Tom Service talks to Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires about the spirituality of her performances, and examines the letters of Benjamin Britten written between 1946 and 1951 - the period when he wrote many of his best known works, founded both the English Opera Group and the Aldeburgh Festival, and toured widely as a pianist and composer.
On this programme:
The Sage Gateshead
The spectacular alien form of the Sage Gateshead opens this Friday to provide North-East England with a huge new music venue. Conceived by the Norman Foster design team, the Sage contains two concert halls and 25 music-education rooms. Tom visited the Sage to talk with the Artistic Director, Anthony Sargent, about the forthcoming programme of events and the impact the Sage will have on the regeneration of the local community.
You can hear Northern Sinfonia's concert of Haydn's Creaton from the Sage on Thursday 23rd December in Performance on 3.
For more information about the Sage Gateshead: www.thesagegateshead.org
Maria Joao Pires
Portuguese pianist, Maria Joao Pires, is one of the most instinctive performers around, and her performances of Mozart, Chopin, and Beethoven have transfixed audiences for decades. Tom caught up with Maria Joao Pires for a rare interview and discovered a person who is the antithesis of the flashy virtuoso. She talks about the way music for her is essentially spiritual and how she's devoted her life to understanding its emotional and physical power.
Maria Joao Pires's new CD of Schubert piano duets, with Ricardo Castro, is out in January next year on the Deutsche Grammophon label.
Britten
As the question of whether there is any relationship between Britten's sexuality and music continues, two new books are published which contribute to the debate. Tom talks to writer and composer Bayan Northcott about whether Britten's operas were a projection of his private torments, looks at a collection of his letters and asks can we separate the man from his music.
Letters from a Life: Selected Letters of Benjamin Britten. Volume Three, 1946-51
Edited by Donald Mitchell, Philip Reed, Mervyn Cooke. Pub. faber and faber, hb. £25.00
Claire Seymour: The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion
Pub. Boydell Press, hb. £55.00
Carols
Tom takes a seasonal pilgrimage to Cambridge to investigate the world of the Christmas carol. He visits the chapel of Trinity College with composer John Rutter and scholar Helen Deeming, and peruses the Trinity Roll, the oldest surviving manuscript copy of a carol. Tom also talks to Judith Bingham, the composer of this year's annual carol commission for the choir of King's College to sing at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. He asks her about the challenge of writing a piece that's new and distinctive for the carol repertoire.
You can hear the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on BBC Radio 4 and BBC2 on Christmas Eve, and repeated on BBC Radio 3 on Christmas Day.
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