While we were gone:
# Vernon 'Tod' Handley, the British conductor, passed away (read full obituary from The Guardian here). Tod did more for British music than any of his peer group, and was a musician of tremendous passion, integrity and imagination - but despite constant campaigning, he was never awarded a knighthood, unlike others who probably deserved it less. Hear him in recordings like this and this.
# The LPO's principal conductor Vladimir Jurowski announced his latest creation: his baby son, Yury (George), born on 10 September - many congratulations to him and his wife Patricia, and Yury's proud sister Martha.
# The Last Night of the Proms came and went, vibrato undamaged, but some commentators sound distinctly underwhelmed, Bryn or no Bryn. Meanwhile all the screams and tantrums about jingoism seem to have achieved some perspective for the first time as everyone assents that basically it's good clean fun - and even Safraz Manzoor in The Guardian doesn't accept that it's 'too white' (by the way, if you follow only one link from this post, make it that one).
# Meanwhile, Messiaen's St Francis of Assisi stole the Proms show utterly, receiving the best reviews of anything I've seen in ages. Unfortunately I was sunning myself in Provence (between thunderstorms and the Mistral) and missed it.
# London's first new concert hall since the Barbican 26 years ago is getting ready to open its doors. King's Place, situated in a snazzy new building beside the canal near King's Cross station, on 1 October with a bonanza of 100 concerts in 5 days. Long term, it's a superb new home for contemporary works, world music and the London Chamber Music Series on Sunday evenings (a cheery bye-bye to the Conway Hall, and thanks for all the streaming colds). Amongst others things. Read all about it here.
# An email arrived bearing a sneak preview of Philippe's Hungarian Dances CD, due for release on the Onyx label later in the autumn. It's even lovelier than I expected.
# Hungarian Dances itself was featured on Yours magazine's book club page. :-)
Back now, ready to pick up the pieces (where possible) and assess the way ahead in the strange new world of the credit crunch.
1 comment:
Ah, Jessica, so it is to Provence that you have been, and having a splendid time, I do hope. I haven't been in Provence, but I've been thoroughly immersed in the novels of Pierre Magnan this past while, so I feel as if I have. Anyway, I said to myself upon reading of Tod Handley's death that that would be your first order of business upon your return, and I was not wrong. A thought I had upon hearing this sad news was that in certain ways the awarding of honours in the field of music has most certainly changed -- pop singers and rock musicians get knighthoods, and if you are a composer adept at reworking everything from a chunk of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto to a song from Brigadoon, you may even go to the Lords. But when it comes to conducting, things haven't changed one whit -- if you do not hold, nor perhaps even want, the 'top job' at a 'top orchestra', there will be no k for you, no matter how immense your contribution to orchestras in other positions or as guest. And if you hold one of those top jobs, the k comes automatically, no matter how dubious your performance. (And still singers get the knighthoods and damehoods while instrumentalists do not, which means it hasn't actually changed since Victoria's time. I think I'm right in saying Curzon and Lympany remain the only instrumentalists to get the big ones for actually playing music, Hess having got hers for organizing the NG concerts.) So this is a strange adherence to a particularly pointless tradition when all else in the honours system has been in flux, it says much about attitudes toward music in official circles, and the snubbing of the great Handley has done nothing but render the whole thing all the more meaningless. So who cares? He was a great conductor, far more so than many of the k's around these days; those who matter, other musicians and lovers of great musicmaking, knew that in his lifetime; and he left a fine legacy of recordings to remind them and inform others in times to come.
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