On this day in 1757, the composer Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid.
Taking the baton from his father Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico was a prolific composer wrote no fewer than 550 keyboard sonatas, an unparalleled output that has a fascinating variety, looking forward to Beethoven and even beyond. Here is a great example with which to end the day, from a very fine album devoted to the composer by French-Canadian pianist Anne Quéffelec
London-based, Australian-born producer, songwriter and DJ, HAAi (aka Teneil Throssell) has shared the latest track from her eagerly anticipated new album – HUMANiSE – out on 10 October 2025 via Mute on limited edition clear double gatefold vinyl and limited-edition CD in eco card packaging.
The new album – an immense evolution from her acclaimed debut – reckons with what it is to be human in an increasingly digital world, as AI threatens to eclipse everything and our screens separate us from each other.
You can listen to Hey! below:
Talking about the new track, Teneil explains, “‘Hey!’ is dedicated to the unmatched human connection we feel on the dance floor. The repeated lyrics “can’t live without you” is a nod to my love for the club and the people in it.”
Hey is an immensely likeable track, with an immediacy born of the dance floor and a direct style with repetition of voices that intersects a little with Caribou’s more minimal work.
The press release continues: In all of her work, Teneil has always sought to conquer new frontiers in electronic music, and on the new album, she’s drilling deeper into the grid to deliver an ambitious and thrilling epic: embodying a sonic step up, exploring the sweet spot between machine-led dystopia and emotion-filled utopia. “Throughout the album, I kept thinking about a machine with a human heart,” she says. Where previously she’s been hidden by a laptop, or obscured behind the decks, more recently she was, “inspired to return to my songwriting roots and use my voice more in my own music.”“Throughout the album, I kept thinking about a machine with a human heart,” she says. Vocals are front and centre, stunningly delicate and giving a newfound dimension to her kinetic productions. “It took a long time to get there, it’s such a vulnerable thing to do,” she continues, “but for this album, it was important for me to allow this ‘human heart’ to be front and centre.”
The human heart has another focus on the album: unity and community. HAAi explains, “Even though HUMANiSE is about how the world is starting to change beyond our control, it’s important to keep a sense of togetherness and hope.” These ideas of community and a sense of belonging is of utmost importance, and she has returned to work with friends including Jon Hopkins, Alexis Taylor from Hot Chip, singer Obi Franky and rapper KAM-BU, artist Kaiden Ford, as well as poet James Massiah, who guests on ‘All That Falls Apart’, and two choirs: TRANS VOICES with choir leader ILĀ and a gospel choir led by Wendi Rose. But this is no clique, the community she surrounds herself with is inclusive, with ample space for the listener on a journey where you are suspended in dreamlike euphoria, drawing the most human part of you to the surface – the part where nothing matters more than family, friends, and togetherness.
HUMANiSE is out on 10 October 2025 via Mute on limited edition clear double gatefold vinyl and limited edition CD in eco card packaging. You can pre-order here
Timothy Ridout (viola), Orchestra of Opera North / Tom Fetherstonhaugh
Vaughan Williams The Wasps – Overture (1909) Bliss (orch. Wilby) Viola Concerto, B68a (1933, orch. 2023) Coleridge-Taylor Solemn Prelude in B minor, Op. 40 (1899) Elgar Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 ‘Enigma’ (1898-99)
Ripon Cathedral Saturday 19 July 2025
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) Jonas Cradock
With a variety of activities throughout its region, the Ryedale Festival is now well established among the most wide-ranging of such events 45 years since its inauguration and this evening’s concert showcased the Orchestra of Opera North in the impressive setting of Ripon Cathedral.
The all-British programme centred on the first hearing for a Viola Concerto that Arthur Bliss had always intended to create out of his sonata for that instrument, but has only recently been carried out by Philip Wilby. A former professor of composition at Leeds University, Wilby is best known for his choral and organ music but as was duly confirmed, is an able orchestrator with a keen appreciation of Bliss’ idiom. Hence the successful launch of a piece that deserves to assume its place within the still-limited repertoire of concertante works for this instrument.
That it exists at all was no doubt through the prompting of Lionel Tertis, for whom Bliss wrote his Viola Sonata some 20 years after a single-movement Violin Sonata (never played publicly during his lifetime) as was his only other such duo. Formally it is among his most innovative pieces, the skewed sonata design of its initial Moderato exuding a restive and even impulsive eloquence as responded well to an orchestration which resembles more the intimacy of Bliss’ late Cello Concerto than the full-blooded fervour of his earlier such works for piano or violin.
The ensuing Andante is Bliss at his most personal – its darkly ruminative progress building to an anguished culmination made the more so in this context, before subsiding into the fugitive unease from which it had emerged. There follows a propulsive Molto allegro modelled on the rhythmic syncopation of the Furiant, a scherzo-cum-finale climaxing with a powerful cadenza here forcefully partnered by timpani. After which, the Coda poignantly surveys all that went before in a sustained Andante maestoso as brings about an apotheosis of plangent resignation.
At around 27 minutes, Bliss’s Viola Concerto is equal in its scale as in its expressive reach to comparable works by Hindemith and Walton, so credit to Timothy Ridout (above, among the leading younger violists) that its essence was so tangibly conveyed. Nor was the OON found wanting under the assured direction of Tom Fetherstonhaugh, heard here in an ambience where detail lacked only the final degree of definition. Hopefully a recording will follow of what is likely to be the most important performance scheduled in this 50th anniversary-year of Bliss’ death.
The first half had begun in sparking fashion with the overture Vaughan Williams wrote as part of incidental music for a Cambridge University production of Aristophanes’ satire The Wasps, its incisiveness not precluding an open-hearted response to the ineffable melody at its centre.
A very different proposition duly launched the second half. Solemn Prelude is a characteristic statement by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor that did not merit the total neglect after its premiere at Worcester Cathedral; further hearings only made possible with the score’s belated relocation at the British Library so new parts could be made. Fusing Elgarian nobility with Brucknerian grandeur, any risk of portentousness was countered with an expressive immediacy abetted by Fetherstonhaugh’s flexible control over pace so that a welcome spontaneity came to the fore.
It certainly made an ideal entrée into the ‘Enigma’ Variations. Performances of Elgar’s earliest masterpiece now seem more frequent than ever, and tonight’s had much to commend it. Never fazed by the expansiveness of this acoustic, Fetherstonhaugh opted for mainly swift tempi as might easily have caused blurring in those faster variations had it not been for his scrupulous balance of detail. Elsewhere there was no lack of emotional input, not least during variations VIII-X with the wistfulness of ‘W.N.’ then deftness of ‘Dorabella’ framing a ‘Nimrod’ whose fervour was the greater for its relative urgency. Nor was the ‘E.D.U.’ finale lacking in panache as it brought the whole sequence to a conclusion of ringing affirmation, though it was maybe a pity that this building’s impressive organ could not have been utilized for the closing bars.
What was hardly in doubt was the response that this account received from the near-capacity audience, making one anticipate more such events at Ripon Cathedral in future editions of the Ryedale Festival, as it continues assiduously to promote the cultural life of North Yorkshire.
L-R Jenny Green, Gina Birch, Helen McCookerybook, Marie Merlet
Rough Trade East, London, 16 July 2025
by John Earls. Photo credits (c) John Earls
Gina Birch was a founding member of legendary post-punk band The Raincoats, but it took her until 2023 to release her first solo album. This concert at London’s Rough Trade East was to promote her just released and excellent second solo album Trouble.
“Many of these songs have never been played live before. So it’s an exciting moment for you and a very exciting and scary moment for us” says Birch as she takes the stage with her live band The Unreasonables (Jenny Green and Marie Merlet).
The opening Don’t Fight Your Friends provides a tentative start but pretty soon it’s clear this is going to be something special.
Happiness is a warm and welcoming second number before Birch tells us “now you’re going to wake up again” and launches into Causing Trouble Again, a stirring celebration and shout out (literally) to iconic feminists “and all the other trouble makers I’ve forgotten” that sees Birch playing a high neck bass line melody and some deft solo work from Green on electric guitar.
Doom Monger follows with some funky reggae riffs before the band are joined on stage by “very special guest” Helen McCookerybook who adds vocals to an affecting Hey Hey with its sparse drums and a powerful I Thought I’d Live Forever.
The set finishes with two songs from Birch’s first solo album. I Play My Bass Loud, with its Raincoats’ No One’s Little Girl undertones, sees all of the band playing basses in wonderful solidarity. Feminist Song is a terrific and potent closer to the show with Birch exclaiming:
“I’m a fighter, I’m a believer I’m a mother, I’m a cleaner I’m an artist and I’m yours”.
A wonderful evening and a demonstration of Gina Birch’s enduring power to inspire and bring joy.
With his 1692 ‘Segelman, ex hart’ Stradivarius Cello, loaned to him from a private sponsor through the Beare’s International Violin Society, Guy Johnston embarks on a British cello odyssey, including the world premiere of a new cello concerto by Joseph Phibbs in January 2026.
To mark Bliss’ 50th anniversary, Johnston’s recording of Arthur Bliss’ Cello Concerto with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Andrew Manze is released digitally on 25 July, 2025 on Onyx Classics. It will form a later album release with the Britten Cello Symphony.
Following a performance at the 2025 Hatfield Music Festival on 12 October 2025, Johnston will record The Protecting Veil with the Britten Sinfonia directed and led by Thomas Gould in live concerts on 28 and 29 October, 2025 at St. Sophia’s Greek Orthodox Church in London. The album will be released on Signum in the summer of 2026.
Completed in 1988, Tavener’s The Protecting Veil was begun in response to a request from cellist Steven Isserlis for a short piece. It developed into a more substantial work, and was subsequently commissioned by the BBC for the 1989 Proms season. Like many of Tavener’s compositions, this work reflects the composer’s Orthodox religious faith. The inspiration for the piece comes from the Orthodox feast of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God, which commemorates the apparition of Mary the Theotokos in the early 10th century at the Blachernae Palace church in Constantinople in grave danger from a Saracen invasion.
As Tavener explained, “the cello representers the Mother of God and never stops singing throughout. One can think of the stings as a gigantic extension of her unending song…the first and last sections relate to her cosmic beauty and power over a shattered world.”
Johnston met Tavener on a number of occasions and was touched to be asked by Britten Sinfonia to perform The Protecting Veil last year on the occasion of what would have been the composer’s 80th anniversary. Johnston was keen to record The Protecting Veil at St Sophia’s, where Tavener used to attend mass.
On 16 January 2026, Johnston will give the world premiere of Joseph Phibbs’ Cello Concerto at the Barbican with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Clemens Schuldt. In 2021, Johnston previously premiered Joseph Phibbs’ Cello Sonata, partly based on an Elizabethan pavane found in the archive of Hatfield House.
Phibbs, who is a huge admirer of Britten, commented,
“The main focus of this concerto is on melody, and how this might be explored in various ways over the uniquely wide range of the cello. The work is symphonic in structure, adopting a multi-movement form as opposed to the traditional three, and ends with a short ‘Vocalise’ (song) for cello and strings which soars to the very top of the cello’s high register. Elsewhere, a dramatic opposition between soloist and orchestra is emphasized. At the forefront of my mind while composing this work has been the wonderfully varied facets of Guy’s playing, which I have admired for many years. It’s been a huge privilege and excitement to write for such a special performer”
In September 2026, Johnston will record Britten’s Cello Symphony with the RLPO conducted by Andrew Manze for Onyx Classics to coincide with the composer’s 50th anniversary (Britten d. on 4 December 1976). The album will include the Bliss Cello Concerto (previously released digitally).
The 2025-2026 season coincides with Johnston’s returns to the Royal Academy of Music as a Professor of Cello. This role will see him offer bespoke tuition to cello students throughout the year. Johnston started out as a professor at the Academy in 2011, later becoming visiting professor. The appointment follows Johnston’s recent relocation back to the UK following his tenure at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, from 2018 to 2024.
Johnston commented,
“I’m thrilled to have returned last year to the UK with my family for this exciting series of recordings, commissions and performances.”
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