18Aug

What's a good doctor like you doing on the opera stage?

The Lebrecht Interview with tenor Ian Bostridge goes out tonight on BBC Radio 3 and all week on-line.   Great-grandson of a professional footballer, born on the ‘wrong’ side of the river, Bozza was an Oxford academic with a research line in witchcraft when the urge to be a singer overcame an innate shyness. His struggle between the two […]

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10Aug

Vladimir Ashkenazy: My Life in the KGB

He is one of the best-selling classical artists and among the most popular with his colleagues – an open, warm, intelligent and gentle man who has never sought the limelight and is famously reluctant to talk about himself. In the Lebrecht Interview tonight on BBC Radio 3 (and streamed all week), Vladimir Ashkenazy talks about his […]

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7Aug

Another silenced voice

Leo Smit, a Dutch-Jewish composer murdered by the Germans in 1943, will have two of his chamber works performed at broadcast tomorrow at the Delft Chambe Music Festival.   Dutch Radio will broadcast the concert on-line and it can be accessed pretty much wherever you are.   I owe this information to Rolf den Otter, who […]

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5Aug

Some forgotten musical victims

The names and works of the Czech composers who were confined in Terezin and killed in Auschwitz have become widely known – Viktor Ullmann fio his opera Emperor of Atlantis, Pavel Haas for his string quartets, Hans Krasa, Gideon Klein, Ilse Weber (of whom more another time) and others. Because Terezin was a showcase of Nazi […]

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4Aug

The Kaiser's not waltzing

Coming up tonight on The Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3 is Michael Kaiser, in very sober mood. Known as Mr Fix-it, or the Turnaround King, for his record in hauling back arts orgs from the brink of bankruptcy, Kaiser – presently chief of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC – surveys the post-crash arts […]

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3Aug

Goodnight to the dodos

There are few heroes in classical music publishing, a musty world of well-meaning mugwumps and would-be minor villains. Not enough profit, I guess, to attract screen heroes. David Drew, who has died aged 78, was the industry’s Humphrey Bogart. In 17 years as head of contemporary music at Boosey & Hawkes (1975-92), he stood for […]

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