Sending up the BBC’s reluctance to perform this year’s Christmas hit on its pop station, the Dutch asked composer Reinbert de Leeuw to perform it on prime time TV.

Here’s the masterpiece, in full and unedited:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-YFadXlw68

The bicentenary of Robert Schumann’s birth had a pretty low-key reception in 2010, competing as it was against Chopin’s and against the recent 150th of Schumann’s death. Amid the recordings that came my way, one that pinned my ears back was the violinist Ilya Gringolts taking on the much-underplayed second sonata – and doing so with captivating zest.

His is the second of the Slipped Disc exclusive free downloads. Click on the link below:

http://www.onyxclassics.com/normanlebrecht/ONYX4053-5.mp3.zip

Schumann: Violin Sonata no.2 in D minor op.121 – II Sehr
lebhaft

Check the www.scena.org review:


Violin sonatas 1-3
(Onyx)
***

Ilya Gringolts and pianist Peter Laul take a sunny approach to the sonatas, a welcome change from the usual gloom and doom. The first two are mid-romantic meditations, the third a posthumous reconstruction. Gringolts is velvety and seductive in the softer passages, avoiding the pursuit of speed and showmanship, a natural storyteller.





The recording was issued on the Onyx label, a really interesting enterprise started five years ago by a pair of executive drop-outs from the crumbling corporate biz. Here is what I wrote about them at the time. I’m glad to see that many of their expectations (and mine) have been fulfilled. Enjoy Gringolts in Schumann. More to come in the festive days ahead.

The bicentenary of Robert Schumann’s birth had a pretty low-key reception in 2010, competing as it was against Chopin’s and against the recent 150th of Schumann’s death. Amid the recordings that came my way, one that pinned my ears back was the violinist Ilya Gringolts taking on the much-underplayed second sonata – and doing so with captivating zest.

His is the second of the Slipped Disc exclusive free downloads. Click on the link below:

http://www.onyxclassics.com/normanlebrecht/ONYX4053-5.mp3.zip

Schumann: Violin Sonata no.2 in D minor op.121 – II Sehr
lebhaft

Check the www.scena.org review:


Violin sonatas 1-3
(Onyx)
***

Ilya Gringolts and pianist Peter Laul take a sunny approach to the sonatas, a welcome change from the usual gloom and doom. The first two are mid-romantic meditations, the third a posthumous reconstruction. Gringolts is velvety and seductive in the softer passages, avoiding the pursuit of speed and showmanship, a natural storyteller.





The recording was issued on the Onyx label, a really interesting enterprise started five years ago by a pair of executive drop-outs from the crumbling corporate biz. Here is what I wrote about them at the time. I’m glad to see that many of their expectations (and mine) have been fulfilled. Enjoy Gringolts in Schumann. More to come in the festive days ahead.

Idealists the world over will be aware by now that John Cage’s posthumous bid to launch a Christmas number one was defeated by the X-Factor machine and other forces of darkness.

Still, against overwhelming odds, the release of 4’33” reached the creditable – indeed, amazing – height of #21 in the UK pop charts – only to run in to a wall of resistance at BBC Radio 1, where producers and DJs refused to play the track in full on their chart shows.
Challenged by Bob Dickinson, one of the Cage activists, a BBC executive composed the following excuse, exquisite in its public-service prevarications. In order to avoid another Wikileaks hoo-ha, certain details have been withheld.
“Please let me assure you that we did carefully consider the option to play the track in full at a production meeting last week. The final decision was that if the track entered the Top 20 we would play it unedited, however it entered at No. 21 and as… a result a short extract was played instead.

… In reality only 15,716 people actually paid for the track compared to the audience for the Official Chart Show which is at least 1.4 million. We decided that while most of them would like to know where the single charted they would be significantly less interested in hearing 4 minutes and 33 seconds of near silence. I completely understand your frustration, but in this case the decision was about pleasing the majority of BBC Radio 1’s listeners rather than a minority”

Idealists the world over will be aware by now that John Cage’s posthumous bid to launch a Christmas number one was defeated by the X-Factor machine and other forces of darkness.

Still, against overwhelming odds, the release of 4’33” reached the creditable – indeed, amazing – height of #21 in the UK pop charts – only to run in to a wall of resistance at BBC Radio 1, where producers and DJs refused to play the track in full on their chart shows.
Challenged by Bob Dickinson, one of the Cage activists, a BBC executive composed the following excuse, exquisite in its public-service prevarications. In order to avoid another Wikileaks hoo-ha, certain details have been withheld.
“Please let me assure you that we did carefully consider the option to play the track in full at a production meeting last week. The final decision was that if the track entered the Top 20 we would play it unedited, however it entered at No. 21 and as… a result a short extract was played instead.

… In reality only 15,716 people actually paid for the track compared to the audience for the Official Chart Show which is at least 1.4 million. We decided that while most of them would like to know where the single charted they would be significantly less interested in hearing 4 minutes and 33 seconds of near silence. I completely understand your frustration, but in this case the decision was about pleasing the majority of BBC Radio 1’s listeners rather than a minority”

My first free download for the festive season, courtesy of Orchid Classics, is one of my most-played tracks of 2010. It’s called Milo and it was written by the British composer Mark-Antony Turnage for his baby son and played by one of his close friends, cellist Guy Johnson. My review, from April, appears below.

Turnage is a terrific, organic musician whose celebrity-culture opera, Anna Nicole, will make international headlines at Covent Garden in February 2011. He made his name with some fairly trenchant music, but his tender stuff is really worth hearing.
Here’s the link to download, exclusive to Slipped Disc readers:
http://www.orchidclassics.com/downloads/ORC100010-Milo.mp3.zip
Orchid Classics is a boutique label set up by the violinists Matthew Trusler and Maya Koch to record the music they and their friends believe in most passionately, regardless of whether it happens to be conventional or obviously commercial. I shall be offering more free Orchid downloads in the coming days, as well as some from an equally interesting label, to be revealed tomorrow.
www.scena.org review:

Mark-Anthony Turnage, 50 this year, is the most distinctive of British composers with an instantly recognisable sound. This disc is built around his music for cello and piano – a set of three lullabies and the captivating Milo, named for his baby son and so tender that you wonder whether this could possibly be the same composer who wrote the savage opera, Greek.

But Turnage, even at his most domesticated, has a wiry, terse muscularity that steers him clear of cliché and imprints his signature on the score. I don’t think I could manage to fall asleep to any of these pieces, but I do keep wanting to hear them again. The cellist is the sweet-toned Guy Johnston and he is partnered by Katharine Stott who, in one of the companion pieces – the Benjamin Britten C major sonata of 1961 – achieves an ear-pricking bell-like effect on the piano to match the cello’s pizzicato.

The remaining pieces on disc are by Britten’s teacher, Frank Bridge. Written just before and during the First World War, they are neither as penetrative as Elgar’s parallel cello reflections nor as pungent as Britten. All credit, though, to the small Orchid label that produced this thoughtful compilation, none of it obviously commercial yet, on second hearing, irresistible. Guy Johnson, it turns out, is godfather to baby Milo. Something more than music went into the making of this album.

For hundreds of musicians who have been stranded in airports and hotel rooms across western Europe, their concerts cancelled or ill-attended, their credit cards maxed out, many of them wondering how they will ever get home in time for the holidays.

And spare a second thought for hundreds more who are stuck at home, their gigs cancelled, their wages unpaid, their families wondering how they will make the next mortgage date.
December is the busiest time for orchestral and session musicians, the difference between make and break. A short bout of bad weather should not disrupt the musical economy, but it does. The end of 2010 may be a good time for musicians to rethink the whole life/travel balance. Meantime, while you watch pictures of families and old folk sleeping rough in airports, think of the poor musicians who are having their toughest Xmas in recent memory.

For hundreds of musicians who have been stranded in airports and hotel rooms across western Europe, their concerts cancelled or ill-attended, their credit cards maxed out, many of them wondering how they will ever get home in time for the holidays.

And spare a second thought for hundreds more who are stuck at home, their gigs cancelled, their wages unpaid, their families wondering how they will make the next mortgage date.
December is the busiest time for orchestral and session musicians, the difference between make and break. A short bout of bad weather should not disrupt the musical economy, but it does. The end of 2010 may be a good time for musicians to rethink the whole life/travel balance. Meantime, while you watch pictures of families and old folk sleeping rough in airports, think of the poor musicians who are having their toughest Xmas in recent memory.

From next Monday, and daily throughout the holiday period, I shall be offering free classical downloads on this site from two of the most attractive boutique labels, a pair of independent outlets that do not get as much attention as their output deserves. 

Both happily responded to my invitation to warm your firesides in the coming slowdown with samples of their best pieces from the past few months and, wait for it, some sneaky peeks at their new releases from major artists the New Year.
Names, and all else, will be revealed on Monday morning. In the meantime, pin back your ears and await a few festive treats, courtesy of the happy holidayers at SlippedDisc.

From next Monday, and daily throughout the holiday period, I shall be offering free classical downloads on this site from two of the most attractive boutique labels, a pair of independent outlets that do not get as much attention as their output deserves. 

Both happily responded to my invitation to warm your firesides in the coming slowdown with samples of their best pieces from the past few months and, wait for it, some sneaky peeks at their new releases from major artists the New Year.
Names, and all else, will be revealed on Monday morning. In the meantime, pin back your ears and await a few festive treats, courtesy of the happy holidayers at SlippedDisc.

The Guardian reports that arts cuts by Birmingham Council have been agreed at 17 percent, down from £12m to £10.1 million, which is nowhere near Monday’s leaked worst-case scenario.

The cake is not being evenly sliced. Birmingham Royal Ballet takes an 18% hit, Birmingham Opera loses 15% but the flagship City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is pinched by just nine percent. This looks to me like a triumph for intensive lobbying and solid good sense in Britain’s second largest city.

The Guardian reports that arts cuts by Birmingham Council have been agreed at 17 percent, down from £12m to £10.1 million, which is nowhere near Monday’s leaked worst-case scenario.

The cake is not being evenly sliced. Birmingham Royal Ballet takes an 18% hit, Birmingham Opera loses 15% but the flagship City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is pinched by just nine percent. This looks to me like a triumph for intensive lobbying and solid good sense in Britain’s second largest city.