Publications
As a PhD student and early career researcher working in higher education, my work and writing focused on nineteenth-century vocal music in Austro-Germany: above all the music of Brahms and his contemporaries. But rather than writing about Brahms’s solo Lieder, which we often hear in concert, I concentrated on his music for vocal quartet and piano – much more unusual concert repertoire – and these pieces, along with domestic music-making (Hausmusik) more generally, are a particular interest of mine.
I’m also fascinated by the history of performance. What information can concert programmes reveal about trends in repertoire, audience types, and broader cultural attitudes towards music and those who practised it? This is where the history of the Edinburgh Festival and the Wigmore Hall enter the mix below. More recently I’ve been working on more marginalised composers, such as Elizabeth Maconchy, as well as people involved in the music business in less obvious roles: like Natalia MacFarren, who provided the first singable English translations of a lot of Italian, French and German music for British audiences.
And most importantly of all, I care about bringing all this research to wider audiences. So you’ll also find general interest classical music books in this list, score prefaces on chamber and orchestral repertoire, and magazine articles and CD sleeve notes. In fact, all these publications are in one place, because they’re all things that anyone can read, not just ‘specialists’ or ‘non-specialists’. I’m keen to write things that can be understood by anyone who’s interested in them, regardless of formal training.
Out soon…
More BBC Music Magazine work… a lot of CD notes… and a chapter on the press reception of Elizabeth Maconchy (Cambridge University Press)…
2024
CD note for Bartók with Juri Zhislin and the State Symphony Capella of Russia (Orchid Classics)
CD note for Schubert Reimagined with Josephine Knight, Simon Crawford-Philips, The Gesualdo Six and Timothy Jones (Orchid Classics)
Review: Javier Suárez-Pajares & Walter Aaron Clark’s A Light in the Darkness. The Music and Life of Joaquín Rodrigo for BBC Music Magazine (August issue)
2023
CD note for Harriet Burns & Ian Tindale Schubert Lieder: Love’s Lasting Power (Delphian)
CD note for Rheinberger & Mendelssohn Choral Works with the Netherlands Radio Choir & Benjamin Goodson (Pentatone)
CD note for Sounds and Sweet Airs: A Shakespeare Songbook with Carolyn Sampson, Roderick Williams & Joseph Middleton (BIS)
CD note for Rosalind Ventris’s Sola: Music for viola by women composers (Delphian)
Review: Robert Philip’s A Little History of Music for BBC Music Magazine (July issue)
Review: John Potter’s Song. A History in 12 Parts for BBC Music Magazine (Christmas issue)
2022
CD note for Benjamin Grosvenor’s Schumann and Brahms (Decca)
CD note for Consone Quartet’s Mendelssohn String Quartets (Linn)
Feature interview with Benjamin Appl for BBC Music Magazine (January issue)
2020
Chapter, ‘Natalia MacFarren and the English German Lied’ in German Song on Stage: Lieder Performance in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, ed. Natasha Loges and Laura Tunbridge (Indiana University Press)
2019
Review: ‘Consuming Music: Individuals, Institutions, Communities, 1730–1830’ in Nineteenth-Century Music Review
Co-editor and contributor to Brahms in Context (Cambridge University Press)
CD note for Claire Booth & Christopher Glynn’s Edvard Grieg: Lyric Pieces (Avie)
2018
Contributor to The Classical Music Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (Dorling Kindersley)
Score preface for Julius Otto Grimm’s Suite no.1 (Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich)
Score preface for Paul von Klenau’s Overture Klein Idas Blumen (Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich)
2017
Review: ‘Brahms-Institut.de’ in Nineteenth-Century Music Review
Contributor to 30-Second Classical Music, ed. Joanne Cormac (Ivy Press)
2016
Co-author, with Natasha Loges, of ‘Singer-Songwriters of the German Lied’ in J. Williams & K. Williams, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter (Cambridge University Press)
‘‘A man of many hobbies…’: Alan Adair and the concerts of the Adair Wounded Fund’ in Fontes Artes Musicae (January-March 2016)
CD note for the Heath Quartet’s Tchaikovsky Quartets nos. 1 and 3 (Harmonia Mundi)
2015
Review: ‘Coughing and Clapping: Investigating Audience Experience’ in Fontes Artes Musicae (October-December 2015)
Score preface for Julius Otto Grimm’s Suite no.2 (Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich)
Score preface for Max Bruch’s Salamis op. 25 (Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich)
2014
Chapter author (for the time period 1850-1899) in Jon Paxman’s Classical Music 1600-2000. A Chronology (Omnibus Press)
Co-editor and contributor to Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall. Between Private and Public Performance (Cambridge University Press)
Score preface for Hans Huber’s Sextet for piano and wind instruments (Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich)
Score preface for Friedrich Gernsheim’s Salamis op. 10 (Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich)
2013-2014
Research assistant to Graham Johnson for his Franz Schubert. The Complete Songs (Yale University Press)
2013
‘Hans Gál and the Edinburgh Festival’ in Brio Vol. 50 no. 1 (Summer 2013), pp.39-52
Score preface for Hans Huber’s Piano Quintet op. 111 (Musikproduktion Jürgen Höflich)
2009
Comprehensive work list for the composer William Hurlstone, former professor and alumnus of the Royal College of Music.
