A turd world country?

Example

- there are 200,000 dogs in Paris

- each day they leave ten tons of excrement behind them

- each year six hundred Parisians break a limb slipping on dog turds

- the city of Paris uses sixty green motorcrottes that streak through the streets trying to vacuum up the turds. The cost of these to the tax payer is £5million a year

From Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong by Jean-Benoit Nadeau & Julie Barlow

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Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

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These photos were taken by me in 2008 at independent record retailer Prelude Records in Norwich. Jordi Savall's impromptu viol recital and signing session preceeded two performances at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. One was a solo recital by Jordi in Peter Mancroft Church ; the other was an immensely moving performance of his visionary Jerusalem multicultural project at the Theatre Royal*. As reported here Prelude Records closed earlier this year; it was a victim of predatory online retailing, and today its premises stand empty awaiting occupation by a mobile phone or E-cigarette retailer. The Norfolk and Norwich Festival has been the victim of savage funding cuts , but continues in a more modest form due to the dedicated work of its small management team. A few days ago I wrote about a two-thirds empty Snape Maltings concert and proposed that classical music's heartland is facing a perfect storm caused by the convergence of the shifts in consumer tastes and the r...
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Silence of a Candle

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David Munrow - more than early music

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'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
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Youth's magic horn

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That photo was taken by me as my wife handed out sweets to these young Senegalese footballers. (Football followers will appreciate the irony of my engagement with both Morocco and Senegal.)  During our recent travels in Senegal we were struck both by the physical presence and beauty of the people, and by the shocking poverty. 60% of the population is under 30 years old, which is at least partly due to a Senegalese husband being legally allowed up to four wives. 'The Youth's Magic Horn'  (Des Knaben Wunderhorn ) is the anthology of folk poems from which Gustav Mahler's  'Poor Children's Begging Song' ( Armer Kinder Betterlied ) for boy's and women's choirs and contralto soloist in his Third Symphony is taken. My recent listening has included returning to Jascha Horenstein's recording of this symphony. Horenstein (1898 to 1973) was a truly great interpreter of of Bruckner and Mahler, and his recording of the latter's Third Symphony is amon...
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Should creative artists be politically engaged?

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Know your audience

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Great recordings without the spin

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This wonderful Christian Steiner portrait of Charles Gerhardt(1927-99) featured in my 2007 post LPs were like the force of gravity . Gerhardt's important contribution as a conductor, producer and champion of twentieth-century composers such as Howard Hanson , whose Second Symphony is the main work on the disc above, has never been fully recognised. So I was delighted when David Cavlovic sent me a link to a wonderful appreciation of Gerhardt's work . Reading Robert E. Benson's memories of Gerhardt prompted me to dig some of his great recordings out of my collection, and to write my own appreciation below. Charles Gerhardt was a champion of the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold , and collaborated with the composer's son George on recordings of his film music. One result was the 1972 LP seen above conducted by Charles Gerhardt and produced by George Korngold, which is a true sonic and musical delight. At one time it was available as a Chesky CD transfer, but I can find no...
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Those are my principles....

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Critical Mass

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Elgar and the occult

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