News that the hedge-trimmers who own EMI are putting the Abbey Road studios up for sale comes as no surprise round here. Living round the corner, as I do, I have seen a thinning of the trail of musicians making their Monday morning slog to work, and the great orchestral pantechnicons are rarely seen nowadays in the courtyard.
It’s not just to do with the shrinking record industry. Many of the facilities provided by Abbey Road can now be emulated on a laptop in a musician’s back-bedroom. The ceremony of going to studio is no longer a necessity of musical life.
Still, I’ll be sorry to see it go. I used to drop in to the canteen to catch up with musicians between sessions and always appreciated the informality of the place. It was not always so. Old-timers told me they used to get turned away by the doorman if they turned up for a session without jacket and tie. The grand old days of Elgar conducting Land of Hope and Glory are preserved on Youtube for all to share.
The outer wall of the studio complex attracts hundreds of tourists every day, all years round, many of them leaving grafitti that declare their love for the Beatles, who enshrined the house in legend.
What will number 3 Abbey Road fetch on the property market? The way prices are heating up round here, I’d guess £30-40 million.
Not a bad return on the 1929 purchase price of £100,000, but nowhere near the £120 million that Terra Firma need to raise by June to service a Citibank loan – and when the sale boards go up they will offer a sorry symbol of an industry that is coming to an end.
Hats off to a pair of chums who start the week with a smart career move.
Peter Alward has become director of the Salzburg Easter Festival, carefully stepping over a hole where three million Euros used to be before his predecessor made off with it; and, even more carefully, recalibrating the balance of power between the founder’s widow, Eliette von Karajan, and its chief conductor, Simon Rattle.
Both know that Passion Pete is not a man to be underestimated. At EMI Classics, which he ran for a decade before the company was sold to hedge-trimmers, he was the only classical label boss to develop a new artists line – an initiative which introduced such young comets as Ian Bostridge, Thomas Ades, Alban Gerhardt, the Belcea quartet, Ittai Shapiro and Alisa Weilerstein. He was also very good at saying No – and meaning it – to big beasts of the podium. Salzburg is in for a good time.
Also on the up is composer John Woolrich, who is about to be named director of Dartington International Festival and Summer School in the rolling hills of Devon. Dartington has been run for the past 11 years by the ingenious Gavin Henderson, who kept spirits high and finances in order through one of the most prestigious contacts book in the kingdom. It was at Dartington that Piotr Anderszewski made his conducting debut and I achieved a rare concert billing in Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw.
John W has a tough act to follow, but he beat off a very strong shortlist and he is full of ideas. Those hills are going to ring with a remarkable diversity of sounds.
Hats off to a pair of chums who start the week with a smart career move.
Peter Alward has become director of the Salzburg Easter Festival, carefully stepping over a hole where three million Euros used to be before his predecessor made off with it; and, even more carefully, recalibrating the balance of power between the founder’s widow, Eliette von Karajan, and its chief conductor, Simon Rattle.
Both know that Passion Pete is not a man to be underestimated. At EMI Classics, which he ran for a decade before the company was sold to hedge-trimmers, he was the only classical label boss to develop a new artists line – an initiative which introduced such young comets as Ian Bostridge, Thomas Ades, Alban Gerhardt, the Belcea quartet, Ittai Shapiro and Alisa Weilerstein. He was also very good at saying No – and meaning it – to big beasts of the podium. Salzburg is in for a good time.
Also on the up is composer John Woolrich, who is about to be named director of Dartington International Festival and Summer School in the rolling hills of Devon. Dartington has been run for the past 11 years by the ingenious Gavin Henderson, who kept spirits high and finances in order through one of the most prestigious contacts book in the kingdom. It was at Dartington that Piotr Anderszewski made his conducting debut and I achieved a rare concert billing in Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw.
John W has a tough act to follow, but he beat off a very strong shortlist and he is full of ideas. Those hills are going to ring with a remarkable diversity of sounds.
