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BBT followed the last week of preparations in December 2024 leading up to the premiere of its co-commission for violist Timothy Ridout, from fellow BBT artist, Mark Simpson. Eavesdropping on a London rehearsal at the start of the week, when we interviewed the pair, we ended the week in Berlin for the world premiere of Simpson’s Viola Concerto, Hold Your Heart in Your Teeth, in the Philharmonie with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under another BBT artist, Robin Ticciati.

With support from his 2022 BBT Fellowship, cellist Zlatomir Fung’s debut recording, on Signum Classics, is built around 19th and 21st century operatic fantasies. During lockdown Zlatomir discovered the wealth of cello repertoire based on operatic themes. Together with such examples as music from Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Zlatomir adds his own Fantasia from Jánaček’s Jenůfa and Marshall Estrin’s Fantasia Carmèn, composed especially for him. He is joined on the piano by Richard Fu. The recording is released on 25 April 2025 (SIGCD882).

Recorded in Amsterdam in May 2024 for Decca, BBT Fellowship winner Lucie Horsch achieved a long-held ambition to breath life into Frans Brüggen’s collection of historic recorders, now in the safe hands of his widow, Machtelt Brüggen Israëls. The resulting recording – The Frans Brüggen Project – is released on 8 November: this year marks what would have been his 90th birthday year, as well as the tenth anniversary of his death. Lucie and Machtelt offer insights into the collection of 17 exquisite instruments from the late 17th and 18th centuries and describe the thrill of making them sound again for a new generation of music lovers.

Trio Isimsiz commissioned, with BrittenPears Arts and Centro Nacional de Difusión Musical Madrid, Francisco Coll’s Piano Trio. Delayed by a year, the world premiere was given in Madrid in January 2022 and the UK premiere was given at the Britten Studio in Aldeburgh in June 2022. In August 2022 the Trio took it into the recording studio for Rubicon Classics, where its musical bedfellows were Brahms’ C major Trio Op 87 and Korngold’s Piano Trio – his Op 1. We were there to film the rehearsals and first day of the recording at The Menuhin Hall, interviewing all three members of the Trio and composer Francisco Coll. The CD – completing Trio Isimsiz’s Brahms cycle – is released on 8 December 2023.