The BBC has acted for once sensibly and without fuss in reunifying its two prime classical musical jobs - head of Radio 3 with controller of the BBC Proms. Roger Wright is to combine the Proms with his day job at 3, inheriting the festival from Nicholas Kenyon who is off to run the Barbican Centre. Wright has done much to modernise the network (where I have an eponymous series, interest declared). Not all of his innovations have gone down well in the backwoods; a peppery group of Friends of … [Read more...]

Some months ago, I reported that Esa-Pekka Salonen was joining London's Philharmonia Orchestra as music director and, in doing so, was preparing to leave California. A volley of denials - from the Los Angeles PO, from Salonen himself and from a host of commentators who presumed to know better. I response to one pained email from a respected LAPO figurehead, I promised to redress any error when an appropriate opportunity arose. Well, it has now. Salonen and the LAPO announced this weekend that … [Read more...]

The music critic of the New Yorker has reproduced statistics from the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) purporting to show that classical recording is alive and well and healthier than ever. Having just published a book that asserts the very opposite, I am not about to enter here into a detailed refutation. However, here are a few quibbles to the contrary: 1 No cultural industry in my long experience has yielded less reliable stats than the record biz. 2 Official record stats usually … [Read more...]