Pictures from a presentation

Awards ceremonies are always best approached with circumspection – not difficult in this case, as I hadn’t heard a single one of the ‘winners’ in the BBC Music Magazine’s final list for 2013 – and then you can only be pleasantly surprised.

As I was on Tuesday afternoon. I’ve written up the event for The Arts Desk, homing in on what most interested me. The three strands of live performance were bound to take the lion’s share, yet there was no contest from Janina Fialkowska and even the charismatic Angelika Kirchschlager; Mei Yi Foo swept us all away with the canny choice of pieces by Gubaidulina, Unsuk Chin and Ligeti from her Best Newcomer award-winning disc ‘Musical Toys’.

She was snapped brilliantly by the BBC Music Magazine’s photographer, John Millar, both in action (above) and alongside some of the splendid Kings Place artwork (the shot I used over on TAD). I thought Millar’s top shot was of Jacques Imbrailo, Mark Padmore, Foo, Berlin Phil cellist Olaf Maninger and the so compelling-to-look-at Kaija Saariaho (a thoroughly sincere person always willing to give of her time, as I know from a short acquaintance). I used it over there, but I can’t resist including it here too

especially as it’s followed by formality, with Janina Fialkowska joining the picture.

Several other photos I couldn’t accommodate, or they didn’t tell the story I wanted. One is of Tony Hall and Sir Mark Elder head to head

before S’Mark swept the board with his Halle recording of Elgar’s The Apostles. This too I have yet to hear, but I didn’t much care for the same team’s The Kingdom, nor indeed for S’Mark’s Goodall-in-Wagner approach to Elgar, who always seems to me to need much more sweeping along, especially in oratorios like these. But we’ll see. 

A few more photos: here’s Mark Padmore looking moved, as indeed he was, talking about Bach as a lifelong companion and the uncanny inspiration of Peter Sellars.

And composer Dai Fujikura, interesting sound-maker in the concert I caught of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Japanese day, quirkily setting up Foo, whom he obviously admires.

As for ‘Musical Toys’, I thought it might just be through her canny choice of repertoire that Foo triumphed, but having listened to the disc a couple of times, I hear so much imagination in the distant voices of the Gubaidulina, while the Chin is technically terrific, and you should really try out the later Ligeti pieces when the notes of the chromatic scale begin to accumulate (he starts with one, ends with all twelve).

It was serendipity that the first unknown personage I was led up to, via the constantly popping-up Sebastian Scotney and David Fraser of ECM, happened to be the founder of Foo’s intriguing new label Odradek and also a pianist, John Clement Anderson. He lives in Pescara and so – with him, I’m presuming – does one of the other pianists featured on the label, Pina Napolitana from, yes, Naples, whose all-Schoenberg disc I need to hear at leisure with a score. Already, though, I’ve been hooked by another featured artist, Domenico Codispoti. 

His Liszt B minor Sonata was bound to feel just a little straightforward with Khatia Buniatishvili’s crazy interpretation still ringing in my ears, but he’s clearly a real poet, as the Petrarch Sonnets clearly show. And what’s haunting me is a Granados piece from Goyescas I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know, El amor y la muerte. This is the image, from Goya's Los Caprichos. 

The ‘ballad’builds around Goya's moment. A young man is dying in the arms of his beloved after losing a duel. The strength of the will to live ebbs and flows alongside the woman's sad consoling song, which breaks the heart before the final darkness falls, at least in this performance. Such profundity. If Odradek carries on at this level, it should have a few more award-winners on its hands. How delighted I am to find that the company has put up a film of Codispoti playing this very piece. Give it your full attention; and if you don't, you'll probably find as it develops that you drop anything you're doing.