Quartet alert

Nick writes from the US to inform us of this disturbing development in the life of a fine string quartet:

AUDUBON QUARTET Members About to Lose Instruments. If you follow chamber music, you probably know of the Audubon Quartet, founded 30 years ago, it was the first US string quartet to win international competitions. In the year 2000, though, three of the quartet's members fired the first violinist for behavior incompatible with the concept of a closely knit ensemble -- he had told the others that he'd initiated two lawsuits agains the cellist (and original founder) Tom Shaw.Upon being fired, though, David Ehrlich filed a series of lawsuits against the three and against the quartet as a corporation. One was thrown out, but somehow, he won a judgement against the other three, and now, more than five years later, they are about to lose their instruments and other worldly possessions. It is a grim story. The quartet was in residence at Virginia Tech in 2000. After the lawsuits, the university let their contracts expire (but has since re-hired the violinist). Now members of the community in Blacksburg are trying to get the university to step in and make Ehrlich cease his actions against the others. You can read all about this at www.enditnow.org , the website created by community members. There is also a petition you can sign there.I think this is a matter of interest to all of us who love classical music and especially to the community of players in ensembles small and large.

Nick sent this originally as a comment on a previous post, but it merits a section to itself. I'm afraid I have not heard about this before and I don't know the ins and outs of the background and history, but please explore the link. Litigation culture run mad? Or classic string quartet acrimony meets the 21st century? Oh yes, classic. If you think orchestral life is stressful, just try being in a string quartet. Stories from the orchestras can be 'hair-raising', but with quartets, 'blood-curdling' doesn't begin to describe it.

Warming the cockles

The Pianist Magazine/Yamaha Amateur Piano Competition held on Saturday night for the first time has awarded its first prize to a 79-year-old piano tuner who once prepared instruments for Liberace but has never played in a concert hall before. Jamie Cullum awarded the prize and magazine editor Erica Worth is justifiably very, VERY proud of the event she's initiated. Doesn't this just warm the cockles of your heart? What a change from all those beastly, corrupt, political piano competitions that young pros have to endure... Read more about it here.

Living daylights?

I don't usually buy Gramophone. But this month Philippe Graffin's CD 'In the Shade of Forests' has made Editor's Choice and an extract on the cover CD - he's plastered all over the thing! - so I thought I'd better get a copy. Gramophone is celebrating its 1000th issue and it proves full of interesting things to read, not only the review of Philippe's disc by Rob Cowan, which is marvellous. I'll post a link to it as soon as Gramophone.co.uk has sorted out the glitch on its Editor's Choice page.

[UPDATE, 3 DECEMBER: Finally, they've done it! Voila!]

The magazine's celebratory articles include a section in which they've asked musical bigwigs to contribute short pieces about why classical music matters (unfortunately heralded with a picture of an audience giving a standing ovation in a plush hall dressed in penguin suits - not the most encouragingly egalitarian approach and not a regular sight anywhere in the UK except Glyndebourne!) Some are succinct and moving on the reasons why we can't live without music, others fully representative of the dense academicism that puts so many people off the stuff altogether. Here are two. Anyone want to guess who wrote each of them?

1. Classical music is unique, in that its grammar, syntax and formal construction present an abstract discourse in time roughly equivalent to that of the most ambitious architecture in space, in which thematic material of contrasting functions is subjected to variation, development and transformation in organically consistent ways, with the tonic of the home key providing a sense of direction over large spans of time - not least harmonically - making multi-dimensionality possible in time, with an ever-changing focus between foreground, middle-ground and background, which as a vanishing point enables this to happen in space. This has no equivalent throughout civilisation.

2. Think of a world without the joys of Rossini, the consolations of Schubert, the ambiguities of Mozart, the austerities of Stravinsky, the complexities of Birtwistle, the diversions of Ligeti. No, don't; it would be too awful to endure. For at least 1000 years, from medieval plainchant to Renaissance polyphony, though two Viennese schools and on to contemporary minimalism, 'classical music' has demonstrated a continuing ability to adapt, form and reform itself, and divert into new codes, discipline and shapes. Throughout this time, 'classical music' has remained universal in its language, extending its reach globally in a remarkable way. If it wasn't also about exhilaration, exultation, anguish, despair and pathos, it would not have survived or deserved to.

Identification tomorrow!

Elsewhere in the magazine, critics are asked to a) select any musician of their choice to give them a Command Performance; b) choose their greatest disc ever. It's refreshing to find Jed Distler choosing Barbra Streisand for his Command artist - and volunteering to accompany her! But the fact remains that the vast majority of musicians chosen by critics in both categories are DEAD. Is there any other field in which young creative artists have to struggle quite so hard to hold their own in the present day against the reputations of their forerunners? At least in literature, the reputations of Tolstoy or Jane Austen don't actually prevent new books from doing well. But any young pianist on CD has to battle the recorded legacy of Rachmaninov and Horowitz, while violinists are up against that of Heifetz and cellists Casals or du Pre.

I'd agree with many of these critics, of course - I'd love to have heard Heifetz, Rachmaninov or Cortot live, and I'm certainly with Rob Cowan on longing to hear Fritz Kreisler play the Elgar Violin Concerto. Still, I've also heard a lot of great stuff right here and now. As I don't write for Gramophone, here is my request for a Command Performance:

DEAREST KRYSTIAN, PLEASE PLAY ME SOME CHOPIN?

Bleak house?

Plenty of food for thought in the December edition of BBC Music Magazine, which landed on the mat this morning (you can order the mag here, though the articles aren't online).

One of its most valuable fixtures is Richard Morrison's Comment page, which this time presents the most sensible writing I've yet seen about the crazy crisis now facing our poor UK orchestras, who are usually tackling one crisis or another but had recently been lulled into a false sense of security by the government's 'Stabilisation Programme'. This time, absurd Inland Revenue bureaucracy appears to be to blame - though not solely.

There's plenty of stuff about it in the press, so I won't restate the detail. Briefly, if the Revenue gets its way and stings them all for National Insurance arrears, the results will bankrupt 4 out of 5 British orchestras.

If that included the LPO - and I'm afraid it would - Tom and I would have to sell our house; a budding novelist would find herself back at the subs desk; and Tom says he'd like to be a train driver if he grows up. Worse, where would our souls be without our music?

Richard says:

"What all this adds up to, I believe, is a national crisis. Do we want a viable orchestral profession in Britain or not? The question is as stark as that. Of course musicians cannot be exempt from the tax laws. But it does seem mad for the Culture Department to invest £35m in 'stabilising' our orchestras, only for almost exactly that sum to be snatched away by the Inland Revenue."

Furthermore, he points out that if all those orchestras went to the wall and their musicians were denied a livelihood, the Revenue certainly wouldn't get its desired £33m.

Also in the magazine there's a fascinating article about the music boom in China, which points out that an entire generation of potential music-lovers was lost because of the policies of Mao. Obviously things are less extreme in the UK, but Richard remarks that he's observed hundreds of empty seats at fantastic concerts in Birmingham, Manchester and Scotland: What we are reaping now, I fear, is the withered harvest of a national music curriculum that has left two generations of school-leavers unequipped to understand symphonic music. Expecting the orchestras to remedy that with 'outreach' projects is a bit like asking cancer patients to heal themselves with aspirin." (Crikey, why has it taken 10 years for someone to admit the truth about 'outreach'?!)

Were Thatcher and Major the British cultural equivalent of Mao? The following will seem harsh, but in China, Chinese traditional culture was supposed to replace Western. Here, Western culture was being elbowed out in favour of...nothing but mindless, soulless consumerism.

That's quite enough ranting... I shall stop panicking, take another Kalms tablet and get back to work on the next novel.

In tribute...

This article of mine is in the Independent today. I don't usually write about theatre (much as I'd love to), but this involves Arthur Miller's "Playing for Time", originally a television play and now being staged professionally in Britain for the first time. It's about the women's orchestra in Auschwitz and has been deeply controversial in the past. Still, it's vintage Miller, in quality only just behind Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. The trouble with basing a theatrical work (or a novel) on fact is that people connected with the events or characters in one way or another are bound to feel something is wrong, which was very much the case here.

The second leading role is that of Alma Rose, Mahler's niece and the daughter of Arnold Rose, the quartet leader. Richard Newman and Karen Kirtley's biography of her, "Alma Rose: Vienna to Auschwitz", paints her as a far more multi-dimensional person than Miller, perhaps, credits her with being. She was not only a tough, non-compromising musician, but a vulnerable woman whose men (especially her husband Vasa Prihoda, violin virtuoso) treated her less than well, and a woman of tremendous inner resources and immense moral fibre. As both a human being, a musician and someone whose surreal, appalling fate was simply unimaginable, she holds a vast fascination for me. I'm glad to have been able to write about this play, which presents deep emotional truths even if some of its facts are not accurate, and to pay tribute in some small way to this terrible story.

The German song I posted yesterday was one that Alma and her Auschwitz musicians performed frequently. I found it in Newman & Kirtley's book (published by Amadeus Press), which is amazing.

Poles apart?

So the Chopin Competition in Warsaw has been won by a Pole for the first time since KZ carried off the prize in 1975. Bart at The Well-Tempered Blog seems distinctly underwhelmed. Rafal Blechacz, 20, looks the part in this BBC report. But since I can't get interested enough in piano competitions at the moment even to watch one online, I can't offer an opinion on whether the prize was deserved. Some extremely sobering thoughts from Solo Piano blogger Lyudmila Chudinova, who was there.

I used to enjoy watching piano competitions. I even went to Leeds once (about 7 years ago, if I've counted right) to cheer on some friends who were participating, and I heard some wonderful playing...by people who didn't make it past the second round or, sometimes, even the first. The winner, I thought later, was also terrific. I went to a concert he gave at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and loved every minute of it. I believe he moved to the States. It's so long now since I heard of him giving a concert in the UK that I can't even remember his name. Was he that much better than those I went to cheer on? They, in some cases, are struggling to keep their heads above water. Some of them are struggling to have enough to eat. And frankly, the differential wasn't huge. I'm not sure it existed.

At Leeds I was able hear for the first time a marvellous young Romanian pianistLuiza Borac, who played Liszt sounding like a young Argerich. She's recording for the redoubtable Avie now and is starting to get the recognition she deserves. Did she get into the finals? No, of course not...How do they decide these things?!? All too often the wrong people get the prizes, and the right ones are left out in the cold. No wonder things in the music world need a shake up.

I'll only say this once: CORRUPTION KILLS ART. And piano competitions are full of it.

hanging in there

Combination of lifting suitcases, sitting in cars for too long and worrying about the new book seems to have done in my back, yet again. Hence lack of recent posts, and, no doubt, of current coherence. I made it to half an hour of the LPO's rehearsal at the Royal Albert Hall yesterday but couldn't face sitting through a three-hour concert, so went home and MISSED WYNTON MARSALIS, about which I'm none too happy.

The LPO is touring Britain with Marsalis & his New York jazz band & a gospel choir in a big piece for big forces that he's written called ALL RISE. The orchestra is seriously excited about it - Tom says it's one of the best things he's ever done. I love big band jazz and was looking forward to hearing them in action - but the chairs in the Albert Hall eventually sent me and my lower back home for a hot bath instead. Watching the rehearsal - during which the unlikely combination of Kurt Masur and Marsalis proved quite an original team - was better than nothing, though.

Personally, however, I do have issues with the question of mingling jazz and classical playing in this way. I kept wishing the choir would shut up so we could hear the jazzers. It's a perennial question in the music magazines: do such joint-force efforts, whether with world music or jazz or pop, create something new and stimulating and inspiring, or do they water down their originals into some kind of three-legged hybrid that doesn't quite work? I always try to take the first view, but do sometimes find myself landing with the second despite myself. What do people think about this?

You can see the show in Manchester tomorrow (Tuesday) and Glasgow on Wednesday.

Piano man or shaggy dog?

The mystery of the "piano man" has been solved. This is the report in The Guardian.

Turns out it was a bit of a shaggy dog story. He's from Bavaria and the whole thing appears to have been an elaborate hoax. As for the 'piano genius' element - it does seem that that was the result of mental health workers in the UK not being able to tell the difference between a full-fledged concert pianist and someone who can just about pick out a tune from Swan Lake. The report on the TV news last night was gently accompanied by a background account of Chopsticks.

Tonight's Prom...

...will be quite an event It features our very own Tomcat and his orchestra, under their principal conductor, the indomitable Kurt Masur! They will be starting with a piece by Gubaidulina and then doing Beethoven 9th. It's going out live on BBC2 - as well, of course, as Radio 3 and the good old webcast. The LPO Prom is always a slightly bigger deal for my resident fiddler than most other gigs, since it is always the first concert after Glyndebourne - having done nothing but opera for several months, one's suddenly out in the spotlight again. And the Albert Hall is very large. Tonight is a little compounded by the suspicion that he'll be in quite a lot of close shots on the TV, because for the Beethoven he's sitting on the second desk of the Firsts, next to the orchestra's glammest blonde Hungarian, who is bound to attract the cameras!

Tickets are a bit thin on the ground, or so I'm told, but the arena queue will be doing its stuff, as ever. Do come along if you can! Gubaidulina is doing a pre-concert talk at 6pm, which should be fascinating, and Tom assures me that the piece is marvellous and very listenable.

Another legendary Prom

One couldn't get into this one the other day for love or money. Annette Morreau's review (click above) really has it in a nutshell.

I did make it, though, to Barenboim's press conference last week -and have to say I've never before been moved to tears in a press conference before. Barenboim seems to have achieved what nobody else anywhere in the Middle East is able to do: bring young people from different sides together to meet one another during a shared endeavour. It's a grass-roots approach, and probably the only way to make any progress.

Five members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra were there with him; one was a young Palestinian violinist from Ramallah whose description of her endeavours to keep her musical training on the rails was deeply touching. After she'd talked about how she'd had a different teacher almost every year - they'd come in from other countries and then leave - Barenboim beamed: "Yet here she is, playing Mahler 1 in London." Two of the others, one Israeli and one Arab, pointed out that they lived just 40 minutes' drive from one another, yet there was no way they would ever have met, but for this orchestra.

The Goethe Institute has quite a good explanatory article about the orchestra's background.

They will play in Ramallah for the first time on 21st August. This is miraculous in itself. Spain - where the orchestra is based - has provided all the orchestra's youngsters with diplomatic passports for the occasion to make it possible. Barenboim's dream is that one day the orchestra will be permitted to play in every country from which its members are drawn...

I've been privileged to meet and write about a lot of fantastic musicians in the last 15 years, but if I had to pick out the greatest one of all, it has to be Barenboim. I don't believe anyone else on earth could have done what he's done for these young musicians.

It's all happening here...

So today I get a press release that says Paul Kildea is to leave the Wigmore Hall to concentrate on his conducting career. He's been artistic director for just two years. Now 'the Trustees are to consider the best way forward' for London's finest and most beloved chamber music venue.

Will report back on anything further I hear about this. Meanwhile I am off to...yes, the Wigmore Hall itself, where Rustem Hayroudinoff is about to play a great deal of Rachmaninov.

Old music never dies, it just loses its appeal...

Hyperion has lost its appeal against Sawkins and what this means for the future of musical copyright as we know it is currently anybody's guess. What is clear is that it's lawyers, not musicians, who stand to benefit the most; and music-lovers who will lose out.

On the town, on the news?!

Reeling slightly after seeing an item on the 10pm BBC news about ENO's new production of 'On The Town'. Apparently it is newsworthy that a national opera company is putting on a marvellous piece of music theatre by a 20th-century genius who happened to use clever lyrics, jazzy rhythms and lots of dancing. The thing is, 'On the Town', shock horror, is officially classified as A MUSICAL! And an OPERA company is doing it! And, horror of ultimate horrors, the tickets are selling well! Oh my Gaaaaahd, we're all going to die......not.

I mean, really. This is great stuff. Why on earth shouldn't an opera company do it? That way we can hear the music played as well as it ought to be, singing that is above the average school production (which was the miserable level of what I heard when I went to see 'West Side Story' in a major London venue a few years ago) and enjoy a wonderfully refurbished opera house without having to nod off while someone tootles through some bel canto twiddling, and without wanting to commit rapid hari kiri after subjecting oneself to Berg. I know what I'd rather see. And hey, I'm supposed to be educated and well-informed about opera. Some famous composer (whose name I can't remember at this time of evening) once said that there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. Implication, ditch the stupid classifications that cater only for the ubersnobs. I say, bring on the Bernstein!

It was 20 years ago today

Well, yesterday. That was the day I went away to university. Thinking back I can't help noticing how much has changed in that time, not only in the world in general but music in particular. But the most obvious thing is that I well remember how chilly the weather was in early October 1984. I wandered around college in thick sweaters (including some knitted by my mother). And there'd be frost on the grass by the river when we walked back after concerts across town. Today the forecasters say it'll be 17 degrees and I'm at home in a tee-shirt. Makes you wonder what global warming will have done to us after another 20 years.

Otherwise, here are my top 10 musical changes:

1. The buzz-word then was 'authenticity'. Nobody talks about 'authenticity' any more because the concept has been so severely discredited. Now it's called 'historically informed performance' instead - a term that snobbily implies that any other kind of performance must be historically ignorant, which is nonsense. But in those days also, you could still hear a normal orchestra play Haydn and Mozart under great conductors in a style that didn't require toothgritting (some of those early instruments have the same physical effect on my teeth as chalk on blackboard). Today that is almost impossible - they are too frightened.

2. The buzz orchestra was the CBSO, rising and shining with Simon Rattle. If there is a buzz orchestra now, it's probably the LSO, though my ears tell me the only absolute edges they have over certain other bands are lots more money, a fantastic horn section and very classy PR.

3. My next-door neighbour in college used to put on recordings of Sibelius 5, Mahler 2 or the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony with the volume RIGHT up and we'd have a good wallow. I have a horrible feeling that music students today would probably say 'Who's Saint-Saens?'

4. A paradox, this, after No.3: rare repertoire was - well - rare. Hardly anyone had heard of Korngold and if they had, they weren't interested. Musicians just wanted to churn out the war-horses. Underrated composers are viewed, happily, in a far more upbeat way now.

5. There weren't many foreign music students, and in the orchestras there weren't many foreign players. Now, at least in the orchestras, they are pouring in from Russia, Poland, Hungary, China, Romania, not to mention France, Germany and Japan. Standards have rocketed commensurately as competition has increased. I was talking the other day to a young girl who is finishing her uni course and wants to go on to music college. She told me the postgrad entrance requirements - vastly more demanding than anything I had to do in 1987.

6. Conductors still alive included Tennstedt, Solti, Bernstein and Karajan. Pianists Richter, Arrau and Gilels (just). Violinists Milstein, Szeryng and, er, Menuhin. Special note for P: Krystian Zimerman had already made the big time and was 27 years old.

7. 20 years ago there was a massive split between academic music and practical music in this country. Each looked down its nose at the other. These days you can take a BA degree at the Royal Academy or specialise in playing an instrument at a university (though not at Cambridge, surprise surprise.)

8. It was quite difficult to find historical 'golden age' recordings in those days. Today they are as important as new ones and many young musicians cite them as their favourites.

9. The record industry was booming.

10. We did not yet have Symphony Hall Birmingham, the Bridgewater Hall Manchester or the new hall in Glasgow. Today most of Britain's major cities have a top-class, full-sized concert hall. Except, of course, for London.

Any more contributions to the list?

LSO US tour cancelled

The London Symphony Orchestra was supposed to have a three-week tour of the US in September, entitled 'The Music of Hollywood'. The programme was going to consist of music from the movies, including excerpts of John Williams's score for Harry Potter. According to most reports on American internet news sites, the promoter, Jeff Bown, has cancelled the tour because of sluggish ticket sales. One site cites 'travel difficulties' as the reason.

It's absolutely tragic for the orchestra, who presumably will be left out in the cold for that time with the usual British orchestra 'no play, no pay' situation. But dare I suggest that if the 'sluggish ticket sales' report is accurate, there may be a lesson to learn here? Faced with one of the great orchestras of Europe, probably with commensurate ticket prices, perhaps the concert-going public doesn't really want to hear it play Hollywood scores. Perhaps it would have responded a little more eagerly to a bit of Brahms, a dab of Debussy, a mouthful of Mozart... Alternatively, faced with a programme of film music, the people willing to sit in a concert hall to hear it maybe haven't heard of either the LSO or, indeed, London, which they may think is a little town in Canada.

Anyone know anything more about this?

The Emperor and his new clothes

FIRST, here is the link to Artsblogging, the collaborative blog in which George Hunka, Helen Radice and I are pooling forces (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor). This is how George describes it:

"Romantic tradition has it that artists are alienated not only from our
culture but from each other, and despite the explosion of information
technology in the past twenty years I can't say that personally I feel any
less alienated than I did in 1984. Blogs have the potential to provide the
communication and communion missing from the fragmented cultural milieux
in which we're all participating. Now, at least, we can be alienated
together."

Do come and join us! I shall, of course, be keeping this one going as diligently as ever...

...to which end, the Prom last night was quite an experience. Anyone convinced of the imminent demise of classical music should have been there. The place was packed to the magic mushrooms in the ceiling. And the ovation that greeted the veteran pianist Alfred Brendel before he had even played testified to the way people not only love the music but love its finest exponents even if they do happen to be white, male and 75. This was to be Brendel's last Prom: reports say that he no longer wants to do live broadcasts, and for someone who has been playing at the Proms for 36 years this seems fair enough. He played the Beethoven 'Emperor' Concerto, and for this night he was an emperor of the piano himself. The performance was full of colour, the tenderest and most luminous phrasing and the exhilaration of making music in such a joyous atmosphere; only a few memory lapses betrayed what might be the great man's reasons for wanting to bow out.

This was not all: before the concerto, we had to listen to the token piece of Birtwistle. Apparently there has only been about one Prom season in the last 20 years or so (that figure may be wrong - I'll check it) in which Birtwistle has not been played. I've never 'got' the big deal about Birtwistle. There are vast numbers of finer composers both dead and alive who never get a look in the BBC Proms door. It's not only that I don't like the way it sounds; but often, and certainly last night, I don't think it's very good music. This was a setting of three poems by Brendel - who, in case you haven't read them, is a marvellous poet, not only musical but also surreal and often hilarious. The three poems Birtwistle set are all excellent, but did the music add anything? Did it have anything to do with the words? Think of what Schumann could add to Heine, Faure to Verlaine, Duparc to Baudelaire... But here I found the noises emanating from (very good) baritone and orchestra little other than pointless - the usual Birtwistlian gloom and discord and squalliness. What for? Yes, it was the emperor again: but this time, the Emperor's New Clothes. The Emperor did very well without them.

And, oh my dears, it was SO last century. As Brendel is giving up Proms, couldn't someone persuade Birtwistle to do so as well so that we can hear some 21st-century voices instead? Music has GOT to move on from this cod-liver-oil effect. We need new sounds that can inspire us, sounds that look forward instead of backward, individual voices that communicate and fascinate and stimulate. We need new voices for a new century and the Proms should be trying to find them.

Today in the Indy...

Today in the Indy I have this:

A hard act to follow about Clive Gillinson's imminent departure from the LSO.

I just want to clarify my reasons for having wanted to write this piece, because no doubt there will be people out there in the big wide orchestral chinese whisper factory who say that I want to bad-mouth the LSO because my husband's orchestra doesn't get as much money as they do. If anyone says this to you, please remember that it is bollocks. The LSO is a fantastic orchestra and everybody respects that, no matter where they are. The thing is, I am well placed to write this article because I know all about how orchestras function here and very often I get so angry about it that I risk high blood pressure.

Clive's achievements have been truly amazing, and what I wanted to do is to put the recent events into context: orchestra runs up deficit creating education centre, managing director pushes off to New York, etc, all highly symptomatic of the state of the arts in this country where the former shouldn't be allowed to happen and the latter tends to happen to anyone who is seriously good at their job. Unfortunately some of the juicier bits were cut, presumably because of space on page, but I think it still says what I wanted it to say. The point, though, is that the LSO has become what it is today largely thanks to Clive's cleverness and now, while the band has a deficit (albeit a small one) for the first time in years does not seem the greatest moment for him to say he's leaving. Because orchestras here depend on the brains of their MDs like on nothing else. They have to find someone equally good, otherwise...

Knockout

Went to the dress rehearsal of Jenufa at Glyndebourne yesterday. Dress rehearsals are for invited audiences of company family & friends and orchestra family is often seated in the front row of the stalls. Therefore I got the full knockout impact of what must be one of the most powerful, horrifying and inspiring operas in the whole repertoire. It is an emotional roller-coaster second to none, with a libretto so fine that, enhanced by this marvellous Lehnhoff production, all the violence and misery is entirely believable. By the end I felt as if I'd been hit by a truck. I can think of few other works quite as upsetting as Jenufa, other than the Mahler Kindertotenlieder, which I now refuse ever to attend because I am so gutted by it.

Nor was there a single weak link in the performance - and this was just the dress rehearsal. Marcus Stenz makes his Glyndebourne debut in the pit - he told me it's not only his first Glyndebourne but his first Jenufa too. It's a huge achievement and I'm sure he'll be back for more. Orla Boylan is enchanting and convincing as Jenufa, a bright girl horribly betrayed by those closest to her; Kathryn Harries as Kostelnicka managed to make this monstrous woman completely human, showing that she acts out of love for her step-daughter and genuinely believes she is doing the right thing until the guilt drives her mad. The men are excellent, the mayor looks like Alf Garnett and the leader of the orchestra, Pieter Schoeman, plays his big Act 2 solo with a beauty and intensity that wouldn't disgrace Pinchas Zukerman.

I adore Janacek but don't know nearly enough about him. That has to change, because this evening begged one question: what on earth drives someone to create an opera like this? Time for a trip to the library.

Unconnected note for UK readers: get The Independent tomorrow... and if you're overseas, have a look on-line after lunch UK time.

Gillinson goes west

Blimey, this really is news.

Clive Gillinson is leaving the LSO and is going to be head of Carnegie Hall

Clive Gillinson has run the LSO for yonks. So why exactly is he leaving now? Of course Carnegie is the tops and you can't blame anyone for jumping at that particular opportunity. But it does feel ironic, since the LSO, the most moneyed orchestra in Britain, hasn't been in such great financial shape recently thanks to the costs of building St Luke's (education/rehearsal centre in City church).

As a majority of my readers seem to be overseas, I should point out that in dear Little Britain, it is almost impossible for any arts organisation to get any government money for anything unless it's seen to be doing Something Socially Useful. An extreme example would be that orchestras wanting to put on Mahler 9 with a world-class maestro will only get any money towards that if they are also teaching Newham schoolkids to play Twinkle Twinkle. Demoralising, perhaps, but true. People in Britain still seem to feel they have to apologise for the fact that classical music is a good thing in itself, that it enriches life in a way that nothing else can...well, we've said all this before. But I wouldn't blame any top arts administrator for wanting to get the hell away from this country with its political footballs, its double standards, its hypocrisy...

Apropos of the Guardian's report (see above link), good old Charlotte just had to get in a dig at the LPO, didn't she? 'had to look as far afield as Australia...' For your information, dear colleagues, half of London's music is now run by Aussies: the Wigmore Hall, the South Bank Centre, English National Opera as well as the LPO. The press stands by, daggers at the ready, waiting for them to do something wrong. But they don't. They are bloody marvellous, most of them, full of creativity and spark, and they're here because a) there's not much for them to do down under, b) we need them because our old boys' network can occasionally make a pig's ear of things if left to its own devices. The only Aussie who boomeranged was the guy who came over to run the Royal Ballet a few years ago.

...yes, Yes, YES, !!!!!!YES!!!!!!!

See AC Douglas on Historically Informed Performance, or what isn't...

I was going to write something just like this, but ACD has got there first! SO glad I'm not the only one who feels this way, because enduring 4 years of the Cambridge music faculty in the mid-Eighties left me wondering if I was. But not any more. The turnround has arrived, and about time too. You want to hear some good Bach playing? Try Harold Samuel in 1931, playing Bach on the piano as if it's great music - not a sharpener upon which to grind the blade of yet another axe.

Another cause for celebration is the double bill at Glyndebourne of Rachmaninov's The Miserly Knight and Puccini's Gianni Schicci. Sergei Leiferkus stars in the former, Sally Matthews in the latter, Vladimir Jurowski is the red-hot conductor, production is absolutely spectacular and it's a clever pairing of works about the Evil Of Money - in front of the stonkingly well-heeled Glyndebourne-goers! Marvellous evening out. Get down there, PDQ.

I am wiped out by my last day of examiner training right now, so will sign off while I can still see straightish, if not spell.