Twilight of the art director?


Dear Pliable, Lovely album cover. Above is another from Westminster that really takes the biscuit! An all-time favourite of mine. Never heard the recording.
Michael Richards, Sydney

Thanks Michael, knowing the wonderful piece you contributed about Stravinsky's Tibetan connection I thought it was an LP of music by George Crumb. Read here how Crumb was an influences on another vastly underrated contemporary composer.
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Travels beyond TripAdvisor

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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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A Philippa Schuyler moment

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Messiaen and Xenakis - Oiseaux Exotiques

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This photo shows Olivier Messiaen pinning the award of Chevalier de la légion d'honneur on Iannis Xenakis in his Paris apartment in 1977. Xenakis was a pupil of Messiaen and I will be playing music by both of them on my Future Radio programme on Sunday April 13 at 5.00pm UK time (repeated 12.50am April 14). The programme opens with Xenakis' Komboi and closes with another award winner, Angelin Chang , John McLaughlin Williams and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony's Grammy winning recording of Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques . The two works are separated by music from a composer who shared Messiaen's deep Catholic faith. Hildegard of Bingen is the earliest composer with a detailed biography and her music drama Ordo Virtutum is considered to be the prototype of the art form that became opera and eight centuries later came full circle in Messiaen's massively underrated Saint François d'Assise which only had its U.S. premiere in 2002. I will be playing the ...
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Wagner, Mahler and Shostakovich all sound like film music

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When the sound really mattered

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Is classical music asking the right questions?

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Third rate music on Naxos' American Classics?

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Scott Ross and the paradox of genius

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On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of his great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the château, the harpsichordist gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos below were taken by me on a ...
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EMI - it's a dog's life

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