My parents encouraged me to play piano and violin, and my mother especially was keen to take me to musical events, including the opera. I was about five when I was taken to Verdi's Rigoletto, and the old ladies behind me said, 'Why do the parents bring this young boy to the opera? He doesn't understand a thing. They were probably right, but I did cry at the end and I remember trying to copy the arias at home.
Robertino Loreti was one of my favourite singers, and I sang Italian songs in the hairdressers when I was a boy. They stood me on the chair and people queued to hear me sing 'O sole mio'! Also as a child, I was taken to organ concerts in Riga Cathedral. It took five long hours to get there, a two-hour concert and then five hours back late at night. When we recently had a state visit to Riga, they knew about this and they brought me to Riga Cathedral to hear the organ again.
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Denne historien er fra September 2023-utgaven av BBC Music Magazine.
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Look back in anguish
Despite Korngold's denials, there is much to suggest that his Symphony in F sharp is a grim depiction of the dark days of Nazism, argues Jessica Duchen
Come again?
If something is worth hearing once it's worth hearing again, explains Rebecca Franks, who charts a history of the use of echoes in music
THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
Music by women and composers of colour is not a separate set of pieces from the ones we know
A brilliant melting pot of discoverable works
Erik Levi enjoys Patricia Kopatchinskaja and friends' eloquent performances of lesser-known works by exiled composers
Pierre Boulez
Tom Stewart celebrates a composer, conductor and musical iconoclast for whom breaking from tradition was not an option but a must
Vienna's cacophonous concert ends to the sound of slapping
‘Fighting at a Schoenberg concert.
Molto humoroso
Cartoonist and broadcaster Gerard Hoffnung lampooned the world of classical music with splendid affection and wit, writes Andrew Green
There and back again
With retrospectives on album and in concert this month, Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore reflects on his years in Middle-earth and tells Michael Beek why he has a lot to thank the LPO for...
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN Pick a theme... and name your seven favourite examples
Composer-conductor Odaline de la Martinez prizes tempo, swing and bounce in her top rhythmic works
Crystal clear with plenty of punch
The great is, they say, the enemy of the good, and that is certainly the case with David Sanger’s interpretation of Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 1, which stands head and shoulders above a strong field of alternative versions.
