An artist's choice: endorse designer gear, or play in a prison?

Here's a pseudo-profound thought for Sunday brunch. When someone makes the celebrity big-time as a classical musicians, should they popularise the face of classical music and making it look 'cool' by modelling designer gear? Or would they do better to take music where it doesn't usually go and show how much good it can do?

Opera Chic reports that Lang Lang has endorsed some Adidas trainers. You can wear his name in Chinese on your heels.

I remember the day - some years ago - when I went to heaven and back at Lang Lang's concerts. A Mendelssohn piano concerto, light as a hummingbird. A Wigmore recital full of variety and marvel and love. Hats off, folks, a genius, I said. Then it all went pear-shaped. No idea what happened, but he zoomed way off the deep end in a Rachmaninov concerto in Verbier, and it just hasn't been the same since. So if he fancies going down a different route to make money, that's fine with me. We should let all the megastar names who've made the big time and become warped in the process do their modelling and endorsing et al, and make way for the real musicians who are quietly working themselves into the ground for the sake of their art.

Tonight, one of the less-blingy artists who's in it for the music is indeed getting some prime media attention: our own violin heroine Tasmin Little is the subject of The South Bank Show! Tune in and see her playing everywhere from Stratford-on-Avon to a Brighton hostel for the homeless and Belmarsh Prison on her Naked Violin project.

Finally, just have a look at this article from today's Independent on singing for peace in Darfur. Music has that much power. So what are its most famous practitioners doing endorsing trainers?

Rant over. off to practise my readings for Tuesday now.

Return of the little black dress...

Mad props to whichever clever being at the Independent thought up the headline A SVELTER BELTER for my piece today about the glorious Deborah Voigt, who is back at Covent Garden next week after an eight-year absence to sing Ariadne auf Naxos, complete with THAT little black dress.

Here's one of the cuter promotional videos I've encountered:

Mary Whitehouse moment...

Having missed The Minotaur at Covent Garden, I watched it on TV yesterday - yes, BBC2 actually decided to show an entire brand-new opera by Birtwistle from the Royal Opera House on Saturday night at prime time (so full marks for that).

I ended up hiding behind the sofa. Honest to goodness, guv, I haven't seen anything so scary since the Daleks, or anything so horrific since Downfall.

Of course, it was fantastic - amazing singing and great performances from everyone and especially John Tomlinson and Christine Rice, huge power in the music even if it's tough on the ears and brain (I liked the use of the cimbalom), and the libretto is very striking indeed. I was just relieved not to have been locked into a Bayreuth-style pew for the duration and I really don't think they should have shown it before the watershed.

Could someone over the Pond please tell us something: are Birtwistle's operas performed much in the States, and how do they go over? Ditto for Germany, France and Italy?

Tragic deaths of Halle Orchestra couple

I'm sorry to have to report that Halle Orchestra musicians Mike and Dorothy Hall have been killed in an avalanche while on a walking holiday in the Pyrenees. Full story here.

Mike, a violinist, was a student alongside my husband a few decades ago and Tom describes him as one of the most positive and supportive people he knew. Dorothy was a cellist. I never met them, but after a wonderful phone chat with Mike I made him one of the 'case studies' in a piece I wrote about orchestral life a few years ago.

Why didn't he just turn the guy into a flautist?

My eye was caught today by this story from The Times about 'the cellist of Sarajevo', who is extremely upset by a novel called, er, The Cellist of Sarajevo. The author, Steven Galloway, raises some interesting points in the article about how to draw the line between fiction and reality, eg whether you have to pay off the latter if creating the former. (His book raises even more interesting questions about this. I am in the middle of it at the moment and feel, so far, that it straddles both fiction and reality, therefore satisfies entirely as neither.)

But what excellent publicity...