What the classical world has been listening to this month
Jennifer France Soprano In preparation for a concert in the autumn, I’ve been immersing myself in Dutilleux’s Correspondances, in a recording by Barbara Hannigan, and George Walker’s Lilacs, sung by Nicole Cabell – both are conducted by Simon Rattle. These pieces are new to me as a performer and are both really beautiful but very contrasting. They are such interesting works, as they are dense in their subject matter and emotionally very complex, and Lilacs isn’t like anything I’ve ever heard before.
Shortly before we got married, my husband and I listened back to a lot of music that meant a lot to us, and one of our favourite songs is ‘Beyond’ by the American singer-songwriter Leon Bridges. It’s the perfect wedding song in that it’s about a man who thinks he has met ‘the one’, and he’s scared about it while also embracing those loving feelings. Bridges has an incredible, very soulful voice.
We play quite a lot of classical music to Aurelia, my two-yearold daughter. Her favourite thing in the whole world to listen to is Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker so, as a result, it is always on in our house – she has something called a Toniebox on which she can play it herself and she loves dancing around to it. She adores the whole work, and particularly the battle with the Mouse King.
And also…
Through work, I have been lucky enough to have spent a large part of this summer in Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. We have had such an enjoyable time exploring this beautiful city, going to the various playgrounds, visiting the markets which are on three times a week and immersing ourselves in French culture. We even went for a hike up the Montagne Sainte-Victoire. It is such a magical place.
Jennifer France sings Dutilleux and Walker with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Royal Festival Hall on 28 September
Geoffrey Paterson Conductor Mahler’s Seventh is a favourite symphony of mine and Kirill Petrenko is a very favourite conductor – possibly the one I admire the most. I worked with him in Bayreuth as an assistant for a couple of seasons and he’s an incredible musician – his hallmarks are a combination of forensic attention to detail coupled with a blazing intensity. He doesn’t record very much, but I have a recording taken from two live performances with the Bavarian State Orchestra in Munich.
I’ve been listening quite a lot recently to the 1932 recording of Elgar’s Violin Concerto by Yehudi Menuhin. It’s one of the landmark recordings of the last century and an in
