Let me share with you a memo from a Promotions Executive at Universal Music Group: Hi I have had a request from Int Tune (Radio 3) to have Tutula Bartley on the show today to discuss Christopher Ravens sad departure and to speak of her memories of him. I don't suppose she is around and in the UK x I have withheld the names of the parties to this correspondence and reprinted the document verbatim. At first sight, I thought it must be someone on the pop side of Universal … [Read more...]
The subcritical mass goes supercritical
February 26, 2009 by
John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic had its fifth production and UK premiere at English National Opera last night. It is, I think, deepening with each exposure and every aspect of the ENO performance was polished by the experience gained by director Penny Woolcock and several cast members at the Met, Amsterdam and elsewhere. What came over more searingly than on the DVD pre-release was the diversity of styles that Adams adopts, one for each scene of the first act. He starts with the language of … [Read more...]
Kate Winslet is innocent, OK?
February 25, 2009 by
She was only doing her job. She was a late stand-in for the pregnant Nicole Kidman. She was just obeying director's orders. She would prefer to be remembered for films she made after the war. Kate Winslet cannot be faulted in The Reader. She spoke the lines she was given and acted to the best of her immaculate ability. I did not intend here to diminish her triumph. My problem is with the film itself, specifically with David Hare's clumsy and anachronistic script which … [Read more...]
Kate Winslet should be afraid
February 23, 2009 by
My heart sank to see Kate Winslet getting the best actress Oscar for her role in The Reader. Nothing to do with her acting, which was restrained to the point of inertia, nor to the way she looked on screen, which was seductive as ever. The problem is the subject and the present context. The Reader is one of a present wave of works that is retweaking the Holocaust to a perpetrator perspective. The most pernicious is Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones which retells the war through the eyes of a … [Read more...]
Late greats
February 20, 2009 by
Valerie Solti has posted a fond tribute to James Lock on the Gramophone website. And an aide of Luciano Pavarotti has been in touch to say how much he loved Jimmy and Christopher Raeburn, staying in touch almost till the day he died. If any readers want to share personal memories of Jimmy and Christopher, from within the Decca studio or one of those famously indiscreet lunches, do use the comment space below as a message board. If your life was changed by one of their … [Read more...]
Happy days are here again
February 18, 2009 by
If you read the small print in The Times newspaper tomorrow, you will find the announcement of an engagement between Gus Christie, 45, master of the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, and the soprano Danielle de Niese, supreme in steely and determined baroque roles. The pair have been an item for about four years and De Niese, Australian born of Dutch and Sri Lankan parentage, has left critics and audiences breathless with admiration pretty much every time she steps on stage. Last summer, … [Read more...]
Happy Haitink Hour
February 17, 2009 by
Coming up in Holland: From march 9th till march 15th the Dutch Avro will host a new batch of free downloads (similar to the Concertgebouw downloads from last year). To honour Bernard Haitink for his 80th birthday, there will be a free download from a recording session with the Concertgebouw orchestra every day. There is no English announcement yet, so you have to do it with a google translate from the Dutch public radio website: http://tinyurl.com/cr79d8 You don't need universal for your … [Read more...]
A better Decca story
February 17, 2009 by
This just in from a veteran Decca producer: Dear Norman, I hope you are well, and have been reading your recent articles on Decca with mixed emotions - mainly sadness at the callous destruction of a once-great company. They remind me of a story of a Viennese professor lecturing his class. He present a large spider and announces: 'This is Adolf, an extremely clever arachnid. When I say "Hop!", Adolf jumps 9.4 centimetres in the air. He says 'Hop!' and, sure enough, … [Read more...]
Decca: The word from Herbert Breslin
February 11, 2009 by
Here's a comment from Herbert Breslin: Let's face it. The thrust of Decca's promotion, marketing, and publicity never materialized from London. For many years I was responsible for the public relations careers of Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland, Alicia de Laroccha, early Marilyn Horne and later Georg Solti. Without what my office accomplished, not one of these artists would have made the important, powerhouse career they did. True, Decca produced the records and they were … [Read more...]
Symphonies without end
February 10, 2009 by
The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, has written a tender-hearted feature about his former schoolteacher, Derek Bourgeois, a composer who claims a British national record for writing the most symphonies. With 44 in his folder, Bourgeois is well ahead of the unstoppable William Havergal Brian, who composed 32 symphonies, two-thirds of them between the ages of 78 and 96. One of Brian's works, the Gothic, drew a twitter of attention when it was taken up by a … [Read more...]
Decca, the epilogue
February 9, 2009 by
It's all over, bar the paper shuffling. In response to my column last week, the Universal Music Group issued a statement confirming that Decca's crossover output will be absorbed into the parent company's UCJ. It maintains that the label itself will remain 'active' and that London will continue to be its 'creative centre'. It names this process 'realignment', which I shall promptly add to my growing lexicon of recession-era synonyms for corporate elimination. The facts are simple. … [Read more...]
Decca’s dead, who’s next?
February 5, 2009 by
The story I broke in my Evening Standard column yesterday that the Decca record label is about to be shut down has kept me in phone calls and emails all day. Producers phoned from London, Paris and Vienna to question the motives of Bogdan Roscic, the not-terribly-active Decca chief who jumped to a non-job in Sony the moment he heard his label was for the scrapheap. A Universal insider called to suggest that Chris Roberts, president of classical and jazz, may himself be heading for termination. … [Read more...]
Worth the wait?
February 5, 2009 by
Two nights late due to snowfall and a dozen years after he last held the stage, Jonathan Miller's production of Boheme opened last night at English National Opera. It was about forty watts short of full power. Miller, as he made clear, shifted the setting to Brassai's monochrome 1930s Paris of stony-eyed tarts and wall-faced punters. The visuals worked well on the whole and Isabella Bywater's gray-white colour scheme was seasonally apt. The flaw was Miller's decision to position Rodolfo and … [Read more...]
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