JDCMB

Ursula Vaughan Williams died on Tuesday. Here's her obituary from The Guardian . Norman Lebrecht has written a big piece about Korngold....

Anne Sofie von Otter's new disc of music from the Terezin concentration camp is one of the greatest CDs I've ever heard. Read more a...

Wonderful Webmaster alerts me to the fact that Sir Georg Solti would have been 95 today. So by way of tribute, here's how he turned thin...

oh dear... English National Opera has set The Coronation of Poppea on a cruise ship. (Am also a tad intrigued to see this critic describe ...

Presenter Tom Service features Korngold in BBC Radio 3's flagship magazine programme today at 12.15. Includes interviews with biographer...

I have a largish piece about Korngold in today's Independent .

I found this on Youtube and could hardly believe my eyes/ears. This is from Korngold's mid-1930s Hollywood musical Give Us This Night s...

The amount of excitement surrounding the forthcoming Korngold celebration at the Southbank is absolutely fantastic. Latest news is that BBC ...

In case anyone was hoping to come to my Alicia's Gift reading at The Red Hedgehog in Highgate tomorrow (it was flagged on my permasite)...

... Opera Chic is having a lorralorra fun . Following on from the more daring inspirations named after Mozart and Tchaikovsky, I hope that t...

...It's today, and I'm not there. I should currently be listening to Piers Lane and the Doric Quartet playing the Elgar Piano Quinte...

As from yesterday, our friends in the Netherlands can read Alicia's Gift in Dutch under the title Wonderkind .

I'd hoped to give a full report on the glittering party that followed the LPO's anniversary concert the other night: the fantastic b...

Seventy-five years ago today, the London Philharmonic Orchestra gave its first concert. On the podium was its founder, Sir Thomas Beecham. ...

First to a blog called International Listings which has to do with luxury real estate. Its proprietor has kindly seen fit to include JDCMB ...

Spent Wednesday at the Gramophone Awards. Suffice it to say that the Dorchester is a splendid venue, the food was superb and the champagne f...

Baden-Baden , where I plucked up the courage to join Tom & the orchestra for a Tristan-dash (check in Heathrow 7.30am, plane delayed 1.5...

The LPO, fresh from last week's Southbank triumph, headed for Baden-Baden for the opening leg of a short run of Glyndebourne's Trist...

Marcel Marceau, master of mime. 1923-2007.

Alex Ross's book The Rest is Noise has reached print at last . Congratulations, Alex - and I'm looking forward to the UK edition fr...

The Guardian today runs an extract from the autobiography of Carlos Acosta (picture above shows him without said tights...photo credit by T...

My German isn't brilliant, but I think that this open letter from Krystian Zimerman explains why he and Gidon Kremer did not appear tog...

...here are some famous goings-on from up the road in St Marc, courtesy of Jaques Tati a.k.a. Monsieur Hulot, on his holidays. This episode ...

Back from France...as I'd suspected, my technotwit tendencies (or inadequate laptop) prevented any blogging en route. My play 'A Wal...

It's September - so here is the late Lucia Popp singing 'September' from Strauss's Four Last Songs in 1977, conducted with...

Gioconda de Vito was my second-ever interviewee, twenty years ago. It was a piece for The Strad to mark her 80th birthday (published in the...

The Buxton Advertiser ran a lovely news story about Alicia's Gift this week.

Fantastic piece in today's Independent about one of my favourite authors, Joyce Carol Oates. "Many writers are sad, bookish people ...

Thanks to good old Youtube, here is a clip of this phenomenal yet not widely recognised Russian violinist playing the Chausson Poeme. Hirshh...

The final evening of the Manchester International Concerto Competition for Young Pianists last Friday was quite an event. With two categorie...

When it's comparable to cycling and prostitution, as this article in today's Observer claims , through an interview with the tenor E...

Biopic fans are going to have some fun with this: an interview with actress Marina Hands in today's Times (re her new film of Lady Chat...

...there was a screw-up which would take too long to explain, but means that anyone trying to listen to the interview wouldn't have been...

The Russian composer Tikkhon Khrennikov has died at the age of 94, decades after the geniuses he helped to persecute. The Independent's ...

James MacMillan, one of the finest composers in Britain, never mind just Scotland, has written a fascinating article in today's Guardia...

The semi-finals of the First Manchester International Concerto Competition for Young Pianists , to give it its full name, kicked off yesterd...

The hot news today is that the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is going to play in 'Second Life' on the internet on 14 September. Hang...

Welcome to LIFE, St Nazaire . The exterior looks as it always has - this is, after all, the old Nazi submarine base that the Allies never ma...

Rodney (left) and Andrew Clarke are centre stage in Carmen Jones at the RFH , which I finally got to see on Saturday. As it happens, these...

Enjoy...

Tonight at the Proms you can hear (or see, if within reach) a whole evening devoted to the music of Nitin Sawhne y, with dance from Akram Kh...

Yes, Die tote Stadt is coming to the Royal Opera House. Not that they're risking trying to stage it themselves; instead they're tak...

The Times yesterday carried this report , in which the glorious South African jazz trumpeter Hugh Masakela, a veteran of the long struggle ...

A report in today's Indy reveals that Adolf Hitler's personal record collection has turned up, in the hands of Alexandra Besymenski,...

So there she was: the radiant Renee Fleming, in a light green gown full of sparkles and trailing a shot-silk scarf, took the stage in the Al...

Korngold fans must tune in to tonight's Prom , at which Renee Fleming will be singing two marvellous and rarely heard arias from the ope...

I've just heard that the redoubtable A.N. Wilson has written a novel about Winifred Wagner's relationship with Hitler. Entitled Winn...

Thanks to 'Pamos' for the alert to this fascinating article by Ed Vuilliamy that appeared in The Observer last weekend. He's be...

We had a very wonderful evening celebrating Tom's birthday at a gorgeous venue close to Glyndebourne yesterday, kindly lent by the dear ...

...the latest singing sensation to be signed up by Universal - baroque singer Elin Manahan Thomas's first solo CD 'Eternal Light'...