brisbane hate

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Composer Lili Boulanger Asking because those of you who are as exercised as I am about the proper recognition of music that's written by women might like to join this splendid initiative from Heather Roche and the Southbank Centre. They're having a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Sunday 2 September, with the aim of adding more female composers to the site's database. Annoyingly, I  will  be away in Denmark then, having an actual holiday (cloning urgently required).  Here's what they say: If you're in London, grab your laptop and come and join us at the The Royal Festival Hall, where we'll provide support and socialising for fledgling editors. Or: set your laptop up and participate remotely; we'll be live streaming the event via Facebook and tweeting throughout the day with the hashtag #ComposingWikipedia.    Currently, only 17% of Wikipedia's entries about people are about women and only 10% of Wikipedia's contributing editors are women. Creating a Wikip...

Thanks, everyone, for your warm response to my post last weekend about Knightsbridge. In it I mentioned en passant that back in about 1992 a friend and I took Shura Cherkassky out to dinner at the Russian restaurant Borscht'n'Tears, and this has caused something between amazement and amusement, so I thought we'd better have a follow-up. In 1993 I was editing Classical Piano magazine (will give you the full story of that little exercise some day) and for one of the earliest issues I seized the chance to interview the almost-uninterviewable Cherkassky and put him on the front cover. Somehow this interview has survived intact on my computer, so here it is. Fresh from the last century, other worlds, other mindsets - much missed. From Classical Piano , 1993... He loves the hottest sun, the most exotic travel and spur-of-the-moment inspiration. And he would rather go to a nightclub than sit and talk about music. Jessica Duchen meets the 82-year-old Shura Cherkassky Shortly after ...

It is Leonard Bernstein's centenary today. Above, the conclusion of his lecture series in 1973, in which as his 'credo' he predicts a new and wonderful musical era of eclecticism rooted in tonality. 45 years on, it seems he was right (though heaven knows we have other problems to contend with now that he probably couldn't foresee). Many of his lectures can be viewed online and I urge you to look them up: he was a musical communicator without compare. The unanswered question? "I no longer know what the question was," he says, "but I do know the answer. And the answer is: yes." And here's some music.

Joszef Lendvay (son) and Joszef Csoci Lendvai (father) in full flight with Fischer & the BFO Photo: BBC/Chris Christodoulou I reviewed last night's Budapest Festival Orchestra Prom for The Arts Desk: Brahms, Liszt and Lisztes! Wonderful to see the audience pretty much eating out of the hands of some real Gypsy violins and the phenomenal cimbalomist Jenö Lisztes, to say nothing of Iván Fischer's heavenly Brahms. And as a show of unity and strength in contemporary Hungarian context, it couldn't be bettered. Read the whole thing here: https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/prom-55-lisztes-lendvai-lendvay-budapest-festival-orchestra-fischer-review-unity-and

The cat is out of the bag! I'm writing a new youth opera for Garsington 2019 with the composer Paul Fincham and the company is now announcing the auditions, which will be held on 15 September. So if you are or know a young person aged 9-21 who likes singing and stagecraft, send 'em our way, please. Details on Garsington's site here. The opera is THE HAPPY PRINCESS, an updated adaptation of that ever-popular Oscar Wilde story, The Happy Prince [NB, the Garsington site currently says Andersen, but it isn't]. We hope it will be touching, fun, 'relevant' and full of beautiful new music by Paul. I've been having way too much fun doing the words. Read about Paul and the audition plans here .

The other day I went to interview a wonderful young musician in order to write the booklet notes for his next disc. We had an hour to talk about a very great composer, the challenges he poses, the eternal appeal he holds. The musician in question lives in Germany and was staying in a hotel in Knightsbridge, so I trotted off to the tube and got off at a stop I visit perhaps once every two years, if that. I wasn't quite prepared for what I found up at street level. Start your week with the Eric Coates 'Knightsbridge March', above. It'll put you in a better mood than what follows, beneath. Because Knightsbridge is not like that now. What and who exactly is Knightsbridge 2018 for? When I was a kid (OK, a long time ago, but not that long, surely?) it was a place we'd sometimes go to for fun on a Saturday afternoon or a day off in the school holidays. We'd park the car in a side-street and wander through the Harrods sale or the food hall, where my dad might buy matjes...

[This is a shared post with my Odette "shed" update page  at Unbound , so if you've subscribed to the book , it will probably pop into your inbox soon...] The other day I growled to my husband, "This book is driving me mad." He gave a shrug: "They always do." After 20 years, it's water off a violinist's back, and he retreats happily to practise his Paganini. Upstairs, though, I am in the middle of what is elegantly termed 'Editorial Development', but is, to me, the inevitable part of writing a book that is a bit like being skinned alive. The outer covering is pulled off and every bone, every vein, the entire network of connective tissue and nerve-endings, are under microscopic scrutiny.  My editor has done a wonderful job with the manucript. She has been kind, encouraging, firm and to the point. She's homed in on issues that I sort of know about, but might not have focused on so clearly: for instance, I tend to speed up towards the ...

Mark Ainley of The Piano Files has just revealed the discovery and imminent release of something utterly extraordinary. A 'live' - i.e., non-commercial/studio - recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff playing his own music has long been considered by some to be the 'holy grail' for historical piano aficionados. Against all the odds, one has finally turned up. It dates from 1940 and on it you can even hear Rachmaninoff singing along and speaking to his colleague Eugene Ormandy while playing. Marston Records will be releasing it in as part of a 3-CD set of the great pianist-composer's non-commercial recordings on 4 September. Above, a taster video compiled by Mark. He says: " I am delighted to share this announcement of the discovery and imminent release of one of the most astounding historical piano recordings that I believe has eve r been discovered - one that I don't think anyone could have imagined existing.  "For years there has been conjecture about a ...

I haven't disappeared into the outback with my Anna Magdalena costume, promise. Got home last Wednesday morning from Hong Kong, suitcases intact this time. Trotted off to Oval to return 18th-century dress on Thursday - encountering, en route, someone so like the actor character in Odette that I thought maybe he was real after all (this is a frequent occurrence with my books: I invent characters, then find I meet them later). And then: struck down with the Long Flight Lurgy. I don't know if there is any truth in the idea that the recirculating cabin air supply increases your likelihood of picking up germs that other passengers are breathing out, or if it's the 15-degree drop in temperature, but one way or another I'm down and out today and the wild sunshine of northern Australia feels like a very, very long way off. Back soon. Holing myself up in the study with an opera DVD to review, lemsip and nose drops.

It’s done! The premiere of Being Mrs Bach was yesterday at 5pm and it simply flew by. It’s almost impossible to sum it up...but the great reward, when you’ve dreamed up a project and you can see it in your mind’s eye, and then months later that image actually becomes reality and does what you want it to do - that’s a good feeling. Mrs Bach backstage. #townsville #afcm #afcm18 #australianfestivalofchambermusic #beingmrsbach A post shared by Jessica Duchen (@jessica.duchen) on Aug 1, 2018 at 3:05pm PDT The original commission for Being Mrs Bach came through last summer from Kathy Stott and Tom and I took off to Leipzig to experience Bach’s environment as far as humanly possible. The trip made a big difference to the story, because there is information at the Thomaskirche, the Bach Museum and the city museum in the Town Hall that provides colour and authenticity that would not have been available to me from the comfort of my bookshelves. Anna Magdalena’s tragedy was that she gave her wh...

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