I have written two columns this year about the French renaissance in concertgoing and record buying. Now the conductor Gary Brain, who lives in Paris, tells me that at a recent performance he was given a leflet with the results of a government survey showing that average attendance age at concerts and opera is 32 and the dress code overwhelmingly informal. Classical audiences are up year on year by 30 percent. So how do the French do it? Mostly, it's a question of … [Read more...]
Musical chaos at the BBC
June 5, 2009 By
The Today programme, a live breakfast serial of political hard talk and cultural whimsy, flirts daily with on-air disaster but rarely comes unstuck as it did this morning with an item about 80 young composers seeking inspiration from paintings at the National Gallery. Two of the composers, Rachel Lockwood and Benjamin Vaughn, were in studio with artist Ganya Pelham, but the music we heard was by a different composer and, as the presenter politely covered up, the item unravelled at … [Read more...]
Oranges are not the only fruit
June 4, 2009 By
I strolled down to the South Bank last night to witness a literary award which I had no chance of winning. The Orange Prize for Fiction is restricted to works by women. Originated in 1996 by Kate Mosse, who has gone on to write epic best-sellers, the £30,000 prize has given a huge career boost to many gifted writers, among them Carol Shields (1998), Linda Grant (2000), Kate Grenville (2001), Ann Patchett (2002), Lionel Shriver (2005) and Chimamanda Ngozi Achede (2007). It has … [Read more...]
Schiff runs aground
June 3, 2009 By
A number of people walked out of Andras Schiff's lecture-recital on Haydn at the Wigmore Hall on Friday night, so I'm told. The erudite Hungarian pianist is in the chrysallis stage of morphing from concert artist to public intellectual, a transition last successfully achieved by Alfred Brendel. Schiff's 2006 Beethoven lecture recital was received with rapture by the editor of the Guardian newspaper, himself an avid pianist, and his residence at the Wigmore is one of the hall's … [Read more...]
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