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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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With or without AI we are facing a pandemic of slop

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In his new book  A Trick of the Mind   experimental psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist  Daniel Yon   provides a thought-provoking take on AI. He proposes that the borders between human creativity and AI are more porous than the dominant narrative suggests , explaining that  there is a close symmetry between what happens in AI's artificial neural networks, and what happens in the networks of our own minds.  Human evolution depends on random variability. Without genetic mutation there would be no variability and humans would never change, meaning every child would be an exact copy of their parents.  Daniel Yon expands the work of social psychologist and scholar  Donald T. Campbell   to propose that this dependence on random mutation does not just apply to human evolution but also to creative evolution. So no random mutation in the creative process means no development. All creativity depends on taking old ideas and combining...
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They collected the entire back catalogue of Leonard Bernstein

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Recent posts here highlighted Lance Richardson's masterly new biography of Peter Matthiesen . Also by Lance Richardson is House of Nutter , which tells the true story of Saville Row tailor extraordinaire and gay icon Tommy Nutter and his photographer brother David . Here is a brief extract from the biography: In part to inoculate themselves against their father, Tommy and David combined their powers of invention. They treated the walls of their shared bedroom with shocks of coloured paint. They built a faux fireplace from scavenged bricks and sculptures out of tin film containers threaded with wire. They sliced out pages from Marie Claire, Paris Match, and made a giant photo mural that juxtaposed Brigitte Bardot with African tribal dancers. They collected the entire back catalogue of Leonard Bernstein, which they blared on a portable radiogram.  That is very-well-dressed Tommy above, and the not-so-well-dressed David below. My encounter with the ambiguous Leonard Bernstein was...
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Pushing the classical music envelope

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'In his short life and his art, the French Canadian composer Claude Vivier was a man diving, often recklessly, into the ultimate…. And from the edge of experience, he began to bring back, in the years leading up to his death in 1983, a new sound.' – Paul Griffiths , The New York Times I recently asked Who is pushing the classical envelope? My header photo shows a little-known figure who certainly pushed the classical music envelope and in the process created a new sound world that is ripe for rediscovery. Claude Vivier, was born to unknown parents in Montreal in 1948. After adoption his education prepare him for the priesthood until he was expelled from his seminary for "immature behaviour". But his religious training had awakened another vocation and he went on to study music, first in Montreal and then in Europe where his teachers included Karlheinz Stockhausen . In 1976 Vivier visited Japan, Bali and other Eastern countries and their musical traditions influenc...
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The end of innocence

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In 1963 an English teacher, who considered passion more important than protocol, smuggled me and a few of his other 14 year old students into a cinema to see a '16' rated film. The newly-released Lord of the Flies was directed by Peter Brook and filmed on a very low budget. It brilliantly transferred William Golding's novel, which we were studying for 'O' Level English, to the screen, and went on to become a classic of the cinema. The DVD of Lord of the Flies , which restores Tom Hollyman's stunning black and white photography to its original glory (images above and below) , is essential viewing. A bonus on the DVD is the optional commentary by Peter Brook and his production team, which was recorded in 2000. But in the 90 minute commentary there is not one single mention of the music score which, with its repetition of the Kyrie Eleison motif, is an integral part of the film. The music for Lord of the Flies was written by Raymond Leppard. It is his best kn...
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Bach - the specialists would never allow that

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I couldn't agree more strongly with Théo . As Colin Davis said when he took over at the LSO, what the orchestra needed was to play a great deal of Mozart and Haydn, string tone often having been the Achilles heel of London orchestras. Davis has also said that, of works he would most still like to record he would most like to record, he would choose the St Matthew Passion, but noted that, alas, the 'specialists' would never allow that. As our good host points out, the present situation would have been incomprehensible to great conductors of the past, whether Walter, Klemperer, Mengelberg, or Furtwängler. How is one to hear the Bach in Mahler, let alone the Mahler in Bach, if one does not know Bach - and know him intimately? Even if one were to take the ayatollah-like view that Bach and Handel were and could only be chamber music, it would be necessary to play them for that reason alone. Those would confine Bach, Mozart, Monteverdi, or anyone else, to a (generally grossly mis...
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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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Specialisation is damaging classical music

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'I would go a little further. One of the issues we face today is the ever-increasing division of classical performances into small, ghetto-like compartments. Forty years ago Fischer-Dieskau could be a giant among singers whether he was performing Bach or Wagner, Schubert lieder or Weber operas. For modern performers that doesn't seem possible. The baroque period has largely been abandoned to specialists. Even performances of Mozart, Hadyn and even early Beethoven, which used to be a staple of most symphony orchestras' concert seasons, are becoming rarities. This over-specialisation makes for less rounded and perceptive musicians. What's more it creates a uniformity of performance style which becomes more and more difficult to challenge. What isn't clear to me is why this should have become the norm. As a lifelong listener it isn't a development I ever wanted and I can't believe the move towards clinical uniformity has done anything except drive audiences awa...
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The composer without a shadow?

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If you want to start a fascinating thread write about Leonard Bernstein's Mass . Here are some comments from my most recent Mass post : Movie commented - It's not a dishonest piece and I think it still works today . I commented - But what are examples of dishonest pieces of music? Pentimento commented - I'd say much of Strauss's oeuvre is dishonest. I couldn't live without Metamorphosen , Capriccio or the wind concertos, and one of my most memorable, and disturbing, evenings in the opera house was Hildegard Behrens singing the title role in Salome with Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1977 Salzburg Festival . But, despite that, you may be right Pentimento. Which leaves me with only one possible back link - Herbert von Karajan Ein Heldenleben Sorry I cannot credit the lovely portrait of Richard Strauss (I do hope you meant Richard and not Johann, Pentimento), but I do not know who it is by. It comes from Ferdinand Von Galitzien's blog . Help with ...
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Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

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That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear ...
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