brisbane hate

Current mood: LUDWIG Everyone is sending out their end-of-year messages of thanks, gratitude, invocation of blessings and marvels at the wonders around us, and I'd like to join in. Only it's difficult, because I am mad as hell about what has happened to my home country during the course of 2018 and terrified out of any remaining wits about what will happen in 2019. I haven't been blogging much, because to be interested in blogging you have to not mind 'sweating the small stuff' and currently I mind this very much indeed. Oooh, a mispronunciation on Radio 3! Oooh, clapping between movements! Ooooh-ahhh, a soloist in a short skirt. WOW! I've been lucky to have some excellent guest posts this year. I've given the floor whenever possible to those who make the arguments best: Anna Lapwood on gender equality for choristers, Dame Sarah Connolly on the implications for the music world of Brexit, and more. It's not that I don't want to write. It's that I ...

Many thanks to everyone who entered the Swan Lake Competition! I hope you've all had excellent Christmasses.  It's time to reveal the winner. The question was: Which ballerina danced the role of Odette/Odile in the world premiere of  Swan Lake , at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, on 4 March 1877? The correct answer is: Pelagaya Karpakova The first correct entry out of the hat is from Lucy Braga, who will receive a paperback of Odette from JDCMB and a CD of Swan Lake conducted by Vladimir Jurowski from Pentatone. Congratulations!

Dear readers, have a wonderful Christmas and new year! Lots of love from your slightly knackered blogger and her household. xxxxx

Deck the halls with chocolate silver,  Falalalalaaaah, meow me-ow... If you've been reading JDCMB for a while, you'll know that TODAY'S THE DAY. It's the Winter Solstice, which means it's time for our very own virtual awards ceremony, in which we take a lighthearted look back at the year's peaks and plunges, while Ricki (chocolate silver) and Cosi (silver) present our winners with a special prize purr and let them stroke their luxuriant fur. Please come in. Welcome to the CyperPoshPlace!  No need to stand on ceremony here. All are welcome. No tickets are checked, no charges made for the cloakroom, and the CyberBubbly, being virtual, is limitless free to all and won't make you drunk. Just the right degree of pleasantly tipsy, if you so wish. It's been a...well, I can't remember a year quite like this one. It's tense. Everyone is anxious and exhausted and we still don't know what the heck is going to happen to us all, let alone the music busine...

Steven Isserlis is 60 today! I have flipping' well missed his big birthday concert on Monday at the Wigmore Hall - which included appearances by Simon Keenlyside, András Schiff, Radu Lupu, Ferenc Rados, Josh Bell and Connie Shih - because for some reason we'd thought it would be a good idea to go to Iceland in the middle of December to try and see the Northern Lights... As my Dad used to say, one lives and learns. Steven Isserlis Photo: PA Anyway, it was a wonderful excuse to pop up to north London the other week and interview Steven himself. We talked about music, books, cellos, Rabbi Moses Isserles, Schumann, Fauré, Bloch, the perils of curly hair and the Marx Brothers, among much else. You can read the whole thing in the JC, here.  And here's one select story. His Twitter account makes lively reading, full of hair-raising stories about his travels with his cello. “I was on a Japanese airline, business class — very nice — and I asked the stewardess if she could help make ...

WIN A SWAN LAKE CD AND A COPY OF ODETTE Vladimir Jurowski's recording of Swan Lake in its original 1877 version - before Drigo got his paws on the score - is an absolute stunner, out now on Pentatone Classics. The State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia 'Evgeny Svetlanov' offers sleek, intense playing, the sound quality is excellent and in Jurowski's hands the dramatic climaxes become utterly hair-raising, almost Wagnerian in their magic and majesty. And in the box there's even a set of instructions for how to fold your own Origami swan. Swan Lake is the inspiration behind my new book, Odette,   in which the ballet's heroine meets the present day head-on. This week Odette has been on a 'blog tour' which has found it termed 'enchanting', 'magical' and 'absolutely unique' (for which I'm extremely grateful and happy.) I'm delighted to say that Pentatone is offering a copy of Jurowski's splendid Swan Lake  recordin...

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