Meanwhile, in the real world ...

I've been doing some very rewarding media training with young victims of crime for the charity Victim Support Norfolk. Here are the results from BBC TV News. You can catch a glimpse of me in the middle of the human knot, which is kind of appropriate.

Comments

Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

Those are my principles....

Image
Norman Lebrecht: Slipped Disc and   Lebrecht Weekly, 12/05/2023   "Why I cannot, in good conscience, review this record I cannot, in all conscience, give this recording a star rating, or even a detailed review. The soloist is Elisabeth Leonskaja, a legendary pianist whose introspections are perhaps the strongest living reminder of her late friend Sviatoslav Richter....Christian Thielemann, in the recent film ‘Music under the Swastika’, claimed that Wilhelm Furtwängler’s complicity in the Third Reich was justified by his legacy of extraordinary recordings.  Leonskaya’s presence in Putin’s Russia is not dissimilar. What are we to make of them?... The performances, per se, have nothing to do with the present situation. And yet, everything.I cannot review them". . ..and if you don't like my principles... well, I have others . Norman Lebrecht: Slipped Disc , 19/11/2025 "The Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven has cancelled a December 4 concert by the Russian-Georgian Jewish pia...
Read more

Things change but remain the same

Image
To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dish...
Read more

David Munrow - more than early music

Image
'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. ...
Read more

This LP is dedicated to Richard Wagner

Image
Composer Klaus Schulze has said 'I still love my Richard Wagner, who influenced me heavily. The way Wagner’s music introduced me to the use of dynamics, subtlety, drama, and the possible magnitudes of music in general remains unparalleled to me. There can’t be any doubt about it'. Schulze's 1975 release Timewind seen above* carries the message 'This LP is dedicated to Richard Wagner', and the two tracks of truly Wagnerian proportions on the original vinyl release were titled Bayreuth Return and Wahnfried . So why doesn't the name Klaus Schulze mean anything to the vast majority of classical listeners? The answer is because Klaus Schulze, who also uses the the alias Richard Wahnfried, is a creative maverick who was a leading figure in the development of the kosmische musik  known popularly as Krautrock, which he then morphed into the proto-ambient Berlin School of electronica, and is today best known as the Godfather of Techno and the Pope of Electronic...
Read more

Classical music is a right-brainer

Image
Whichever way you look at it classical music is not in good health. Concert attendances are down, arts funding is drying up , classical venues are increasingly dark, recording release schedules get thinner and thinner, orchestras are being downsized or disbanded , and mainstream media coverage is disappearing. Yet the classical fraternity remains in denial of an irreversible cultural change that looks increasingly likely to leave the classical genre as no more than an anachronism . Why? In 1932 the German-born Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser identified that a change was taking place in Western consciousness, and that this change was impacting on science, art, literature, philosophy and other disciplines. His thesis was that human consciousness is in transition, and these transitions are abrupt but overlapping mutations, rather than smooth transitions, and these transitions involve cerebral and physical changes. Jean Geber's thesis is developed by Dr Iain McGilchrist with his theor...
Read more

Third rate music on Naxos' American Classics?

Image
I'll be interested in American readers' reactions to the start of this review by the Guardian's Andrew Clements - ' Considering how much third-rate music has been included in Naxos's American Classics series, Elliott Carter has so far been poorly served by the budget-price label. But in the year of the composer's 100th birthday, this - the first of two discs that will include all five of Carter's string quartets - could be the start of a major addition to his discography.' Andrew Clements then goes on to write a glowing five-star review of Naxos' new CD of Elliott Carter's String Quartets Nos 1 and 5 performed by the Pacifica Quartet . I'll agree whole-heartedly with his verdict on the Carter Quartets, I bought them last week and they are superb performances of superb music. But I am not so sure about his other views. That judgement of 'third-rate music' raises the interesting point of should a critic focus primarily on the interpr...
Read more

Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

Image
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...
Read more

Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

Image
That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear ...
Read more

Classical music must go on a diet to survive

Image
In a comment on my post about orchestras touring China and the United Arab Emirates longtime reader Joe Shelby argues: "Better an orchestra with occasional trips to places we'd rather they not go, then no orchestra at all". I don't want to take Joe's comment out of context, because he quite rightly advocates more activism by musicians. But the view that classical music has to turn to ethically challenged destinations and also to ethically challenged funding to survive needs challenging. During a much reported presentation in 2013, Universal Music ceo Max Hole told orchestras they must change or die. He was right up to that point, but he was woefully wrong when he went on to tell orchestras how to change. The dogma expounded by Max Hole and generally accepted across the classical music establishment is that 'change' involves tinkering with the cosmetics of concert presentation . To date there has been absolutely no recognition of the very obvious ...
Read more

Classical music has many Buddhist tendencies

Image
With 376 million followers Buddhism is the fourth largest belief system in the world. Its core teachings of compassion and non-violence are well-known; but the wider cultural impact of those in the creative community exhibiting what the composer Jonathan Harvey described as "Buddhist tendencies" is underappreciated. Sri Lanka's state religion is Theravada - doctrine of the elders - Buddhism , and it may not be a coincidence that in 1960 elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike , the world's first woman prime minister. The island has been a center of Buddhist scholarship and practice since the introduction of Buddhism in the third century, and the country played a leading role in the preservation of the Pāli Canon of Buddhist teachings. I took the accompanying photos on a recent pilgrimage to Buddhist shrines in Sri Lanka, and to illustrate the influence of Buddhism on classical music I have juxtaposed them with cameos of music with Buddhist tendencies that provided the iPod so...
Read more