At its première in June 1969 Shostakovich described his Symphony No. 14, in effect a symphonic song cycle, as ‘a fight for the liberation of humanity… a great protest against death, a reminder to live one’s life honestly, decently, nobly…’ Originally intending to write an oratorio, Shostakovich set eleven poems on the theme of mortality, and in particular early or unjust death, for two solo singers accompanied by strings and percussion. This is the penultimate release in Vasily Petrenko’s internationally acclaimed symphonic cycle.

The Fourteenth Symphony is a powerful, death-obsessed work, unremittingly gripping, and the penultimate work in the canon of 15 symphonies. Petrenko’s cycle has thus far received huge international acclaim, winning accolades from The Sunday Times, Gramophone, IRR, Fanfare, BBC Music Magazine etc.

The award-winning Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is the UK’s oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra, dating from 1840. The dynamic Russian, Vasily Petrenko was appointed Principal Conductor of the orchestra is September 2006 and in September 2009 became Chief Conductor.

Dmitry SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

In Leopold Mozart’s old house (now a museum) in the Bavarian city of Augsburg a piano tuner is hard at work tuning one of the working exhibits – a venerable clavichord. Enter Reinhard Goebel and Mirijam Contzen whose new Oehms Classics recording of the Six Mozart Violin Concertos with the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie is sure to stimulate lively debate and maybe even raise eyebrow or two in the coming months. For one thing there are six not five concertos and that is something that Goebel, after exhaustive detective work, is now confidant should be the accepted norm. In this exclusive audio podcast with Edward Seckerson he outlines precisely why he now believes that the Concerto KV 271a is genuine Mozart despite the New Mozart Edition’s continued insistence upon annexing it. It’s a fascinating and convincing case he makes and Mirijam Contzen is on hand to offer the player’s perspective.

Goebel is a colourful and forceful personality and that has been reflected over the years in his ground-breaking and super-dynamic recordings of repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries. He is passionate about giving music historical context and his programmes (and recent recordings) with the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie – a dynamic young ensemble he can now call his own – are constantly looking to champion the composers who laid the foundations for composers like Mozart. And that all-important word “Style” – we can all learn a thing or two from him in that regard…

http://www.kammerphilharmonie.de/

http://www.oehmsclassics.de/

In the season of goodwill a new musical based on Bret Easton Ellis’ notorious novel American Psycho might earn itself the subtitle “NOT the Christmas Show” – but when the composer is Duncan Sheik, he of the sensational Spring Awakening, and the director Rupert Goold, fresh into his artistic stewardship of the Almeida Theatre, all bets are off. There’s even a number entitled “Mistletoe Alert” – so the season of rampant consumerism might well prove just the time to launch one of the most anticipated musicals of this or any season. In this exclusive audio podcast Sheik and Goold tell how the bloodiest show since Sweeney Todd has reached the stage and how for Matt Smith the leap from Doctor Who to Patrick Bateman – city slicker and seasoned psychopath – might not prove so dramatic after all. Bateman is surely one of the most alien and elusive creations in contemporary fiction.

Book writer Robert Aguirre-Sacasa has embraced the Batemanisms – “It all comes down to this: I feel like shit but look great” – and Sheik will be referencing the 80s soundtrack in Bateman’s head as a textural part of his eagerly awaited score. Patrick Bateman live on stage. Bring a raincoat.

http://www.almeida.co.uk/

Bowing in at the London Coliseum for the latest revival of Anthony Minghella’s sumptuous staging of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, conductor Gianluca Marciano is fast building a reputation as one of the most thoughtful and stylistically incisive of thoroughbred Italians on the circuit. In the UK his work at Grange Park Opera has garnered impressive reviews and he has taken the Italian tradition East with his Music Directorship of the Tbilisi State Opera and Ballet Company in Georgia – a great breeding ground for some impressive vocal talents – and the Artistic Directorship of the Al Bustan Festival in Beirut. In this exclusive audio podcast he shares with Edward Seckerson his views on the Italian style and traditions, his thoughts on the role of the conductor, his love of literature and the classics and even musicals, his need to be informed. His belief that everything in music is essentially a form of singing tells us more than words ever could about his musical philosophy.

http://www.gianlucamarciano.com/

As Vasily Petrenko’s much-lauded Shostakovich symphony cycle moves closer to completion we reach the renegade Fourth Symphony written in 1935 and driven underground by Stalin and his establishment naysayers. This astonishing piece  – which remained unperformed for 25 years until 1961 when Kondrashin in Russia and Eugene Ormandy in the USA brought it in from the cold – represents the moment, in Petrenko’s view, when Shostakovich really became Shostakovich and with significant inspiration from Gustav Mahler on matters of sonata-form and the lethal deployment of irony was able to leave prescribed traditions behind and forge a path of his own. As with every release in this series, Petrenko talks to Edward Seckerson about the cycle in general, the piece in particular, and some very personal conclusions of his own.

http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.573188

http://www.liverpoolphil.com/274/vasily-petrenko/

In the listening room of Grieg Hall, Bergen – a concert hall sometimes masquerading as a theatre and vice versa – Edward Seckerson talks to Mary Miller, Director of Bergen National Opera, and Andrew Litton, Music Director of the venerable Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra – about the genesis of opera in Bergen and the prospect of the big Autumn production – Beethoven’s cry for freedom and political tolerance, Fidelio – which will serve as an upbeat to the 200th anniversary of the establishment of Norway’s Constitution in 2014.

Miller talks about the creative freedom of an opera company which is project specific and not beholden to a roster of contracted artists while Litton endorses his passion for Beethoven and references the many reasons why this his only opera is so close to his heart. He speaks of Beethoven’s genius for self-editing, of innovation (the timpani not tuned to tonic/dominant for the great dungeon scene), of the supreme challenges of both vocal and instrumental writing. Most fascinatingly, in this staging of Fidelio the Bergen Philharmonic will quite literally become the main protagonist.

http://www.bno.no/

http://www.harmonien.no/

On the day that the “chamber” version of his Tony Award winning show Titanic opens at London’s Southwark Playhouse the loquacious MAURY YESTON – composer of Nine and the “other” Phantom – chats to EDWARD SECKERSON about his journey in musical theatre. An undergraduate at Yale University, Yeston majored in music theory and has been influenced by everything from Stravinsky to Doo-Wop. His Titanic score is a compendium of all things British from Gilbert and Sullivan to Charles Villiers Stanford. Yeston has been a major presence at the BMI workshop in New York, mentoring and encouraging music theatre talent and crucially giving them an “audience” in the honing of their skills. As anyone who has ever heard the opening “symphony of voices” in Nine will testify his is the most fertile of musical imaginations which married to a great nose for drama makes for a master practitioner in the genre.

Benjamin Wallfisch was born into an extraordinarily musical family. His father Raphael Wallfisch is a cellist of international repute and his grandmother Anita Lasker-Wallfisch would not be alive today had her cello not served as a refuge for her soul while she was an inmate at Auschwitz. Benjamin did not play the cello but instead graduated from piano to baton in pursuit and fulfillment of his musical passions.

He also fell in love with the cinema and while watching ET take his leave of Elliot in the closing sequence of Steven Spielberg’s classic movie he realised how much of the emotion of that sequence came directly from John Williams’ score. Ben wanted, needed, to do the same and after a seven-year apprenticeship to movie music ace Dario Marianelli he was paid the greatest compliment of all when he orchestrated and conducted what was to be Marianelli’s Oscar-winning score for the movie Atonement.

He now has 43 movie scores under his belt and his latest for Summer in February starring Downton Abbey’s Dan Stephens is sure to haunt the airwaves for some time to come. His concert pieces are mounting up, too, and when he’s not conducting a Shostakovich violin concerto he might be caretaking his own. In this exclusive audio podcast he vigorously refutes the notion that movie music is in some way a poor relation of the music that daily fills our concert halls and indeed is quick to tell Edward Seckerson that speed of composition is as vital for him in his concert pieces as in his movie scores. That way lies the spontaneity he so passionately seeks.

http://www.benjaminwallfisch.com/film/

Lucy Schaufer has always been one to confound our expectations. As she puts it herself, she’s “an American in London, conceived within the American Dream and living in the Old World.” As an indication of her boundless versatility she’s been seen here in roles as diverse as Claire DeLoone in Bernstein’s On the Town, Thea in Tippett’s The Knot Garden, and Jenny in Knussen’s Higglety Pigglety Pop! She made a huge impression at the Leicester Curve as Margaret in the UK premiere of Adam Guettel’s The Light in the Piazza. “Carpentersville” is her debut album and in this exclusive audio podcast she talks to Edward Seckerson about her reasons for doing it, her choice of material, and who she is as an artist. “The voices heard in these songs”, she says, “are women telling their stories of love, hope, humour, worries and woes from the simplicity of childhood dreams to the shattering acceptance of life’s limitations. And all of it through the vision of a kid who grew up in a small town outside Chicago called Carpentersville.”

http://www.lucyschaufer.com

It comes as no surprise that international tenor Ian Bostridge plays a significant part in EMI and Virgin Classics‘ contribution to Britten 100. In this exclusive audio podcast talks to Edward Seckerson about the man, the music, the insecurities, the contradictions, the isolation that came with being a pacifist in time of war and a homosexual in a time of illegality. Bostridge talks from first hand of Britten’s extraordinary gifts as a word-setter – a composer of songs and operas that define his special gifts and, of course, his inspirational union with Peter Pears, his muse, his, partner, his rock. Bostridge talks about how the pears legacy has impacted on generations of tenors in this repertoire and how those operas and the characters he wrote specifically for Pears were essentially about aspects of himself. EMI and Virgin Classics are putting together a collection of new releases to celebrate Britten 100 and three brand new recordings feature Bostridge himself. He talks about them here: an album of Britten Songs with Antonio Pappano including “Winter Words” and the “Michelangelo Sonnets”; a new War Requiem from Pappano’s Santa Cecilia forces in Rome; and a live Rape of Lucretia  from the Aldeburgh Festival 2011 conducted by Oliver Knussen.