Can you imagine...

...any "normal" radio station taking a risk on broadcasting a four-and-a-half hour piano work by a contemporary American composer? Our friend Pliable has an outlet for just such a work, however, at Overgrown Path's slot on the internet-based Future Radio. The piece is Alvin Curran's Inner Cities, the date is 5 December.

Is the internet the future of music radio? If you are tiring of nose flutes on Radio 3 and sofa ads on Classic FM, if you would like to see broadcasting champion experimental, creative, thought-provoking work, even if it's niche, you may well agree that it is. I reckon this is just the beginning. Read all about it here.

Wilhelm Kempff, 112

Wonderful Webmaster, a fount of anniversary knowledge, writes to remind me that today is the birthday of Wilhelm Kempff, who was born in Juterborg on 25 November 1895. Here is the great pianist doing what he did best: profound Beethoven. The slow movement of the D minor Sonata Op.31 No.2, the 'Tempest', recorded in Paris in 1968.

BTW

If anyone logs on today after receiving an automated alert about a post called 'The Truth about Ingerland', apologies - it needed a lot more work and I've deleted it for the time being. More soon.

And now for something completely different: Cecilia and Maria

Cecilia Bartoli has just brought out a fabulous new CD of music written for and by the legendary 19th-century diva Maria Malibran, Pauline Viardot's big sister and an inspiration to Bellini, Rossini and Mendelssohn, amongst others.

I went to Paris a few weeks back to meet her in her Malibran Bus - a converted lorry in which her ample collection of Malibran memorabilia is on display. It was parked on the Place de la Sorbonne, causing double-takes all round, and it's coming to London with her in December, when she has two concerts at the Barbican (both already sold out!). Here's my article from The Independent a few days ago. I think it ran on Wednesday. I regret to say that I was so busy with the 'Heliane' talk preparations that I hadn't even realised it had come out.

The disc is wonderfully accompanied by a Swiss period-instrument ensemble, La Scintilla, which brings a whole new colour to the bel canto world - it's like watching by candlelight. There's plenty of Bellini and Pacini, but also marvellous virtuoso numbers by Malibran and her father; and for me, the highlight of the disc is a substantial Mendelssohn concert aria 'Infelice', written for Malibran and her second husband, the violinist Charles de Beriot. Bartoli has drafted in Maxim Vengerov to play the solo. It's a masterpiece.

I first read about 'Infelice' a couple of years ago when I was researching Viardot for the St Nazaire 2006 project, and tried to track it down for the show. In the end we dropped the idea since it was rather tangential and much too long for the Viardot/Turgenev story - we already had way too much stuff. But I was sad not to see or hear it. What a treat to discover it on this disc, in the best possible hands.

Another interesting concept: you can get the CD and its associated printed matter in a standard edition, or a deluxe hardback edition, or a superdeluxe version with DVD thrown in for good measure.

Here's a video about it:

Heliane: the reckoning

So here come the reviews. Most are fair, one [correction, two or three once you pass the nationals and hit the Spectator and Musicweb] is monstrously unfair. As always, it's the story that puts most of 'em off, though I reckon I've seen worse.

Meanwhile, if anyone is wondering who the 'eminent German musicologist' was whom I mention in my programme notes, it is Prof Dr Jens Malte Fischer, a professor at the University of Munich who has written extensively on Mahler and Wagner.

Will add the write-ups as they come in. For starters, here are:

Ed Seckerson in The Independent: "...it succumbs to indulgence over narrative cohesion, and it does so at the same pitch of hysteria for much of its protracted duration. Even so, it's hard to resist the noise that it makes."

Neil Fisher in The Times: "Eighty years on, not just a necessary premiere: at best, an intoxicating one."

Alexander Campbell in Classicalsource.com: "Being greeted with an orchestral layout that includes a piano, organ, celesta and harmonium in addition to an array of percussion, one gets some idea as to the scale of the London Philharmonic’s undertaking to present the piece. No wonder stagings in opera-houses are extremely rare. The real stars of the evening were indeed the orchestral players under Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski."

And if you want a good laugh, Rupert Christiansen in The Daily Telegraph: "Ye Gods! In all the annals, can there be an opera containing more unmitigated codswallop than Erich Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane?"

UPDATE: Tim Ashley in The Guardian.

UPDATE: Intermezzo (hiya, glad you didn't leave at the interval!)

ANOTHER UPDATE: Andrew Clark in the Financial Times.

Dear Rupert, I feel exactly that way towards Bruckner's symphonies, the whole lot of them. Bruckner was the biggest pompous, empty, pontificating, boring, overblown windbag who ever set note to paper - but just because I don't like it, that is not going to stop anybody playing the blasted stuff. After twenty-five years of 'giving him a chance' I just vote with my feet and refuse to go. And I won't go to Berg any more, either, because a few months ago I suffered an actual panic attack in the Three Pieces for orchestra - an aural torture that I suspect the prisoners of Guantanamo are spared.

Critics have always hated Korngold, so this guy is just one more poor lost soul who's not eating enough apricots. What the heck. Our reviews may no longer wrap chips, but they do end up being recycled into loo roll, which is where many of them really belong.

Here are some more backstage pics from the other night.