Have your say…

Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Colston Avenue, Bristol, BS1 4ST Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contact us on Facebook and Twitter

The glories of G&S

How lovely to see your article on Gilbert & Sullivan (I have a song to sing, O!, Christmas issue) and even more touching to know that they are still loved by amateur societies, as they should be. Not that Sullivan ever wanted to be famous for that, though. He once admitted in an interview that it bothered him to set music to such polished lines and metre as: ‘We figure in lively paint, Our attitude’s queer and quaint, You’re wrong if you think it ain’t, Oh!’ But he still did, and I for one love these operettas all the more for that. Let’s see lots more productions!

Paul Brock, Oxford

Igor’s passion

To add further confirmation to the mention of Stravinsky’s enthusiasm for Gilbert & Sullivan, when I was writing something about their legacy back in 2009 I contacted Stravinsky’s long-term collaborator Robert Craft as an authoritative witness. He confirmed that Stravinsky was a genuine fan. ‘I can say,’ said his email, ‘that he loved the Gilbert & Sullivan repertory and actually preferred it to the opera in London. This was in 1912 and 1914, and again in a revival in the 1920s, the reason in every case being partly why he stayed at the Savoy Hotel during all of his early visits to London.’ For myself, I can sense a hint of the pair’s influence in the Auction scene in Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress.

George Hall, London

Sounding good

Everyone loves a name check, so thank you Daniel Jaffé for such kind words – ‘well captured in Andrew Keener’s fine recording’ – in his review of Martyn Brabbins’s performance of Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony (Christmas issue). It’s true that as well as being a ‘musical midwife’ (Walter Legge’s description) a producer also has a say in the sound of a recording. But it is the engineer who makes that sound. To quote another of my predecessors, Christopher Bishop, ‘a producer without a good engineer is lost’. On these Vaughan Williams sessions, plus countless others, I would certainly have been lost without my engineering colleague Simon Eadon. Andrew Keener, New Malden

Postcard pleasure

I have greatly enjoyed the series of ‘musical postcards’ broadcast on BBC Radio 3 for their imagination and diversity of expression. I think it would be wonderful if you could collect them together and issue them as one of your CDS. It would surely represent a lasting legacy of this extraordinary time.

Jonathan Tubb, Walthamstow