Last music critic standing


Elsewhere there are attempts to drum up interest in a poll to find the last contemporary composer standing. Whatever next - perhaps a poll to find the last music critic standing?

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In the shadow of Chopin

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The music police are already telling us how we will be celebrating the Chopin bicentennial this year. So, never one for musical correctness , my header photo honours another giant of the piano, in status if not in stature, who is buried literally in the shadow of Frédéric Chopin. Michel Petrucciani, compositeur - pianiste de jazz , died in 1999 aged just 36. He is buried alongside birthday boy Chopin in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris and his pianistic genius has featured several times On An Overgrown Path . Père Lachaise has more musicians per acre than any other burial ground, and they include Georges Bizet whose headstone is seen below. Bizet's grave is surprisingly understated for France's most famous musician and the dates on it are a sobering reminder that he was the same age as Michel Petrucciani when he died. Adjacent to Bizet is the more contemporary resting place of Georges Enescu who died in 1955. Enescu (Enesco in France) taught Yehudi Menuhin , Arthur Grumiau...
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Musician's dissent dismissed as "sanctimonious shit"

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Violinist, conductor, composer, and improviser Pekka Kuusisto recently announced he would pausing his professional engagements in the United States in the following message: I’ve decided to stop working in the United States for the time being.  I want no pressure placed on any of my colleagues to come to the same conclusion.  Love and solidarity Predictability his decision was greeted by an outpouring of bile on the classical music industry's online resource of choice Slipped Disc . Just as the decision of respected American composer John Luther Adams to relocate to Australia  was greeted with similar bile . Here is just one comment posted in response to Pekka Kuusisto's decision: Sanctimonious piece of shit. Never going to another one of his concerts. The US didn’t kill Iranian school girls for performative violence. This false accusation is disrespectful to the US military which gives Pekka his freedoms. Online forums always attract nutjobs. But this thread is a conti...
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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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Vonnegut gets his Dresden facts wrong

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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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Lizzie, I am sorry that this article didn’t appear last year as I had planned. 2006 was the centenary of your birth, but the year passed with scarcely a mention of your work, or a performance of your music. It was my plan to rectify that in a small way, and I wrote a very nicely turned appreciation. I am sure you would have approved of it - all about the myth of Elisabeth Lutyens, the mother of British serialism, ‘Twelve-tone Lizzie’ - the outspoken eccentric shunned by the musical establishment whose compositions were rejected by the BBC, and the composer who struggled for commissions and performances. The myth is perpetuated in your Wikipedia entry which says you 'worked in isolation and neglect, creating a personal style of serialism and eventually gaining some recognition for her ability to set text. Lutyens' work was exposed to the public at large through her scores for horror films.' In your autobiography the Goldfish Bowl you made much of the tensions with your ...
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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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