Sebastian Rochford & Kit Downes @ Kings Place. Photo (c) John Earls
As part of Arcana’s 10th birthday celebrations, we invited our readers to contribute with some of their ‘watershed’ musical moments from the last 10 years.
Regular contributor John Earls writes:
A Short Diary consists of seven short piano pieces composed by Sebastian Rochford in memory of his father, the poet and academic Gerard Rochford, who died in 2019. An eighth piece was composed by his father. It is a profound and moving expression of loss. Rochford’s drumming combines beautifully with Kit Downes‘ piano playing.
When I heard it my own father had a few months before been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (I am still a co-carer for him). This has been both an uplifting and consoling collection for me.
Carlos Simon Fate Now Conquers (2020) Ibert Flute Concerto (1932-33) Prokofiev Symphony no.7 in C# minor Op.131 (1952)
Studio 1, BBC Maida Vale Studios, London Tuesday 4 February 2025 (2:30pm)
by Ben Hogwood Photo of Vinay Parameswaran (c) Roger Mastroianni, courtesy of The Cleveland Orchestra
For this concert linking seventh symphonies, the BBC Symphony Orchestra made their first public appearance with conductor Vinay Parmeswaran.
They began with music from Vienna via America, Carlos Simon effectively remixing the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony no.7 and applying some fresh paint of his own. The piece was inspired by an entry Beethoven made into his journal in 1815, and takes its lead from “the beautifully fluid harmonic structure” of the symphony’s second movement, Simon composing “musical gestures that are representative of the unpredictable ways of fate”. Though Beethoven’s structure could still be glimpsed, it was viewed through music incorporating the language of Sibelius, Copland and John Adams to create a relatively familiar but ultimately thrilling orchestral vista. Simon’s development of the material was enjoyable to witness, though the sudden end felt underpowered in context. Nonetheless, here is a composer to investigate further.
Ibert’s Flute Concerto is one of the instrument’s calling cards from the 20th century, though is heard in concert rather less than it could be. Here it was performed by Elizaveta Ivanova, a flautist recently recruited to the BBC New Generation Artists programme and making her first appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. She brought to the piece a welcome freshness, rising to the challenge of Ibert’s virtuoso solo part while including stylish phrasing and thoughtful dialogue with the orchestra. The graceful second movement Andante is the emotional centre of the concerto, and recalls the equivalent movement in Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major in its beauty and softer-hearted sentiments. This was in vivid contrast to the outer movements, whose syncopations took the music closer to New York rather than Paris, Ibert’s cosmopolitan style enjoyed by the reduced BBC SO forces as much as by the athletic soloist. A fine performance, and a welcome revival for a composer whose colourful orchestral music and abundant melodies are a tonic.
Melodies, bittersweet or otherwise, are at the core of Prokofiev’s late Symphony no.7, written the year before his death. In a short interview section Parmeswaran implied the work was ‘softer’ than its predecessors, but there were no shrinking violets to be found as the second movement reached a juddering conclusion. Here Prokofiev’s attempts to write a competition winner, simultaneously pleasing Stalin, were affected by his own personal angst, for he was living in poverty at the time.
The weighty bass of the first movement and graceful cello theme of the third movement, marked Andante espressivo, were indicators of the emotional range of the symphony, but the biggest tune, heard from the full orchestra, was the second theme of the first movement, a soaring and winsome melody that returns to crown the final movement. Under Parmeswaran’s affectionate direction it was beautifully judged, though he was careful to ensure the final word in the symphony carried equal impact, the strange ticking of the percussion indicating the creeping passage of time. The symphony ended as it should, its smiling countenance compromised by a frown.
Listen
This concert was recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3. A link will appear here when that becomes available.
Published post no.2,433 – Wednesday 5 February 2025
As part of Arcana’s 10th birthday celebrations, we invited our readers to contribute with some of their ‘watershed’ musical moments from the last 10 years.
Gary Carey writes:
I heard this around the time of the early stages of the Covid pandemic, when I watched the film, Shutter Island, which I would also strongly recommend, though only when you’re in a good place mentally.
The reason I like this piece so much is that it really seems to offer emotional energy, in both Max Richter’s melancholic orchestral composition and the almost desperate, cry-for-help, of Dinah Washington’s vocal accompaniment.
I believe both pieces were originally produced as completely separate works, which were then combined together for the film soundtrack’s finale.
However, this does not seem evident in the finished piece itself, which is a further testament to the production and mixing expertise involved, ultimately producing a compelling new piece of music, collaborating from generically disparate and musically separate sources.
Ben Hogwood adds:
As a postscript to Gary’s memorable moment, I would like a piece of music used earlier in Shutter Island that had a dramatic effect on me – the use of Penderecki‘s Symphony no.3 to highly dramatic effect:
As part of Arcana’s 10th birthday celebrations, we invited our readers to contribute with some of their ‘watershed’ musical moments from the last 10 years.
David Gutman writes:
This is a peculiar time for music and politics but perhaps it’s been that way for longer than we think.
Christopher Rouse, my favourite ‘living composer’, has been dead since 2019 and is rarely played in the UK but we’re continuing to discover ‘new’ works by him online and on disc. Rouse began as an academic evangelist for rock music as it was understood in the 1970s but took his ‘classical’ calling seriously enough to take an unfashionable stand: “I’m not going to talk about rock ‘n’ roll any more. It doesn’t need my help. It’s not that I no longer like that music, but I feel the wagons have been circled, and I’m going to stick with my high-falutin’, élitist, dead white European male brethren and, if necessary, go down fighting.”
His Organ Concerto of 2014 appeared only last year in a Naxos collection of American Organ Concertos played by Paul Jacobs. The Rouse is the highlight, his usual wildly eclectic mix, only around 20-minutes in length and traditional in form but pugnacious in content, whether tonal or atonal. There is also drumming. Its central Lento, which hostile critics have already misheard as ‘sentimental’, is another of the composer’s heartfelt meditations on the nature and acceptance of grief. This matters as we age (this listener is 67 ½) while the finale’s return to consonance and affirmation despite noises off is not just for show. It moved me very much. Rouse wrote the piece ‘the old-fashioned way’ with pencil and paper, on a table.
You can listen to the whole piece on Tidal below – the Rouse is tracks 5 – 7:
If you’ve been near any social media platform in this country, you’ll have surely worked out why, as BBC Radio 2 is undergoing an overhaul on its daytime schedule. You will probably have been blasted by the massed choirs heralding the arrival of Scott Mills on breakfast…but I would argue that the real star of the show so far has been Trevor Nelson.
On the evidence of the shows I’ve heard so far, his transition from late evenings to afternoons has been a seamless one – helped by bringing the ’5 Seconds To Name’ feature quiz with him and bolstering it with the superb ‘Old School Run’.
Yet there is another factor to his early success – his new jingle. Trevor has been fortunate with jingles – he had a couple of crackers on the Rhythm Nation show – but this one, co-written and sung by Zoe Birkett, is a proper ‘diva moment’. Listen to the jingle and watch its recording here:
📻ITS OUT !!! Waghhhhh!! 📻 Buzzing to have recorded the vocal jingle for Dj Trevor Nelson @DjSpoonyofficial new radio show on @BBC Radio 2 I had so much fun with the writer in the studio, I was given a brief 2 days before recording but when I got into the booth the writer let me go loose vocally to pop my own spin on it , they were all so supportive and loved what I gave , and I can’t wait to tune in tonight to hear Spoonys jingle as hearing them LIVE on radio is there first time I’ve heard them ! Did anyone hear it ? ☺️ #singer#radio#bbcradio2#fy
From personal experience, writing such a short piece of music is anything but easy. The Darkness singer Justin Hawkins, no less, started out in music writing adverts for IKEA and Yahoo. He and his contemporaries deserve so much more credit than they get, for everyone recognises the old start-up for Microsoft Windows, the double, slightly stuttered chord that brings the start of another Netflix show, or even the cosmic flash with which ITVX is introduced.
Trevor’s jingle has a lot going on. Birkett – who finished fourth in the original Pop Idol competition – has gone for broke with a killer vocal, her convictions backed up by some spicy harmonies and a production suggesting big room funk from the 1980s, with an especially big cadence that brings the likes of Parliament to mind.
Birkett hasn’t stopped there either, delivering a similarly classy jingle for DJ Spoony’s Good Groove show. Proof that the art of the jingle is alive and kicking – those writers and performers deserve a good deal of credit!
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