Page 14 - BBC Music (January 2020)

The full score

SoundBites TIMEPIECE This month in history

Cup winner:
the victorious
Clara Schumann

A Clara victory
Following our December issue 50 Greatest
Composers poll, voted for by today’s
leading composers and topped by JS Bach,
we opened up the debate by running a
‘Composers World Cup’, voted for by our
followers on Twitter. In this instance, it was
won by Clara Schumann who, interestingly,
had not gained one vote among the 870 cast
by the composers in the magazine itself.
Chordal Finn Golden sounds:

Anna-Maria Helsing has been appointed the opulent interior of
the Musikverein in a
as the principal guest conductor of the BBC
painting from the 1890s
Concert Orchestra. Helsing became the
first ever female chief conductor of a major
Finnish orchestra when she took over at the
Oulu Symphony in 2010, and now joins a JANUARY 1870
veritable flurry of Finns who have taken
up posts at British ensembles in recent
years, including Sakari Oramo at the BBC Vienna’s Musikverein
Symphony Orchestra and John Storgårds at
the BBC Philharmonic.

Ten plus four stages its first concert
The BBC’s Ten Pieces scheme, which was
set up to introduce classical music to school n 6 January, 1870 the and Egmont Overture were performed;
children, has launched a set of four films
aimed specifically at those with disabilities Musikverein opened its doors to the occasion also marked the centenary
and special educational needs. The films, Oconcertgoers for the first time. of Beethoven’s birth. Mozart’s music
which aim to highlight how disability The city’s largest ever concert hall, the did feature, however – an aria from Die
is no barrier to making music, feature glittering Grosser Saal (or Goldener Saal) Entführung aus dem Serail, sung by one
performances of music from Doctor Who had space for 2,000 and an acoustic Herr Walter – along with Bach, Haydn
and Hans Zimmer’s Earth and are hosted by that venues around the world have tried and Schubert. This being Vienna, there
much-loved TV presenter Ade Adepitan.
to emulate ever since. The Emperor was also an opening ball, at which
Happy Hallé Franz Joseph I himself marked its Johann Strauss II introduced his new

Big celebrations in Manchester, where the completion by laying the capstone, and waltz Freuet Euch des Lebens (Enjoy Life).
Hallé has been enjoying the opening of the handsome neo-classical building Johann Herbeck conducted the
its grandly refurbished St Peter’s Oglesby instantly became a Viennese landmark. inaugural concert. A name barely
Centre. A £6.6m three-storey extension to One critic at the opening felt the remembered today, he had for
the former church, based in the Ancoats area hall’s architecture embodied Mozart’s several years been conductor for the
of the city, has added a large new rehearsal
space, an interactive classroom for outreach great Jupiter Symphony, but it was Gesellscha! der Musikfreunde in Wien
work and a bar and café to the orchestra’s Beethoven who was at the heart of the (Society of Friends of Music in Vienna)
impressive facilities. GETTY first programme. His Fi!h Symphony – also known, somewhat confusingly,

16 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE