from the British Music Society
News, reviews & features
Finzi biographer Diana McVeagh dies aged 98
Diana McVeagh, author and long-term BMS member, died on 2 July aged 98…
BMS trust to promote Hurd’s music in 2026
Many members will remember the generous grant for the British Music Society left in composer Michael Hurd’s estate…
Obituary: Garry Humphreys
Garry Humphreys, baritone, conductor, writer, researcher, and business librarian, has died aged 79…
Bite-Back: it’s not a second hand book!
Dr Strachan suggests that my ‘assessments of Coleridge-Taylor’s music are likely to be at second hand’. They’re really not…
July release for one act opera
The Parlour, an opera in one act by Grace Williams, will be released on 4 July…
BEAUTY VEIL’D: Dare, Howell, Matthay, McEwen
Marie Dare is a new name to me; if her Phantasy Quintet starts with a surging Baxian theme, it soon relaxes into something rather more suave and loosely pastoral, with a hint of Ravel’s airy textures…
Review: Opera North – Earth & Sky
A field of butterflies on the Pennine Moors, ethereal poetry and fascinating music in your ears as you explore the wild landscape above Haworth in West Yorkshire…
INCANDESCENT INCANTATIONS: Works for solo violin & reciter
In the field of music for solo violin and speaker, Alan Ridout’s Ferdinand the Bull has roamed, largely unchallenged, for over 50 years. The two commissions here that attempt to rectify the balance are therefore to be commended…
AND THE BLACKBIRD SANG: Choral Music
An invigorating issue of fascinating material, Excalibur Voices are a well-balanced ensemble whose phrasing, if not always the tidiest, is natural and musical…
PIANO QUINTETS: Godfrey, Hodgson, Walthew, McCabe
Percy Godfrey? No, me neither; but this 1900 Piano Quintet is quite the find. The first movement surges with full-bodied invention…