I was asked the question at the House of Commons culture committee and suggested Sir John Tusa as a good candidate. He has run the BBC World Service and the Barbican Centre to very good effect and remains so passionate about the arts that its hard to find him at home of an evening.
John would do a great job of cleaning those Augean stables, the more so after today’s massive debacle.
However, I hear there are more names in the frame. Whispers in the past 24 hours suggest that former Marks & Spencers boss Stuart Rose and Tesco chief Terry leahy are being considered by the Goverment. Neither has prior form in the arts or any notable passion. Past experience of business moguls has been dismal – remember Labour’s Gerry Robinson.
If there is a plan to remove Liz Forgan before her term expires in 2013, Jeremy Hunt should keep his focus on someone from the arts with a no-nonsense history. Tusa’s the name.
I was asked the question at the House of Commons culture committee and suggested Sir John Tusa as a good candidate. He has run the BBC World Service and the Barbican Centre to very good effect and remains so passionate about the arts that its hard to find him at home of an evening.
John would do a great job of cleaning those Augean stables, the more so after today’s massive debacle.
However, I hear there are more names in the frame. Whispers in the past 24 hours suggest that former Marks & Spencers boss Stuart Rose and Tesco chief Terry leahy are being considered by the Goverment. Neither has prior form in the arts or any notable passion. Past experience of business moguls has been dismal – remember Labour’s Gerry Robinson.
If there is a plan to remove Liz Forgan before her term expires in 2013, Jeremy Hunt should keep his focus on someone from the arts with a no-nonsense history. Tusa’s the name.
Music
Ranking recorded by Wikio
Music
Ranking recorded by Wikio
Rudolf Barshai, who has died at his Swiss home, aged 86, was the best viola player in Russia. He had a long friendship with Dmitri Shostakovich, who called him one day in the summer of 1975 with technical questions about the instrument. When Barshai asked what he was composing, Shostakovich replied ‘a sonata, for you’. It was to be his final work.
Barshai had already applied to leave the country and was officially an outlaw. The sonata, opus 147, was published and performed in Moscow with a dedication to Feodor Druzhinin, viola player of the Beethoven Quartet.
Out in the wide world, Barshai fulfilled his ambitions to be a conductor, working with many orchestras though never achieving star status. His finest moments on record are with a German youth orchestra with which he performed
Mahler’s fifth symphony and his own realisation of
Mahler’s tenth. Both are legends among Mahlerians and his score of the Mahler tenth is gaining widespread acceptance. It is probably as close to what Shostakovich would have done, had he accepted a 1941 invitation to complete the work.
For more details see Why Mahler? and Elizabeth Wilson’s Barshai interview in Shostakovich: A Life Remembered.
There is a rather lovely picture of Barshai with a bemused look on his face as his friend Yehudi Menuhin demonstrates his yoga skill of standing on his head.
Unbelievable.
It’s the only word I can find to describe Alan Davey’s performance on the Today programme this morning.
The chief executive of Arts Council England has just ‘discovered’ that many of the companies receiving regular grants, the so-called RFOs, never actually applied for them.
Absolutely right. Maynard Keynes stipulated in 1945 that arts funding was to be ‘informal’ and the Arts Council existed to choose ventures and support those which had a ‘reasonable prospect of success’. This is foundation stuff. How is it possible that Davey has been chief executive for three years and does not know this?
And what point is there in making a National Theatre apply for its grant? Will any Arts Council ever dare to drop a national enterprise?
The gimmick comes with a ten-year strategy plan that was first sketched in 2007 and bears no relation to present reality.
Unbelievable, in both senses of the word. The ACE initiative makes you wonder whether they are living on the same planet as the rest of us. And Davey’s presentation was so tremulous, so lacking in personal credibility that no-one can possibly imagine why this man is still in his job, earning £191,000 after a £16,000 increase last year.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
It’s the only word I can find to describe Alan Davey’s performance on the Today programme this morning.
The chief executive of Arts Council England has just ‘discovered’ that many of the companies receiving regular grants, the so-called RFOs, never actually applied for them.
Absolutely right. Maynard Keynes stipulated in 1945 that arts funding was to be ‘informal’ and the Arts Council existed to choose ventures and support those which had a ‘reasonable prospect of success’. This is foundation stuff. How is it possible that Davey has been chief executive for three years and does not know this?
And what point is there in making a National Theatre apply for its grant? Will any Arts Council ever dare to drop a national enterprise?
The gimmick comes with a ten-year strategy plan that was first sketched in 2007 and bears no relation to present reality.
Unbelievable, in both senses of the word. The ACE initiative makes you wonder whether they are living on the same planet as the rest of us. And Davey’s presentation was so tremulous, so lacking in personal credibility that no-one can possibly imagine why this man is still in his job, earning £191,000 after a £16,000 increase last year.
Unbelievable.
