January
No sooner than the BBC Music Magazine team had trundled back into the office after our Christmas holidays, then the sad news reached us that the ground-breaking French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez had died. The extent of Boulez’s musical influence was extraordinary. As a composer, writer and conductor, he championed the works of generations of new composers, encouraging a need for greater musical experimentation. A pioneer of serialism, he developed his own ‘controlled chance’ technique that allowed performers to have choices about what to perform (read more). The other two main news stories of January 2016 were much more cheerful: Jaap van Zweden was appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic, and the King’s Singers announced that they’d found a replacement for the retiring David Hurley.
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla appeared on the August cover of BBC Music Magazine
February
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra took the classical music world by surprise in February when it announced that it had appointed a new music director: Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. After just one concert with the CBSO in July 2015, chief executive Stephen Maddock raced through another booking. ‘The orchestra were unanimous. They said she was the clearest conductor they had ever worked with,’ he says. Quite a claim, when that list contains CBSO predecessors Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo and Andris Nelsons (read more). This was a month for celebration, as film composer Ennio Morricone won his first ever Oscar after 37 years of nominations, and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies was awarded a Royal Philharmonic Society gold medal. On a sadder note, leading American composer Steven Stucky died, aged 66.
Peter Maxwell Davies passed away in March, 2016
March
2016 has taken many greats from the world of culture, and classical music was no exception. The death of revered Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt came just three months after his retirement from the stage due to ill health. In a career that lasted over 60 years, Harnoncourt was one of the most influential musicians of his era, not just as a conductor but, importantly, as a major scholar, pioneer and champion of the period instrument movement (read more). A month after being awarded the prestigious RPS gold medal (see above), composer Peter Maxwell Davies died after a long battle with leukaemia. The former Master of the Queen’s Music, widely known as ‘Max’, he was part of the avant-garde 'Manchester school' in the 1960's. He moved to Orkney in 1971, where he lived for the rest of his life and, in 1977 he founded the St Magnus Festival there.
The already troubled English National Opera suffered another blow in March, when its music director Mark Wigglesworth resigned as music director after disagreements with the executive panel over the future of the company. The UK government released its first white paper on culture in over 50 years.
April
The biggest excitement in April was, of course, the BBC Music Magazine Awards – aside from being a fantastic party (tickets for 2017 are on sale now), it provided a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the exceptional recordings of the year. The Recording of the Year in 2016 was Verdi’s Aida, conducted by Antonio Pappano. With an all-star cast, including Anja Harteros in the title role and Jonas Kaufmann as Radamès, this superlative Warner Classics recording was made in the studio in Rome with the Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia – just when the days of large-scale opera studio recordings were believed to be a thing of the past (read more).
Also in April, Susanna Mälkki was named as the LA Philharmonic’s new principal guest conductor, Ziyu He won the Yehudi Menuhin competition, and Daniel Kramer was appointed artistic director of English National Opera. Plus, a lost manuscript of Malcolm Arnold’s Symphony No. 7 turned up on eBay.
May
In May, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason won BBC Young Musician of the Year with a scintillating performance of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto - the same work that Guy Johnston performed in winning BBC Young Musician in 2000. Dobrinka Tabakova, the composer and chairman of the BBC Young Musician judges, said of Kanneh-Mason that 'He was electric. There was something about the way he drew the audience in. A sincere and moving performance.' (read more) The Royal Philharmonic Society gave out their annual awards to celebrate the achievements of artists and projects. Amongst the winners was Sakari Oramo, who won the conductor award just a month after winning the BBC Music Magazine Orchestral award for his recordings of Nielsen’s Symphonies Nos 1 & 3. In rather less joyful news, the European Union Youth Orchestra’s funding was slashed, forcing EUYO to announce it would close. After much protest, not least from successful alumni of the orchestra, president of the commission Jean-Claude Juncker announced that a funding solution had been found.
June – September
The summer months are often called the ‘silly season’ in media circles, due to an unusual dearth of news. However, there were a few significant stories that you may have missed whilst sunning yourself on holiday. In June, Yannick Nézét-Séguin was named as the next music director of New York's Metropolitan Opera, succeeding long-serving conductor James Levine, 72. But Nézét-Séguin won't pick up the Met baton full-time until the 2020-21 season due to his current commitments. 'It required some juggling for him to be able to come as early as then,' said the Met's general manager Peter Gelb in The New York Times (read more). In July, the leading Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara died at the age of 87. 'It is my belief that music is great if, at some moment, the listener catches "a glimpse of eternity through the window of time",' he once said. 'This, to my mind, is the only true justification for art. All else is of secondary importance.' In August, BBC Radio 3 announced their new cohort of New Generation Artists. They include Egyptian soprano Fatma Said, Romanian cellist Anrej Ionita, and British bass-baritone Ashley Riches.
October
In October the British conductor Sir Neville Marriner died aged 92. On the website of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF), the ensemble Sir Neville founded in 1959, current Academy director Joshua Bell describes his predecessor as ‘one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever known. I will remember him for his brilliance, his integrity and his humour, both on and off the concert platform.’ Bell’s memories will doubtless strike a chord with hundreds of musicians with whom the immensely popular Marriner performed over his very long career (read more). In other news, English National Opera announced that conductor Martyn Brabbins would take over from Mark Wigglesworth as musical director of the company.
November
In November the UK government announced a further £300m investment for England’s music hubs. The sizable sum will be put towards the network of 123 hubs over the next four years, in a drive to get more young people taking part in music and the arts (read more). It was also announced that a previously lost work by Igor Stravinsky would be given its first performance in 107 years in early December. The piece, which bridges the gap between Stravinsky’s early work and The Firebird, had been hidden away in a back room of the St Petersburg Conservatoire library (read more).
December
Finally, to round off the year, BBC Radio 3 announced a programme to record music by ‘lost’ female composers. Edwina Wolstencroft, editor of Radio 3’s Women’s Day, says about previous broadcasts that ‘There were composers it was not possible to feature because the performances or recordings to play to our listeners just didn’t exist. Research shows there are some 6,000 overlooked female composers from the past and most people can only name a handful of composing women, if that.’ (read more)
What were your musical highlights of 2016? Do comment below, or send us an email at music@classical-music.com