Welcome to BBC Music Magazine's September 2025 issue!
This month's cover star is the Oscar-winning Icelandic cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. She has forged a career spanning classical, film and electronics – but Guðnadóttir has always been drawn to unsettling themes, as she tells Claire Jackson.
Elsewhere, Simon Broughton explains how hearing the Javanese gamelan at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris introduced Debussy to a whole new soundworld. And: can you identify a pianist's country of origin from their playing style? Do national schools of piano playing still exist in 2025, asks Jessica Duchen – and indeed, has the concept ever really been an accurate one?
We've also thought, this issue, about the music that brings us healing in life's most testing moments.
Multiple studies show that music can do wonders for our mental health. So which pieces do we turn to when times are tough? We've come up with the pieces that bring us that inner stillness and peace we crave - and here they are, from Bach to Vaughan Williams via Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Mahler.
James Stewart learned the trombone for his role in The Glenn Miller Story; Geoffrey Rush played pianist David Helfgott in 1996’s Shine. Actors ‘playing’ instruments on screen can be the stuff of nightmares. But, asks Michael Beek, to what lengths have they gone to make it look convincing? And elsewhere, Michael White tells how a violin, cruelly confiscated by the Nazis but now recovered, has inspired a new work by Huw Watkins about its heroic owner.
November's Composer of the Month is the great Michel Legrand. With a portfolio ranging from iconic film scores (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg!) to jazz standards and even a piano concerto, the versatile Frenchman is hailed by Mervyn Cooke. And for this month's Building a Library, we set our faces against the wind and plunge headlong into Tchaikovsky's The Tempest. Jeremy Pound is storm-tossed and then enchanted as he seeks out the best versions of the Russian’s Shakespeare-inspired fantasy-overture.
This month's cover CD features scintillating performances of two of Carl Nielsen's six symphonies - No. 2 and No. 6. Nielsen's Second, also known as 'The Four Temperaments', is a vivid character portrait of human moods — choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic, sanguine — rendered in bold orchestral colours. By turns playful, stormy, lyrical, and jubilant, it reveals Nielsen’s earthy wit and originality.
Nielsen's final symphony, meanwhile, is nicknamed the 'Sinfonia semplice' ('Simple Symphony') - but is anything but simple. Instead, it bristles with irony, abrupt contrasts, and restless invention. Playful parodies clash with moments of tenderness and darkness, reflecting Nielsen’s complex, questioning late style. The two symphonies here receive dazzling performances from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and conductor Osmo Vänskä.
Click here or on the image to see the track details for this month's cover CD.
