• Scored for a chamber-sized orchestra of strings and percussion, and two solo voices, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No 14 (1969) is cogent, affecting, beautiful, but also raw and short on consolation. A welcome new recording (Chandos) from the BBC Philharmonic, with chief conductor John Storgårds and soprano Elizabeth Atherton and bass Peter Rose as excellent soloists, is part of their ongoing series of the composer’s late works. With its settings of poems (in Russian) about death, by Apollinaire, Rilke, Lorca and others, the work has more the feel of an oratorio: melancholy and exploratory. Shostakovich dedicated it to his friend Benjamin Britten, who conducted the first UK performance in 1970 at his Aldeburgh festival.
The symphony is paired with the Russian composer’s Six Verses of Marina Tsvetayeva, sung with arresting fervour by contralto Jess Dandy, the woodwind, brass and percussion played with sour, fiery intensity, the BBC Philharmonic players on terrific form.
• Based in London, the chamber-sized Riot Ensemble champion new music and always surprise with the freshness of their repertoire. Their latest album, Vestige (Coviello), features seven composers, the title taken from a work by Naomi Pinnock. Here, the composer finds herself, mid-pandemic, back home, brushing up against the memories of her teenage years: forgetting and remembering, as the singer (the ever agile soprano Sarah Dacey) recalls, in vivid dialogue with violinist Marie Schreer.
Elisabeth Lutyens (1906-83), whose recognition is long overdue, was among a group of composers commissioned to write a work in memory of Stravinsky, after his death in 1971. The result was Requiescat, which set lines from William Blake’s The Couch of Death, accompanied by string trio: five minutes of ethereal, quietly ebbing music that brings to mind Blake’s angel paintings. Works by Ashkan Behzadi, Michaela Catranis, Alex Groves, Enno Poppe and Peter Wilson capture the mood of “memory, of healing and desire”, as promised in the album’s liner note. Each of these contrasting tracks is played with expression and finesse by this first-rate group.
• On the road: Radio 3 Breakfast’s popular presenter Petroc Trelawny travels across Northern Ireland via its loughs, with live broadcasts from Carlingford, Strangford, Neagh, Erne and Foyle, and contributions from local musicians, naturalists, historians and poets. Monday to Friday, 6.30-9am, Radio 3/BBC Sounds.
