Jingles all the way

I'm on my Amati Soapbox howling about Christmas jingles et al today - but also about a ray of hope emanating from the Southbank, named John Adams. http://www.amati.com/articles/1049-jingling-all-the-way-to-the-bank.html

Meanwhile, it's ALICIA'S GIFT at St Mary's, Perivale, this afternoon, starring Viv McLean and me. 3pm start, but it's free admission, first-come first-served, so get there early to get in!

In memoriam Mandela: a recording that couldn't have been made without him

We were fortunate to have such a figure as Nelson Mandela in the world at all. Today everyone on social media seems to have found a pertinent quote from him - each one chosen in a way that is extremely personal to the chooser. Each one is an inspiration in itself. (Tomorrow the Indy will publish a special souvenir edition in his memory, btw.)

Instead of a quote, here's an incident.

Ten years ago the violinist Philippe Graffin went to Johannesburg to record the gorgeous violin concerto by Samuel Coleridge Taylor with the Johannesburg Philharmonic. It was an event that could never have existed without Nelson Mandela: a mixed-race South African organisation, performing a work by a composer half British, half African. This is the end of the first movement and the whole of the second movement. (Get the whole recording.) And here - from the first month of JDCMB - is why this means such a lot to me, then and now. http://jessicamusic.blogspot.co.uk/2004/03/coleridge-taylor-and-south-africa.html

Happy Birthday to the Ballades champion

If you heard my BBC Radio 3 Building a Library on the Chopin 4 Ballades the other day, you'll know that we ended up with three top choices: Krystian Zimerman (recorded c1988), Alfred Cortot (1929) and Sviatoslav Richter (1960). It's Krystian Zimerman's birthday today, as luck would have it, so here he is in the surprise wild card of the four: the heart-warming poem that is the A flat Ballade No.3.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KRYSTIAN, wherever you may be!

Soapbox time

In my Amati.com Soapbox this week I've tackled a particular bugbear of mine: please can we have less curating and more artistic directing in these parts?

http://www.amati.com/articles/1046-please-return-our-artistic-directors.html 

And yes, that is me as the Statue of Whatever's Left of Liberty.

Benjamin Britten: "My Fairy-Tale Uncle"

My Yorkshire sister-in-law has drawn my attention to this wonderful memoir from a member of the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, which is performing the Britten War Requiem tonight at Sheffield City Hall with the CBSO under Michael Seal.

Steve Terry is supporting the performance through the Friends of Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus Scheme "in celebration of my late wife and of Benjamin Britten's genius". He knew Britten well as a youngster and has written about their friendship on the website. He remembers BB as "a fairy-tale uncle, living in a beautiful house full of treasures (Constable paintings, Rodin and Henry Moore sculptures, a gorgeous parrot) and creating the most remarkable music, which I found both accessible and intellectually and emotionally challenging."  Read it all here.