Oliver Zeffman

June 3, 2021 at PDT

Live At The V&A

Atmospherically filmed amid the Raphael Cartoons in the V&A’s Raphael Court, this album is a treat for both ear and eye. British conductor Oliver Zeffman leads the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in a program that wanders through time, perfectly complementing the glorious surroundings. Russian-born British violinist Viktoria Mullova joins the ASMF for Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major in a performance that’s crisp, songful, and wonderfully eloquent, and her Bach solos speak powerfully in such a striking setting. Zeffman conducts Honegger’s “Pastorale d’été” with a lovely sense of atmosphere, while Arvo Pärt’s timeless “Fratres” makes a huge impact with its stillness and deceptive simplicity.

14 Tracks

April 13, 2023 at PDT

Live at the Cutty Sark

Britain’s island story has long been accompanied by a soundtrack inspired by the sea. Conductor Oliver Zeffman dips into the nation’s stock of maritime music for the fourth of his Music x Museums concerts, performed in company with the Philharmonia Orchestra and mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly in the glass-roofed space beneath the Cutty Sark. The legendary British ship, among the fastest clippers ever built, stands as part of Royal Museums Greenwich.

The nautical themes of Grace Williams’ Sea Sketches and Elgar’s Sea Pictures are prefaced by Ralph Vaughan Williams’ majestic Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910). “Of course the Tallis Fantasia isn’t about the sea, but it fitted the program’s mood naturally. And Thomas Tallis, one of Tudor England’s greatest composers, is buried just around the corner from Cutty Sark in St Alfege Church.”

Elgar’s Sea Pictures (1899), with Sarah Connolly as soloist, transforms often pedestrian verse by five different poets, the composer’s wife among them, with its compelling combination of big solo tunes, rich orchestral colors, and emotional ebb and flow. Sea Sketches, five evocative pieces for string orchestra, was written in London towards the end of the Second World War. Grace Williams, who had studied with Vaughan Williams, longed to return to the seascapes of her native Glamorgan and evoked their changing moods in her score. “It’s very atmospheric,” notes Zeffman. “The last movement, ‘Calm Sea in Summer,’ creates an irresistible impression of a summer’s day by the sea.”

11 Tracks

February 3, 2022 at PST

Ives: The Unanswered Question - Single

2 Tracks

June 29, 2023 at PDT

Caroline Shaw: Is A Rose - EP

A distinctive bass-baritone sings raw vignettes with dramatic poise. Then, a soprano relives heartbreak and healing, with lines that swoop across a rhythmic accompaniment. Finally, a tenor arcs over lush strings, bringing lyrical flair to Scottish poetry. These three singers—Davóne Tines, Ella Taylor, and Nicky Spence—are joined by the Philharmonia, conducted by Oliver Zeffman, in this new version of Caroline Shaw’s Is a Rose. The song-cycle is the centerpiece of Classical Pride, a special EP created to celebrate LGBTQ+ composers and musicians.

“It’s an incredibly beautiful piece,” Zeffman, who curated the program, tells Apple Music Classical. “These are love songs—ultimately that’s what Pride is about: being allowed to love who you love.” Is a Rose was composed from 2016 to 2019, originally written for mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. It comprises three distinct pieces: The Edge, based on words by Jacob Polley (sung here by Tines), And So (Taylor), and Red, Red Rose, a setting of a Robert Burns poem (Spence). Shaw’s engaging melodies—following on from Partita for 8 Voices, the 2009 to 2012 work that made her the youngest-ever recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 2013—benefit from this fresh orchestration, with the variety of voices bringing appropriate multiplicity of style. “We’re a wide-ranging group of performers to show the diversity of Pride,” says Zeffman.

Classical Pride also includes a new arrangement of the theme to the second season of The White Lotus, the HBO series that has become a touchstone in gay culture. Taylor is the virtuosic vocalist in a soaring solo part that requires the soprano to ululate on a top B. “We’ve chosen these tracks to show that classical music is an essential part of Pride,” says Zeffman, “it’s not just Kylie and Kim Petras.”

4 Tracks

April 6, 2023 at PDT

Live at the Science Museum

Music and mathematics were taught together in Europe’s universities for centuries before science and the arts drifted apart. Conductor Oliver Zeffman shows how the two subjects intersect in this live album, part of his Music x Museums series. Its program, performed in the well-stocked space of London’s Science Museum, explored the diverse ways in which composers play with the nature of musical time. It was brought to life by Ozero Ensemble’s 16 players, almost within touching distance of objects in the museum’s Stephen Hawking at Work exhibition.

Bach’s intricate counterpoint, the musical equivalent of multivariable calculus, opens the show dressed in shimmering colors supplied by George Benjamin. His arrangement for nine players of a canon and fugue from The Art of Fugue intensifies the music’s twists and turns. Harrison Birtwistle’s Tragoedia (1965) employs often violent textural contrasts to create a work rooted in the world of ancient Greek drama. “It’s very aggressive in some places,” notes Zeffman. “And then there are reflective moments in the middle. It’s a monumental, ritualistic piece.”

The concert includes the world premiere of William Marsey’s instantly accessible, meditative Why Do You Grieve, constructed from “programmable” elements of sound that can be extracted, manipulated, and reconstituted in multiple combinations. “Will’s a good friend, but I’ve never had the chance to make something with him before,” recalls Oliver Zeffman. “He was excited by the idea of writing a piece that played with notions of time. And we end with Terry Riley’s In C from 1964, said to be the first minimalist composition, which plays with time by having the musicians repeat 53 phrases at different times as often as they wish.”

12 Tracks

March 16, 2023 at PDT

Live at the V&A, Vol. 2

Those inseparable twins, dress and identity, fell under the spotlight of the V&A’s Fashioning Masculinities. The exhibition’s galleries—Undressed, Overdressed, and Redressed—informed Oliver Zeffman’s choice of music for the first of his Music x Museums concerts. Recorded live in the V&A’s sublime Raphael Court, the performance opens with Lully’s Overture to Le bourgeois gentilhomme, a nod to the periwigged posturing of 17th-century Paris.

Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, the American composer’s reimagining of the classical minuet and trio, shows how an old musical fashion can be redressed in elegant new clothing. “It’s so atmospheric, particularly in that breathtakingly beautiful space,” comments Zeffman. The majority of this release is set aside for Stravinsky’s neoclassical ballet Apollo, first performed in 1928 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and representing here the undressed state. “The point of neoclassicism is to strip away the excesses of Romanticism,” notes the conductor. Its score depicts the Greek god Apollo, rationally minded leader of the muses, in music that combines echoes of Lully with the cool, clean lines of modernism. It’s the perfect program for a museum that brings old and new together in spectacular ways.

12 Tracks

September 24, 2020 at PDT

Eight Songs From Isolation

For this extraordinary opera shot entirely on iPhone, eight leading composers including Thomas Adès, Freya Waley-Cohen, Huw Watkins, and Julian Anderson chart the ways lockdown has eroded our way of life. By setting poetry, letters, and speech, each orchestral song brings a new perspective on physical isolation. And each is performed in sequence by a different singer, alone in a variety of locations—including soprano Sophie Bevan with her baby son in the sanctity of her bedroom and tenor Toby Spence confronting the solitary bleakness of a London flat. The eight remarkable films directed by UK filmmaker Billy Boyd Cape combine for a compelling musical tapestry of physical separation. Highlights include Helen Grime’s setting of Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “Prayer,” poignantly performed within an empty church by mezzo Sarah Connolly, its lyrical melody hovering over a nervous, skittish accompaniment. And baritone Andrei Kymach brings Ilya Demutsky’s disturbing portrait of mental disorder to vivid life inside a filthy, fly-infested kitchen. Oliver Zeffman, who commissioned each song, conducts members of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, with each singer recorded separately in isolation.

8 Tracks

September 24, 2020 at PDT

Eight Songs from Isolation [Visual Album]

For this extraordinary opera shot entirely on iPhone, eight leading composers including Thomas Adès, Freya Waley-Cohen, Huw Watkins, and Julian Anderson chart the ways lockdown has eroded our way of life. By setting poetry, letters, and speech, each orchestral song brings a new perspective on physical isolation. And each is performed in sequence by a different singer, alone in a variety of locations—including soprano Sophie Bevan with her baby son in the sanctity of her bedroom and tenor Toby Spence confronting the solitary bleakness of a London flat. The eight remarkable films directed by UK filmmaker Billy Boyd Cape combine for a compelling musical tapestry of physical separation. Highlights include Helen Grime’s setting of Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “Prayer,” poignantly performed within an empty church by mezzo Sarah Connolly, its lyrical melody hovering over a nervous, skittish accompaniment. And baritone Andrei Kymach brings Ilya Demutsky’s disturbing portrait of mental disorder to vivid life inside a filthy, fly-infested kitchen. Oliver Zeffman, who commissioned each song, conducts members of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, with each singer recorded separately in isolation.

18 Tracks

March 23, 2023 at PDT

Live at the V&A, Vol. 2 (Visual)

8 Tracks

March 30, 2023 at PDT

Live at the British Library (Visual)

6 Tracks

April 13, 2023 at PDT

Live at the Cutty Sark (Visual)

11 Tracks

April 6, 2023 at PDT

Live at the Science Museum (Visual)

4 Tracks