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 … [Read more...]
And the winner is…
May 21, 2009 By
At the Jewish Quarterly's Wingate Book award, which I judged in 2008, last night's winner was a rank outsider. Against a field which included Jackie Wullschlager's outstanding biography of Marc Chagall and Zoe Heller's straight-to-Hollywood novel, The Believers, the prize went to the late Fred Wander for a Holocaust memoir, The Seventh Well. It was the second award bash I attended in three nights and it set me thinking again about the value of small awards against the … [Read more...]
The spirit of a place
May 19, 2009 By
Three years ago I was asked to judge an unusual literary prize, one which became more unusual as the judging progressed. The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize is a £10,000 annual award for 'a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place'. My colleagues and I had little trouble separating the distinguished works from the run of the mill, but when it came down to determining 'the spirit of a place' we found ourselves in an uncharted … [Read more...]
Deconstructing Eurovision
May 17, 2009 By
At the innocent dawn of television in the 1950s, a contest was devised to spotlight national differences in popular music, No-one took it very seriously, except as a way of showing how live broadcasts could be exchanged by landline, and the content provided gentle amusement around the continent as Bavarians popped up slapping leather-clad bottoms, Switzerland supplied an obligatory yodeller and Norway collected a statutory zero, nul points. Over time, competitive … [Read more...]
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