Christopher Raeburn and Jimmy Lock both pass away

Mourning today the passing of two of the great driving forces of Decca.

Christopher Raeburn was a great-hearted and golden-eared individual with high musical ideals and an infallible instinct for talent-spotting and development. He was the best-known and best-loved of Decca's producers, having joined the label in 1954 and bouncing straight into the first-ever studio recording of the Ring Cycle. Jimmy Locke was the chief sound engineer and the brain behind the much-celebrated 'Decca sound' from 1963, a 'star among stars' as Valerie Solti says.

Michael Haas has written an obituary of Christopher for Gramophone, quoting Angelika Kirchschlager's tribute: "When you listen to me, it’s not only with your ear, but even more with your soul, searching for perfection not only in intonation but in truth. There is no better example of knowledge, enthusiasm, respect and humanity in this world of music than you!"

Norman Lebrecht is inviting further comment over at Slipped Disc, more are appearing at Gramophone, here and here, and I too would like to invite your memories, tributes and so forth in the comment boxes below, please.

I got to know Christopher personally just a few years ago, but can think of few people in the business whose warm and open nature and absolute artistic integrity inspired so much affection so quickly.

To lose both him and Jimmy within days, and barely a week after the 'realigning' or whatever it is of Decca itself hit the cyberwaves, seems not only tragic but also ironically symbolic...but I don't have to tell you that. You can see it clear as daylight without anyone uttering a word.

UPDATE, 27 February: Here is an obituary of Christopher from The Independent.

When Ivan met Glenn

Over in Toronto, young Serbian-American-Francophile piano hotshot Ivan Ilic (nothing to do with Tolstoy) is making his Canadian debut tonight in a recital at the Glenn Gould Studio and took the opportunity to get a photo with a local celebrity. "Glenn and I were talking about his favourite coffee-shops and Indian restaurants in Toronto," Ivan explains. "He offered me a few prescription drugs, I tried (unsuccessfully) to convince him about Chopin..." He also gives a lecture-recital at the city's Alliance Francaise tomorrow.

I much enjoyed his Debussy Preludes CD on the Paraty label, their order rather effectively (but very systematically) scrambled, which you can sample here. Look out for his London debut soon.

Very successful pre-concert chat last night with Martin Helmchen at the QEH yesterday. Earnest, curly-haired, high-cheekboned, possessed of silky and radiant tone plus fine-tuned brain, Martin proceeded to navigate his way brilliantly through the complexities of the Bach Sixth Partita (the one with the very scary last movement that always leaves me thinking 'THAT is a GIGUE?!')and three powerful extracts from Messiaen's Vingt Regards, towards which mighty complete cycle he's working his way steadily. But his style is made for Schubert. He's launched himself into the CD market with the big A major sonata, a disc that drew an out-and-out rave from BBC Music Mag.

What a very pianoy week this seems to be.

Meet Martin Helmchen

A morning chance to brush up your German and Dutch, from my next victim! ...seriously, this guy looks like becoming something very, very special. I will be doing a pre-concert talk with him at the Queen Elizabeth Hall tonight before his recital in the International Piano Series, where he'll be playing Bach, Messiaen and Schumann.

His new recording of Schubert is the pick of the month in BBC Music Magazine. He's won the Clara Haskil Competition and has been a BBC New Generations Artist and one of the select fellowship-holders on the Borletti-Buitoni Trust scheme. And he's only 26. I will be foregoing the world premiere of Vladimir Martynov's new opera at the RFH tonight in order to hear him.

In case you are considering going to the Martynov, though, rumblings suggest that it is very 'listenable' and that the singers are completely fabulous - well, they would be, as they include Joan Rodgers, Tatiana Monogarova and Mark Padmore. LPO & Vladimir Jurowski take it to New York next week. Here is an article by Jurowski himself about the piece from The Guardian the other day: "Torture by beauty". He says: "Some of the sounds and harmonies he employs in Vita Nuova are exactly that: tortuously beautiful, maybe more than an average European listener can take." (Why does this feel familiar, I wonder?)

The two Mishas hit London

Micha and Misha - Mikhail Rudy and Misha Alperin - hit Kings Place with Double Dream on Wednesday and Friday: classical Russian meets jazz supremo in a wonderful two-piano extravaganza, composed/improvised/inspired. The performances are part of Mikhail Rudy's 'curatorship' days at the hall entitled Piano Dialogues; on Thursday he is bringing together Janacek and Kafka in Letters to Milena, a musical and literary exchange of the type I adore, with narration from actor Peter Guinness. Each evening you can also see the brand new documentary about Micha, starting at 6pm, free.

Regretfully, though, his planned late-night recitals are now not going to happen. I wonder whether this is because Kings Place, for all its excellence, is ideally supposed to help regenerate the seriously grotty bit of London that moulders away behind Kings Cross station. Good new venues should ideally be a great device to pull an area up, but this can take a very long time - it can be 20 years, or sometimes (as at the South Bank) 50. For the moment, there is nothing much at Kings Place except Kings Place itself and, though I am convinced the venue is the best thing to happen to London's musical life in decades, I could understand a classical audience not wanting to emerge into the murk after 11pm, when you tend to put your head down and leg it to the tube pdq. A pity, though, that we will not be hearing Micha play Scriabin.

Soon, more news about another Russian pianist we won't be able to hear elsewhere, for very different reasons...

Meanwhile, here's a taste of Double Dream.

Benjamin's premiere really is a first

Blimey, guv. George Benjamin's one-act opera Into the Little Hill ended up enjoying its London premiere yesterday in the spot the audience probably would have liked to be in all along: the bar. Ten minutes into the show in the ROH's Linbury Theatre, the lights went out, as Alan Rusbridger reports in the Grauniad. The power cut only affected the theatre, so everyone was offered free drinks in the bar while they tried to sort it, but eventually the doughty performers cut the Gordian Knot at 10.15pm and announced they'd do the performance right there instead.

"The audience, which included the Arts Council chair, Dame Liz Forgan, and the former defence secretary, Michael Portillo, stood, sat, crouched and perched on the floor and assorted chairs for the 40-minute work," writes Mr R. There's a video on the site, here, so you can see the scene for yourself.

But...drumroll...is it possible that a Jealous Rival Composer engaged in a Spot of Sabotage? Miss Duchmarple Investigates...