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Oxford ISSUE 2 | 2012

THE MAGAZINE FOR THE ALUMNI OF THE FACULTY OF MUSIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Inside this issue:

Anacréon at the Sheldonian Alfred Brendel in Oxford The Music Faculty 40 years on Interview with BBC Radio 3’s Suzy Klein Oxf Musician 2012 [F]__Layout 1 30/07/2012 11:58 Page 2

CONTENTS Oxford Ertegun Scholarships ...... 3 Two Music Graduates are first among scholars Anacréon at the Sheldonian ...... 4 The Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment perform the modern premiere of Rameau’s THE MAGAZINE FOR THE ALUMNI OF THE FACULTY OF MUSIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD Anacréon Hummingbirds and film music in FROM THE HEATHER PROFESSOR Berkeley ...... 6 Peter Franklin recounts his time as Bloch Visiting Welcome to this, the second Faculty of Music alumni newsletter. A year passes Professor of Music at the University of California incredibly quickly here, and it seems scarcely credible that we’re once again The Music Faculty 40 years on ...... 7 putting together our collection of snapshots of what members of the Faculty  Susan Wollenberg reflects on her time at the past and present  have been doing, and a taste of the amazing variety of Faculty events and accomplishments that continue to pour forth from this hotbed of New Radcliffe Chamber Music music and scholarship. Residency ...... 8 The Cavaleri String quartet talk about their Nothing ever stays still around here, and alongside continuing developments in first visit to Oxford the buildings wonderful new lighting in the Denis Arnold Hall, a ceremonial Alfred Brendel in Oxford ...... 10 opening for the new ensemble room and practice rooms, new flooring in The legendary pianist visits Oxford University various places, and most importantly new pianos in the practice rooms  thanks for a Masterclass and Lecture/Recital to Dame Mitsuko Uchida there have been various changes in the Faculty’s staff. Masterclass: ‘The stuff of dreams’ ...... 11 Michelle Anthony, who put the last newsletter together, got married and Faculty Pianist plays for Brendel and Lang Lang moved to the US with her husband  her place now happily filled by Rebecca Alumna Profile ...... 12 Tay, a theology alumna from Oriel, who comes to us from time spent working at We catch up with Radio 3’s Suzy Klein the Oxford Playhouse. And Oxford’s rather too successful track record of Oxford University Music Society News . .13 supplying other universities with their professors sadly for us continues with The new president of OUMS talks about the Martin Stokes’s appointment to the distinguished position of King Edward VII year ahead Professor of Music at the Kings College London. We wish Martin  who was Building for the Future ...... 14 featured in the last newsletter  every success in his new role, just as we We celebrate the completion of the Practice welcome his successor as ethnomusicologist in the Faculty: Dr Jason Stanyek, Block and Denis Arnold Hall refurbishment who joins us from New York University in the autumn. Alumni Profiles ...... 16 Oxford Musician catches up with six Faculty Fortunately it’s not only in their appointments to other universities that the Alumni Faculty’s outstanding scholars and musicians get their due recognition, and last summer no fewer than four members of the Faculty were recognised with the Current Student Profiles ...... 18 title of professor: Susan Wollenberg whose profile appears on page 7, Michael We meet Julia Sitkovetsky and Adam Harper Burden, Elizabeth Eva Leach, and Martin Stokes  before his appointment to Bate Collection News ...... 19 Kings. No less significantly, the outstanding role of the Faculty’s library staff, and Andy Lamb looks at the year ahead, and the facilities of the Faculty library itself, were quite rightly recognised this year announces the Bate Recording Prize winners by an International Association of Music Libraries IAML Excellence Award. News and Releases from Members of the Looking forward, there’s great excitement in the Faculty about the forthcoming Faculty ...... 20 Anacréon event with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the News, recordings, books and broadcasts. Sheldonian see page 4; the next visit of our newly appointed Quartet in Stay in touch ...... 24 Residence, the Cavaleri String Quartet, who reflect on their first encounter with Alumni Events, benefits, and how to be involved the Faculty on page 8; and much, much more.

Edited by Professor Eric Clarke, Ms Aloïse Fiala As we said last year: this newsletter is just one of the ways in which we hope to Murphy, and Ms Rebecca Tay stay in touch with you, our alumni: we hope you enjoy reading in the following Magazine designed by Baseline Arts Ltd pages about what members of the Faculty, and a selection of alumni and current students have been doing. We would love to hear from you, or see you Photography by Anna Söderblom, Ralph at one of our events, so please do keep in touch, send us your news and Williamson, Rob Judges, Jaani Riordan, Graham Fellows, and Michelle Cresswell. suggestions, and help us to continue to grow from strength to strength!

The editors would like to thank all the students, Best wishes, staff, and alumni who have contributed to the magazine; Lang Lang and Columbia Artists Management Inc; Alfred Brendel and Ingpen and Williams Ltd; The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; and the University of Oxford Eric Clarke Humanities Division and Development Office. Heather Professor of Music

2 . OXFORD MUSICIAN . 2012 FACULTY 3 . 2012 . www.ox.ac.uk/ertegun OXFORD MUSICIAN MUSICIAN OXFORD The Oxford ThinkingThe Oxford Campaign: FIND OUT MORE! OUT FIND Ertegun awards: can help about how you information For support and the Music Faculty students visit www.campaign.ox.ac.uk MICA ERTEGUN VISITS MUSIC THE FACULTY The Rolling Stones, The Ray Franklin, Aretha Yarns... The Charles, It that the say is fair to Ertegun some name has borne witness to defining music of the of the most genre aren’t Yarns The OK, perhaps past 60 years. Nevertheless, it was our yet. there, quite be rehearsing good fortune to and pleasure of Music when Mica Ertegun, in the Faculty of Atlantic founder of Ahmet, late wife around. was being shown Records, of songs, a couple running through After met we how about the band, chatted we The in Oxford. music scene and the live role an integral has played of Music Faculty through Yarns, The of in the development newly refurbished, both superb, providing practice and a professional spaces our recorded in which we studio, recording at several will be playing we year, This EP. BBC 6 been picked up by and have festivals Robinson. Tom Music’s storyThe of our (albeit fledgling) all a story is probably that’s development Mica familiar to too Ertegun, but it was of music diversity clear that the facilities, of Music and support the Faculty by given keep our We’ll made a lasting impression. contract that recording for fingers crossed arriving in the post… Hodgson, Thomas in Music DPhil candidate College St John’s

Oxford University arising out of the Led Oxford O2 concert reunion Zeppelin at London’s in 2007. Arena particularlyIt that exciting is therefore in the first feature two Music graduates the selected from of scholars, group of extraordinarily first round competitive Christabel one of Stirling, applications. students in the DPhil only four obtain ErtegunHumanities Division to of Camberwell is a graduate funding, School of Art, and London Kings College, Christabel’s University. Brookes Oxford interdisciplinary project, supervised by Born, will be an Georgina Professor role exploration of music’s ethnographic in and the ways in the urban landscape, which it engages with public and private spaces in the contemporary city. other Ertegun of Music’s The Faculty is a composer Johannes Snape, Scholar, studying at the Institutewho is currently of and participatingThe Hague, Sonology in University. in Sociology seminars at Leiden “Bonesong”, Johannes was the composer of at an electroacoustic installation created DepartmentCambridge University’s of He Festival. and at the Edinburgh Zoology also co-curated a the Rite of Spring Project, performance masterwork of Stravinsky’s in a multi-story car park in Peckham. Dr Martyn Harry Studies Director of Graduate College and St Anne’s College St Hilda’s

Mica Ertegun with Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones bassist John Paul Ertegun Zeppelin Mica with Led Scholarships K Earlier this year a major new graduate Earlier this year was Oxford at scholarship programme the Micaannounced: and Ahmet ScholarshipErtegun Graduate new exciting These Programme. been made possible scholarships have gift the most generous for by Humanities students in the University’s history900-year – £26 million pledged Micaby Ertegun the Humanities to announce pleased to are We Division. the students from graduate two that amongst the first of Music are Faculty holders. award The Mica and Ahmet Ertegun Graduate will initially Scholarships Programme support scholarships at least 15 graduate rising 35 in due course to per year, The stage. later at a scholarships or more fifteen Ertegun Scholars will Graduate the use of Ertegunhave House (37a St. Giles) which will be fully equipped with state-of-the-art A Senior IT facilities. staff at among the academic Scholar from of a programme the University will curate the Ertegun as they for Scholars, events will be known, and the wider Humanities community. graduate Mica Ertegun of is an interior designer and is the widow of Ahmet world renown, Ertegun, of Atlantic Records, the founder that shaped the company the record of artistscareers as Ray as diverse Charles, The and the Rolling Stones. Franklin Aretha to benefaction on a donation given builds Ertegun Oxf Musician 2012 [F]__Layout 1 30/07/2012 11:58 Page 3 Page 11:58 1 30/07/2012 [F]__Layout 2012 Musician Oxf Oxf Musician 2012 [F]__Layout 1 30/07/2012 11:58 Page 4 EVENTS Anacréon

L Reliving student days; listening to music on the at the Sheldonian steps of the concert hall Modern premieres of long-neglected operas by major composers are rare, so a forthcoming concert in Oxford’s beautiful Sheldonian Theatre this autumn promises to be a very exciting event indeed. On 9 November the one-act opera Anacréon by Jean-Philippe Rameau will receive its modern premiere by none other than the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with Dr Jonathan Williams at the helm. This major collaboration is made possible by the significant support of the Music Faculty, St Hilda’s College, Magdalen College, the John Fell Fund, the Conway Fund, and generous private donors.

Jonathan teaches orchestration and is the copied score of Les Boréades. It’s such some interesting challenges to a novice Director of College Music at St Hilda’s, and astonishingly imaginative, colourful, musicologist - the first being to arrive at a is a busy freelance musician, and dissonant, varied and dramatic music: I was definitive version of the score. The conductor. We caught up with Jonathan to hooked! I was really surprised that it was autograph score hasn’t survived and none find out what led him to be involved in impossible to get hold of Rameau’s music of the surviving musical sources is Rameau’s music and this exciting premiere. in print, so in an attempt to rectify that I complete. What’s more there are two applied to Keble to read for an MPhil and different versions dating from three How did you come to be interested in study Rameau. I arrived in 1989 and, with different productions, so initially this was the music of Rameau? Brian Trowell and Edward Higginbottom as quite a puzzle! I came across Rameau whilst putting supervisors, I got to work on Anacréon, together a programme of French music for alongside the distractions of horn playing Establishing the basics of the historical the University Chamber Orchestra in and conducting the OU Opera Club. circumstances of the opera meant Manchester back in 1989. I was casting exploring Paris libraries and sifting around for something from the eighteenth Why Anacréon? through two decades’ worth of journals century to go with some Fauré, Ibert and Graham Sadler had suggested that and newspapers for any mention at all of Poulenc, and my tutor suggested Rameau. I Anacréon would be a good subject for its creation, performance, and reception. got in touch with the Rameau scholar some research: the sources were My most fruitful was time spent in the Graham Sadler who, with amazing and incomplete and little was known about the Archives nationales going through characteristic generosity, sent me his hand- music or its composition, so it presented paperwork from the royal department

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responsible for organising the rousing choruses. It’s a remarkable Boréades with OAE that Rattle chose to entertainment at the court of Louis XV, testament to the imagination and perform. Next year OAE will play the first the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi. Waiting to be creative spirit of a 70-year-old composer Rameau opera at Glyndebourne. read here was page after page of and it deserves to be better known. handwritten invoices from all those So OAE were the obvious choice for this providing services related to the first Has Rameau been neglected in the UK? project? performance of Anacréon at the beautiful Rameau enjoyed a renaissance around his Yes. My first experiences hearing OAE château at Fontainebleau in1754. From bicentenary year in 1983 but has been were during the 1990s when they visited this information a detailed picture of the only infrequently performed in the UK Oxford regularly with such conductors as premiere could be constructed. This was since. Unlike his contemporaries Vivaldi, Charles Mackerras and Frans Brüggen. A crucial and fascinating information, but Bach or Handel, Rameau didn’t compose friend and I used to listen through a gap most important for me was that the a Gloria, Brandenburg Concerto or in the doors at the back of the Sheldonian research would lead to something Messiah, so his music doesn’t have the where we could best hear the horns (and practical: an edition of the opera. For my same accessible points of entry. And from where we were regularly shooed work to have now been published by given that his operas were bank-rolled by away by the custodian…!). The players of Bärenreiter is very gratifying indeed. Louis XV, and make extravagant use of OAE combine an open-minded approach large forces (including dancers), they’re towards scholarship with an unparalleled What’s the opera like? neither cheap nor easy to stage. Then virtuosity and creative enthusiasm and Louis de Cahusac’s light-hearted libretto is there’s the French Baroque style itself – flexibility. I am hugely encouraged by, and witty and light, but as there are also like any French music it inhabits a rarefied grateful for, the enthusiasm and support allegorical references to court figures sound world and poses quite particular that everyone has shown for the project; a (among them Louis XV himself), there is technical challenges for the performer. celebration of scholarship and world-class also a subversive message beneath the But Rameau has had some champions in performance. love triangle plot. The score is full of the UK. John Eliot Gardiner and Simon Rameau’s trademarks: lively dances, Rattle have both performed his music at Daniel Hyde, ravishing soprano solos, fast-paced the Proms and when invited to the Informator recitatives, virtuosic orchestral music and Salzburg Festival it was Rameau’s Les Choristarum, Organist and Tutorial Fellow at Magdalen College; Lecturer in Music

‘We're delighted that Magdalen College Choir will be appearing alongside OAE, with a mix of the well-known Vivaldi Gloria and the lesser- known Anacréon’

J Jonathan Williams inside the Sheldonian

FRIDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2012 Vivaldi Gloria ALUMNI OFFER! 7.30pm . Sheldonian Theatre Daniel Hyde conductor Music Faculty Alumni can claim a 15% Robyn Allegra Parton (alumna) soprano discount off a number of tickets for ORCHESTRA OF THE AGE Esther Brazil soprano Anacréon. Simply quote ‘Oxford OF ENLIGHTENMENT Musician’ when booking your ticket over Jean-Phillipe Rameau Anacréon (1754) the phone. THE CHOIR OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE The first complete performance in Rameau in Oxford Study Day modern times 12:30 – 6pm Consort Iridiana Speakers to include Jennifer Thorp, Peter Brown, Felix Budelmann, Graham Sadler, Jonathan Williams conductor Roger Savage and Roger Scruton. Tickets: £42 £28 £18 £10 Anna Dennis soprano For more information, go to Booking: 01865 244806 Agustìn Prunell-Friend tenor www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/events or contact www.musicatoxford.com Matthew Brook baritone [email protected]

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I wanted to position more as a rich prototypical form of mass-cultural entertainment than a bridge to the Modernism that led Leverkühn into the arms of the Devil.

Perhaps it was because Berkeley’s illustrious Professor Richard Taruskin (sole author of all in Berkeley five volumes of the recent Oxford History of Western Music) had swapped the usual late- romantic put-downs (like ‘decadence’ and There is a species of humming-bird ‘late-romantic’ period of European ‘self-indulgence’) for ‘maximalism’ that I that survives all year in Berkeley, operatic and symphonic culture, c.1880- wanted to nuance the idea that European thanks to feeders suspended in the 1939 – I think of it as the ‘long musical culture at that time had been all gardens of the fanciful houses that late-nineteenth century’. For the posters I about size. The opposing poles of my main climb the hills north of the University chose an appropriately long title: Distant title alluded to two operas by Franz campus. Occasionally in an evening you Sound – Singing Devil. The Politics of Musical Schreker (the subject of the last lecture): his encounter them in groups of what look Passion in the Age of Leverkühn. Adrian once popular The Distant Sound (1912) and like fast-forward dragon flies, hovering and Leverkühn, the fictional composer anti- his more experimental The Singing Devil moving imperceptibly up and down, left hero of Mann’s 1946 novel Dr Faustus was (1929). Each enabled a different way of and right amongst the blooms of some a contemporary of all the figures I wanted confronting the usual critical dismissals of flowering tree, accompanied by a cloud of to discuss, from Mahler and Rachmaninov music that had consequently furnished busy ‘peeping’ sounds. Walking down to to Puccini and Schreker. The underlying models of the regressive conservatism the local supermarket, with a glittering issues arose from the cultural politics and against which avant-garde Modernism view of the Bay ahead of me, the Golden critical controversies that supported what defined its project. It was a topic that had Gate Bridge only just out of sight, I felt no emerged in my film-music book, Seeing less exotic and unlikely; but there I was, a K Berkeley Music Faculty Entrance Through Music. Gender and Modernism in British musicologist teaching a seminar on KK Bay View from Berkeley Campus Classic Hollywood Film Scores (OUP 2011); I Hollywood film music in California, with was able to see that through its pre- the Pacific distantly in sight. This was my publication stages in my borrowed office Changing Places experience in the Fall of (from Mary-Ann Smart) in the Berkeley 2010, and here I was in David Lodge’s Music Department. Along the corridor Euphoria State. were Oxford alumnus and eminent Beethovenian Nicholas Mathew, musical- It was my very good fortune to have been theatre scholar Holley Replogle-Wong and invited to be Bloch Visiting Professor of Romanticism specialist James Davies – Music that semester, a position funded by high-quality colleagues, including of course a bequest from the Swiss-born composer Richard Taruskin himself, who even tried to Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) who spent the explain baseball to me on one memorable last part of his career at the University of trip to watch a game in Oakland. California. The Bloch Professors are required to give a series of six public Back in Oxford the job in hand is to turn the lectures (from which a book should ensue) Bloch Lectures into a book – a happy one and teach a graduate seminar. Not sure that brings back memories of my Euphoria what the latter should be on, I asked days as I work through drafts made on US advice and was told that Hollywood film notepads bought in the little student-shop music would be fine, since no-one else on Euclid. But then I turn the corner of had been teaching it and I had just Jowett Walk and bump into Berkeley finished a book on it. It all seemed too friends like New College JRF Adeline good to be true. Mueller and Musicology MSt student Mark Rodgers. Small world…■ I decided that the lectures would focus on some of my favourite music and resurrect Professor Peter Franklin a long-pending project on the so-called St Catherine’s College

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This year, rather remarkably, is the L The Music Faculty, 32-33 Holywell Street in 1981 40th that I have been in post at the j Lecture Room B in the Holywell Faculty Faculty: when I took up my University Lectureship I was scarcely much older than the students I was teaching, and if ‘When I joined it in 1972 the any of my earliest pupils are reading this Faculty had until then been an they may remember my attic room in 32 Holywell, where the Faculty’s premises all-male team: I was the first were originally situated. Because of the sloping floor, I was advised that it would woman to be appointed to a be impossible to install a piano; but I was University Lectureship in allowed instead to have a Hitchcock spinet, originally on loan from the Roger Music at Oxford. ’ L The Old Library Warner Collection, which was certainly an attractive alternative (and which later total of four women lecturers, with Bloxham had a guiding hand in found a permanent home in the Bate Suzanne Aspden, Suzie Clark and myself, planning the musical side of this collection, thanks to the support of the together with the late Hélène La Rue, who enterprise. Finally, I’ll mention an area of Bate Friends, the Hulme University Fund wondered if she should change her research which I embarked on not by and the MGC/V&A Local Museums name! In the 1990s I introduced my plan but by chance when Fred Sternfeld, Purchase Fund). courses on women composers, when this who acted as my unofficial mentor in was still a very new area of study. the early years of my appointment to When I joined it in 1972 the Faculty had Highlights of those early efforts included the Faculty, found he didn’t have time to until then been an all-male team: I was the guest lectures by Julie Sadie and Rhian complete the work for his chapter on first woman to be appointed to a Samuel in the wake of their work on the Music for the eighteenth-century University Lectureship in Music at Oxford. New Grove Dictionary of Women volume (vol. 5) of the History of the When in 1975 our first child was born, Composers: the collaborative review of University of Oxford and offered the task provision for my maternity leave had to be that volume produced by my seminar to me! This area has remained a strong invented by the University as the situation students was subsequently accepted for interest, and I’ve moved through the had never arisen with this particular type publication in the Musical Times (1995). centuries since then, recently of post before! In 1980, with our second More recently the bicentenary conference contributing a chapter on ‘Music in child due and the Faculty’s move to St ‘Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn Oxford, 1945–60’ for the Festschrift for Aldate’s in prospect, Anne Roberts, the Bartholdy) and her Circle’ brought leading John Caldwell (ed. Emma Hornby and administrator at the time, suggested that I scholars in the field to Oxford in David Maw) in which the beginnings of might prefer an office on the first rather celebration of a composer with Oxford the modern Music Faculty were traced. than the second floor. I was delighted to connections (through the Deneke find that it featured a view over Christ Mendelssohn collection housed in the I’ve found (and still find) this a most Church meadow (as well as comfortably Bodleian Library). hospitable and stimulating place in housing a piano). which to work, and am rather proud to Schubert has been another important contemplate my long association with Much has changed, of course, in the focus of my teaching and research: it was the Faculty. ■ Faculty over the decades, and in particular wonderful to hear the ‘Spirit of Schubert’ the gender balance has definitely on BBC Radio Three in March of this year Professor Susan Wollenberg improved. Not so long ago we reached a and to know that my former pupil Emma Lady Margaret Hall

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New Radcliffe Chamber Music Residency

As mentioned in the last issue of the magazine, the Faculty of Music launched a new Chamber Music residency in 2011 with support from the Radcliffe Trust. Four of the country’s best young string quartets competed in the final at the Holywell Music Room last November, with the residency being awarded to the Cavaleri String Quartet. We catch up with the Cavaleris to see how they’re enjoying the residency.

Congratulations once more! How did it have to listen to any Haydn quartet to melodies and each of the four parts is full feel winning the competition? hear an example of this. We all get such of challenges. Another favourite is the Great! We know there are many deserving a buzz from achieving the pure blended Ravel Quartet. We’ll always have fond quartets out there so it’s always very sound that is possible in these pieces. It memories of performing that work from satisfying when it goes your way. And we feels as if the four instruments are so our Wigmore Hall debut in 2010. felt honoured to be chosen by a panel of beautifully balanced that they become Oxford professors, who assessed us not one. Add to this the charm, humour and How do you approach new music as a just in performance but also in the short warmth in Haydn’s music and it group? Do you find it presents a coaching session that we gave to a becomes an immensely satisfying form different set of challenges to student ensemble. It’s nice to know that of music-making. It’s difficult to talk traditional repertoire? we were chosen on the basis of both of about core classical string quartet The challenges of new music can be very these aspects of what we do. repertoire without mentioning different but the goal is the same. The Beethoven. We all grew up listening to difficulty lies in trying to understand the The purpose of the residency was to great recordings of the Beethoven composer’s style quickly. Each time we attract young ensembles wishing to Quartets and it’s so rewarding to get to play a new Beethoven quartet we already develop and deepen their approach to play them! From the energy and vigour have a degree of understanding of his works from the standard of his early quartets, to the emotional repertory. What draws you to this kind intensity of the late works, they have of work? everything that a performer could want. ‘From the moment we arrived I think if you ask any quartet player why We also have a passion for the late we were made to feel very they devote their lives to the genre, they’ll Romantic and 20th century repertoire. A say it’s because of the abundance and big favourite is Janacek’s Quartet No. 2 welcome… there was a real buzz richness of the repertoire. We are spoilt for Intimate Letters, which we’re performing around the faculty and we choice with masterpieces written by quite a lot around the country at the some of the greatest composers. You only moment. He writes such sublime quickly settled in.’’

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So far you’ve visited the faculty for the and Rowie both attended the Yehudi first of three week-long residencies Menuhin School and were greatly which will take place over the next few inspired by his musicianship. We all ye ars. How did you find it? admire the violinist Gordan Nikolitch, From the moment we arrived we were whose approach to music is so free and made to feel very welcome. It was great liberating. Being part of the string to see that there was a real buzz around ensemble directed by him at the Royal the faculty and we quickly settled in (the College of Music was an unforgettable coffee and pastries also helped!). experience. It was here at the RCM that Coaching the students was a real the quartet was formed. Anna and Ciaran pleasure. All the ensembles were of a high were founding members, later joined by standard and it was challenging for us to Annie from the Sydney Conservatorium coach not just quartets but piano trios and Rowie, who came down to London and other mixed ensembles too. Another after finishing at the RNCM. She was very highlight was getting to work with the fortunate to receive coaching in composers, who produced some Manchester with the late Chris Rowland, excellent pieces for us. It’s pretty exciting and indeed the quartet in its student to learn around ten new wo rks in a ve ry years also received coaching from him. He short space of time for a public workshop! was a fascinating character and a Our concerts at the Holywell were also wonderful chamber musician. In our first very memorable; it’s a venue with a real session with him he seemed to have an sense of occasion and history. Towards almost psychic ability to work out each of the end of the busy week, we were lucky our personalities after hearing us play one enough to be invited to dinner at high movement of a Mozart Quartet! The older table in Magdalen and Wadham Colleges generation of string quartets, like the – two of us at each college. For the two of Amadeus and Alban Berg Quartets, were us who went to Magdalen, it was also a constant source of inspiration to us. incredible to walk across the roof tops We’ve been lucky to play to members of and down what seemed like a secret these great groups and to learn from their staircase, into that stunning dining room. decades of experience at the top level. At dinner Rowie sat next to an Growing up with their recordings inspired musical language, but with a new piece astrophysicist, who taught her all about all of us to form a string quartet. this is not always the case. We recently atom splitting. On hearing that she played played Black Angels for electric string the cello for a living, he teased her ‘Is that The next part of the residency will take quartet by George Crumb, at the all?!’ It was a great night and by the end of place in Michaelmas term 2012. What Wigmore Hall. In this piece we were the week we felt very much part of the are you most looking forward to, and required to play tuned wine glasses, Oxford family. what music do you plan to bring us? maracas, tam tams, and cymbals with our As we spend so much time travelling, it’s bows, as well as shouting in Swahili, Our students gave you some wonderful nice to know that we have a creative base Russian and French! However unusual the feedback with regards to the coaching in Oxford. The faculty is the perfect place piece, you realise that a contemporary you provided. When you were students to escape the hectic pace of London life composer very often has intentions that who inspired you? Did you all always and get some good work done. We’re are similar to those of a ‘classical’ want to form a string quartet? particularly looking forward to learning composer, but with a different voice. It’s As students we were all incredibly lucky the Third Quartet by Hugh Wood, an our job and pleasure to discover what to learn from some of the most eminent Oxford alumnus who is celebrating his that voice is. musicians from all over the world. Anna 80th birthday this year. Hopefully he will spend one of the days with us, introducing his work to the students. We’ll also have some Beethoven, Brahms and Schnittke on the menu. All very exciting! ■

ALUMNI OFFER! A limited number of free tickets for the Michaelmas Term Cavaleri Concert will be available to Music Faculty Alumni. Email [email protected] to register your interest and receive dates and programme information.

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In February 2012, the distinguished tell the performer what he should do drew attention to the huge range of his pianist Alfred Brendel presided over and not the performer telling the piece music, his influence on others, and his two remarkable musical events in what it should be like, or the composer foreshadowing, in the later works, of Oxford, joint ventures promoted by what he ought to have composed.’ developments in 20th century music. both the Music Faculty and Music at Oxford. Now in his 82nd year, Brendel Although Brendel is primarily associated Since his much-publicised retirement in has various connections with Oxford: he with the music of Beethoven, Schubert, 2008, Alfred Brendel has played in is an Honorary Fellow of Exeter College Haydn and Mozart, a glance at his public hardly at all. Although some of and was awarded an honorary DMus in discography reveals significant the musical examples on this occasion 1983; the present writer has the honour excursions into other areas of the were provided in classic recordings by of bearing the name of Alfred Brendel in repertoire. Liszt is not a composer with other pianists, whose playing Brendel his job title, since the post of Curator of whom one might at first expect a evidently admires, he did treat us to his Music at the Bodleian Libraries was performer of Brendel’s temperament to own live renderings of the Petrarch endowed in honour of the pianist in have a great affinity, but the pianist is Sonnet no. 123, Unstern and excerpts 2010. evidently fascinated by Liszt the man from the sonata, to illustrate his points. and his music. Over the years, he has On 15 February, Brendel gave an eagerly produced benchmark recordings of The lecture has certainly caused the anticipated masterclass in the Holywell most of the more important works, present writer, at least, to look at Liszt in Music Room – a complete sell-out well including the B minor sonata, the a new light. To use Brendel’s own words, in advance, as might be expected. Those Années de Pèlerinage and the concertos. what emerged was a picture of “a noble present were privileged to witness three It should not, therefore, have come as a and generous personality”, a description talented students being put through surprise that he chose this occasion to that is as appropriate to the lecturer as it their paces by a pianist who sets the premiere his Liszt lecture in English in is to his subject. ■ same exacting standards for his pupils the Sheldonian Theatre on 24 February, as he does for himself. Movements from following on from Liszt’s bicentenary Martin Holmes both of Beethoven’s A flat major celebrations last year. Alfred Brendel Curator of Music sonatas, opp. 26 and 110, were put under the microscope, separated by The event was entitled ‘Genius of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, and Expression’: a Lecture Recital exploring the a common theme to emerge from Legacy of Franz Liszt (1811-1866), Brendel’s comments was his concern to employing Schumann’s description of realise the composer’s intentions as the legendary 19th century pianist faithfully as possible. Speaking of his whom Wagner described as ‘the most own place in pianistic history, Brendel musical of musicians’. While readily has said: ‘If I belong to a tradition it is a admitting that Liszt’s considerable tradition that makes the masterpiece output is uneven in quality, Brendel

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Masterclass: ‘The stuff of dreams’

In my first two years at Oxford I’d Anyone who has seen Alfred Brendel ‘I got to experience first-hand taken part in a number of speak or teach will probably have a fair masterclasses put on by the Faculty – idea of how the rest of that masterclass the standards of a man who sometimes as a soloist, but also with panned out. Let’s say that he is not one to has made his way to the chamber groups, duos, singers – and I’ll pull his punches and, for all that I think admit that I’d expected something along much of what he was saying was absolute top of his game.’ the same lines with these two most recent profoundly, unequivocally true, the lesson events, in spite of the occasions involving he taught us best was how to handle chastised me, Lang Lang patted me on musicians with significantly bigger often quite trenchant criticism in a room the back. Brendel’s reality check was international reputations. Turning up that full of your peers and teachers. ‘You do complemented by Lang Lang’s generous Thursday at the Holywell Music Room, not understand dynamics!’, ‘You play encouragement. I watched in awe as he then, and finding the venue filled to a totally, completely, out of time!’ But I can enchanted the audience, as he swept capacity that I’d never dreamed it could honestly say that I really did enjoy playing around the stage, as he demonstrated my hold (‘It’s very, very busy in there’, I was told to Alfred Brendel in the end. And not just piece with breath-taking and effortless in the Green Room) would be the first because ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you bravura. And then it was over. I signed the surprise of many to follow. In contrast to stronger’, as one audience member BBC’s release form, returned the smiles of the clamour of the Room itself, the space reminded me afterwards, but because I the departing crowds, and watched as backstage was deathly quiet. Clocks ticked, got to experience first-hand the standards the man I’d shared a piano stool with not radiators hummed (without offering any of a man who has made his way to the ten minutes before was escorted into a breath of warmth for frozen fingers), and absolute top of his game. limousine by men in black sunglasses. three eager student pianists tried not to gape as Alfred Brendel offered them each The contrast with Lang Lang less than a In short, two very different pianists and a chocolate biscuit. I’d love to be able to week later could hardly have been two very different experiences. But in all say that in response to my reverential greater. As I discovered, one does not truth, the lasting impression is simply of questioning Brendel revealed some of the simply sit in a Green Room with Lang having had an unbelievably inspiring (and deepest secrets in the world of piano Lang. The Sheldonian was buzzing with on my CV it looks literally unbelievable) playing; but the truth is that when you sit audience members, camera crew, sound couple of days - of coming into contact in a room eating biscuits with one of the technicians, piano technicians – in fact I with a world that, even amongst the world’s most famous pianists (the muted met everyone other than the man dreaming spires, is the stuff of dreams. ■ thunder of hundreds of people waiting just himself. When I eventually did lay eyes on outside) you’re lucky if you can cobble my second great pianist of the week, he Robert Gorrie, Finalist together even the most basic pleasantries. was everything I’d expected: Christ Church Mostly we just concentrated on breathing, immaculately turned out, and with that relaxing, and trying to remember to enjoy air of supreme confidence that, I’d Excerpts from the Masterclass with Lang what might just be the highlight of our imagine, comes with celebrity like his. Lang will be broadcast in a forthcoming BBC musical careers. And in the end, while Brendel had documentary with Alan Yentob.

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Interview with Suzy Klein

Unsurprisingly, it seems there is always a radio in the faculty tuned into Radio 3. We catch up with alumna and voice of Radio 3’s In Tune, Suzy Klein to talk about past experiences and future plans.

It must be an exciting time to be at Radio 3, with so many varied projects. We really enjoyed your programming of the complete works of Schubert in March this year. How did the project come about, and what was it like to work on? The Schubert project was, like Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky before it, an attempt to understand better one of the great composers through a deep and immersive experience of their music – allowing the notes to speak for themselves. Around that, there were talks, discussions and features. It makes me immensely proud of the BBC that Radio 3 broadcast The Spirit of Schubert, featuring pretty much every complete piece and musical fragment he ever composed. You just don’t get that kind of dedication to a subject anywhere else, so I absolutely love being part of these projects!

Are there plans for similar projects in the future? What are you most looking forward to, and what would you most like to see? Next year we have a focus on the music of Verdi and Wagner, which as a huge opera fanatic I’m very excited about. There are also celebrations of the Britten centenary, which I’m looking What advice would you give to any of our alumni wanting to forward to being involved in. And alongside those are other pursue similar careers? special projects – one of which is a new music series on BBCTV It is very difficult to get started, but don’t let that stop you. I had soon presented by Oxford alumnus Howard Goodall, for which seven months of rejection letters before I got even a single day of I’m hoping to do a series of companion pieces on Radio 3. I can’t unpaid work experience at the BBC at the very tell you more about it yet as I’m sworn to start of my career. If you know your subject, are secrecy, but it should be very exciting. passionate about it and can talk about it engagingly (plus you have a good speaking You first started broadcasting while at voice!), you should go for it and send a voice Oxford. How did that happen, and how did tape to Radio 3. If you want to go into you carve your own path? production, scour the jobs pages. After all, My route into broadcasting was by pure chance. everyone’s looking for new faces, voices and I had always driven past the BBC as a child and creative talent all the time. Good luck! loved Broadcasting House. Then, at Oxford, I got involved in Oxygen FM where I presented a Outside of music, what are your other weekly arts show. I didn’t give presenting another passions? thought until more than ten years later, when I love contemporary art and have just finished someone dropped out of a screen-test that I was a book, co-written with my sister Jacky. It’s a producing (I was then working in BBC Television as children’s guide to the joys of contemporary a producer). I stepped in, loved talking to camera art and will be published this autumn. Apart from and had my first break on the Proms that summer. I’ve not looked going to concerts and the opera as much as I can, I’ve also got two back since. young children, so between all of that I’m kept pretty busy. ■

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The year ahead is an important one for ...the society's As even this brief overview shows, music at Oxford OUMS. After no external sponsor for the past year, University continues to thrive well beyond the the society’s current priority is to establish a current priority is lecture room and remains a vibrant part of substantial sponsorship deal with a major University life. If you would like to stay up to date corporation, as well as promote links more locally to establish a with the latest OUMS news, concert listings and in Oxford, to ensure that all Oxford ensembles have musical notices, please email: the necessary funding to achieve their goals. substantial [email protected] to Alongside creating a new website and player sponsorship deal subscribe to our weekly email newsletter and also database, the new committee is also exploring ‘like’ our facebook page possibilities of additional concerts with other with a major www.facebook.com/OUMusicSociety to see Universities, especially Warwick, Cambridge and details of upcoming events, as well as the latest London. corporation, as photos from rehearsals and concerts. ■

Although larger musical plans for the coming year well as promote Thomas Nelson are still in the pipe-line, this Trinity term has seen, links more locally University College amongst other concerts, Oxford University [email protected] Orchestra performing Berlioz’s Symphonie in Oxford... Fantastique under Dane Lam and the Philharmonia performing Brahms’s 3rd Symphony under its new conductor, Harry Sever. The Big Band also commissioned Callum Au (an Oxford alumnus who now writes music for the BBC Big Band) to write a suite based on West Side Story, which was performed at Corpus Christi auditorium with Mornington Lockett, one of the top professional tenor saxophone players in the UK.

Looking further ahead to the next academic year, Oxford University Orchestra will be performing extracts from both Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet with Geoffrey Paterson on November 8th, while Philharmonia is currently considering the possibility of performing a large- scale choral work with a University of Cambridge choir. Along similar lines, the OUMS committee is also in contact with representatives of the University of Warwick to determine the feasibility of a joint concert with their orchestra or choir. The Wind Orchestra will also be entering the National Concert Band Festival once more, after two successive performances in the National Finals over the past two years. Following their recent tour to Israel (hosted by the Tel Aviv University Wind Band), they are also hoping to organise a return visit in 2013, in which Oxford would host the Tel Aviv University Wind Band in a joint tour of Oxford and London.

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During the past three years there have been significant changes to the St Aldate’s teaching facilities, thanks to timely and generous investments from University capital funds and one- off government funding dedicated to the improvement of teaching and learning spaces in UK higher education.

In 2009, the Faculty’s two small lecture rooms, the seminar room and committee room received a complete makeover, with the installation of new lighting, carpets, tables and chairs, and state-of-the-art IT/AV equipment (smart boards, visualisers, audio equipment, speakers). A celebratory reception was held to mark the completion of the work, attended by the Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Vice Chancellors and others, showcasing the research achievements of Faculty members.

LL The new Ensemble Room

L The renovated Denis Arnold Hall

J Edmund Whitehead (1st Year, Hertford College) practising in the Ensemble Room

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2010 – 11 saw the completion of two more ambitious, and long-awaited, projects: the renovation of the Denis Arnold Hall, with new air-conditioning, chairs and decorations, and top-quality IT/AV (including HD widescreen overhead projector, an eight channel speaker system, permanently installed microphones, and audio and video links to the recording studio); and the transformation of the music practice block, creating nine soundproofed and air- conditioned practice ‘pods’ housing a brand new fleet of Yamaha pianos, together with a new large ensemble room for chamber music rehearsal and performance. The result has been a complete transformation: the DAH is now a truly multi-functional space for lectures, rehearsals, recordings, composition workshops and much more, and the practice block provides an amazing world- class resource for our student performers.

Looking to the future, the Faculty is eager other Humanities Faculties on the to expand and strengthen its teaching Radcliffe Observatory Quarter; an and research profile in all areas, estimate of the total cost of what is maintaining coverage of the broadest needed (including valuable public possible span of scholarly, performance performance space) is something like and composition elements. An absolute £50m. ■ pre-requisite for this ambitious development will be the construction of David Hyland, Faculty Administrator new, purpose-built facilities alongside and Board Secretary

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DAVID BEDNALL Before coming to Oxford, I completed an undergraduate degree Queen’s College, in Music and French at Bristol University (one of only 2 students 1997 – 2000 in my year), and then moved to Newcastle University to Upon leaving Oxford I held complete an MA in Music. Oxford was thus my third university organist positions at experience and I keep up with many music graduates, now Gloucester and Wells scattered to London, Hampshire and Cambridge. I found the Cathedrals, and during this college social life to be a major benefit at Oxford and one of my time became increasingly closest friends with whom I happily both matriculated and interested in composition – graduated, completed a DPhil not in music but in something to which has now very much do with fruit flies and genetics. With my doctorate under my become my calling. Most of belt, I am now looking forward to my next challenge – which is my work to date has been to bicycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats this summer, choral and this has resulted perhaps foolishly declining the option of a support vehicle to in a large number of carry all the kit! broadcasts and recordings – Hail, gladdening light (which was a Gramophone Editor’s Choice), Flame Celestial with Wells Cathedral, and Requiem with St Mary’s, LIAM NOBLE Calne. The last of these was nominated for a Disc of the Year on Lady Margaret Hall, 1987 –1990 www.musicweb-international.com. A particular joy of this project Music in all forms was always was to work again with Edward Whiting (Queen’s, 1998 – 2001) as something that interested me. he commissioned it for his choir; the world-renowned Philip I grew up in Bromley and got Dukes played the extensive viola part. The most recent project is involved with the Music very exciting – I was commissioned by Owen Rees to write a Service there as a clarinettist, large-scale (70 minute) Christmas Cantata for the Chapel Choir of although piano was always Queen’s. This work, Welcome All Wonders, was given its premiere my main instrument. My twin there in November 2011 and has now been recorded; I’m very passions were playing and much looking forward to its release. I am currently finishing a PhD composing but I wasn’t a in Composition at Bristol University which is hugely enjoyable, potential concert pianist, and but am always glad of any opportunity to return to Oxford. could never actually finish a composition. Jazz combines elements of both these JENNY TAMPLIN disciplines, though you have Christ Church, to ‘unlearn’ a lot of classical 2006 – 2011 technique. I graduated last October with a DPhil in Music. My Oxford was great for me; a relatively free rein to study great research, which was scores and discuss my findings with experts in their field. I funded by an Arts and remember conversations, essays, and musical discoveries while Humanities Research at LMH that continue to inform my work. After Oxford, I went to Council three-year the Guildhall to do the Postgraduate Jazz Course, and occasional studentship, explored gigs gradually turned into a career path. I teach on the jazz melancholy within the courses at Trinity Laban and the Birmingham Conservatoire now; context of modernity teaching is a major part of a career in performance for most (both modernist and early people. I feel very lucky that I get asked to work in many varying modern), with Harrison contexts as a sideman; my own new quintet premieres at the Birtwistle’s music forming the Cheltenham Jazz Festival this summer, following a gig at the lynchpin of my research. I was also very active in the Music Vortex in Dalston. www.liamnoble.co.uk Faculty, giving undergraduate tutorials, playing the clarinet in Ensemble Isis, convening the graduate colloquia and pioneering a reading group for graduate students and staff – as well as becoming a ‘Singing Medicine’ tutor at Oxford children’s hospital. SEND US YOUR NEWS! I took up a full-time position at Wadham College, Oxford in March 2010, working in admissions, and continue to use my It’s always good to hear from you. Stay in touch, and let us musical skills in workshops designed to introduce university to know what you’ve been up to since graduating from the Year 9 – 11 students, mainly from seven local authorities in East faculty: [email protected] London (the college’s ‘link areas’).

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ROBERT HOLLINGWORTH My first lecturing job at University College Scarborough took me New College, 1985 – 1988 to a town that I still love nearly as much as Oxford; and after that I set up I Fagiolini (we were I took up a Junior Research Fellowship at St Hilda’s College, eight voices), at New College in which entailed teaching Magdalen undergraduates in 1986 from choral scholars and techniques and analysis. For a further two years I taught others who wanted to sing hectically and broadly at the Welsh College of Music and Drama, secular vocal ensemble music and then with some relief got a job at Newcastle University, of many different periods and where I’ve been for the last ten years, and am now Head of styles. 25 years on, the reasons Undergraduate Studies in Music. I’ve recently had articles for doing it all feel the same – published in the journal Music Analysis and in Music and to share a passion for this – Consciousness (eds. Clarke and Clarke, OUP), and am about to go but now we seem to be doing on a research trip to Thailand. more unusual types of project and they have all come about from my feeling that some music benefits from either a dramatic context or juxtaposition with JONATHAN FINN another art form. ‘Simunye’ was a crossover project with a South Christ Church, 1986 – 1989 African group; ‘Tallis in Wonderland’ used speakers and sound At the start of my degree I was design; ‘The Full Monteverdi’ was a theatre piece set in a already painfully aware, from restaurant about couples breaking up. ‘How like an angel’ is our composing at school, that current collaboration with Australian contemporary circus writing music involved a lot of company Circa in UK cathedrals this summer: what those unnecessary scribbling, acrobats do puts our vocal worries into perspective... We were correcting, and copying out slow to get into the recording business, but last year we won the instrumental parts. Why wasn’t Gramophone award for early music for our première recording of there some kind of computer ‘Striggio Mass in 40 parts’; the follow-up to it, ‘1612 Italian Vespers’ program to help you – a was released in June (see page 23). I’ve also just music-directed ‘music processor’ ‘Shakespeare The Sonnets’, the pop song project with perhaps? This was 1986, Renaissance instruments setting Shakespeare’s sonnets. when most people’s Interesting one for me, that. It’ll probably make someone quite experience of computers cross – which is always good! wasn’t Windows but green- on-black text. So with only rare forays into the Music Faculty I The Editor writes: Robert has recently been appointed to an started creating the tool I wanted to use myself: it should seem Anniversary Readership in Music at the University of York. Many like composing directly onto a hyper-intelligent sheet of congratulations to him. manuscript paper, and (unlike a word processor) should play the results as well as print them.

BETHANY LOWE After graduating I finished the program, teamed up with my Magdalen College, 1990 – 1993 twin brother Ben and we started selling it as Sibelius. The time My time studying Music at Oxford seemed right and demand was instant, helped by press prepared me well for my later coverage you couldn’t buy (such as a Times editorial, and a activities in conducting and cartoon in the South China Morning Post). Throughout the 1990s academia – not least how to Sibelius was adopted by composers, schools and universities balance these and several other worldwide, including Oxford. Meanwhile I programmed more activities all with deadlines and more features, often based on personal requests. Dr Robert coming up at the same time! After Sherlaw Johnson once emailed me his wish-list and, unsure of three years at Magdalen, and my academic status, took no risks and went for ‘Professor Finn’! graduating with a First, I decided to take a ‘year out’ from academic The company was acquired in 2006, and since then I’ve been work and study Orchestral devising other artificially intelligent software, currently for poker. Conducting at the Royal College Meanwhile Sibelius flourishes without me: now you can display of Music. There then followed another year in London doing the your score on an iPad, bringing the humble music stand into the Masters in Music Theory and Analysis at King’s College, after which digital age. all these strands came together in a PhD on the relationship between performance and analysis, studying tempo patterns in The Editor writes: Jonathan and his brother Ben, who co- recordings of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony in the music department at founded Sibelius Software, were awarded the OBE for services to Southampton University. Software Technology in 2007. ■

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Student profiles

Julia Sitkovetsky Adam Harper

The Queen’s College, Finalist. Wadham College, DPhil Joan Conway Award Holder Candidate in Music

Before coming to Oxford, I was My long-time belief in the very fortunate to have richness and creativity of understudied at both underground pop music led Glyndebourne and English me to moonlight as a music National Opera, which gave critic while I studied classical me the ‘singing bug’. I was music history academically, understudying the role of Flora but now I’m training my in Britten’s Turn of the Screw in scholarly sights on one of the both places, a rather dark pop subcultures that has introduction to opera, but a always charmed me the most. blast to sing in nonetheless! I’m now coming to the end of The thrill I got dressing up in full costume and running out onto the second year of my DPhil research at the Music Faculty, with the Coliseum stage and bursting into song was indescribable. Eric Clarke as my supervisor, exploring ‘Home-Recorded, “Lo-Fi” Pop Music: the Construction of an Aesthetic’. I’m looking at the While I’ve been studying here at Oxford, I have had many development of pop music recorded domestically on tape from opportunities to continue this passion. I have performed roles in the 1960s up to the present day, and the particular aesthetic student productions here, such as Oxford Opera’s The Turn of the narratives that are constructed by those many musicians Screw, New Chamber Opera’s Acis and Galatea and most recently searching for an ‘authentic’, ‘lo-fi’ sound that now has more to do Orpheus in the Underworld. I have also performed in several with nostalgia and being evocative than with technological professional concerts during my time here, such as being a limitations. This follows an undergraduate music degree at soloist a few times with the Orchestra of St John’s, most recently Magdalen culminating in a dissertation on Charles Ives, and a singing a concert of Grieg and Debussy songs, and performing a Master’s in Historical Musicology at Goldsmiths. I’ve been a fan of recital at the Newport Music Festival and with the Greensboro lo-fi music for many years, but away from the iPod and under the Symphony Orchestra in the USA. magnifying glass of a DPhil its claims to authenticity and political subversion become much more complicated than they appear. The opera productions I’ve participated in here at Oxford have been very rewarding and a lot of fun. One of my favourite ‘opera As a music critic, I write for The Wire and Dummy magazines, moments’ while at Oxford has to be in this year’s production of having branched out from the blog I started in 2009, Rouge’s Orpheus in the Underworld, trying to dance the Can-Can in an Foam. The essays on my blog led to my writing Infinite Music: incredibly short dress and heels while singing at the same time. I Imagining the Next Millennium of Human Music-Making for Zer0 don’t think my legs will ever recover! books, published in November last year. Aiming to rebuild a modernist aesthetic and ambition for the comparatively doubtful This past December, I was awarded a scholarship to study and derivative twenty-first century with some help from John Postgraduate singing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Cage, it hopes to understand new music through a conception to continue studying with Susan McCulloch, with a view to of music as a complex and continuously changing system of joining the Opera school there, hopefully in 2013. This is a really variables, and in the process addresses the hunger I’ve always exciting opportunity and I am very much looking forward to had for musical novelty. I also turned one of my Rouge’s Foam continuing my studies in opera there. ■ essays Heaven is Real: John Maus and the Truth of Pop (on the philosophy of pop music as it arises from the work of one particular underground practitioner) into a small pamphlet for Precinct in 2011. In the past year, I’ve very much enjoyed doing some tutoring, discussing with bright undergraduates the controversial topics that bring depth and urgency to musicology. I’m looking forward to more teaching, further music criticism, and the chance to continue pursuing my adventures in lo-fi pop through my final doctoral year - and perhaps considerably beyond. ■

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This has been an exciting year for the Bate Collection. A number of long-term projects are beginning to bear fruit and student The Bate Recording Prize engagement with the collection has reached an all-time high. We are pleased and proud to announce the award of the new Bate Recording Prize for Oxford undergraduates – a new initiative from this As part of our archival recording project we have academic year. There are two prizes awarded to students who have celebrated the launch of a professional CD of the engaged with the collection in historically informed performance. historical recorders in the collection. The aim of the From a strong field of entries we selected a pair of very fine project has been to create a series of high-quality, performances, both in joint-first place. Jennifer Pike (Finalist, Lady professional recordings of some of the more iconic Margaret Hall) was BBC Young Musician of the Year 2002. She chose to instruments in the collection and make them play the Adagio and Presto from Sonata No 1 in G minor by JS Bach. This available for sale to the general public. Professor was played on the Rose violin, dated 1750 (Bate 9010) donated by M. Peter Holtslag, world expert on early recorders, spent Jean Henri of Paris in 1999. This is the most ‘original condition’ violin in the some time with the instruments, developing a Bate Collection, retaining many of its historical features. sparkling programme of music including pieces by Banister, Eccles, Handel and Schickhart. This is only The other prize winner was Michael Papadopoulos (2nd year, Trinity the first of a series of recordings, which will ultimately College), who had contributed a piano performance to the Bate 40th include the use of the whole collection. Anniversary Concert (12 March 2011). His entry for the recording prize was an Allemande in D minor by Handel, performed on the Smith harpsichord, We are also producing a new series of publications dated 1720 (Bate 974) donated by Audrey Blackman of Boars Hill in 1990. on aspects of the collection. These take the form of According to legend, this instrument was owned by George Frideric demi-catalogues and guides that have been Handel, and it certainly bears a striking resemblance to the instrument in authored by experts from the broader world of the portrait of Handel by Philip Mercier. Copies of the instrument can be organology. The aim of all of these projects is to found in the Handel-House museums in London and Hamburg. ■ produce sounds and images to make the collection K Jennifer and Michael in the Bate accessible to a wider range of people via books, recordings and uploads from our website. To this end we have also developed an on-line store for the sale of books, CDs and technical data: www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk

This year we have also started a programme of informal lunchtime gallery recitals. Music Faculty students have always been encouraged to use the collection and borrow its instruments, and we are pleased now to be able to give them the opportunity to have fun showing off their range of skills. The performances have proven immensely popular with a loyal band of regulars and we are looking forward to expanding this idea further in the future.

For next year, we have also planned something more substantial, with a multi-disciplinary conference on the history and development of musical instruments in collaboration with the University of Huddersfield and the Galpin Society (25 - 29 July 2013). This is timed to coincide with the forthcoming Stradivarius exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum (16 June - 18 August 2013). There will be a rich variety of workshops, performances and paper sessions – so do come along if you’re in town! ■

.OXFORDOXFORD MUSICIANMUSICIAN .. 20122012 . 19 Oxf Musician 2012 [F]__Layout 1 30/07/2012 11:59 Page 20 FACULTY NEWS NEWS AND RELEASES FROM MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY News, recordings, books and broadcasts.

Books of music and sound, their capacity to Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological engender modes of public and private, and Cultural Perspectives, published by MUSIC AND POLITICS IN their constitution of subjectivity and the Oxford University Press in 2011. The TWENTIETHCENTURY EUROPE politics of sound and space. Chapters twenty chapters range across a wide Professor Jonathan Cross has a chapter discuss music and sound within specific range of musical traditions, from entitled Stravinsky’s Petrushka: settings, including sound installation art, Monteverdi and Madonna to Indian Modernising the Past, Russianising the popular music recordings, offices and classical music and free improvisation Future; or, How Stravinsky Learned to be an hospitals, and music therapy. With discussed from perspectives that include Exile’ coming out, in P. Fairclough (ed.) international examples, from the Islamic neuroscience, phenomenology, music Music and Politics in Twentieth-Century soundscape of the Kenyan coast, to therapy, Jungian psychology, drugs, and Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, forthcoming religious music in Europe, to First Nation Buddhism. Eric also appeared in BBC4’s 2012). musical sociability in Canada, it offers a programme ‘Summertime’ – broadcast a new global perspective on how music, number of times since last autumn – Jonathan has also recently appeared on sound and space transform the nature of examining why it is that George BBC Radio 3 as Part of Hear and Now - BBC public and private experience. Gershwin’s perennial favourite is ‘the Total Immersion Day on Unsuk Chin and (Forthcoming Cambridge University Press, most covered song in musical history’ Jonathan Harvey, as well as discussing Jan 2013) (25,000 versions, and counting…). Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress on Music Matters, and Schubert the Wanderer as part of the Complete Works of Schubert’s GUILLAUME DE THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO Series. MACHAUT: ARVO PÄRT SECRETARY, Benjamin Skipp (Junior Research POET, MUSICIAN Fellow at St Peter’s College; Lecturer at INTERDISCIPLINARITY: Professor Hertford College) RECONFIGURATIONS OF THE SOCIAL Elizabeth Eva has contributed a AND NATURAL SCIENCES Leach’s book on chapter to this part Professor Georgina Born has two new Guillaume de of the respected books out soon. The first, Machaut has Cambridge Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the recently been awarded the Phyllis Companion series. Social and Natural Sciences, edited by Goodhart Gordan Prize for 2012 for best The book is intended Andrew Barry and Georgina Born, is based book in Renaissance studies published for a mixed audience on a series of ethnographic and historical between 1 July 2010 and 30 June 2011. In of students and case studies of distinctive fields of it Leach discusses Machaut’s central interested readers interdisciplinarity. In the context of the poetic themes of hope, fortune, and without musical escalating commitment to death, integrating the aspect of Machaut’s interdisciplinarity in research policy and multimedia art that differentiates him K Christ Church Cathedral Choir perform the St John funding in recent years, which has been from his contemporaries’ treatment of Passion accompanied by continuing difficulties in similar thematic issues: music. In restoring comprehending the term the centrality of music in Machaut’s interdisciplinarity and what is novel in the poetics, arguing that his words cannot be practices it engenders, the book outlines truly understood or appreciated without an innovative methodology for the additional layers of meaning created understanding specific trajectories of in their musicalisation, Leach makes a interdisciplinarity, as well as for evaluating compelling argument that musico-literary them. performance occupied a special place in (Forthcoming Routledge, Dec 2012). the courts of fourteenth-century France. Published by Cornell University Press

MUSIC, SOUND AND SPACE Georgina’s other new title Music, Sound MUSIC AND CONSCIOUSNESS and Space, is the first collection to Professor Eric Clarke is the co-editor integrate research from musicology and with Professor David Clarke (no relation! sound studies on music and sound as But Professor of Music at Newcastle they mediate everyday life. In this book, University), and a contributor to, a new leading scholars explore the spatialisation edited volume entitled Music and

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training. Arvo Pärt is one of the few living composers to have a dedicated volume, and this collection of essays, written by a distinguished international group of scholars and performers, is the essential guide to Arvo Pärt and his music. The book begins with a general introduction to Pärt’s life and works, covering important biographical details and outlining his most significant compositions. Published by Cambridge University Press

Choir News: L New College Choir Evensong Recordings and Library. Under the baton of Stephen Performances Darlington, the performers are Jeni Bern (soprano), Ben Hulett (tenor), Nathan Vale CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL (tenor), Brindley Sherratt (bass), with CHOIR Christ Church Cathedral Choir and the Christ Church Cathedral Choir’s latest CD Oxford Philomusica. The recording will the Treasures of Christ Church was Radio 3 be released in 2012. Essential Classics featured CD of the week 12 December 2011. It is a newly They are also currently recording a recorded, special collection spanning second volume of Music from the Eton 500 years of English choral music, all of Choirbook. The first volume, entitled which has some connection to Christ ‘More Divine than human’, was Church cathedral, the college or its nominated for a Gramophone Award. precious manuscript collection. It includes several works from the sixteenth From Michaelmas 2012 the choir will NEW COLLEGE CHOIR and seventeenth centuries as well as launch their webcast series. Visit: 2012 has seen several new recordings premiere recordings of a version of www.chchchoir.org to listen in. from New College Choir. The first, Handel’s Zadok the Priest, edited by François Couperin, Petit Motets came out in Stephen Darlington, and new pieces by The choir will be touring in China in January on Novum, and was BBC Radio 3 John Rutter and Howard Goodall. The August 2012 and will be in the USA again CD of the week. The second, Illumina: a recording is the latest in an award- in 2013. choral anthology (including choral winning series on the Avie label, and the versions of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony CD was the highest new entry in Adagietto, and the Inspector Morse the UK specialist Classical chart on its MAGDALEN COLLEGE CHOIR theme music) came out in April on the release. Magdalen Choir will be performing in Decca label. And the third, Haydn, Nelson Anacreon with the OAE in the Mass with New Century Baroque will be The choir have recently recorded Sheldonian on 9 November 2012 (page released on Novum in September 2012. Mendelssohn’s version of Handel’s Acis 4). As part of its on-going collaboration and Galatea using a specially with consort in residence Phantasm the This year New College Choir also appeared commissioned edition of the original choir will also be involved in an on BBC 2’s Andrew Marr Show on Easter manuscript, currently in the Bodleian exploration of music for choir and viols Day, and broadcast their Choral Evensong by John Ward. on BBC Radio 3 on May 30 2012.

The choir will be performing in late On 5 June New College Choir also took September this year as part of the Oxford part in the special Queen’s Jubilee Choral Festival, plans to perform Bach’s St Concert in St David’s Cathedral (Wales), John Passion as part of their Easter and performed with the University’s Festival in 2013, and will also take part in resident professional orchestra, Oxford a number of events as part of the Britten Philomusica, in Malvern, Bath and Oxford in Oxford 2013 celebrations. For more during July. information on this festival visit: www.britteninoxford.co.uk New College Choir has also launched their weekly webcasts. Visit The choir also hopes to tour the USA www.newcollegechoir.com to listen to later in the year. an evensong, festival, or carol service.

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Composition News Sforzando Records in September 2012. The project was funded by the PRS Being recognised for such PROF ROBERT SAXTON Foundation, Living North Pennines sustained excellence across the In 2011 Robert Saxton’s String Quartet No 3 project and the John Fell Fund. was premiered by the Arditti Quartet at University is a great the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, as part The world premiere of Martyn’s newest of the South Bank Centre’s International work for large orchestra Galgenhumoreske achievement, particularly the String Quartet series. It has been repeated took place at the Barbican Concert Hall in in 2012 as part of Sounds New Festival, London on 12 June 2012, performed by recognition that the resources Canterbury, and recorded for future the Oxford Philomusica, conducted by Oxford devotes to students are broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Marios Papadopoulos. second to none. 2012 has also seen a performance of 2012 has also seen the UK tour of My Psalm – A Song of Ascents (written for John Mother Told Me Not To Stare, a ‘deliciously Wallace for the 25th anniversary of the dark operetta for curious children and support for low-income students of any London Sinfonietta in 1993) recorded by their grown ups’ by Finn Kruckemeyer and university in the country as a further sign DPhil student Simon Desbruslais and The Martyn Harry. This version was of our commitment to supporting our Orchestra of the Swan (Stratford-upon- commissioned with funding from Arts students. With our educational excellence Avon) for the Signum label. Chacony for Council England and the John Fell Fund, and our financial support package, Oxford piano left-hand (1988) also received its and toured in June, with a week’s run at represents not just quality, but Japanese premiere in Tokyo this year, and The Pegasus Theatre, Oxford. A CD of the affordability too.’ the autumn will see the premiere of Little operetta was recorded at the Jacqueline Suite for Organ, at the University of du Pré Music Building, St Hilda’s College, Aberdeen with Dr Roger Williams. and will be released on Sforzando THE OXFORDPRINCETON Records in Spring 2013 PARTNERSHIP Future projects for 2013 include Time and In 2008 the Faculty of Music was the Seasons, a song cycle on own texts, for successful in a bid to the John Fell Fund baritone (Roderick Williams) and piano to establish a research partnership in (Andrew West) commissioned by Oxford Other Faculty News music theory and analysis with colleagues Lieder Festival, and Shakespeare Scenes for in the Music Department at Princeton Trumpet and Strings, commissioned by The OXFORD TOPS TABLE University. Orchestra of the Swan for Simon The 2012 Times Good University Guide Desbruslais, to be premiered in Stratford- once again ranks the Oxford Music Faculty The Oxford–Princeton Partnership aims to upon-Avon’s Civic Hall and recorded on as No. 1 in the UK. The University of encourage closer research collaborations the Signum label. Oxford also tops the Times Good on projects of mutual interest between University Guide for the 11th year colleagues in the two institutions; to running. rethink definitions and boundaries of DR MARTYN HARRY musical analysis in the context of the In 2011-12 Martyn was commissioned by The Times Good University Guide ranks historical, critical and interdisciplinary His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts on higher education institutions using eight work of both departments; to produce the occasion of their 30th anniversary criteria, including student satisfaction, joint publications emerging from our season to write a work for four cornetts, research, staff-student ratios, graduate annual symposia; and to consolidate four sagbutts, harpsichord and chamber employment and degree results. Oxford as a leading UK centre for music organ. The resulting work, At His Majesty’s theory. Pleasure, received its world premiere Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor recording at Crystal Palace, London on Andrew Hamilton, said: ‘To have remained The second Oxford-Princeton Analysis 9-13 April 2012, and will be released by at the top of The Times’ league table for Symposium took place at Princeton eleven years running is an incredible University, 17–19 March 2011. Faculty testament to the achievements of members Eric Clarke, Jonathan Cross and Oxford’s faculty and students across its Laurence Dreyfus, along with graduate many colleges and departments. Being students Simon Desbruslais and Maria recognised for such sustained excellence Witek, took part in three intensive days of across the University is a great presentations and discussions on and achievement, particularly the recognition around analytical/theoretical topics with that the resources Oxford devotes to the aim to share and explore current ideas students are second to none - and in progress. student achievement and satisfaction are high to match. Discussion of future collaborations between faculty and graduates of the two ‘Next academic year, Oxford will be departments, and how to fund this, are offering the most generous financial currently in progress.

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Alumni releases

Chisato Kusunoki (University College, 1998-2001; Gibbs Prize Holder) has released a CD of Sergei Rachmaninov, Six Moments Musicaux Op. 16; Nikolai Medtner, Sonata in G minor, Op. 22; Alexander Scriabin, Fantasie in B minor, Op. 28; and Sergei Liapunov, Etudes D’Exécution Transcendente, Op.11.The works reflect her passion for discovering neglected piano works of the 19th-20th centuries, and was released on the Quartz label in Nov 2011.

L Chris Ferebee at the Oxford Philomusica Composers’ Workshop PHANTASM AT MAGDALEN AND THE Awards and Prizes WIGMORE HALL The viol consort Phantasm, the consort-in- GIBBS PRIZE HOLDERS residence at Magdalen College and the Rachel Coombes (Christ Church) and Faculty of Music, played at the Wigmore Hall William Church (Magdalen College) in London on 6 June, with a programme of have been awarded the Gibbs Prize 2012 music by John Dowland and William Lawes. for Music. Directed by Professor Laurence Dreyfus and featuring Daniel Hyde on the organ, the The Gibbs Prizes are awarded, provided programme was also heard the previous that there be candidates of sufficient evening in Magdalen College Chapel. The merit, on the results of the examination for Robert Hollingworth (P17) leads his Wigmore concert was broadcast live on the Honour School of Music in Trinity Term maverick ensemble I Fagiolini on a new BBC Radio 3 and around the European 2012. album unearthing incredible lost works Broadcasting Union from the late Renaissance and early Baroque: 1612. The recording recreates a CONTRAPUNCTUS OXFORD PHILOMUSICA COMPOSERS’ thanksgiving Vesper in commemoration Contrapunctus presented a concert of WORKSHOP of the famous Venetian naval victory at eighteenth-century works revealing the On 23 March 2012 the Oxford Philomusica Lepanto in 1571, celebrated for over 200 links between Italy and Portugal, in the premiered City of Trees by Chris Ferebee years after the event in a new festival – Setubal Festival on 2 June. On 12 July they (DPhil candidate, St Hilda’s College) after The Feast of the Holy Rosary. also gave a concert in Santander, Spain, and his submission to the Oxford Philomusica in October appear in the Evora Festival, Composition Workshop in 2011. Portugal. November will see an appearance at De Bijloke Music Centre in The selected composer from the 2012 Ghent, followed by a concert in Oxford on workshop was Chris Garrard (DPhil 17 November in the Queen’s Chapel, and candidate, St Hilda’s College). Chris’ piece, the group’s first CD recording (on the broken thumbs, will receive its premier in Signum label). spring 2013

K Contrapunctus

SEND US YOUR NEWS! If you have released a book or CD recently, please email the information to [email protected] and we’ll try to include you in the next issue.

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HOW YOU CAN STAY IN ALUMNI CAREERS TALKS The Music Faculty will be running careers talks for current TOUCH WITH US... students in Michaelmas Term 2012. If you would like to take part as an Alumni speaker please email JOIN US FOR AN EVENT [email protected]

We will be offering special deals for Alumni for our The Oxford Careers Service provides careers support for life for future events. all alumni: www.careers.ox.ac.uk/alumni

Coming up: ALUMNI BENEFITS Music Faculty Alumni can claim a 15% discount off a number of tickets for Anacréon. Simply quote‘Oxford Musician’ when Alumni of the University of Oxford are entitled to an ever- booking your ticket over the phone. expanding range of benefits and services; from discounts associated with the Oxford Alumni Card, to exclusive holidays A limited number of free tickets for the Hilary Term Cavaleri and opportunities for professional development. String Quartet Concert will be available to Music Faculty Alumni. Email [email protected] to register your For more information and to register for an Alumni Card visit: interest and receive dates and programme information. www.alumni.ox.ac.uk

Email [email protected] to be put on the mailing list for the Events Brochure or visit the Events page at: SEND US YOUR NEWS www.music.ox.ac.uk We hope you enjoy receiving this magazine. We are always From 2013 the Events Office will be programming an Alumni interested in hearing your views, comments and news. Recital Series. If you would like to be considered, please Email us at [email protected] email the Events Manager [email protected] Website: www.music.ox.ac.uk

This year’s Alumni Weekend will take place on 14 – 16 @MusicFac_Events Music Faculty Events, September. Book online to register your place: University of Oxford www.alumniweekend.ox.ac.uk

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