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Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol, BS1 4ST Email: music@classical-music.com Social media: contact us on Facebook and Twitter
The price is not right
In response to your invitation to tell us about concerts we wish we had attended (Letters, October), one of the best things about being a schoolboy in Manchester in the late 1960s was conductor John Barbirolli and the Hallé. I was a regular in the Free Trade Hall, usually in the two shilling and sixpenny seats in the gallery. In December
1969, I was desperate to be at the concert to celebrate Barbirolli’s 70th birthday…
but I see from the rather forlorn note I made on the season prospectus (above)
that ‘only 25 shilling seats’
were left. I didn’t go. Half a century later, I have the Barbirolli Society’s recording of the concert and
I can hear that it was pretty good – a small consolation. Martin Sixsmith,
London
Absent pilgrim
A concert I missed but would have loved to have attended was in 2000 when, as part of his Bach Pilgrimage, John Eliot Gardiner conducted Bach cantatas in Santo Domingo de Bonaval, Santiago de Compostela. The performance of BWV 161 is something I will never forgive myself for missing. Mark Padmore never sounded in finer voice, and I enjoy the CD so much. I would also have loved to have been on Iona for their concert on the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death, particularly as they sang BWV 118, a favourite of mine. Sadly, it was not recorded.
Jan Wilson, Tregavethan
A tough choice
In the 1960s, I bought tickets for the pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.
As was often the case, he cancelled at the last minute but rescheduled the concert for a few days later. His chosen day was the same as the British Grand Prix, which I had also planned to visit. Reckoning that one would take place and the other was unlikely, I chose motorsport over music. Inevitably, Michelangeli did play and I never had another chance to hear him live.
Paul Langridge, Rattlesden
Many thanks for your letters and emails about the concerts you wish you had attended. We would love to hear more!
Owl ’owler
Rick Jones’s A memorable folk trail feature in your October feature was fascinating, plus a great help to me for a minipresentation I gave at our U3A Music Group when the subject was the number five, for which I chose VW’S Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus. Incidentally, the Union Jack outside The Owl pub in the picture on the fourth page of the feature is upside-down. Are you going to tell them, or shall I?
Peter Graham, via email
Vinyl treasures
I had much pleasure reading your Analogue age feature in the October issue. I will never be deprived of my LP collection, begun in the early 1960s. Where would I be without the young Brendel playing Mozart concertos on Turnabout? During lockdown, I discovered gathering dust two LPS containing unique broadcast concerts of Serge Koussevitzky conducting four Sibelius symphonies: Nos 1, 5, 6 & 7. Then I worked out I had a Remington LP containing the only broadcast recording of the Seventh Symphony conducted by a Finn – Nils-eric Fougstedt – during Sibelius’s own lifetime. I bought a rare 10" LP of Janine Andrade playing the Violin Concerto to go with that Seventh. Where would I be without these LP treasures? Edward Clark, President, United Kingdom Sibelius Society
I was very interested to read the letter in October regarding the first performance of Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia in Gloucester Cathedral in 1910. Clearly the suggestion is being made that, despite the overwhelming impact it had on Herbert Howells and Ivor Gurney, it was not received with great enthusiasm by the majority of the audience. Why then is it now justly considered such a major masterpiece in the British repertoire?
I think we may get a clue from the 100th-anniversary performance given in Gloucester Cathedral during the Three Choirs Festival in 2010. Conductor Sir Roger Norrington decided that the Philharmonia Orchestra should play without vibrato, as apparently this was the custom in 1910. Frankly, to my ears this wonderful, radiant work sounded awful, as it did to the majority of my companions. If indeed it was played without vibrato in 1910, then it is no surprise that it produced a negative reaction for many people. I wonder if this can be confirmed or denied?
David Green, Fakenham
An interesting thought, though our deputy editor was also present at that 100th-anniversary concert and says he came away with a very different impression! For him, the spare, simple nature of the vibrato-free performance was ideally suited to the chant-inspired nature of the work as it echoed around the vast spaces of the Cathedral. Horses for courses, as they say…
Wild Oscars
In contrast to what you say in your October Cover CD feature, Henry V did not win the Best Picture Oscar nor the Best Actor Oscar for Laurence Olivier – it was Olivier’s film of Hamlet (1948) which achieved that feat. However, Olivier did receive a Special Academy Award for his ‘outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing Henry V to the screen’. Also Walton did not win an Academy
Award for his score for Henry V, though he was nominated; the Oscar that year went to Hugo Friedhofer for his score for The Best Years of our Lives.
Neil Sinyard, Saxby All Saints The editor replies:
Our apologies for the error. We are pleased to be corrected.
Seagull supporter
Richard Morrison’s column in the August issue is thoughtprovoking. Is there truly a problem when people fail to treat classical music ‘with respect’, as Philip Pullman says? If I have my favourite classical station on while doing things in the house, should I feel ashamed because I’m not concentrating on it deeply? In the dispute between Pullman and Bobby Seagull that Morrison discusses, I have to side with Seagull. Nobody has the time and money to treat great music with the respect it deserves all the time. By making it readily accessible, however, we increase the likelihood that people who might never have taken an interest in it will do so. Was Stanley Kubrick ‘misusing’ the music of Strauss when he employed Also Sprach Zarathustra in his movie 2001: A Space Odyssey? I think not, and a great many movie-goers came away wanting to find out about the magnificent music they’d just heard. I did.
George C Leef, Raleigh, NC, US