Pity the poor BBC presenter

A novelty at this years' BBC Last Night of the Proms, conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek, is Fučík's Entrance of the Gladiators.

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Classical music's next big thing is Karajan 2.0

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Anybody who has been around the classical music industry for some time will be struck by the remarkable similarity between the portrait of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on the cover of her first release for Deutsche Grammophon and Siegfried Lauterwasser 's brooding photo of Herbert von Karajan used on Deutsche Grammophon's 1979 vinyl release of the Beethoven Symphonies seen below. I tread on very dangerous ground here as expressing anything other than effusive praise for Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla simply prompts the usual social media tongue lashing . So let me make it clear right now that this release of symphonies  by the neglected Mieczysław Weinberg is very laudable . Moreover, let me also make it clear that there has never been a single artistic or personal criticism of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on this blog. But what I have expressed several times are reservations about the way that classical music's next big things are marketed . That Beethoven cycle by Karajan was released f...
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A sound is born

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