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H A L K O L A I I R S K / G A L L E R Y I O N A L I S H N A T I N N F : . P H O T O M U S E U M A R T A T E N E U M ; C M 5 7 X C M I O N C O L L E C T 8 4 ; C A N V A S S A N D B E R G O N I L B Ö R J E O/ ) I L ;I E S ( D E T A 1 1 9 0 ; I E W V L A K E ; K A L L E L A G A L L E N I A K S E L : I N G I N T P A C O V E R I T I Q U A N T B O A R D O F I O N A L N A T / T H E H E L A N D E R I V A R : P H O T O G R A P H Founded in 1923 by Sir Compton Mackenzie and Christopher Stone as ‘an organ of candid opinion for the numerous possessors of gramophones’ Two announcements end months of speculation After months of speculation, the announcement finally arrived. Many words over many months had been written examining the possibilities, and so audiences around the world, sitting in front of their computers and waiting patiently for the live-streamed press conference to begin, were eager to discover how their listening lives were about to change. At this point, the story goes in two very different directions. Let’s start with the live stream from San Francisco, where in early June senior Apple executives, shirts untucked and high-fives at the ready, unveiled before an assembled audience of technical developers their next big step in online listening: Apple Music. Most Apple initiatives – iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad – have either kick-started, or arrived in the early days of, a technological trend. In this instance, they’d been beaten to streaming by services such as Spotify, Qobuz and Tidal. Apple’s offering needed to be bigger and better to reclaim lost ground: by the time you read this, it will have launched and you’ll have your own views on whether it’s succeeded. Playlists and listening suggestions are clearly a key part of the service. I’d love to see Apple being bold and creative in this area, proposing classical tracks to users they identify as among the more exploratory, helping to bridge those artificial borders between genres, ones largely defined back in the days of purely physical sales when companies needed to know which bit of a shop to stock something in. Given the millions who are likely to use Apple Music, what an amazing opportunity this could be to reinstate classical as being serious music for the culturally curious, not merely a specialist genre sidelined by the uninitiated. Time will tell. Back to that live-streamed announcement, this time with shirts tucked in (though still open-necked - this is 2015) and the more familiar formalities of a traditional press conference, as the Berlin Philharmonic announced its new Chief Conductor, Kirill Petrenko. This was more of a surprise, but that in itself bodes well. In life an obvious choice can sometimes be a lazy choice: a less obvious one generally stems from careful consideration and special insight. Again, time will tell. So, two very different announcements, relating to two very different organisations, not least when it comes to time-scales. Petrenko doesn’t replace Sir Simon Rattle until 2018 – three years is an incredibly long time in the digital world, and by then something completely unheralded may have once again radically altered how we buy and hear music. And yet there’s something of the ethos of Apple’s innovativeness lurking in the Berlin Philharmonic – its Digital Concert Hall has set the bar impressively high for how an orchestra can harness the web to reach new audiences. Perhaps more unites these two organisations than just the fact that both announcements were delivered in the same way. And finally, what does it say about how rapidly the way in which we engage with music is changing in that it seemed perfectly normal, entirely unremarkable in fact, that both announcements were live-streamed? martin.cullingford@markallengroup.com THIS MONTH’S CONTRIBUTORS JEREMY DIBBLE is the author of this month’s Collection on Bax’s Tintagel. ‘One of the classic 20th-century ‘Spending time in one of the ancient forests of Finland in November threw up so many questions about Sibelius and his English tone-poems, it’s full of majestic impressions of Cornwall’s commanding seascape and its mystical castle ruins,’ he says. ‘It is also one of the most brilliant examples of the composer’s phenomenal orchestral technique.’ inherent Finnishness,’ says ANDREW MELLOR, who has written this month’s cover story on the Finnish composer whose 150th anniversary is celebrated this year. ‘It was fascinating to delve deeper into the woods.’ JOSHUA KOSMAN, the writer of this month’s Musician and the Score, has covered classical music for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1988. He was delighted to peruse Ravel’s score with mezzo Susan Graham: ‘Going through Shéhérazade with her was like travelling through a city with an inspired and enthusiastic tour guide,’ he says. THE REVIEWERS Andrew Achenbach • Nalen Anthoni • Mike Ashman • Philip Clark • Alexandra Coghlan • Rob Cowan (consultant reviewer) • Jeremy Dibble • Peter Dickinson • Jed Distler • Duncan Druce • Adrian Edwards Richard Fairman • David Fallows • David Fanning • Iain Fenlon • Fabrice Fitch • Jonathan Freeman-Attwood Caroline Gill • Edward Green¨ield • David Gutman • Lindsay Kemp • Philip Kennicott • Tess Knighton • Richard Lawrence • Andrew Mellor • Ivan Moody • Bryce Morrison • Jeremy Nicholas • Christopher Nickol • Geo¨frey Norris Richard Osborne • Stephen Plaistow • Peter Quantrill • Guy Rickards • Malcolm Riley • Marc Rochester • Julie Anne Sadie • Edward Seckerson • Pwyll ap Siôn • Harriet Smith • Ken Smith • David Patrick Stearns • David Threasher • David Vickers • John Warrack • Richard Whitehouse • Arnold Whittall • Richard Wigmore • William Yeoman gramophone.co.uk Gramophone, which has been serving the classical music world since 1923, is irst and foremost a monthly review magazine, delivered today in both print and digital formats. It boasts an eminent and knowledgeable panel of experts, which reviews the full range of classical music recordings. Its reviews are completely independent. In addition to reviews, its interviews and features help readers to explore in greater depth the recordings that the magazine covers, as well as o fer insight into the work of composers and performers. It is the magazine for the classical record collector, as well as for the enthusiast starting a voyage of discovery. GRAMOPHONE AUGUST 2015 3

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