I’m a Berliner now
I was in Germany in April 2023, I’d been to Leipzig for the Bach 300 festival before catching a train for ten great days in Berlin. A city I last visited in the late 1990s, just a few years after…
Tag Shostakovich
Hopeful signs bursting out all over Lewes.
As we reach the middle of February here in Lewes, UK, our winter is releasing its frozen grip out there and I can already see signs of hope out there on the horizon. I, inevitably, have succumbed to the latest…
Mussorgsky and friends – the writing, unwriting and re-writing of a great opera.
Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881) I have to warn you that today’s blog is a tragic tale. Yesterday I wrote Mussorgsky’s great unfinished opera Khovanschina and one of the composer’s finest interpreters, the Ukrainian bass, Mark Reizen. It is a…
Playing the numbers game with the great symphonies
The Times ran an article yesterday that might have seemed dull to some but was pure delight to a classical music geek like me. They asked nine different writers to name their favourite numbered symphony – each writer having just…