I'm normally not at all a cynical person

says the assistant principal viola of the Oregon Symphony.
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Those are my principles....

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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...
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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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Swamped by a tsunami of classical populism.

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These photos show me with Jonathan Harvey in 2010 recording an interview for Future Radio. As I will be away from blogging for a while I am leaving you with a long listen. My broadcast interview is available via this link from the archive website of the then Future Radio station manager Tom Buckham. The 87 minute broadcast ends with a performance of Jonathan's masterpiece for large orchestra and electronics Speakings with Ilan Volkov conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. (For those with 2025 attention spans a transcript is available via this link .)   Jonathan Harvey was a composer with Buddhist tendencies . His composition ... towards a Pure Land for large orchestra evokes the state of mind in Buddhism beyond suffering where there is no grasping. Two years after I recorded the interview Jonathan left us far too early to travel towards the Pure Land - Nibbāna . Since then his eclectic vision of a new music for a new audience has been swamped by a tsunami of cl...
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We are encouraged to be victims

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Maria Farantouri went into exile when Mikis Theodorakis' music was banned after the 1967 military coup in Greece. By performing Theodorakis' songs around the world she nurtured international resistance to the military dictatorship and made the Greek public familiar with the poetry of the Nobel Prize-winning poets George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis and other important Greek poets.   On the  1967 LP  seen above Maria Farantouri and John Williams perform Theodorakis' music. (Farantouri is the usual transliteration of the Greek, rather than Farandouri as on the record sleeve.)  After the military coup d’état in 1967 the new regime banned Theodorakis’s music and he was eventually arrested. But he managed to send a short message to Maria Farantouri, advising her to leave Greece.  Maria Farantouri was just twenty years old when she left Greece for Paris, and she gave many concerts supporting the anti-dictatorship movement.  Through her political engagement...
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The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

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Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol...
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A vintage year for blasphemy and heresy

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2010 was a vintage year for blasphemy and heresy. A post on Salvador Dali drew attention to his forgotten audiovisual opera-poem Être Dieu inspired by the Cathar heresy, Jonathan Harvey stirred things up on my Chance Music programme by saying "the future must bring things which are considered blasphemous like amplifying classical music", while yet another path took me to new heights of heresy. In fact the path reached 2400 feet, which, as the photo above shows, is a serious challenge for anyone who, like me, who has a vertigo problem. I took the photo from the fortress of Quéribus in Languedoc, France and the view is towards Mont Canigou, the holy mountain beloved of Pablo Casals and Thomas Merton . Quéribus castle was the last Cathar stronghold to surrender in 1255 and Jordi Savall's The Forgotten Kingdom had led me to Languedoc and Catharism and on to Gnosticism. The Cathar heresy has its roots in the "dualist" religions in the Indus basin which origina...
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What price the BBC Proms?

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My life was changed by a Henry Wood Promenade Concert on 4th August, 1975. In the second half Sir Adrian Boult gave us Vaughan William's Fifth Symphony , and the blazing intensity of that performance remains unmatched, in my experience, in the concert hall or on record. Sir Adrian's 86 years had no relevance to his music making. Music, not age, was what mattered then. In the summer of 1975 punk was at its peak and the Vietnam War had ended after Communist forces took Saigon in the spring. Back with classical music, Pierre Boulez was in his last season as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which was at the top of its game , while William Glock's golden period as BBC controller of music and Proms administrator still informed music making in London. Your life could be changed for £1.30, which was the price of a balcony seat in the Albert Hall. All of which set me thinking, what price today's BBC Proms? In 2009 Promenade Concerts are one of few remaining...
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John Lennon beyond the Maharishi

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I don't believe in magic, I don't believe in I-Ching,I don't believe in Bible, I don't believe in tarot, I don't believe in Hitler, I don't believe in Jesus, I don't believe in Kennedy, I don't believe in Buddha, I don't believe in mantra, I don't believe in Gita, I don't believe in yoga, I don't believe in kings, I don't believe in Elvis, I don't believe in Zimmerman, I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me That litany of rejected influences comes from the track God on the 1969 John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band album. John Lennon dismisses two elements of Christianity, the Bible and Jesus, and five of Eastern traditions, I-Ching, Buddha, mantra, Gita and yoga. But intriguingly Lennon does not reject Islam as an influence. There may well be a simple explanation for this: namely that Vedanta and Zen Buddhism but not Islam were the esoteric traditions of choice for the the 1960s counterculture. But there is another possibl...
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Wagner, Mahler and Shostakovich all sound like film music

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In a typically thoughtful contribution to my post Why not play the premier league composers more often? Richard Bratby - who is professionally involved in classical music - mused "speaking solely from my own experience - there is a very noticeable falling-off in ticket sales when a symphony orchestra programmes pre-Beethoven repertoire, irrespective of the quality of the performance or the music, or the energy with which it is marketed. But why?" Now Kea has answered Richard's question with the following comment: Wagner, Mahler, Shostakovich, etc, all sound more or less like film music (or -- more accurately -- film music sounds more or less like recycled bits of Wagner, Mahler, Shostakovich, etc) and therefore don't require any intellectual involvement or serious effort to listen to. Understanding the music of Bach, Mozart or Haydn, etc (or for that matter Schumann, Brahms, Webern, Cage, etc) actually requires people to listen actively rather than being pulled alo...
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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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