Simon Rushby

#listeneveryday 5 Mar 2021 The final post in this current run of #listeneveryday is of one of my personal favourites, Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major. Its first performance was given by Marguerite Long with Ravel conducting, in Paris in 1932, and it quickly became popular, partly thanks to a European tour by Ravel and Long who performed it in sixteen cities. It was one of Ravel's last compositions (he died from a neurological condition in 1937, at the age

#listeneveryday 4 Mar 2021 The Argentinian bandoneon player and composer Astor Piazzolla grew up in New York and settled in Buenos Aires in 1938, at the age of 17, joining the orchestra of one of the leading bandoneon players, Aníbal Troilo. Piazzolla studied with both tango and classical teachers and became interested in fusions between the two styles. His works in the 1940s and early 50s sometimes offended Argentine audiences who felt that their beloved t

#listeneveryday 3 Mar 2021 Sigur Rós is an Icelandic band formed in Reykjavík in 1994. Their name means 'victory rose' and is the name of front man Jón Pór "Jónsi" Birgisson's little sister, who was born not long before the group got together. Their style, often known as post rock, is experimental, incorporating unsual sounds, timbres and textures over a recognisable rock song structure. Hoppípolla, which means 'Hopping into Puddles', was the second single

#listeneveryday 2 Mar 2021 Songwriter and bandleader Hoagy Carmichael wrote Georgia On My Mind in 1930, while he was living in New York. The story goes that he and his room-mate, a banker named Stuart Gorrell, were looking out of the window at the wet weather and decided to write a song together about the warmer southern state. However Carmichael had a sister named Georgia and it's possible the song is about her. Interestingly it was the only lyric that Gor

#listeneveryday 1 Mar 2021 We begin this week with some long-overdue Beethoven, and in this piece find him in a meditative mood. Unusually for him, it took only a few weeks to write his Violin Concerto in the winter of 1806, and it was first performed by his friend Franz Clement in Vienna. This first performance wasn't a huge success, marred by the fact that Beethoven was so late supplying the finished piece that Clement had only a couple of days to learn i

#listeneveryday 26 Feb 2021 Jason Robert Brown is a composer, pianist and conductor who was born in New York in 1970 and is best known for his musicals. His first musical was a collaboration with director Daisy Prince called Songs For A New World, a kind of theatrical song-cycle which remains popular with student and amateur groups. He then worked with Daisy's legendary father, Hal Prince, on a Broadway show called Parade which gained him a Tony award thoug

#listeneveryday 25 Feb 2021 This iconic song is one of four written by Jimmy Cliff that featured on the soundtrack to the 1972 film The Harder They Come, in which Cliff starred. The film is famous for bringing reggae to the attention of the world, and it was enormously successful in Jamaica and seen as one of the Caribbean's greatest movie exports. Jimmy Cliff first released You Can Get It If You Really Want in the summer of 1970, and Desmond Dekker and The

#listeneveryday 24 Feb 2021 Amy Beach was an American composer who lived from 1867 to 1944, and one of the most respected pianists and composers of her era. Like other composers of her gender, her music has only really come to light in recent years after far too long away from the mainstream concert platform. Radio 3 made her 'composer of the week' early this year. She gave her first public piano recital at the age of 16, and wrote a great many beautiful wo

#listeneveryday 23 Feb 2021 Shostakovich was heavily criticised by Stalin's regime in the mid-1930s. In 1936 the Soviet authorities described his opera Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk as "chaos, instead of music" and through an article in Pravda warned Shostakovich that any further 'stepping out of line' would not be met in a friendly manner. Shostakovich knew he was in a desperate situation. He felt allied to his fellow Russians, concerned at the authorities' effo

#listeneveryday 22 Feb 2021 Take Five appeared on Dave Brubeck's 1959 album Time Out, released in the same year as Giant Steps by John Coltrane and Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, who featured on #listeneveryday last week. Brubeck and his quartet had been experimenting with unusual rhythms and metres for a time and drummer Joe Morello was bugging Brubeck for a new composition in 5/4 time. Eventually saxophonist Paul Desmond said he would write one, and the qua

#listeneveryday 19 Feb 2021 We see much about the troubles in Syria, so I wanted to bring some balance by sharing some of the beautiful music from the region. Vocal music is very popular, with examples ranging from adhan (call to prayer) chanted by muezzin to popular songs which regularly appear in films. Ya Tira Tiri Ya Hamama (Fly, fly away, my dove) is a traditional Syrian song with lyrics that come from the classical poetry of Andalusia in Southern Spai

#listeneveryday 18 Feb 2021 I guess I'm four days late with this one, but it is one of my favourite standards and has been recorded by a vast number of major artists, including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Bing Crosby and even Elvis Costello. I love this performance by Miles Davis with pianist Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter on sax, bass player Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams. Davis, born in 1926, was enjoying huge success on the back o

#listeneveryday 17 Feb 2021 The story goes that Count Hermann Karl von Keyserling, a powerful 18th century diplomat, suffered from insomnia and instructed one of his staff musicians - a man named Johann Gottlieb Goldberg - to play for him to help him get to sleep. Goldberg studied with J.S. Bach and mentioned this to him one day. Bach helped out by composing an Aria and 30 variations for Goldberg to play to the Count. The Goldberg Variations, as they are kn

#listeneveryday 16 Feb 2021 Just before our love got lost, you said "I am as constant as the Northern Star" And I said "Constantly in the darkness, where's that at? If you want me I'll be in the bar." Canadian singer-songwriter (and painter) Joni Mitchell took time out of her busy performing schedule to travel around Europe in 1970. It was on this trip that she wrote much of the album Blue which she recorded and produced herself in 1971. Blue is regarded by

#listeneveryday 15 Feb 2021 He rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound, Of many links without a break, In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake. These and other lines from George Meredith's 1881 poem The Lark Ascending preface the score of Ralph Vaughan Williams's famous piece for violin, originally composed in 1914 with piano accompaniment and then reimagined with orchestra in 1921 to form the version so many people know and love. Vaughan

#listeneveryday 12 Feb 2021 I wanted to include a performance by Sarah Vaughan and fully expected it to be a standard by Gershwin, Porter or someone similar. Then I stumbled across this performance of Send In The Clowns, from Stephen Sondheim's 1973 musical A Little Night Music. It's one of Sondheim's best-known songs, thanks to famous performances from people like Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins and Barbra Streisand, but this TV performance by Sarah Vaughan in

#listeneveryday 11 Feb 2021 Labrinth is Timothy McKenzie, a Hackney-born producer, songwriter, singer and rapper who began his career writing for artists such as Professor Green and Tinie Tempah, with whom he appeared (uncredited) on the 2010 hit Pass Out. Following this he was signed as an artist to Simon Cowell's Syco label - the first in a number of years to do so having not appeared in a TV talent show. He went on to have a very successful string of rel

#listeneveryday 10 Feb 2021 Clara Wieck was a German pianist and composer, born in 1819 in Leipzig. She lived with her father and studied music for hours every day under his careful guidance. She became a highly regarded concert pianist and toured widely, performing with other 19th century virtuosi such as Paganini and giving the first performances of many pieces by other leading composers of the day. One such composer became her husband. Robert Schumann wa

#listeneveryday 9 Feb 2021 In the 1630s, a member of the Sistine Chapel choir, Gregorio Allegri, composed a setting of Psalm 51, Miserere mei, Deus (Have mercy on me, Lord) for the Tenebrae services of Holy Week at the Vatican in the time of Pope Urban VIII. There are a lot of stories surrounding the life of this very famous and beautiful setting. One is that the 14-year-old Mozart attended a service at the Vatican in 1770, and on hearing the Miserere he im

#listeneveryday 8 Feb 2021 We're stepping into the world of film today, and Rachel Portman's music for the 2000 film Chocolat, which starred Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench and Johnny Depp. It tells the story of Vianne, who sets up a small chocolate shop in a sleepy French village at the beginning of Lent, and how her arrival affects the community. Rachel Portman is a very successful and prolific film composer, who studied at Charterhouse School and Oxford Uni