brisbane hate

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Live radio is quite scary, but I took the plunge yesterday. It's an honour to be on the panel of judges for the BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour Power List 2018, which is devoted to Women in Music and was launched yesterday. I'm the classical representative alongside some formidable figures from the pop world - producer Catherine Marks, broadcaster Jasmine Dotiwala and singer-songwriter Kate Nash - and we have quite a task ahead of us, whittling down the number of powerful women in the music world to select the top 40. The list will be announced in the autumn. You can hear the podcast from yesterday's programme on the iPlayer, here.  Happy listening.

Liza Ferschtman Photo: Marco Borggreve I had a lovely interview with the Dutch violinist Liza Ferschtman the other week (official version available to read in this week's JC, here ) - she will be in London to play Bernstein's Serenade at Cadogan Hall with the Brussels Philharmonic on Thursday 31 May. Her recording of it - and the Korngold Violin Concerto - is highly recommended. During our conversation, I learned that her family was close to the absolute legend of a violinist that was Philippe Hirschhorn. Her father was the cellist of the Glinka Quartet until they left Russia in the late 1970s, her mother was a pianist, and she grew up in the Netherlands with fellow emigré Hirschhorn virtually as honorary uncle.  Hirschhorn, born in the USSR, won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels, and later settled in the Netherlands - but his career ended tragically, with his death from a brain tumour aged only 50. His sound burned one up like no other. There was more to say than I...

Barbara Hannigan as Isabel, Stéphane Degout as The King, Gyula Orendt as Gaveston Photo: Stephen Cummiskey There has been a great deal of fuss this week, courtesy of questionable decisions at the Philadelphia Orchestra, about 'respecting the sanctity of the concert hall' ( Read Philip Gentry's piece here. ) Just the tired old standard defence against anyone objecting to decisions made by performers/managers that are...questionable – designed simply to silence those who disagree. It's saddening to see Yannick say 'Musicians are not men and women of words', as most of the ones I know bloody well are. My latest evening at the Royal Opera House has left me wondering why anyone would consider there's anything resembling 'sanctity' in any performance house – I won't say 'any more' because it probably was never there. Last night I went with a friend to see the new George Benjamin opera Lessons in Love and Violence. We sat in the amphitheatre - c...

Planning to spend the bank holiday weekend catching up on a spot of practising?...well, if you're anything like me, you may be wondering where to start. I sit and stare at my books of Beethoven, Debussy and Schumann, feeling stumped before playing a note by the decision of which piece to pick and why. Brush up an old one or learn something new? Try something I know (well, think) I can still manage, or something that will force me to learn a new technical trick? Or what? Fortunately I've asked pianist, teacher and maker of anthologies Melanie Spanswick for a guest post and she says: play to your strengths. Here's the post explaining why. JD Playing to your strengths A guest post by Melanie Spanswick Piano students working towards a graded piano exam, a diploma, a competition, a concert or any type of performance always want to know if the repertoire they have selected offers an eclectic programme. Is their choice of composers, piano pieces and range of styles and genres, sui...

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The violinist and artist Tatiana Berman is one of three musicians featured in Forte, a new documentary by American filmmaker David Donnelly exploring the notion of 'success' through the eyes of three female musicians - all of them strong personalities pursuing their dreams. Using classical music as an example, the film looks at the societal expectations women face today as private and professional individuals.  To fund it, they've got a  Kickstarter campaign, which has just three more days to run. Please support them here!  Below is the trailer and a guest post from Tatiana about her own experiences... JD The Journey of the Female Soloist by Tatiana Berman To become a professional soloist, you have to start young. For me, it was five. My mother and father were musicians, so naturally I wanted to play. At 14, I was accepted into the Menuhin school, one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, on a full scholarship. My mother had passed away unexpectedly tw...

Ute Lemper is in London tomorrow to present an extraordinary and heartbreaking project at JW3. Songs for Eternity is a programme of songs from the ghettos and concentration camps of the Nazi era. I talked to her about it the other week and you can read the full interview in The JC, here . And here's why she says this devastating repertoire is so important for us to hear, right here, right now. “People are saying racist things that they should never say, advertising intolerance and reactionary nationalism. Thousands of people have been displaced because they are not born with the privilege of freedom, peace, education and religious freedom. They fear for their lives in the middle of genocide and war  —  yet these people are often not even let in because of the fear of terrorism. Many thousands of innocent people are rejected, sitting in front of barbed wires or in immigration rooms, or simply being sent back. I feel broken-hearted when I see this, and the way the population r...

Jonas Kaufmann, Jochen Rieder, BBCSO. Photo: Mark Allen/Barbican It's possibly some measure of my current distraction - with libretto, deadlines, nephew's wedding the other day and an ongoing situation with a very sick cat - that I completely forgot Jonas Kaufmann was coming to London to do the Strauss Four Last Songs , until the Barbican press office sent me an email saying, in effect, '...but don't you want tickets?'. So after Meghan and Harry had walked up the aisle - and so, in Harrogate, had our nephew and his own American bride, and so, in Cambridge, had Guy Johnston and Ali Digby (huge congratulations to music's loveliest new couple!) - and the sun shone and the Rev Michael Curry had wowed a rather startled congregation with his reminder of the powers of love and fire, off we headed for the City to see what the tenor of this event would be like. One question that always applies at such concerts is: what else goes into the programme? Kaufmann's friendl...

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Lauren Zhang plays Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto with the CBSO in the BBC Young Musician final Photo: Greg Milner Coinciding with yesterday's apparently stunning final of this year's BBC Young Musicians Competition, oboist Nicholas Daniel and a magnificent roster of fellow past winners - Nicky Benedetti, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Natalie Clein, Guy Johnston and many more - have launched a plea for music lessons to be available free of charge to every primary school pupil in the country. The BBC YMoY is 40 this year and has helped to inspire several generations of young people to love music and want to play it. This (along with so much else in the UK at present) is desperately under threat.  Here's some of the letter: "....despite some brilliant schemes, we are all deeply concerned that instrumental music learning is being left to decay in many British schools to the point that it could seriously damage the future of music here and jeopardise British music’s hard won ...

We're trialing a new (hopefully more efficient) event registration system. Please go here to register for this weeks events https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/questgaine-week-16-sunnybank-hills-tickets-46044383992?aff=es2

Last week I had a call from The Observer to ask me to stand in for their absent critics Fiona Maddocks and Stephen Pritchard, which was both a surprise and an honour. It looked like a quiet patch at first - just too early for the premiere of Lessons in Love and Violence - but closer examination revealed two concerts that couldn't have been more 'up my street' if they'd tried. One was the shooting-star French soprano Sabine Devieilhe at the Wigmore lunchtime concert in a programme based around the salons of Pauline Viardot, who happens to be a long-standing obsession of mine. The other was billed as a TED Talk with music: Cambridge history professor Sir Christopher Clark joined Brett Dean and the City of London Sinfonia for an evening of Beethovenian exploration at the shiny new QEH. Due to circumstances beyond my control, it was my first trip there since the hall reopened - and gosh, it's good! (And it really does smell like a shoe shop.) Here's the review.   Y...

Thanks for coming to tonights QuestGaine at Coorparoo You can input your answers   here . The map is available  here Feel free to post your route in the comments below.

2018 - Week 15 - Coorparoo 9-10 May @ 7pm This week we'll be starting at Majestic Park, Coorparoo.  This is a recycled map by Craig from 2017. Please arrive by 6:45 to sign on and grab your map ready to turn maps over at 6:58.  For those who cannot make the  Wednesday  night, you can register for  Thursday  and someone will bring maps to the start.  Please register below -  BY MIDDAY ON THE DAY YOU'RE ATTENDING -  so that we can print enough colour maps. Entry is Free!  Timing: Please arrive by 6:45pm Map handout at 6:58pm Turn over maps for two minutes of route planning at 6:58pm Mass start at 7:00pm Finish at 8:00pm - 20 point penalty for every minute you are late 8:00pm onwards - enter your answers into the online form that generates a live leaderboard What to bring: Marker Pen/ highlighter Headtorch Compass (optional) Whistle for safety (optional)

Taking a short break. I'll be back as soon as possible.

If you've been wondering where I am... My beloved cat Ricki has been desperately ill. He is just home after 10 days in vet hospital and we're feeding him a lot of fish to build up his strength. I've been preoccupied, sleepless and unmotivated for blogging. Meanwhile, though, the Royal Philharmonic Music Awards are coming up next week, and the wonderful Rosemary Johnson is stepping down as executive director. I was keen to offer a tribute to her, so can only send my profuse thanks to Jack Pepper, our youth correspondent, who has written what follows. (This is a longer version of a piece which has appeared in the BBC Music Magazine website.) JD TRULY PHILHARMONIC A tribute to Rosemary Johnson, by Jack Pepper   Starting out in the classical music world is never easy. Commissions lead to commissions, performances to further performances, but this relies on an initial opportunity to get you started. There is no flame without a spark. In December 2017, one very notable inspirati...

Thanks for coming to tonights QuestGaine at Eight Mile Plains You can input your answers   here . The map is available  here Feel free to post your route in the comments below.

2018 - Week 14 - 8 Mile Plains 2-3 May @ 7pm- This week we'll be starting at Gagarra Street Park Eight mile plains.  We'll be using the regular question and answer format this week. Please arrive by 6:45 to sign on and grab your map ready to turn maps over at 6:58.  For those who cannot make the  Wednesday  night, you can register for  Thursday  and someone will bring maps to the start.  Please register below -  BY MIDDAY ON THE DAY YOU'RE ATTENDING -  so that we can print enough colour maps. Entry is Free!  Timing: Please arrive by 6:45pm Map handout at 6:58pm Turn over maps for two minutes of route planning at 6:58pm Mass start at 7:00pm Finish at 8:00pm - 20 point penalty for every minute you are late 8:00pm onwards - enter your answers into the online form that generates a live leaderboard What to bring: Marker Pen/ highlighter Headtorch Compass (optional) Whistle for safety (optional)