Results tagged “lebrecht interview” from Slipped disc

Stephen Hough has slightly jumped the gun on one of the topics in tonight's Lebrecht Interview by setting out his views on assisted suicide in his telegraph blog, here.

We were discussing the deaths of the conductor Edward Downes and his wife Joan who, in their own way, jumped the gun recently by opting for euthenasia in a Swiss clinic, Dignitas, rather than awaiting the inevitable. 

Stephen, a devout Roman Catholic, argued lucidly against the legalisation of assisted suicide on the grounds that it would encourage elderly people to makes themselves 'less of a burden' on younger relatives, and that it would subject doctors to more moral stress and executive authority than they are qualified to exert.

Quite by coincidence, a very junior hospital doctor told me yesterday of an elderly patient in the final stages of cancer who refused to sign the DNR (do not resuscitate) forms, only for the attending physician to attempt to persuade her son to sign them by proxy. The doctor will have thought he was acting in the patient's best interests - resuscitation of a comatose aged person is not pleasant for anyone - even as he overrode her express wishes. It is for such reasons that I believe we need to think very carefully before altering the laws on euthensia.

You may feel differently ... feel free to discuss below.

In our intense and extensive conversation, Stephen - who is by far the most successful British pianists of recent times - touches upon his own near-death experience, as well his battle to convince the Church to recognise gay relationships.

The Lebrecht Interview airs tonight at 2145 UK and streams all week online on BBC Radio 3.

Coming up tonight on BBC Radio 3, and streamed throughout the coming week on site, is the Lebrecht Interview with one of the most self-possessed artists I have ever encountered.

Hilary Hahn, last year's Grammy winner for the Schoenberg concerto that hardly anyone else dares to play, puts neither a note nor a hair out of place. We eyeballed for an hour in a studio in Liverpool, the shutters slamming down whenever the conversation touched on private life.

I don't pretend to have got the measure of Hilary - she's too smart for that - but you may form a bit more of an impression of what she's about from listening to her duck and weave under a hail of questions.

The new Lebrecht Interview series starts tonight on BBC Radio 3 with an unbuttoned conversation with William Christie, early-music pioneer and the American who revolutionised the culture of musical performance in France.

'Am I being indiscreet?' he says, at one point.

Yes, he is. We talk for 45 minutes, no holds barred and all names named, about how great musicians abuse their students, how public funding gets distorted by political vanity and how an individual with tunnel vision can overturn a state bureaucracy.

The broadcast will be streamed here for seven days - up to the next Lebrecht Interview.

Halfway through a Lebrecht Interview for the upcoming BBC Radio 3 series, Hilary Hahn took control and demanded: 'But what about you? I want to know what you think musicians should be doing in this situation. You're supposed to be the expert. Where's it all going?'

It was an astute interjection, cleverly deflecting my line of questioning from areas where the hard-headed violinist did not want to go and putting the pressure on the interviewer to come up with an instant panacea. Did I pass the test? You'll have to hear the programme, which goes out some time in July or August. But I liked Hilary all the more for her initiative and the moment loosened her up for the rest of the conversation as much as it did me. 

She insisted afterwards that we had photos taken making funny faces to belie my description of her as the most serious violinist of her generation. In the course of time, you'll see the pictures on the BBC website. Tomorrow night, Hilary will be playing Jennifer Hidgon's concerto in Liverpool with Vasily Petrenko and recording it for Deutsche Grammophon the following day.