By the way...

...announcing one of the South Bank Show Awards last night, Andrew Lloyd Webber said that he's going to turn Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita into a musical, and I can't work out whether he was joking or not. HELP!

South Bank rising

In today's Independent, Jude Kelly, the South Bank (or Southbank?) Centre's artistic director, gives the run-down on the gear-up, with reopening of the Royal Festival Hall scheduled for the weekend of 11 June, in grand style. There's a remarkable amount of good news, besides the Korngold stuff I just had to yell about first. The press conference the other day had one of the best atmospheres I've ever encountered at a SBC event; people were positive and excited, as well as broadly supportive of the new team including Jude herself and music supremo Marshall Marcus; the only slightly tetchy note was sounded by one journalist who wanted to know what's happened to the Lieder recitals we used to have in the Good Old Days (I'd like them back too, come to think of it). I'm particularly pleased that they're putting on Carmen Jones this summer, because the LPO will accompany and it means fewer late nights for me while Tom comes back from playing at the South Bank (20 mins) instead of Glyndebourne (1 hr 15 mins).

But the best thing of all was when Jude, wrapping things up, wanted to make sure everything had been included and said "Is there any fairy that's been left out?" The press conference must have consisted of at least 50 per cent gay critics, so everyone cracked up laughing. "I mean in the Sleeping Beauty sense," Jude added gracefully.

Seriously, though, this is laughing with, not at, because Jude is not only a Very Good Thing, but she's also emblematic of long-term, forward thinking. It's hard to believe that in over 50 years, nobody's thought of giving the SBC an overall artistic director before. Jude is the first. Now she's there, the absence of such a post beforehand seems all the more astonishing - and rather typical of 20th-century arts management British bungling. Let's hope that we're in a new era in which people are going to do things properly. The Royal Opera House is a good example of how matters can be turned around; now the South Bank has its chance; and if ENO can follow suit, and someone can transform the Barbican into a place that one actually wants to go (programming is the least of its worries), then London will be the all-round world class player that it ought to be.

LPO TO GIVE UK PREMIERE OF KORNGOLD'S 'DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE'

It's true! Korngold's biggest, greatest opera is finally to receive its UK premiere, nearly 80 years after it was written. The London Philharmonic will play, Vladimir Jurowski will conduct, and an all-star cast is headed by Patricia Racette, Michael Hendrick and Andreas Schmidt; supporting roles will be taken by the likes of Willard White, Robert Tear, Ursula Hesse von den Steinen and Andrew Kennedy. Date for the diary: 21 November 2007. Pre-concert talk by a Korngold devotee closer than you think (*blush*). Full details here.

Yesterday the upbeat team of what's now written as the Southbank Centre launched the classical music programme for the reopening season of the spanking newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall. 11 June is the big day; the first 48 hours are all free; and all four resident orchestras - the LPO, the Philharmonia, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the London Sinfonietta - will play together for the very first time (Ravel's Bolero included). There's a tremendous bonanza of world-class music-making to look forward to. I note with tears in my eyes that the Philharmonia lists piano god Radu Lupu among its soloists. He hasn't played at the South Bank since...well, I can't remember. Pollini will be playing two Beethoven concertos with the LPO. The Piano Series includes recitals by Uchida, Brendel, Andsnes and Krystian Zimerman. Violinists include Mutter, Fischer, Kavakos. There's a run of Carmen Jones in the summer, and later there'll be festivals of Nono and of Messiaen for his centenary.

And they are going to do a Korngold anniversary series. A couple of years ago, I realised that 2007 would be the 50th anniversary of EWK's death and decided that someone had to do something, otherwise nothing would happen. Sketched out my Fantasy Football Korngold Festival, took it to the then head of classical music at the South Bank and left it in her capable hands. Cripes - they went for it. I'm still pinching myself in wonder. Of course, the series has evolved from the basic plan, with everyone deciding which pieces to do; and Vladimir himself plumped for Heliane, not Die tote Stadt.

The LPO is doing three Korngold concerts: a film music programme on 2 November conducted by John Wilson, putting his music alongside Steiner, Newman, Rozsa, Williams et al; the Violin Concerto with the glorious Nikolaj Znaider on 14 November, in a programme with Zemlinsky and Shostakovich conducted by Jurowski; and Heliane to culminate. The Korngold series will also feature a day of events on 27 October, with the showing of Barrie Gavin's splendid documentary, a round-table discussion with a panel of exerts (I'll be asking the questions), a chamber concert by the Nash Ensemble and a song recital by Anne Sofie von Otter with that great Korngold champion Bengt Forsberg at the piano.

I'll introduce a Korngold Watch series on this blog as soon as I can, as there are events taking place all over the world. But to the best of my knowledge, ours here in London is one of the biggest. BOX OFFICE IS NOW OPEN: 020 7840 4242 or online via the concert links above.

Can critics and artists ever be friends?

The Guardian is having a debate about this, which makes sobering reading for those of us who sometimes try.

You'll have noticed a heading in my sidebar called 'Musician Friends'. Heck, some of my best friends are musicians. I've never pretended otherwise. Do I review them? Sometimes: a) if my editors know darn well that we're friends, but still send me their CDs; b) if I've enough faith in their abilities to know that the review can be genuinely positive; c) if I know they have enough faith in me not to take it badly if the review is negative. Honest reviewing has sometimes strengthened friendships, because it can result in genuine mutual respect.

I treat friendly overtures from some musicians with suspicion; one can usually sense the 'caution needed' occasions pretty fast. A few experiences have left me cynical - some people don't bother to disguise their ulterior motives, but even individuals you've trusted for years sometimes cool off when they realise you're spending more time writing novels and less editing magazines, or, worse, that your 'art' (yes, "general fiction" is an art) is suddenly as much in the limelight as theirs.

True friends, though, are the dearest and most valued people on earth, and if they happen to be terrific musicians, so much the better. And the interesting thing is that these friends don't regard me as a critic at all.

Yikes, it's Tchaiks

Everything is covered in snow this morning. One of those gorgeous every-twig-and-every-blade-of-grass falls, more common when one was a kid pre global-warming; the world looks like a black and white movie with splashes of colour spliced in where lights illuminate distant windows. A disgruntled-looking blackbird is huddling in the apple tree outside my study; and for once, following the paw-prints, I can see something of where Solti goes after breakfast.

What composer could be snowier than Tchaikovsky? The BBC is about to have one of its little bonanzas: his complete works on Radio 3. Oh, and Stravinsky's too, only nobody's been shouting about that. Is it a little add-on to please the R3-diehards for whom wall-to-wall Tchaik just sounds too nice? The Russians are coming on 10 February, until 16th.

Of course there's nothing nice about Tchaikovsky. Pain, yes; tragedy, yes; and this greatest of Russians beats the Germans at their own game because there is no musical sehnsucht that can compare with his. Yet this is the quality for which people denigrate him. Dearie dear, he wears his heart on his sleeve. How Russian. How Romantic. How very un-Anglo-Saxon.

The intriguing thing is this: musical hearts don't get worn on sleeves unless their composers have the technique to put them there. And the articulation of longing is not easy. It's hard enough in words, as I've been discovering to my cost while revising third novel (go through manuscript taking out every superfluous adjective and every mention of hearts, souls or spirits, then try to convey how it feels to fall head over heels in love during the course of one conversation on a train. hmm...).

It must require a certain genius to express longing through the metaphor of music to the degree that Tchaikovsky does. Tatiana's letter scene, the transforming swans, princesses and nutcracker princes, the first, fourth, fifth and sixth symphonies, the violin concerto, the Suite no.3 - there's no end to his yearning for the unattainable. It's so perfect that we take it for granted. Yes, people long for the unattainable, yes, so did Tchaikovsky, so it gets into his music, so what? Actually, so plenty.

My favourite Unintentionally Appropriate Tchaikovsky-related quote is from ballerina Alina Cojocaru in a piece currently on the Indy website: 'I find the Sugar Plum Fairy pas de deux terribly uplifting'. I'm sure her partner Johan Kobborg would agree...

They're showing The Sleeping Beauty on BBC2 on Saturday 27 October. Ballet on terrestrial TV is so rare these days that that's newsworthy.

UPDATE, Thursday 25 January: Solti requests that anyone confused by the above mention of paw-prints should come on over to his blog to see how he won his battle to be allowed outside again...