Glenn Gould is perhaps best known for recording keyboard works by Bach, and in particular the Goldberg Variations – first in 1955 and again in 1981. In the recordings, the Canadian pianist can be heard humming along to melodies.
In 2018, Sir John Eliot Gardiner launched his Schumann cycle, recorded for LSO Live, with concerts at the Barbican and on tour in Germany. In an excerpt from a conversation with David Nice, he introduced us to Robert Schumann's orchestral music, which we are bringing to your living rooms this Thursday (26 March 2020).
Long-standing LSO cellist Jennifer Brown tells us about her career in music and how orchestral life has changed since the 1980s.
Over the course of the last twelve months, eight emerging composers on the Panufnik Composers Scheme have been experimenting with writing music for a full symphony orchestra. With support and guidance along the way from renowned composers Colin Matthews and Christian Mason, these eight artists have each developed a piece roughly three-minutes in length, all of which will be performed and discussed by the LSO and Principal Guest Conductor François-Xavier Roth in two public workshops in March. But what does it take to follow in the footsteps of giants like Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mahler? Panufnik composer Jonathan Woolgar shares his thoughts with us.
'I only encountered the Britten Violin Concerto for the first time in 2003, when I heard Maxim Vengerov and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich on the radio. I was mesmerised. Britten’s music was rather a late discovery for me, but it immediately spoke to me in an irresistible language that I had never heard before. I remember the feeling of despair and drama that came across – a romantic violin concerto in 20th-century language.'
