What the classical world has been listening to this month
Aron Goldin Pianist
I studied Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe with pianist Malcolm Martineau at the same time that he recorded and released it with bass-baritone Florian Boesch. I would walk to the Royal Academy listening to their recording, then a few minutes later I’d be at the keyboard with him working on the cycle; it was a real privilege. I love the recording because they made brave creative decisions around tempo and expression in order to allow the interior drama of the songs to burn with a new intensity.
I’ve been listening to an album by soprano Patricia Petibon and pianist Susan Manoff called L’amour, la mort, la mer. I shared a stage with them at Oxford Lieder in the Holywell Music Room, and they performed music from it. It’s an astonishingly beautiful album; you’ve got traditional Breton and Irish songs and songs by Villa-Lobos and Granados, but you’ve also got John Lennon and Samuel Barber, so it’s a really eclectic and interesting mix of music.
I went to Wigmore Hall earlier this year to see András Schiff perform Bach and Beethoven. For me, he is the greatest living pianist and one of the best of all time.
Certainly, he’s a huge inspiration to me, and the thing I love most about him is that his on-stage presence is so unique – it’s light and humane and even playful, but the music he makes is profound and meditative, and ultimately a transcendental experience.
And also…
I’m reading a book called Geography for the Lost by the poet Kapka Kassabova, a Bulgarian who now lives in Scotland. The voices in her poems are of migrants, and they speak about what it’s like to feel lost – in the place you live, with ones you love, or even in your own history. Despite the horrors of the world around us, and those described in the poems, she is able to find the stark, magical beauty in it all.
Aron Goldin’s album ‘Homelands’ is out now on the Rubicon label
Stephanie Childress Conductor
I am so impressed with conductor Stéphane Denève’s recording of Poulenc’s Stabat Mater with Stuttgart and North German radio ensembles. I love Poulenc: he writes so well for the female voices, which are so often a major driving force in his vocal and choral works. There is a purity there but also a great emotional force. People might call his music self-referential – and he does use certain themes and chord
