The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

Vox feminarum: Women’s Voices – The Composers

2nd September 2021

Newly released on the ever-enterprising Edinburgh-based Delphian label, a generous selection of songs by Ina Boyle shines fresh light on the output of one of Ireland's most neglected composers. Privately educated in composition by the likes of Percy Buck, Charles Kitson, Charles Wood and Ralph Vaughan Williams (the latter a key influence and important supporter), Boyle (1889-1967) was denied wider recognition during her lifetime by a combination of rural seclusion, a self-effacing nature, and societal prejudices against the... read more

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Quincentenary: Celebrating Josquin

25th August 2021

27 August 2021 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Josquin Desprez, perhaps the central figure of what is now known as the Franco-Flemish musical Renaissance. Like many artistic figures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, details of his early life are sketchy: he was born around 1450–55, probably near Saint Quentin in northern France, as Josse (or Josquin) Leboitte, but subsequently acquired the suffix ‘des Prez’ already used by his father and uncle – indicating that his paternal grandfather’s family may have... read more

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Insight or idiosyncrasy? The art of 'underlining'

18th August 2021

In 1886 Brahms wrote to his close associate the violinist Joseph Joachim, who was preparing to conduct an early performance of Brahms’s Fourth Symphony in Berlin: ‘I have marked a few tempo modifications in the score with pencil. They may be useful, even necessary, for the first performance .... Such exaggerations are only necessary where a composition is unfamiliar to an orchestra or soloist .... Once a work has become part of [the musicians’] flesh and blood, then in my opinion nothing of that sort is justifiable any... read more

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Director’s Opera: Threat or Challenge?

10th August 2021

‘Is it a traditional production?’: this is one of the most frequent questions we receive from customers wanting DVD or Blu-ray performances of opera. An affirmative reply usually prompts a positive response, a negative one a polite refusal. Updated and controversial productions (which are more and more frequent, as they are in international opera houses) are looked on by many opera lovers with a mixture of scorn and dread. Why do directors persist in staging works in a manner that repels so many traditional fans of the... read more

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The Wrong Side of History: Karel Ančerl

3rd August 2021

Two boys born within a week of one another in April 1908 went on to become two of the most important conductors of the post-WW2 era. The elder was born on 5 April (the same day as Bette Davis) to a well-to-do Salzburg family of Macedonian and Slovenian descent. Musically precocious, he studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum with Bernhard Paumgartner and the Vienna Academy with Alexander Wunderer and Franz Schalk. Having determined on the path of conducting, Herbert von Karajan (for it was he) made rapid progress via operatic... read more

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