26Mar

Does Edinburgh know what it's getting?

Bliss, Brett Dean’s opera on Peter Carey’s novel, opened in Sydney amid a tide of patriotism for Australia’s most important operatic venture in decades. The opera, put online by the ABC, could not be accessed outside Australia so I am forced to reply on the views of those who were there. Amid a flush of generally heated reviews, […]

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26Mar

Believe what you like

Courtney Love, widow of the late Kurt Cobain and supposedly ‘the most controversial woman in the history of rock’, has a powerful interest in Sir Edward Elgar’s voyage to South America, in the New Economic Foundation, in Japanese pop music and in a movie about Lourdes. That, at any rate, is what we are meant to […]

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25Mar

No more Holy Molys

When the meditative music of Arvo Pärt and Henryk Mikolai Gorecki reached western ears in the early 1980s, it was tagged by the modernist establishment with the derogatory name of Holy Minimalism. The amount of derision piled into that conjunction is almost incalculable. ‘Holy’ meant that the two composers were the agents of organised religion, making a […]

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23Mar

Lament for Lady Walton

Susana, widow of the composer William Walton, has died in the garden shrine she created in his memory at La Mortella, on the island of Ischia. She was 83. Walton was twice her age when they met a press conference in Buenos Aires in 1948 and their marriage was neither equal nor easy. In her […]

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22Mar

Lang Lang gets a partner

The Sony label, which paid $3 million to snatch Lang Lang from Deutsche Grammophon a few weeks ago, has swooped again to sign the violinist Ray Chen, winner of the latest Queen Elisabeth competition in Belgium. Chen, 21, was born in Taiwan, raised in Australia and schooled at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. He is represented by the […]

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22Mar

The war has ended at Bayreuth

The death of Wolfgang Wagner, announced Sunday night, ends a post-war era at Bayreuth that was almost as unpleasant as the Nazism that preceded it. Wolfgang, with his brother Wieland, conspired in covering up the family’s collaboration with Hitler, which included the operation of a small concentration camp in the grounds of the Bayreuth Festival. Any […]

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21Mar

Waltzing off with an everlasting smile

The Vienna Philharmonic has posted a tribute to one of its oldest friends, Franz Mailer, the supreme authority on three-four steps and the works of the Strauss family. Mailer, who has died at the age of 90, attended the first New Year’s Eve Concert in December 1939 under the directorship of Clemens Krauss and a large […]

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19Mar

So who's slashing artist fees?

In the second episode of my conversation with the strings world in The Strad magazine, I discuss what has been happening to musicians’ fees in this third season of recession. The trend, as you’d expect, is sharply down, but how, where and by how much is more than a little interesting. The conversation is a […]

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7Mar

A Very Serious Jew

Before you sit down tonight to watch the Oscars, you may wish to sample the latest in-depth analysis of one of the outside contenders. A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers’ account of second-generation immigrant alienation in the 1960s Midwest has already been subjected to more second-hand cogitation than its essentially light narrative can bear – a […]

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6Mar

News just in: Philip Langridge has died

The great English tenor, the outstanding Peter Grimes and Aschenbach of recent years, has succumbed to a rapid, aggressive cancer. He was 71. The last time I saw him was in Harrison Birtwistle’s latest opera, The Minotaur, directed by Philip’s son, Stephen Langridge. The show was totally dominated by John Tomlinson as the raging man-bull, […]

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5Mar

How critics make up their minds

Coming out of a premiere at the Young Vic last night, I overheard the following exchange between two of the attending critics, one of them a recent appointment. Critic A: I know we shouldn’t share, but what did you think? Critic B: You’re right, we shouldn’t. Critic A: Still, what did you think? Critic B: Magnificent. […]

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