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Cecilia, they’re breaking your heart

February 27, 2009 By

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...]

02/27/09 9:46 AM | filed under: main |

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...]

02/26/09 10:07 AM | filed under: main |

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...]

02/25/09 11:00 AM | filed under: main |

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...]

02/23/09 11:36 AM | filed under: main |

As personal as a parking ticket

February 21, 2009 By

James Lock's funeral will take place this Friday in Golders Green and Christopher Raeburn's the following Friday in Amersham. I guess the Universal Music Group will send a wreath or two. After repeated inquiries from musicians and members of the music profession as to why Decca had not issued any notice of the deaths of its last backroom legends, an external publicist was contracted to put together a press release at the very end of the working week - and almost … [Read more...]

02/21/09 7:04 PM | filed under: main |

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...]

02/20/09 6:46 AM | filed under: main |

Silent deaths at Decca

February 19, 2009 By

See LATE EXTRA below The sad news has just reached me of the deaths, within days of each other, of the last two stalwarts of the Decca golden age - Jimmy Lock, the chief sound engineer, and Christopher Raeburn, the label's driving-force producer. Jimmy was in the throes of selling his north London house and moving to work in a Portuguese studio when he was found dead by a visiting estate agent. He had joined the label in 1963 and advanced the famous Decca Sound into digital and beyond. Sir Georg … [Read more...]

02/19/09 10:50 AM | filed under: main |

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...]

02/18/09 4:41 PM | filed under: main |

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...]

02/17/09 8:46 PM | filed under: main |

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...]

02/17/09 4:06 PM | filed under: main |
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