Have celebrity musicians passed their sell-by date?



An unexpected composer is sandwiched between Respighi and Borodin at number 16 in the Gramophone specialist classical chart this week. His name is Joubert and the disc is the new Dutton release of John Joubert's Second Symphony as previewed here in April. You can sample John Joubert's music above in the form of the opening movement of his First Symphony with Tod Handley conducting the London Philharmonic in a Lyrita recording. What is remarkable in this extract is how the transmission and lineage of composer, performers and production team blaze through the intermediate filter of a YouTube file. And on the same path it is good to see just-in-time Jordi being lauded in a Guardian editorial. But does this mean his status changes to celebrity from mad genius?

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Comments

CliffordChallenger said…
I have, commenting elsewhere on the blog, thanked you for drawing my attention to this CD. It's not only the Joubert symphony which is interesting. I had never heard of Carlo Martelli whose symphony is also on the CD (though I must have heard his music on film soundtracks). Record companies like Dutton, Lyrita, NMC and other independents deserve a lot of praise for making available much music which we would not hear otherwise.
3:28 pm
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