📖 Sunday Culture Crunch 📖

For all your weekend culture needs

Welcome to the first Sunday Culture Crunch — a new fortnightly feature for this newsletter! It’ll be a weekend roundup of thought-provoking listening/reading, new music, my upcoming events, and recommendations for general culture stuff to look out for over the next few weeks. I do all my weekend reading with a large mug of coffee, but I suspect this newsletter can also be enjoyed with any beverage of your choice. If there are things you’d like to see in the crunch let me know in the comments!

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I’m speaking at Edinburgh International Festival this week, on the 24th and 25th August. My workshop on the 25th is already sold out, so don’t miss out on tickets for my discussion about Quartet on the 24th. If you’re based outside Scotland, you can also register to watch online. And if you can make it to Edinburgh, please do come say hi at the book signing afterwards!

Regular followers of this blog will know that I’m currently researching the life and work of the wonderful composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor. I made a feature for BBC Radio 3 about her and two of the women in Quartet — Dorothy Howell and Doreen Carwithen — which you can catch up on here. It includes us discovering a Howell overture over tea & bics (as you do), and me getting exasperated by historical music critics.

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New Recordings

• Helvi Leiviskä, Piano Concerto & Symphony No. 1. This is a disc I’m really looking forward to. Leiviskä was a Finnish composer and there’s so far very little of her music recorded. This is a most welcome world premiere recording of two of her larger works. Ari Rasilainen conducts the Staatskapelle Weimar, with Oliver Triendl at the piano.

• Louise Farrenc, Piano Music Vol. 2. Joanne Polk continues her Farrenc recordings. There are some really enjoyable works on here, beautifully played. The Linos Ensemble also have a recording of Farrenc's chamber music out this fortnight.

• Kalevi Aho, Concertante works for Recorder, Saxophone and Accordion. I’m a big fan of Aho and his bonkers numbers of concertos. If you like this one, you can dig into the other excellent Aho concerto recordings from Bis, including the Double/Triple Concertos and Percussion Concerto.

• Sounds and Sweet Airs: A Shakespeare Songbook. As the cover suggests, this album is just a lot of fun. Carolyn Sampson, Roderick Williams, and Joseph Middleton perform songs inspired by Shakespeare.

• Emilie Mayer, Piano Concerto & Overtures. Mayer’s enjoying something of a renaissance at the minute. A great addition to her growing discography.

• Sirens’ Song. You can’t really go wrong with The Sixteen, and this disc doesn’t disappoint. The stand-out for me is Imogen Holst’s Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow.

• Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 8. It’s Paavo Järvi conducting the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, so I expect this recording will be excellent.

Oldie and a goodie:

• Anna Meredith, FIBS. Been listening to Anna Meredith obsessively this year. I’m sure it’ll wear off eventually but until then, this is on repeat. My highlights are ‘Calion’, ‘moonmoons’ and ‘Paramour’.

What I’m Reading

• Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. To add to the enormous chorus of praise for this book, I really enjoyed it. It’s a beautifully insightful exploration of friendship, love, and creativity. A great summer read.

• Jeremy Eichler, Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and Music of Remembrance. Out on the 29th August, this book explores how we can hear the history of musical works, and how music can commemorate the Holocaust. I’ll be posting a full review before long.

• In other writing, I enjoyed this article from Granta Best Young Novelist Derek Owusu, on publishing and prizes.

• An illustrated essay from Dandelion Seeds on ‘The Sounds of Home’.

• Kat Lister’s love-letter to the recorder.

• The secret feminist history of butter cows by Lyz Lenz.

• Mary Louisa Locke on nineteenth century lady shoplifters.

• Composer György Kurtág interviewed by Kate Connolly. You can catch up on the UK premiere of his opera Endgame at the Proms on BBC Sounds.

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Live Music

• I’ve just finished writing a programme essay for Shipston Song, a festival in the Cotswolds. Their programme is gender equal, and they’ve got Boulanger, Clarke, Schumann, Hensel etc alongside Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Stenhammar, Tippett. You can check them out and book tickets here.

• Edinburgh International Festival is in full swing — Klaus Mäkelä conducts the Oslo Philharmonic on the 21st August, Yuja Wang plays Ravel on the 22nd, Nai Barghouti is performing on the 26th, Anoushka Shankar on the 27th, and Karina Canellakis conducts the closing concert also on the 27th.

• There are a load of world/European premieres at the BBC Proms this fortnight. Judith Weir’s on the 24th August, Julia Adolphe on the 25th, and Rachel Laurin and Carlos Simon on the 26th. Chineke! Orchestra are always great and are performing on the 1st September. If you’re not London-based the Proms are all broadcast live on Radio 3, and the Chineke! Prom will also be on BBC 4 later as well.

• A brand new festival, Green Room, is launching on 1st September in Kent. Fenella Humphreys, Nicholas Daniel, Jack Gonzalez-Harding and the London Mozart Players are their headline classical performers.

• Aurora Orchestra are playing Anna Meredith, Caroline Shaw, Nico Muhly and Bach at King’s Place on 22nd September.

• Yuja Wang is playing pieces she’s chosen to respond to David Hockney’s artworks at Lightroom from 28-30 September.

• Ever wanted to go behind the scenes at the Royal Opera House? They have backstage tours running through the summer. They’ve also got a ‘Herstory’ tour running, and a tour about theatre and crime in Covent Garden.

And for something completely different…

If you want a silly podcast that will get you smiling, I’ve been enjoying Who Shat on the Floor at my Wedding. Three friends investigate, totally seriously, which of their wedding guests is responsible for rogue faecal matter at their nuptials. Kudos to the genuine forensic experts who weigh in on the investigation. I’m only on episode 7 so no spoilers please!