I believe in letting an invader in and then setting a good example. That is the reply Benjamin Britten gave to a tribunal for the registration of conscientious objectors in 1942 when asked "What would you do if Britain was invaded?" I was reminded of it when researching my recent article on Marco Pallis , who was an authority on both Tibetan Buddhism and early music, and, together with Britten, a champion of Purcell . In his best-selling book Peaks and Lamas , which was written in 1939, Pallis tells this story about the Sakyas , the ethnic group of which Gautama Buddha was a member which inhabited the foothills of the Himalayas. News was brought to them of an impending attack by a hostile tribe and it was debated anxiously whether resistance should be offered or not. Eventually they decided that, as followers of [Buddhist] Doctrine, they were debarred from offering armed resistance, but must welcome the invaders as friends, so they threw down their arms... The Tibetans, how...
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Charming...
So Karajan, Giulini, Jochum, Furtwangler, Horenstein, Sinopoli, Chailly, Celibidache, Tintner et al wasted all their time on wonderful performances and recordings of severely flawed scores for nothing?
If anybody could get Karajan and Celibidache in the same fan club they must have been doing something interesting...
So wrote Elgar in 1905 to his publisher Jaeger about the composition of his Introduction and Allegro.
Thank you Marcus for reminding us of how great that 'devil of a fugue really is.
Isn't it interesting that so many consider this magnificent work to be his finest, yet it is also his most classical in form?
I wonder how many of today's jet-set maestros would conduct ballet? (It is interesting that Antal Dorati was another fine ballet conductor).
Follow this link for more on Elgar's music for The Sanguine Fan.