Results tagged “bbc radio 3” from Slipped disc

The director Jonathan Miller, inventor of time-shift opera, is in the hot seat of the Lebrecht Interview tonight at 21.15 (UK time) - and streamed all week on BBC Radio 3.

Miller confronts his guilt feelings at abandoning medicine for the arts, his anger at singers who abuse their power and his intolerance for those of lesser intellect.

His New York Mafia Rigoletto is coming back for the 27th year at English National Opera.

Criticising Daniel Barenboim's East West Diwan orchestra of young Arab and Israeli players is not something many reviewers are prepared to do. The Diwan brings together musicians from either side of the Middle East divide and the playing is, when I have heard it, of a very high youth-orchestra standard. These young artists are playing for peace on earth and goodwill for all mankind, and reviewers treat them as if they were Mother Teresa.

So praise be to Fiona Maddocks who, in today's Observer, detects a flaw in the enterprise that runs deeper than 'rough ensemble and problems with tuning'. You can read her whole review here, but allow me to quote the salient passage:

It has been reported that some Muslim players in the orchestra were observing Ramadan by fasting until nightfall. It is interesting to note, in turn, that none of the Jewish players were observing the Sabbath. I have read no comment on this discrepancy. In a conflict that is avowedly faith-based, does one faith matter more than another?

She has a point, and a very strong one. All creeds are respected in the orchestra's mission statement, but where some Moslem players maintain their observances and their pride in an ethical heritage, none of the Jewish Israelis, least of all their secular conductor, appears to show more than liberal disdain for the archaic rules of a discarded faith culture.

This is a serious shortcoming. Religious faith of all degrees, from mild affinity to wild fanaticism, lies at the heart of the Middle East conflict. If the Diwan does not represent all forms of faith, its role in the peace dialogue cannot be more than an ephemeral gesture.

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.

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.

In Alan Gilbert's first season, just announced, the orchestra will pay a reparatory visit to North Vietnam, a gesture infinitely more meaningful and productive than Lorin Maazel's attention-grabbing swoop last year on North Korea.

Why so? Because, while the US has dues to pay in both places, Vietnam these days is a fairly open society where people can read what they like on the internet and choose which concerts to attend. Some 17,000 Vietnamese bought into the BBC's download Beethoven cycle. Those who go to hear the NY Phil will do so out of free will, not as puppets of a regime where nothing moves an eyelid without the Dear Leader's say-so.

In Pyongyang, the audience was made up of party hacks and hordes of foreign journalists who descended on a starved, enslaved society like proverbial locusts. The concert, an empty showcase for one of the cruellest governments on earth, achieved precisely nothing.

In Hanoi, most of the audience will be survivors of the Vietnam War or its human legacy, the progeny of relationships, loving or coerced, between US soldiers and local people. There is much pain and memory still to be catharted in Vietnam and this event promises to be a new stage in the healing process. It augurs well for Alan Gilbert's leadership.

All those who have been reading 'In a Critical Condtion' on this blog will be encouraged to know that the crisis in criticism theme has been picked up by BBC Radio 3.

This morning I gave the Free Thought talk on the subject - streamed here from tomorrow - and tonight I will be defending it on Night Waves against the Guardian's editor of online reviews.

Professional criticism is a pre-requisite of democracy. Free online reviews are weightless.

Discuss.

A nice journalist on The Scotsman rings up to say his editor is banging on about well-known authors, me included, whose events have not sold out at next week's Edinburgh Book Festival.

'Give us a chance, guv!' I cry. 'I haven't got on the train yet or done a stroke of publicity. By three pm next Tuesday, they'll be banging down the doors of my yurt.'

Just in case any of you are going to be in Ed next Tuesday, do drop in. Here's the URL:

http://www.list.co.uk/event/167453-norman-lebrecht/

And if you have been enjoying the Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3, next up from Monday is Peter Jonas, the only administrator with senior experience of all three arts funding systems - US (Chicago Symphony), UK (English National Opera) and EU (Bavarian State Opera). Among other topics, Peter talks movingly about his relationship with the serene Slovak mezzo-soprano Lucia Popp and her previous lover, the conductor Carlos Kleiber.

Here's where to find it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00d19kh