Genius or genetic experiment?


It is rewarding to see my early advocacy of an overlooked woman musician 'Philippa Schuyler - genius or genetic experiment?' back up among Overgrown Path's most read stories - see sidebar - after seven years. That is Philippa above and the linked analysis with audio samples of her piano music by John McLaughlin Williams is also a must-read. Speaking of must-reads, did you see that story elsewhere 'Women in orchestras wash their hair, and the men?'

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No flowers please for Herbert von Karajan

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Few musicians have generated such a mixture of respect and revulsion as Herbert von Karajan. It takes Richard Osborne 851 pages in his masterly biography to capture the essence of this extraordinary conductor, entrepreneur and opportunist, and it would be impertinent to even attempt to cover the same ground here. So instead, with the centenary of Karajan's birth falling on April 5, I offer this personal vignette from my time at EMI, which I hope in some small way illustrates the conundrum that was this extraordinary man. During the late 1970s the Machiavellian Karajan had carefully nurtured a deadly rivalry between EMI and his other contract company, Deutsche Grammophon. This meant that EMI had, at very considerable expense, outbid DG for the four act version of Verdi's Don Carlos with José Carreras and Mirella Freni , and Debussy's Pelléas et Méliande with Frederica von Stade and Richard Stilwell . Pélleas was a personal passion of Karajan, and because of this he ...
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A Philippa Schuyler moment

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The truth about those French orchestras

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Vonnegut gets his Dresden facts wrong

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Different tempo but the music continues

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BBC launches free classical MP3 downloads

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