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I've been reading an interesting book, which I'm reviewing for BBC Music Magazine. It's Good Music: What It Is and Who Gets to Decide , by the American academic John J Sheinbaum . Among many things it does is to articulate a shake-up in the deep-seated ways we tend to think about the music we listen to. Is the idea of "greatness" all-encompassing in our musical judgments? If so, why? Does it have to be? Do we listen to music because it is empirically "great" in some way - or because we think it is because others have judged it to be? And not to other things because they are...not? It's a chewy, academic read, but deep within the texts and analyses are some intriguing ideas and a good few home truths. It's got me thinking... Good Music WHAT IT IS AND WHO GETS TO DECIDE 69 JOHN J. SHEINBAUM 320 pages | 2 halftones, 25 musical examples, 8 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2019 Over the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of “...

Aurora plays from memory. (Photo: auroraorchestra.com) If you want music to lift you clean out of your chair, go and hear the Aurora Orchestra play a symphony from memory. The opening concert of their season, on Sunday afternoon, entitled Smoke and Mirrors , found them at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, delivering a theatrically staged event – in the first half of which, through clouds of dry ice, the brilliant singer Marcus Farnsworth travelled from Schubert's Der Wanderer to HK Gruber's Frankenstein!! . A narrated link described an erupting volcano, the skies that it darkened in 1816 and some glimpses of Mary Shelley and friends writing ghost stories by the lake. This storytelling's ability to immerse us in the world and the legacy of early romanticism proved vivid and atmospheric; Aurora has Kate Wakeling as writer in residence, and I assume she penned this dramatic casing. (You can find her work in their season programme  - not marketing blurb but actual short stories, lit...

In these febrile times, I think it takes some courage to march around Westminster singing and playing the Ode to Joy. This is precisely what two brave Simons - baritone Simon Wallfisch and violinist Simon Hewitt Jones - and their friends have been doing on a regular basis for months and months and months. They are spreading togetherness and, well, joy, they say, to help heal this divided nation. Given the grim future that's at stake for every one of us if the government pushes ahead with "hard Brexit", we should all go and join in!

There's a plethora of terrific concerts on 8 March, International Women's Day. Actually we're splendidly spoilt for choice this year! In the Barbican' s offering, Laurence Equilbey conducts her own Insula Orchestra - resident at La Seine Musicale in Paris - in the UK premiere of the Symphony No.3 by Louise Farrenc (1804-1875), with Beethoven's Triple Concerto in the first half starring Natalie Clein (cello), Alice Sara Ott (piano) and Alexandra Conunova (violin). I asked Laurence why she's putting Farrenc side by side with Beethoven, and plenty more besides... Equilbey in action Your London concert is on International Women’s Day. This annual event has gained prominence at an extraordinary speed over the past few years. Why do you think it’s important to mark it? There is definitely a greater appetite from audiences to hear music from female composers of the past than there has been previously, and when is a greater opportunity to celebrate this than on Interna...

Murray Perahia's recording of the Beethoven sonatas 'Hammerklavier' Op.106 and 'Moonlight' Op.27 No.2 is just out - sadly too late for my #hammerklavier roundup, but worth waiting for - and full of his extraordinary, empathetic musicianship. I wrote the booklet notes, based on an interview with the great American pianist at his London home, some extracts of which are featured in the trailer below from DG. And if there is anything more astounding than sitting in Perahia's music room while he plays Bach, it is being there while he plays this . Moreover, his insights into the motivations behind the 'Moonlight' Sonata are absolutely remarkable. Here we find an Aeolian harp - or what Beethoven's idea of one may have been - and some imaginative associations with nothing less than Romeo and Juliet .