Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis is one of his best known works, and Tudor church music was a major influence on the composer. During 2008 I am playing all the Vaughan Williams symphonies on my Future Radio programme , and this Sunday (Feb 17) it is the turn of the Eighth Symphony. This for many, including me, is one of his finest works, and it certainly destroys the myth of the composer as a backward looking English pastoralist, with its scoring for vibraphone, xylophone, tubular bells, glockenspiel and three tuned gongs. I'm coupling all the Vaughan Williams Symphonies with choral music from Thomas Tallis . This will be taken from the splendid new 10CD box of Tallis' complete works at bargain price from Brilliant Classics sung by the Chapelle du Roi directed by Alistair Dixon . Tallis also composed a number of instrumental works which are included in the box. They are not of the same peerless quality as his choral works, but are, nevertheles...
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The glimpse at what BBC executives claim as expenses and receive in terms of corporate hospitality does not include anything that relates to "journalism, art or literature".
This is because of exemptions within the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000, as explained on the BBC website:
It is important to bear this in mind when considering the Freedom of Information Act and how it applies to the BBC. The Act does not apply to the BBC in the way it does to most public authorities in one significant respect. It recognises the different position of the BBC (as well as Channel 4, S4C and the Gaelic Media Service) by providing that it covers information “held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature”. This means the Act does not apply to information held for the purposes of creating the BBC’s output (TV, radio, online etc), or information that supports and is closely associated with these activities.
As the BBC's main purpose is to create output for TV, radio, online etc this means the great part of the BBC's activities are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. An interesting situation when one considers that the BBC's annual income is more than £3 billion, and that the income is raised by a legally enforced poll tax.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/about.shtml
My view of the good Sir Nicholas is forever coloured by a lunch I had with him 20 years ago, when he was editor of, I believe, that soaraway publication Early Music News.
Lunch was on my expense account and, if I remember rightly, Mr Kenyon (as he was then) ordered the most expensive items on the menu and a big cigar afterwards. He was clearly thinking big in those days too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/F7497566?thread=4922946
Plus ça change. BBC Radio 3 controller Roger Wright's contribution to the Guardian Stockhausen tribute was to namedrop the London restaurant he took the composer to -
http://music.guardian.co.uk/electronic/story/0,,2226684,00.html