• The Welsh composer Rhian Samuel (b1944) tirelessly supported the cause of female composers long before it became fashionable, co-editing The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers (1994). Now her own works are winning proper recognition. In Clytemnestra (BIS), soprano Ruby Hughes, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Jac van Steen give new life to Samuel’s powerful, seven-movement work for soprano and orchestra (here coupled with Mahler and Berg). Commissioned by the BBC NOW in 1994 but neglected since, it explores – with rare insight, passionately expressed by Hughes – the motives that led Clytemnestra to murder her husband, Agamemnon.
There’s more by Samuel on the album Song Lied Cân (Ty Cerdd). This small Welsh label, doing quietly impressive work, has paired her songs with works by Clara Schumann, performed by Katharine Dain (soprano), Paul Carey Jones (baritone) and Jocelyn Freeman (piano). All worth discovering.
• On Spark Catchers (NMC), Chineke! Orchestra and Chorus have brought together music by six contrasting composers, all working today. Errollyn Wallen’s Concerto Grosso (2008), compact and energetic, mixes stylistic patterns of the baroque with punchy jazz rhythms. James Wilson’s The Green Fuse (2017), buoyant and intense, is in pastoral mood. Hannah Kendall’s vibrant and compelling The Spark Catchers (2017), inspired by Lemn Sissay’s poem, gives the disc its title. Daniel Kidane’s Dream Song, which sets the words of Martin Luther King (sung by the baritone Roderick Williams), and Philip Herbert’s lyrical Elegy (1999) for 18 string players, in memory of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, reflect issues that, as Kidane says, “echo the unity of Chineke!”. The disc ends with Julian Joseph’s Carry That Sound, making a bluesy, upbeat conclusion.
• Live from St David’s Hall, Cardiff, at 4pm today, as part of Radio 3’s Beethoven Unleashed season, the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales and the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera will recreate the monumental concert, which included premieres of his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, staged by the composer in Vienna in 1808. Set aside your afternoon – and evening too.
