In a comment relating to a previous blog post, Dré remarked that my thoughts on ways to broaden the appeal of classical music might ‘…create some controversy within the traditional classical audience you address . “How dare you…” would be a common reaction, I would expect from my experience within the classical music scene.’ This [...]
I just found myself googling ‘ “Stravinsky” “stick a deckchair up your nose” ‘. Let me explain, lest you think this is a sign of further mental degeneration: I recently read a wonderful book on the master conductor Pierre Monteux, who, amongst other notable achievements, conducted the premiere performances of Petrouchka and the Rite of Spring. [...]
If you’ll pardon me channeling Peter Griffin from Family Guy for a moment, something that really grinds my gears happened again recently: I was mistaken for a Public School Boy. For anyone reading this from outside the rather narrow British tradition, a public school is the exact opposite of what it says on the tin. [...]
I’m in Finland at the moment to conduct a concert including Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony – it might sound like an odd work to perform here but in the composers own words it’s ‘Dedicated, without permission, to Jean Sibelius’, so the idea isn’t all that left field. There are Sibelian whiffs every now and again, [...]
I remember the first time I walked into the vast atrium of the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and falling deeply and irrevocably in love. Of course it’s just the same old trick cathedral builders have been using for a thousand years, enclosing air and light on such a grand scale as to give [...]