Forty-three years ago, he shot the president in a delusional bid for attention — one in a long line of disturbed young men who have bent the arc of the nation’s history.

Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/Francis
(CPO)
The music is earnestly motivic and the scoring dense and dark

Of Irish parentage, Augusta Holmès lived in France throughout her life, adding the grave accent to her surname when she became a French citizen. She was a friend of Franz Liszt and a favourite pupil of César Franck , who channelled his feelings for her into his stormy piano quintet. Alhough until very recently her music had been almost entirely forgotten, in her lifetime she was regarded highly enough to have been commissioned to compose an Ode Triomphale for more than 1,000 performers to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution. Her output included four operas (only one of which has been staged), more than 100 songs and cantatas, and a series of symphonic poems, four of which are conducted by Michael Francis on this disc.

Completed in 1876, Holmès’s Roland Furieux is a compact three-movement symphony, based upon Ariosti’s Orlando Furioso. Irlande and Pologne, from 1882 and 1883 respectively, were declarations of solidarity with the oppressed peoples of Ireland and Poland; while Andromède, completed in 1899, four years before her death, is based upon the story of Andromeda as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. All four scores are heavily influenced by Wagner; the music is earnestly motivic, the scoring always on the denser, darker side, though other performances might bring more transparency to the textures.

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As they gear up for a 20th anniversary tour, Daniel Kessler and Paul Banks answer your questions on getting stuck for two days in snow, playing Glastonbury in the mud and which Killers song they would cover

Around the time of Antics [2004] your stage persona was very much inline with the music: atmospheric, brooding, serious. Eight years later there was lots of smiling and laughter. What changed for you? davetinsel
Daniel Kessler [guitar, backing vocals]: I feel like the brooding, serious stuff is still there, but I’ve learned to take into account the craziness and privilege of playing music, people coming to the concerts and having a reaction. You start to really appreciate that connection, which is happening in real time.
Paul Banks [vocals, guitar]: On our first tour especially, I think I had a chip on my shoulder about any criticism we encountered, so it was a little bit us vs them. But it’s not a pressure situation now. It feels like a party. Giving a toast at dinner or something, there’s this social pressure to be fun or relatable. But performing in a rock band I always feel like the authority on my own lyrics, so that whichever way I choose to deliver them is the right way. I always felt relaxed on stage … much less so off stage, probably.

What’s your fondest memory from recording or touring Antics? Monica_
PB: The record had leaked and some fans in Spain came up to us talking about it. Having people hear your unreleased record isn’t usually good news, but it was to me because we were on our second record and I could feel this building energy.
DK: We recorded it in Connecticut and were right up to the deadline if we wanted it to be released on time. Matador sent a limousine to get us back to New York for mastering at 9am. We had six or seven hours to master it and sequenced the track listing in the car – remarkably, we all agreed, so the last two hours of the drive were very enjoyable.
PB: Limo well spent!

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BBC Philharmonic/Mena
(Chandos)
Juanjo Mena brings out the flair for instrumental colour in Roberto Gerhard’s early works

The Catalonia-born Roberto Gerhard was a pupil of Schoenberg in Vienna and Berlin in the 1920s, but it was not until the 1950s that he began to use his teacher’s serial technique systematically in his own music. But, as this collection of Gerhard’s earlier works shows, the flair for instrumental colour and for creating vivid orchestral images that gives his later music such vitality had been ever present.

The ballet Don Quixote was first performed at Covent Garden in 1950, but Gerhard had begun working on the score in 1940, soon after leaving Franco’s Spain for the UK. The other two works here, the ballet Alegrías (Joys) and Pedrelliana, also originated in those war years. All three inhabit a musical world that Juanjo Mena, the BBC Philharmonic’s former chief conductor, understands instinctively. His performances are suitably deft and exuberant, making the disc a fine, if belated, addition to Chandos’s invaluable Gerhard series.

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At his best, Gardiner’s take on classical repertoire could be thrillingly alive – but after stepping down from his ensembles following a violent outburst, his career is uncertain

It comes as little surprise after the events of last summer that John Eliot Gardiner has formally severed all links with the three pioneering ensembles that he established, the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Gardiner apologised and publicly stated remorse over the incident after a performance of Berlioz’s Les Troyens in August last year, when allegedly he struck one of the singers, the bass William Thomas , for leaving the platform on the wrong side, and he subsequently decided to step down from his conducting engagements for an unspecified length of time to undergo “therapy and counselling”. Even so, it always seemed unlikely that Gardiner would be able to continue to conduct the singers and instrumentalists with whom he had worked so closely for so long.

Yet Gardiner’s position at the forefront of the development of historically informed performance in Britain over the last 60 years is so significant that his split from the groups with whom he nurtured that development seems like a defining point in the whole evolution of the style, and the trigger perhaps for a real generational change.

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As a new best-of collates the era between Peter Green and Buckingham-Nicks, we pick out the gems from this diverse and unfairly ignored period

In Mark Blake’s excellent forthcoming book about the history of Fleetwood Mac, Dreams, there is a great quote from Mick Fleetwood. Their co-founder is looking back at the band’s history and bluntly summarising the almost perpetual state of turmoil in which it seems to have found itself. “This band,” he notes, “is a cauldron of shit.”

It’s a close-run thing, but the period in Fleetwood Mac’s history when the cauldron bubbled most violently may be the one that stretches from the departure of the original frontman, Peter Green, in mid-1970 to the arrival of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham – and with it superstardom – in 1975.

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• Stars expected to perform Édith Piaf’s ‘La Vie en Rose’
• Lady Gaga spotted aboard floating piano on river Seine

One posted photos of herself at the Louvre, gushing: “Every time I return to Paris, I remember there’s so much beauty and joy still to experience in the world”. La deuxième was spotted on a floating piano on the river Seine.

France’s president Emmanuel Macron has just about kept his counsel up to now but there is growing certainty that a slow tease comprising layers of confidentiality seductively dropped over recent days will end with a duet by Céline Dion and Lady Gaga at the glittering opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris on Friday night.

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The British music industry’s award for outstanding albums features eight debuts, from the likes of Nia Archives and Barry Can’t Swim, as the prize fails to find a sponsor

Charli xcx has crowned the so-called summer of Brat – the name of her sixth album album, whose lurid green aesthetic has even reached the US presidential race – with a nomination for this year’s Mercury prize. It is the Hertfordshire musician’s second nod, following one in 2020 for her lockdown album, How I’m Feeling Now.

She is one of four musicians nominated this year to have been previously recognised by the UK music industry’s flagship prize for albums by British and Irish artists, alongside Trinidad-born, London-raised rapper Berwyn , for his debut album Who Am I (following a nod for his mixtape Demotape/Vega in 2021); Leeds songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae , for her fourth album, the psychedelic opus Black Rainbows ; and London rapper Ghetts , for his fourth album On Purpose, With Purpose .

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People living next to Santiago Bernabéu venue say gigs – including those by Taylor Swift – are ruining their lives and are taking action

When Delphine de Pontevès opens the window of her first-floor flat in Madrid a little before 10pm on a Tuesday night, more spills into the living room than the unforgivingly hot night air.

The voices and shouts of the crowds below give way to cheers, then to bass-heavy beats and music that will last until midnight and further stretch the patience of those who, like De Pontevès, live next door to the Santiago Bernabéu stadium.

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