The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

31st January 2024

One of this year’s major musical anniversaries – the centenary of the birth of Luigi Nono on 29 January – has so far been little marked on the international scene. On the day itself, BBC Radio 3 broadcast none of his music (this week’s Composer of the Week is, instead, Stravinsky). A native of Venice, Nono was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant garde, and for many new music insiders his name ranks alongside those of Boulez and Stockhausen in the modernist Pantheon. Yet outside of his native Italy and the... read more

17th January 2024

Amid the seemingly constant flow of new Bruckner recordings being issued in anticipation of the composer’s 200th birthday on this September, it’s easy to overlook another important musical bicentenary that falls this year. Bedřich Smetana was born on 2 March 1824, six months and two days before his Austrian counterpart. Although he was raised in a German-speaking household and mastered the Czech language only later in life, Smetana formed the keystone in the musical Czech national revival of the 19th century. He had... read more

3rd January 2024

Shortly before Christmas, the Czech musicological world lost one of its leading lights. Lenka Hlávková, head of the Institute of Musicology at Prague’s Charles University, was among the fourteen victims of a lone gunman at the university's Faculty of Arts. Founded in 1347, Charles University is one of the oldest such institutions in Europe. Prague itself is generally regarded as among the safest of European capital cities, and attracts many millions of international tourists every year, making the multiple shooting incident... read more

20th December 2023

As the end of the calendar year fast approaches, looking back on 2023 prompts mixed emotions. At last clear of most of the challenges set by the global health crisis of 2020-22, musicians, performing artists and their audiences have had other problems to contend with. Global emergencies and conflicts dominate the headlines more depressingly than ever, and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis continues to have an impact, whether on private purse-strings or strategic cultural spending.

2023 was the year when the BBC –... read more

13th December 2023

On this column’s last trip to the Nordic spaces of Finland, we looked at the music of the ‘three Ms’: Erkki Melartin, Leevi Madetoja and Aarre Merikanto. All were born in the last quarter of the 19th century, and the latter two in particular played their part in bringing Finnish music into the 20th century, Madetoja with evident stylistic debts to Sibelius, Merikanto rather more cosmopolitan. The advance into more mainstream European modernism was taken further by three more composers, all born in the early decades of the... read more