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Early Music Round-Up
30th November 2022
‘Early Music’ comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. In recent months, several new releases have come our way which have impressed us with their quality and the scope of the repertoire covered. Here we summarise just a few recent releases that have stood out from the crowd.
The Glasgow-based Linn Records continues to expand its ventures into rare earlier repertoire. One outstanding example comes from the Marian Consort (familiar from previous releases on the Delphian label), with a fascinating disc of motets by the... read more
Recent Brahms Symphony Sets
23rd November 2022
Conductor A is about to conduct a performance of Brahms’s First Symphony. Meeting him before the performance, Conductor B wishes him well, adding: ‘I hope your Brahms is suitably bearded!’ To which Conductor A responds: ‘But Brahms didn’t have a beard when he wrote the First Symphony!’
The spectre of the ‘bearded Brahms’ – autumnal, wistful, elusive, a shade lugubrious – hangs over the common perception of all his music, much as the images of ‘old man’ Bach, ‘Papa’ Haydn and the ‘tormented genius’ Beethoven have... read more
A few thoughts on CD packaging
16th November 2022
If you’re reading this, it’s highly likely that you buy CDs and/or DVDs on an occasional or regular basis. Maybe the odd one or two, or perhaps many, adding to a small or large collection. And you’ll no doubt have noticed how much sheer space they take up. When CDs originally started replacing LPs in the mid-1980s, many collectors rued the small size of the new medium, the often tiny print of the booklet notes, the shrunken artwork on the cover. Yes, they were more durable than LPs, less prone to scratching and warping (some... read more
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Assessing the impact of Arts Council England's cuts
9th November 2022
Following the announcement last Friday of Arts Council England’s new funding agreement, the arts world is currently taking stock of cuts and in some cases the complete withdrawal state funding to several high profile organisations. The general thrust of the new plans has been to move funding away from London to the regions, while bringing cuts to the overall budget during a time when the UK government is trying to find across-the-board reductions in public spending. (Arts Council England is notionally an independent body,... read more
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Cost of Living, Quality of Life and the Arts
2nd November 2022
Following the stressful years of the Covid lockdowns, the current cost of living crisis has put extra pressure on almost all sectors of society, both domestically and globally. And it has added to the ongoing woes of the arts sector. Musicians and those who support them are not immune from these issues. With many people now worried about such basics as how to power their homes or afford basic foodstuffs (sometimes having to choose between the two), the arts might be seen as a luxury few can afford. Yet, as we've remarked on... read more
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