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It’s Miller tonight – and nothing lite about it

August 31, 2009 By

The director Jonathan Miller, inventor of time-shift opera, is in the hot seat of the Lebrecht Interview tonight at 21.15 (UK time) - and streamed all week on BBC Radio 3. Miller confronts his guilt feelings at abandoning medicine for the arts, his anger at singers who abuse their power and his intolerance for those of lesser intellect. His New York Mafia Rigoletto is coming back for the 27th year at English National Opera. … [Read more...]

08/31/09 6:41 PM | filed under: main |

Religion and the ideal orchestra

August 30, 2009 By

Criticising Daniel Barenboim's East West Diwan orchestra of young Arab and Israeli players is not something many reviewers are prepared to do. The Diwan brings together musicians from either side of the Middle East divide and the playing is, when I have heard it, of a very high youth-orchestra standard. These young artists are playing for peace on earth and goodwill for all mankind, and reviewers treat them as if they were Mother Teresa. So praise be to Fiona Maddocks … [Read more...]

08/30/09 6:45 PM | filed under: main |

Some more good numbers

August 28, 2009 By

A day behind the Salzburg statistics, Glyndebourne has announced 96 percent attendances over 76 performances this summer, which is four percent up on breakeven and a remarkable achievement for the marketing team in a season of corporate swine flu. Next year will feature a new Billy Budd and Don Giovanni - plans here - and an expansion of the company's cinema screenings. So far, none of the fat-cat music festivals has suffered the effects of recession. But most are booked early in the year and … [Read more...]

08/28/09 5:14 PM | filed under: main |

The Russians are coming … and the Chinese

August 27, 2009 By

Box-office returns from the current Salzburg festival show a 60 percent increase of ticket sales in Russia and a tripling of last year's revenue from Chinese visitors. The uptake is still a tiny proportion of the overall attendance which is overwhelmingly Austro-German, but the increase in new markets covered a sharp fall in the number of US visitors at Europe's top-prestige festival, down seven percent on 2008. Encouragingly, a ten percent drop in corporate bookings was fully covered by an … [Read more...]

08/27/09 4:25 PM | filed under: main |

At last, a premier assessment

August 26, 2009 By

The Australian has just taken note of the death of the nation's leading pianist, Geoffrey Tozer, almost a week after the sad event. But unlike the belated and bone-headed coverage in the Melbourne Age, the national Murdoch paper has got in a proper reaction - from the former prime minister Paul Keating. Never one to mince words, Keating lays into his country's dumbed values, saying of Tozer: "Had he been a boneheaded footballer who was biffing fellow players and chasing women down … [Read more...]

08/26/09 3:59 PM | filed under: main |

Not in an Age and a half

August 25, 2009 By

The Age in Melbourne has just posted a belated obituary of Geoffrey Tozer, five days after his death. It is a plodding recitation of career events, almost without incident and making no attempt to place Tozer in the context of his art and his profession. He was the foremost and most successful pianist in Australia. What is the point of buying a newspaper if it doesn't give you that salient judgement? In the three days since I posted the sad news of Geoffrey's death, many … [Read more...]

08/25/09 6:26 PM | filed under: main |

Taking issue with Downes’ Syndrome

August 24, 2009 By

Stephen Hough has slightly jumped the gun on one of the topics in tonight's Lebrecht Interview by setting out his views on assisted suicide in his telegraph blog, here. We were discussing the deaths of the conductor Edward Downes and his wife Joan who, in their own way, jumped the gun recently by opting for euthenasia in a Swiss clinic, Dignitas, rather than awaiting the inevitable.  Stephen, a devout Roman Catholic, argued lucidly against the legalisation of assisted suicide on the … [Read more...]

08/24/09 2:37 PM | filed under: main |

Not in an Age

August 24, 2009 By

The Age of Melbourne used to be one of the world's serious newspapers. During the 1990s it kept its finger on the pulse and was in the market for good journalism, wherever it reared its head. Many of my own pieces were syndicated in its pages. Lamentably, like many city papers, the Age has gone into steep decline - especially in its coverage of anything above the middle of the brow. even so, I am distressed to learn that, four days after the death of Australia's leading pianist, Geoffrey Tozer, … [Read more...]

08/24/09 11:10 AM | filed under: main |

Sad news from Australia

August 23, 2009 By

The country's most successful pianist, Geoffrey Tozer, has died at home in Melbourne, aged 54. A prolific, inquisitive artist, he tackled difficult and little-known works by Busoni, Medtner, Respighi and Roberto Gerhard, much of it undertaken on a 'genius grant' given somewhat controversially by the serving prime minister Paul Keating, whose son was Tozer's pupil. Keating said later that he felt 'ashamed' to find an artist of Geoffrey's talent had been reduced to teaching high … [Read more...]

08/23/09 6:03 PM | filed under: main |

Why can’t we mention the G-word?

August 21, 2009 By

Several colleagues in British media have expressed surprise at Manuela Hoelterhoff's direct questions about God in the Holocaust and my equally direct answers in our conversation on Bloomberg Muse. We were talking about my new novel, The Game of Opposites, and Manuela wanted to know if I agreed with an opinion voiced by one of the characters. So we set about the issue in a few concise lines. 'Couldn't happen here,' said a senior newspaper editor. 'God only gets dealt with in the God slots' … [Read more...]

08/21/09 9:59 AM | filed under: main |
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