully with a nod towards something greater than just the forests themselves. Thanks for having a look and a listen.”
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Published post no.2,712 – Saturday 8 November 2025
In another indication of the staying power of electronic music, Kompakt’s TOTAL series has reached its quarter century. In that time the Cologne label have provided annual sighters of where they are musically, and this selection reveals what a variety of styles they continue to have at their disposal.
These include ‘the latest boy band in town’, Pop Vampires Cologne, as well as two tracks from label co-founder Michael Mayer, and a special track written for the occasion by Robag Wruhme, where he sings on record with his family for the very first time.
What’s the music like?
Typically engaging and stimulating.
The Pop Vampires Cologne contribution, Karianne, is flighty but with a strong, rolling beat, part of a selection of music that does indeed have poppier leanings. These include Pandora’s Box from Superpitcher, where Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor adds a touch of sweetness to the vocals, and a lovely bit of dubby bass from Jürgen Paape and Hella, whose Grace (A Tale) is a treat.
Gui Boratto brings memories of M/A/R/R/S’ epic Pump Up The Volume to the playful Panorama Xpress, while Robag Wruhme’s contribution is the typically atmospheric contribution from minimal means, Starsow Total. Mayer’s tracks are both excellent, with the chattering of Brainwave Technology contrasting with the eventful Erdbeermond, with its serrated groove.
Does it all work?
It does – expertly curated and sequenced, too.
Is it recommended?
It is indeed. TOTAL is still a required diary entry for electronic music fans, Kompakt demonstrating that their music still carries the ability to innovate and, in this case, surprise with its relatively poppy dexterity.
Gwilym Bowen (tenor), Gareth Brynmor John (baritone), William Vann (piano), Navarra Quartet [Benjamin Marquise Gilmore, Eva Aronian (violins), Sascha Bota (viola), Brian O’Kane (cello)]
Venables Out of the Shadows Op.55 (2023) Vaughan Williamsarr. Vann Fantasia on Greensleeves (1934) Vaughan Williams On Wenlock Edge (1909) Vaughan Williams Love Bade Me Welcome (1911) Venables Portraits of a Mind Op.54 (2022) Howells An Old Man’s Lullaby (1947)
The Temple Church, London Tuesday 4 November 2025
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
The emergence of Ian Venables as the leading British art-song composer was suitably marked with a 70th-birthday concert, sponsored by the Morris-Venables Charitable Foundation under the auspices of Temple Music Foundation and held in the evocative setting of Temple Church.
Song cycles being at the forefront of Venables’s output, it made sense to start with one of his most recent – Out of the Shadows a wide-ranging overview of male love. From the coyness of Constantine Cavafy’s At the Cafè Door and the barbed humour of Horatio Brown’s Bored, this takes in the fleeting ecstasy of Cavafy’s The Mirror in the Hall and stark soulfulness of Alfred Tennyson’s Dark House, prior to the overt playfulness of John Addington Symonds’s Love’s Olympian Laughter and calm affirmation of Edward Perry Warren’s Body and Soul.
Affectingly sung by Gareth Brynmor John (above), it preceded likely the most influential such cycle in English. A. E. Housman may have disliked his settings, but Vaughan Williams always gets to the heart of the matter in On Wenlock Edge. Hence the volatile imaginings of its title-number or hymnic poise of ‘From Far, from Eve and Morning’, the brooding dialogue of ‘Is My Team Ploughing’ or nonchalant wit of ‘Oh, When I Was in Love with You’; reaching a climax in the innocence to experience of ‘Bredon Hill’, with ‘Clun’ ending the sequence in fatalistic repose.
Gwilym Bowen gave a searching account of this cycle (doubly so having replaced Alessandro Fisher at such short notice), with Brynmor John comparably attuned to the understatement of George Butterworth’s Love Blows as the Wind Blows. These settings of W. E. Henley amount to a cohesive yet subtly contrasted entity – the existential musing of In the Year that’s Come and Gone followed by the deadpan charm of Life in Her Creaking Shoes and effervescence of Fill a Glass with Golden Wine, then On the Way to Kew brings a close of deftest poise.
Bowen duly tackled a further Venables cycle. Written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s birth, Portraits of a Mind is a notably inclusive one of the composer. Hence the gentle pantheism of George Meredith’s The Lark Ascending and the meditation on creativity of Ursula VW’s Man Makes Delight His Own; the engaging impetus of R. L. Stevenson’s From a Railway Carriage a perfect foil to the resignation of Christina Rosetti’s Echo, before lines from Walt Whitman’s A Clear Midnight conjure a warm transcendence.
Throughout these performances, the playing of the Navarra Quartet (above) evinced an incisiveness and eloquence always at the service of this music; William Vann’s attentive pianism astutely deployed in his appealing arrangement of VW’s Fantasia on ‘Greensleeves’. Brynmor John opened the second half with that composer’s disarming take on George Herbert’s Love Bade Me Welcome (first of Five Mystical Songs), with both vocalists heard to advantage in An Old Man’s Lullaby – Herbert Howells’s setting of Thomas Dekker that made for a winsome envoi.
Taken overall, this was a wholly pleasurable evening and welcome confirmation of Venables’ creative prowess – his corpus of songs or song-cycles surely second to none among those for whom the English language is a source of never-ending and always unexpected possibilities.
It is now 25 years since Kathryn Williams earned a Mercury Prize nomination for the album Little Black Numbers, and 15 since she started the productive partnership with label One Little Independent. In that time her reputation has persisted as a purveyor of quality folk music, exhibiting the “quiet emotional depth and lyrical precision” the press release for this album accurately describes.
For Mystery Park she strips back the sound, but gathers a high-quality team of musicians in the form of multi-instrumentalist Leo Abrahams (guitar, piano, bass, vocals) and guitarists Neill MacColl and Polly Paulusma, all of whom contribute backing vocals – as does multi-instrumentalist Ed Harcourt. Drummer Chris Vatalaro and harmonica player David Ford are also present, as is Paul Weller, credited with Hammond organ as well as vocals.
Importantly, Williams pinpoints the album as the most personal record she has made, featuring as it does her own painting on the cover, based on her grandmother’s tea sets.
What’s the music like?
There is a strong autumnal feel to Williams’ music this time round, the basis of a strong seasonal attachment running through the record like a thread. This is most obvious in the Polly Paulusma collaboration Goodbye To Summer, where the swallows leave and the inevitable question is asked, “how many more summers do we have?”
The personal attachments range from a celebration of her eldest son in Sea Of Shadows but also This Mystery, where she addresses her father’s dementia in moving clarity. Weller’s guest appearance is saved for the striking Gossamer Wings, where Williams’ talents for spinning quite oblique melodies are exploited – as indeed they are throughout the album.
Does it all work?
It does. Williams exudes a quiet confidence, able to express herself with the minimum of fuss but also in a way that draws the listener in to the middle of her conversational ways – by which point they can also appreciate the detailed and often exquisite instrumentation at work here.
Is it recommended?
It certainly is. Kathryn Williams makes music that is all the more beautiful for its subtlety, beckoning the listener over to spend more time in its company. Once there, it is pretty much guaranteed they won’t leave without seeking out more of her impressive discography. This particular listener will be doing just that!
For fans of… Laura Marling, Unthanks, Lisa Hannigan, Joanna Newsom
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Published post no.2,709 – Wednesday 5 November 2025
Arcana.fm 