New Years Resolutions. Virtuously made (and easily broken), this year the BBC Music Magazine team have decided to share our musical resolutions as incentive for keeping on course. Likewise, do share your New Year’s resolution in the comments section – we’d love to hear them!
Oliver Condy, editor
From January, I’m going to have just over an hour with my one year-old daughter each morning before I take her to nursery, so I thought I might use one of those mornings a week to introduce her to a new piece of classical music, whether I play it on the piano or on the hi-fi. Whether she enjoys it not remains to be seen, but it will give me a good insight into the way young people respond to different styles of music. I suppose I ought to leave the Webern for a little while…
Jeremy Pound, deputy editor
2016 will see me delving deeply into the great musical treasure trove that is Haydn’s 104 symphonies. Like many people, I know and love a couple of the later ones, but my dalliances with the rest have been fleeting at best. A Haydn-loving friend has armed me with a list of ‘must-hears’ – such as Nos 22 (‘The Philosopher’), 60 (‘Il Distratto’) and 73 (‘The Hunt’) – but I intend to go way beyond those. Whenever and whatever he composed, Haydn always had something interesting to say, so it’s a resolution I’m looking forward to hugely.
Rebecca Franks, reviews editor
Top of my resolutions list every year is to restart piano lessons. But I’d like to add a new one for 2016: to visit more great composers’ houses. There’s something rather special about seeing where they lived, perhaps the piano they played or the desk they sat at. This year I went to Valldemossa in Majorca, where Chopin spent a winter, and Wagner’s Swiss home, Tribschen. Both were very atmospheric, so now I’ve added a few more to the shortlist: Sibelius’s Ainola in Finland, Ravel’s house near Paris and, a bit closer to home, Leith Hill Place, left to the National Trust by Vaughan Williams in 1944.
Neil McKim, production editor
Being a double-bass player, you get a lot of grief from people shouting ‘that’s a big violin/guitar’ wherever you go. This isn’t helped by the fact that my instrument’s case looks like it’s made from the same black material as a nightclub bouncer’s bomber jacket. My New Year Resolution is to give it a makeover. I’ll start with some attachable wheels to stop it swaying wildly when I carry it, and I’m on the lookout for a new case design. Ideally I’d like one that reflects one of the most famous bass pieces of all, Saint-Saëns’s ‘The Elephant’.
Elinor Cooper, editorial assistant
Like Rebecca (above), the top of my list is always full of resolutions to pick up old instruments again, and implement regimented practice regimes. This year I have a new instrument to play with, having bought a viola for our December issue feature 'The Great £100 Instrument Challenge,' and I intend to use it! Grade 1 by the summer? We'll have to wait and see...
What are your new year's resolutions?