Beatrice Rana, The Ordering of Moses, Claude Debussy and Emma Bardac

Music Matters

Image: © Simon Fowler

The Italian pianist Beatrice Rana joins Tom Service to discuss her immersion in Beethoven’s late piano sonatas during Italy’s lockdown, and her relationship with one of the most famous works in the canon – the composer’s ‘Emperor’ concerto. She reflects on how the circumstances of Chopin’s life are articulated in his Scherzi, and on thanking audiences for being part of performances.

With Robert Nathaniel Dett’s Oratorio, The Ordering of Moses, receiving its first outing in the UK with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus on Wednesday, some 85 years after the live broadcast of its premiere at Carnegie Hall, Music Matters is joined by the conductor Joshua Weilerstein, soprano Nadine Benjamin and researcher, horn player, and conductor Dwight Pile-Gray to explore what Dett’s music can tell us today.

As Lindisfarne Castle welcomes back visitors after its winter recess, we speak to the sound artist Paul Rooney and cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir about their collaboration on a new project, Song (After Nature) – a contemporary soundscape installation which will be heard throughout parts of the 16th-century stronghold. They reveal how the calls of Lindisfarne’s resident grey seals provide the creative impetus for their work. We hear, too, from the scholar Hannah E. Collins about a frequent guest at the castle, Guilhermina Suggia, and the role the cellist played as a trailblazer for female performers in the early 20th century as well as the legacy she left.

And, we speak to the pianist Lucy Parham and author Gillian Opstad, ahead of the launch of her new book Emma and Claude Debussy – The Biography of a Relationship, and learn more about the composer’s marriage to one of the titans of early 20th-century Parisian life, Emma Bardac, and the role she played in supporting his creative output.