Daisy Goodwin Bloomsbury 416pp (hb) £18 Fictionalising the biography of a real-life person can be tricky, the obligation to respect historical truth potentially impeding creative freedom. But Daisy Goodwin has embraced the task with gusto, scrupulous

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Available from BBC Music Magazine is a must-read for anyone with a passion for classical music. Every issue brings the world of classical music to life, from interviews with the greatest artists and features on fascinating subjects, to all the latest

Edith Sitwell’s reputation as a poet has had switchback ups and downs across the years; and wider knowledge of her output tends to depend on the way her words have been immortalised by music. Façade is the most famous example. But there are other set

Schedules may be subject to alteration. For up-to-date listings see BBC Sounds and iPlayer 6.30-9am Saturday Breakfast 9am-12noon Saturday Morning 12-1pm Earlier… with Jools Holland CHOICE 1-2pm Music Matters West-Eastern Divan Orchestra 2-4pm Record

An Easter trip to Crantock in Cornwall presented the perfect opportunity for a clifftop walk, complete with headphones. First up, to accompany crashing waves and gliding seagulls, was Vaughan Williams’s Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, performed b

Flute Concerto*, Clarinet Concerto**, Violin Concerto^ Ulla Miilmann (flute)*, Johnny Teyssier (clarinet)**, Bomsori Kim (violin)^; Danish National Symphony Orchestra/Fabio Luisi Deutsche Grammophon 486 3487 ‘I didn’t expect to win this award at all,

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Or, in the case of Anna Clyne’s work, the sound or the visuals? When the British-born, US-based composer came to create Night Ferry, the turbulent sea-washed soundscape inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s po

As a full-time commercial barrister, I knew I would struggle to convince any established record label to take me seriously, even with (what I thought was) a compelling recording of Alkan’s Symphony for Solo Piano and Concerto for Solo Piano. But my d

On 31 March 1809, Joseph Haydn turned 77, passing the day unostentatiously at his home in Gumpendorf, a village near Vienna. Nine days later, Austria declared war on France, and within a month Napoleon’s cannonballs were flying over Gumpendorf, one l

Vaughan Williams Howells Delius Elgar Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Concerto for String Orchestra; Late Swallows; Introduction and Allegro Sinfonia of London/John Wilson Chandos CHSA 5291 John Wilson has become a familiar face on the BBC Musi

Works by Barrios, Ginastera, Villa-Lobos Sean Shibe (guitar) Pentatone PTC 5187 054 Sean Shibe has a string of knockout albums to his name. His debut Dreams and Fancies was nominated for a BBC Music Magazine Award in 2018, described as the best guita

Perhaps the story of Isaac Albéniz is not the most colourful, unlikely or fascinating of any composer’s life. But it can’t be far off, especially as accounts of it have often been liberally peppered with self-created disinformation. Paul Dukas once t

Sam Jackson, the controller of BBC Radio 3, selects three programme highlights for the month of June The third episode of Clemency Burton-Hill’s six-part series celebrating Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said’s brainchild – an orchestra where Arabs and

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has announced that Klaus Mäkelä is to be its next music director. The 28-year-old Finnish conductor will begin as the orchestra’s music director designate with immediate effect, before beginning a five-year contract in

LIFE: Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual is born on 29 May in Camprodón, Spain. Emerging from an early age, his musical talent is encouraged by his father, a customs officer. TIMES: Spain defeats Morocco at the Battle of Tétouan (left) in north

It is December 1913 and in the bleak midwinter (‘In the BMW!’ choristers will quip), I set off on a solitary walk through Essex to clear my head after a tough term of teaching. The students at James Allen’s Girls’ School (JAGS) enjoy the carol I wrot

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BBC Four’s flagship performance series returned to screens in the spring, seeing the BBC orchestras team up with world-class soloists to perform some of the concert hall’s biggest showstoppers. The lineup for this series includes Brahms’s groundbreak

I’m looking through a small, round hole that may be the most celebrated hole in music history. It’s in the middle of a canvas cloth, forming the open mouthpiece of a roughly painted face. And it’s the hole through which, in 1922, the poet Edith Sitwe

My path follows a flower fringed stream on the slopes of a high mountain peak overlooking Verbier. This is May, snow capped Mont Blanc is shimmering in the distance, and the only things that break the silence apart from rushing water are the scrunch

Works by Ravel, Unsuk Chin, Rachmaninov, Freya Waley-Cohen et al George Xiaoyuan Fu (piano) Platoon PLAT15459 ‘Ravel is one of my favourite composers, and Miroirs has so many interesting figurations and textures – I could practise it for hours!’ enth

Late String Quartets Calidore Quartet Signum Classics SIGCD733 ‘We learned a lot about how we play together.’ Ryan Meehan, violinist with the Calidore Quartet, is recalling the making of their Chamber Award-winning recording of Beethoven’s Late Quart

Complete Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin Rachel Podger (violin), Gary Cooper (fortepiano, harpsichord) Channel Classics CCSBOX7824 (8-discs) Between Bach’s great solo violin works and Beethoven’s celebrated Violin Sonatas, Mozart’s 36 Sonatas for Key

I was always aware that my father was a composer. He was working every morning in his study, and he would show me what he was working on and I got very intrigued by it. I was improvising at the piano from the age of six or seven, and I remember my mo