Ken Russell, who died yesterday, cheerfully disavowed the constraints of authenticity when making his epic film, Mahler.

He was not bothered by whether Alma was telling the truth in her memoir of Gustav. ‘She tells a good story,’ he decided.

Nor was he troubled  by location. ‘I shot it in six weeks, half in the (English) Lake Disctrict, half in a flat in Portobello Road.’

To make Mahler’s family sound more Jewish, he had them speak in London East End accents.

‘I can’t read music and I don’t speak German,’ Ken declared proudly to me.

So far, so fake.

But what could not be denied was Ken’s passion for Mahler and his music. He was consumed by it, absorbed, besotted. Music was Ken’s driving motivation and his use of it in the film is inspirational.

Klaus Tennstedt, the most instinctual Mahler conductor I have known, called it the best film he had ever seen about music and watched it over and over again. When opera houses asked him to conduct Strauss, he named Ken as his preferred director. When they refused – on grounds of Ken’s turbulence and notoriety – so did Klaus. They never worked together, but they met several times and enjoyed each other’s company.

The Grawemeyer Award, the richest prize for contemporary composition, is greatly coveted by all who put notes to paper. Apart from the prestige, there’s $100,000 in an envelope, which is more than most living composers see from their work in a decade.

This year’s winner has just been announced.

It is Esa-Pekka Salonen for his violin concerto. Here’s his victory interview with Alex Ross.

Would you say the Salonen violin concerto is the best new work of the past year? Listen here. You judge.

My singer friends inform me that Ubaldo Gardini, one of the great voice and Italian language coaches of the past half century, died yesterday in hospital in Ferrara.

Here’s a tribute by Sir Colin Davis, who called him ‘maestro’. Mark Elder, in an interview, once named Gardini as the man from whom he had learned most.

A member of the family has just informed me that the film director Ken Russell died yesterday afternoon, peacefully in his sleep.

He was 84.

Ken made his name with a series of films and fantasies about great composers: Elgar, Delius, Mahler, Liszt and more.

He went on to make feature films – Women in Love (1969), The Devils (1971) and Tommy (1975), always with an assertive music component and an uncomplicated narrative line.

Among many achievements that spring to mind, he made British cinema less insular and self-referential. He was also a leading creative force in the history of British television.

He will be widely mourned.

photo: (c) Everett/Rex (all rights reserved)