Hannibal hits the high notes... plus the Monty Python of music, a mountaineering composer and a brand-new piece by Brahms

"I thought I'd end up in the steelworks in Port Talbot for the rest of my life," says Sir Anthony Hopkins. Is he the most open and straightforward person I've ever interviewed? Certainly one of them. And it was rather touching to hear that familiar voice speaking to me from Los Angeles, and to realise that his own, natural accent remains distinctly Welsh. As you'll know by now, Classic FM is bringing out an album of music by Hopkins. Today my interview with him about it is in The Independent. Read it here.

More light reading for Friday morning: I have an interview with the fantabulous and very funny pianist Jonathan Biss in the JC this week, which is here.

And back at the Indy, we meet the young Italian composer who went up a mountain to create a tune with a view...

That should hopefully entertain you over your coffee. And here's a bonus: a "new" Brahms piano piece has turned up in America and is to have its world premiere on BBC Radio 3 on Music Matters, 21 January, played by Andras Schiff. Christopher Hogwood apparently stumbled upon the work which looking through a collection of manuscripts in the US that had once belonged to the director of music at Göttingen University. The piece, a complete Albumblatt about two minutes long, was written in 1853 when our Johannes was all of 20 - the year he met Schumann and Clara for the first time. Perhaps it would have been amongst the pieces he performed to them on that first visit in Dusseldorf. It is apparently an early version of what became the trio section of the scherzo in Brahms's Horn Trio. The Guardian has more on this, here.

Paranoid androids?

I spent a fascinating morning today at the Royal College of Music talking to postgraduate students, together with inspirational and entrepreneurial academic David Bahanovich and the one and only Gabriel Prokofiev. We covered topics ranging from Gabriel's innovative Non-Classical club nights to what the greatest musicians have in common - energy? dedication? more?; and from why "person gives concert" is not a story, to why you really need to understand, in today's music business, how digital media and social networking function or else risk being torpedoed. And much more.

It's wonderful, in 2012, to walk into the RCM and see devoted and brilliant young people who are on fire with the love of music and ready to spend their lives in its service. But also very worrying, because I don't know what in the world is going to happen to the RCM - or the other British music colleges - after the government removes all their support. Or am I being a paranoid android? After all, British music students can still hop on a plane to Denmark and study there free of charge (though they may need a different range of vocabulary from that of The Killing and Borgen). But I want to see top-notch, open-minded, free-spirited music colleges here in the Big Smoke, a city buzzing with creativity and diverse music-making every moment of every day, where young musicians could be nurtured without having to burden themselves with impossible debt. A college education should be free to those talented enough to pursue it. When we stop investing in education, we smother the future. It's that simple.

Speaking of creativity, David told me, en passant, about the pianist Christopher O'Riley's runaway success in the US with piano transcriptions of Radiohead, which apparently help to attract people to his recitals who might be under the age of 50 and sometimes sport interesting haircuts. Christopher's programmes might have a first half of, for instance, Janacek and Bartok, and a second half of Radiohead song covers. I hadn't heard the transcriptions before, so thought I'd check them out. Here's Paranoid Android: in this context, not so very far away from mainstream American minimalism, perhaps. Contemporary music: a convergence?

Accolade for Alan

Dr Alan Walker, whose three-volume biography of Franz Liszt is now the definitive text on last year's bicentenary supremo, has been awarded a top honour by the Government of the Republic of Hungary: the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit. It was announced, we hear, before the end of Liszt year (and before the new constitution in Hungary, which came into force the other day, dropped the word 'Republic'). Walker, professor emeritus of music at McMaster University, is also the biographer of Hans von Bulow, the conductor and Liszt's pre-Wagner son-in-law, and The Death of Liszt, based on the diary of Liszt's pupil Lina Schmalhausen. He will be bestowed with his award on 17 January at the Hungarian Embassy in Ottawa.

Accolades for books of this excellence are few and far between and goodness knows it is well deserved. But I imagine it won't be long before someone says he ought to consider refusing the award in protest at the current turn of political events in Hungary. This brings home the point that we ought to have more recognition for excellence in musical scholarship from cultural and governmental bodies a bit closer to home.

Ivan Fischer on the future of the symphony orchestra

I just found Ivan Fischer's video blog on the Budapest Festival Orchestra's website. Here he talks about the future of the symphony orchestra - and reveals in a few succinct sentences exactly what he thinks of 'crossover' and why.



While Hungary's political and economic situation goes through what looks increasingly like hell and high water don't forget why it matters everywhere else. Let's hope that this towering musical tradition, with its purity, clear-sightedness and intensity of purpose, won't be subsumed by yet another destructive ideological steamroller. The riches of that tradition are exemplified today by Fischer and his brother Adam, Andras Schiff, Gabor Takacs-Nagy and many, many more.

A year ago Andras Schiff alerted everyone to the Hungarian political situation with a letter to the Washington Post. But of course a lot of people said what they usually say when musicians talk about politics, to the effect of "shut up and play the piano", and now he doubts he will ever return to his native land. This is extremely unfortunate, because he was right and he should have been listened to - but the opportunity to make a bigger stand early enough was effectively lost. The truth in the overview of such situations can often be astutely commented upon by those who are outside it - people who care, but whose interests are not vested - and as great musicians tend to be intelligent, passionate people whose gifts have earned them a world stage, sometimes we really ought to take some notice of what they say.

In Senegal, another world-renowned musician, Youssou N'Dour, is running for president.

Inspiration? Try the shower

The Guardian has a fantastic spread at the moment in which some leading creative artists - writers, artists, musicians, choreographers, etc - talk about how and where they find the inspiration that drives them. I particularly like the very concise concluding section by Wayne McGregor. Read the whole thing here.

A couple of late additions from JDCMB:

* Hot water. I get my best ideas in the shower. No explanation.

* Read lots of history and biography. The past is full of stories so outlandish that you couldn't make them up. So is the present, of course...

Any more tips, anyone?