The conductor Raffaello Morales has come up with an original solution for making post-Covd audiences pay.

He has founded a Fidelio Orchestra Cafe in Clerkenwell, nears central London and has engaged such renowned performers as Steven Isserlis, Pavel Kolesnikov, Simon Callow, Alina Ibragimova, Louis Schwitzgebel, Samson Tsoy and Charles Owen, starting on 7 July.

All concerts are followed by a dinner catered by celebrity chef and author Alan Rosenthal. In order to comply with social distancing guidelines, admission is restricted to 25 people per evening. Artists will perform the same programme for up to five nights running.

Details can be found here.

 

The prolific film and TV composer Jonathan Whitehead has died of a heart attack.

His TV shows included Green Wing, Nathan Barley, Smack the Pony and the Graham Norton Show.

He was fond of quoting his Bristol University tutor, Derek Bourgeois, who greeted new students with the declaration: ‘Music is dead – there’s nothing after Stravinsky.’ Bourgeois enjoyed phenomenal success as a TV composer and phenomenal failure as composer of 116 symphonies.