Carry too little merchndise is #1 no-no.

However, while Ari Herstand’s list is designed for pop roadies, it contains a good deal of sense for classical roamers. Especially ##2-6.

Read the tips here.

I’ve just about had it with the notes in three languages that record labels append to new releases. Apart from the pages telling me how this or that artist and orchestra is ‘one of the world’s leading….’, the music notes seldom give any information that I don’t know already, or that I actually need to know.

Take this new Beethoven album by the turbulent Turkish pianist, Fazil Say. the first movement of the C minor concerto contains a cadenza so tantalising and intelligent that I turned straight to the booklet to see who composed it.

Nothing. Not a word. Plenty about compositional process and ‘a radiant C major’, a legal note to inform us that the conductor Giannandrea Noseda appears by courtesy of another label, but not a dicky-bird about the cadenza.

I assume it’s by Fazil. If so, it should say so.

Dammit, what is the purpose of these otiose sleeve notes?