Archives for November 2009

Things are hotting up with the BBC/Radio3/English National Opera Sing Hallelujah project. We now have 350 choral events across the UK on our online map, so audiences can find their local performance of the Hallelujah Chorus - we are checking another 80+ registrations, so we should soon have well over 400 events logged.

Many of these local choirs are raising money for Children in Need, in tribute to Handel who used performances of Messiah to raise money for the Foundling Hospital, Britain's first home for abandoned children.

Once registered, choirs can download resources to help them perform the piece, including sound files and hints and tips from BBC Singers' chief conductor David Hill. Choirs can record their performances and then upload them to their event page. Some of the recordings will also make it on to Radio 3.

Next on the schedule are two large learning events on 5th December in Glasgow City Halls, and 6th December at ENO London Coliseum, and the there will be a special edition of The Choir  devoted to Sing Hallelujah on Sunday 6th December at 6.30pm.

Meanwhile, on English National Opera's side, there are new films, photos and text entries on the Messiah Community Ensemble blog, which I can recommend as a fascinating read!

• This is a link to the Sing Halllelujah site, where you can find details of all the features discussed above.
• This is a link to English National Opera's Community Ensemble blog.
  
  
  
  

Lovers of Haydn's music will be much saddened to hear of the death of H.C. 'Robbie' Landon on November 20th 2009 at his home in France, at the age of 83. Until very recently, his tireless enthusiasm for Haydn was only matched by his generosity towards everyone who showed a similar love for the composer and his works.

Among many other gifts, he was a comsummate broadcaster. I hope that over the next few weeks, we shall have the chance to recall through radio and television, his many talents as a scholar, critic and musical advocate.

As one of many who knew him and enjoyed his generous hospitality I shall miss him greatly. Perhaps it is a neat coincidence that he died so close to St Cecilia's Day and in Haydn's bicentennial year ...

All through the London Jazz Festival, there's been a course for aspiring jazz journalists called the Write Stuff. With help from Jazzwise Magazine, Serious (the Festival Producers) and Radio 3, eight young journalists have been reviewing concerts, learning interview techniques and meeting experts to help them hone their writing and reporting skills. Everything came to a conclusion on Sunday, with drummer and pianist Gary Husband being interviewed by the entire group. Some insights into his playing and writing came out of the session, but everyone learned from one another about how to draw out an interview subject and probe behind CDs and concerts to find out more about the jazz life. I joined the course for the final day and was very impressed by the skill and application that this group of writers brought to the task. In the photograph you can see Gary (far right) in the group interview, and you can also hear from all the students on the course.

Photo by Emile Holba. See more photos on flickr.

Listen to our conversation.

Yesterday afternoon at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, 80 amateur singers gathered together to perform with pianist and composer Gwilym Simcock and his band. This was part of Gwilym's work with The Voice Project, and the pieces, based on the theme of freedom, were first performed by the group in May. Gwilym was a difficult man to track down straight after the gig, as he was very busy signing CDs! I did however manage to monopolise him for a few minutes, during which we chatted about the project, and about what he likes about working with amateur musicians.

Listen to our conversation.

I caught up with London jazz enthusiast Patrick outside the Royal Festival Hall ahead of tonight's performance by Scottish musicians Dave Milligan (piano) and Colin Steele (trumpet). He's a regular at the London Jazz Festival, so we had a chat about coincided concerts and year round Jazz for the Londoner.

Listen to our conversation.

I caught up with Bellatrix after her gig at Charlie Wright's, she talked about her experiences and how she got into world class beatboxing!

Check out the exclusive London Jazz Festival signoff!

Winkball's reporters were at Gilberto Gil's LJF concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. They asked the Brazilians in the audience if they could explain why Gilberto's so important to Brazilian culture, and if you could ask him any question - what would it be?

Watch the video responses by clicking on this link.

It was the Helge Lien Trio at Pizza Express last night. I discovered that although the doors opened at 7.30, the band wasn't actually on until 9.00! So come 9.00 I was rather annoyed and thinking, "This had better be good..." They were worth the wait though. The music itself is innovative yet easy to listen to, with a harmonic language that reminds me greatly of Bartok at times, but which has a voice all of its own. But it was the rhythmic language that really made me smile. I'm a sucker for unusual time signatures, which of course are de rigueur in modern jazz, but there were some flashes of pure genius in the way that the music fitted together rhythmically. Bassist Frode Berg has a virtuoso technique that you really don't see that often in a bassist - he's as comfortable whizzing around in the higher register as an acccomplished cellist would be, and has a beautiful tone too. And Helge himself is a really unusual player. He has a lightness of touch and a depth of sound that would be every bit as at home in Chopin and Mozart as in modern jazz, and so I was stunned to discover that he hasn't played classical piano since he was 17! I caught up with him between sets to ask him about his influences.

Listen to our conversation.

I met up with old friends, Milton and Bridget ahead of tonight's beatbox extravaganza at Charlie Wright's, Hoxton - Bellatrix & the Boxettes. I'm really interested to hear how hiphop and a capella female vocal techniques come into the jazz world, and tonight should be a masterclass!

Listen to our conversation.

Here's a wonderful picture of legendary jazz singer Sheila Jordanreceiving her 81st birthday cake at her Bull's Head masterclass. Photo copyright © 2009 Emile Holba www.emileholba.co.uk

Last night was Cleveland Watkiss' 50th birthday celebration at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Cleveland admitted to the audience that this was the first time he'd ever actually had a birthday party, and what a party it was! He collaborated with artists including Bonnie Greer, Byron Wallen, Goldie, Nikki Yeoh, Talvin Singh, Jason Rebello, Simon Purcell, Julian Joseph, Mark Mondesir, Shaney Forbes, his brother Trevor Watkis, and the legendary Sheila Jordan, who had just celebrated her 81st birthday. The Green Room at the QEH was absolutely teeming with jazz royalty - I felt rather star-struck. Pictured are some of the pianists striking an air piano pose.

As for the concert, it's impossible to pick out musical highlights as there were so many, so I'll just mention that Cleveland does a rather cruel but hilarious impersonation of Simon Purcell! I also have to say that he looks absolutely incredible for his 50 years - I'd have thought he was about 35.

Among the many awesome musicians playing with Cleveland Watkiss last night to celebrate Cleveland Watkiss at 50, Shlomo was one of the most impressive. This man is an absolutely incredible beatboxer, taking the human voice to the absolute limits of virtuosity. During the concert, Shlomo collaborated with Cleveland and several other musicians to create a sort of jazz-meets-drum n bass improvisation. And if anybody was in any doubt that improvisation really is genuinely made up on the spot, Shlomo assures me that when he went out on stage at the QEH, it was the first time that set of musicians had ever played together at all. I caught up with him backstage and persuaded him to give me a beatboxing masterclass. What do you reckon - should I give up the day job?

Listen to our conversation.

Reporters from the Winkball video networking site are attending a number of events at the London Jazz Festival. They set out to discover from his fans, how important Branford and the rest of the Marsalis family are for jazz music.

You can see the responses by clicking on this link! 

Haydn from Belfast (and elsewhere)

As the BBC's Composer of the Year celebrations begin to wind down, it's good to find another rich week for Haydn being programmed in advance of the Purcell events around St Cecilia's Day on Sunday. Being currently housebound with an awkward back condition, I've been able to enjoy a lot of more than usual of what's on offer on Radio 3. This week's Lunchtime Concerts have all been dedicated to Haydn. On Monday, they began with a really convincing performance of The Seven Last Words by the Emerson Quartet, and the remaining days feature the Dutch keyboard player Ronald Brautigam (and friends) from last month's Belfast 'Festival at Queens'. As always, these recitals can be heard using the BBC iPlayer service.

Although Brautigaum does play other instruments, he seems more at home at the fortepiano than the modern concert grand, as this sequence of programmes demonstrates. In his Belfast concerts, he showed the instrument in several different ensembles, beginning with a selection of solo works on Tuesday. The three Piano Trios Nos 27, 28, & 29 that Haydn wrote for Clementi's star pupil Therese Jansen while in London followed the next day, Wednesday. In Thursday's broadcast Brautigaum played three of the composer's concertos with the Narratio Quartet as chamber music. This short series of programmes showed some of Haydn's gifts as a composer of domestic music and concludes on Friday with Scottish soprano Mhairi Lawson singing a selection of canzonets and folksongs.

The weekly parade of symphonies also continues, with two notable rarities appearing - Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia in No 92 - The Oxford (Classical Collection, Wednesday), and Guido Cantelli with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in No 93 in D (Classical Collection, Friday). There's no doubt about it - there's a lot to enjoy!

• The photo (copyright BBC) shows Otto Klemperer in 1970.

I caught up with singer Natalie Williams just after a rocking set at Spice of Life, in which she performed an incredibly diverse mixture of jazz standards; her own songs, including one with lyrics by her poet father; and even a Keane cover. It was a pretty quick interview as we were in a hurry to get back to the bar to hear the legendary Anita Wardell! Natalie told me all about how she first got into jazz singing. She also informed me that I had been missing out on some rather good parties recently...

Listen to our conversation.

The day is upon us which Purcell himself celebrated with odes and finally his own death by chocolate, tuberculosis or pneumonia after being locked out of the house by Mrs Purcell. (The theories are several and none more credible than any other.) Indeed Purcell actually founded the celebrations to mark St Cecilia's Day (November 22), the saint having somehow acquired the patronship of Music in the seventeenth century, having previously been associated only with blindness. You don't have to see to love music.

The big event is at Purcell's place of work and burial, Westminster Abbey, this Friday evening (Fri 20 Nov). The Abbey Choir, accompanied by St James's Baroque Players and conducted by James O'Donnell, performs the Te Deum and Jubilate in D from 1694, the Ode for St Cecilia's Day composed in 1692 Hail Bright Cecilia and the Funeral Sentences composed for the death of Queen Anne in 1694. The soloists are soprano Carolyn Sampson and counter-tenor Iestyn Davies who is on a roll at the moment and long may it last. The concert is lustrous enough for BBC Radio 3 to broadcast it 48 hours later on the actual saint's day this Sunday at 6.30pm.

Indeed, Radio 3 is devoting the whole weekend to Purcell commemorations of various sorts. It has even been mentioned on Radio 4 which Mrs Jones listens to. You can find all the details by clicking on this link.

Read the rest of this entry

The Spice of Life was packed last night, with a queue of dozens of people who hadn't managed to get in, snaking their way right up into the top bar. You'll be pleased to know that I maintained decorum and resisted the urge to thumb my nose at them as I swanned past with my AAA pass, although I did feel rather smug. Anyway, The Spice of Life is a great venue, really intimate but with a fantastically friendly atmosphere. Although I arrived on my own and didn't know anyone there, I'd made several friends by the end of the night!

Opening the night was Emma Smith, a student at the Royal Academy of Music. Emma is a really, really special talent. She has a beautiful sound and an incredible palette of timbres, punctuated by impeccable diction. Much as it pains me to admit it, her version of Lionel Bart's Where is Love? actually brought a tear to my eye. And as if that wasn't enough, she's only 18 years old.

Listen to our conversation.

One of the busiest musicians at this year's London Jazz Festival is bass clarinetist, soprano and baritone saxophonist John Surman. On Wednesday he's got a major concert celebrating his 65th birthday, and he's also meeting me at 6pm in the Front Room to record Saturday's edition of Jazz Library. I went along to his masterclass at the RFH on Saturday, which was enthralling. Not only did he demonstrate the mysterious art of circular breathing ("Anyone can do it," says John. "No they can't!" said a voice from the back, "You tried to teach me 20 years ago and I still can't make it work!") but he gave insights into practice regimes, the incredible range he has developed on the baritone and on the way he has absorbed folk music into his compositions. We heard about his early years in London, coming up from Plymouth, and about his blues playing, his free jazz colleagues and his early European adventures. There'll be more on Wednesday night, but here's part of a quick chat I had with John as he was packing up his horns on Saturday morning.

Photo credit: John Surman Masterclass at the Southbank Centre, by Emile Holba

Listen to our conversation.

Appearing at the QEH on Tuesday with her quartet the Lost Chords, featuring British saxophonist Andy Sheppard, is American pianist / composer Carla Bley. She was recently my guest on Jazz Library, and picking just ten representative recordings from her vast catalogue was no easy task! Her concert from the London Jazz Festival will be broadcast in Jazz on 3 on Monday 23 November, but as a foretaste, here's part of a conversation I had with her looking forward to her QEH gig. We were talking about how the Lost Chords first got going, and how -- a little while beforehand -- she had gone out on tour with just herself and her long-term colleague bass guitarist Steve Swallow.

Listen to our conversation.

One of the great things about the London Jazz Festival is that there is never a dull moment and the Southbank, with its multitude of performance spaces, is one of the best places to be over the next few days. I had half an hour to kill before the Branford Marsalis concert last night, so I wandered over to the Festival Hall thinking I'd have a quiet cup of coffee and check on the #LJF Twitter stream. Instead I discovered a packed Clore Ballroom enjoying a free performance by Brass Jaw, a sax and trumpet quartet who are quite simply stunning. Brass Jaw have been performing all over the place over the last few days as part of the Festival On the Move. I caught up with the boys over some well-earned post-performance drinks, during which they explained what they're doing at the festival.

Listen to our conversation.

I arrived at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, along with hundreds of other jazz fans, to hear Julian Joseph interviewing sax legend Branford Marsalis as part of the Hear Me Talkin' To Ya series. Branford proved to be a very entertaining interviewee with a fantastically dry sense of humour as he revealed all about his childhood; his musical education; how he's learned from his fellow musicians; his constant struggle to eliminate weaknesses in his playing; and his bitter sibling rivalry with brother Wynton, who apparently was very annoying as a child! I caught up with Julian to ask him what he's doing at the festival, and how it's been going so far.

Listen to our conversation.

I arrived at the Southbank Centre to discover a choir of dozens of amateur singers rehearsing the classic Duke Ellington tune Mood Indigo, led by Pete Churchill as part of the Southbank's Voicelab project. Over post-rehearsal coffee, he explained how it all worked, and how even the most seemingly-complex music can be easily tackled with the right tuition. Later in the day, the Voicelab students came together to give a performance to a packed Clore Ballroom - they really were the stars of the day!

Listen to our conversation.

On Sunday 15th November, at the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House, I was working with conductor Andrew Gourlay and clarinettist Julian Bliss on one of the more unusual concerts in the London Jazz Festival. This year is the Benny Goodman centenary, and to mark the occasion, we took a look at two of the classical concerti associated with Benny. Around the mid-1940s, Benny took an increasing interest in developing his classical technique and he commissioned a chamber work from Bela Bartok and a concerto from Paul Hindemith. But we looked at arguably the most famous of Benny's commissions from the '40s, namely the Aaron Copland clarinet concerto, and also the much later Malcolm Arnold Concerto no 2, written in 1974. With the students of Trinity College of Music Chamber Orchestra we took the two concerti apart, looking for links between Benny's classical works and his jazz playing. You'll be able to hear the results on 13 December at 5pm, on Radio 3, but as a foretaste, here's a brief chat I had with Julian and Andrew about this concert.

Listen to our conversation.

Ronan Guilfoyle from Metier tells me about the ensemble and how they came to perform at the London Jazz Festival!

A blogger himself (ronanguil.blogspot.com), I caught up with Ronan backstage after their fantastic performance - Saturday 14 November at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank.

I have their CD 'Cascade' in my grubby mits and am looking forward to listening to it! Tonight's concert will be broadcast on Jazz on 3, 11.15 pm, Monday 16 November

Listen to our conversation.

Saturday evening standing alone at the back of the returns queue (for the Tomasz Stanko Quintet at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank), Cary told me about her trip up to London and why she will book in advance in the future! This erstwhile reporter nearly struggled to get his reserved ticket! It was absolutely packed out!

** News update! **

Cary from the returns queue was spotted in the auditorium - apparently there was a press ticket no show!

Listen to our conversation.

On Wednesday at the Bull's Head, the legendary jazz songstress Sheila Jordan celebrates her 81st birthday. She is still at the very top of her profession and I've heard several of her concerts in Britain this year, where she combines a love of authentic 1940s bebop with ballads that tell deep stories of the human experience. She's also appearing at several other London Jazz Festival gigs in a variety of settings. I can think of few other singers who so expertly adapt to the room in which they're playing, but remain completely themselves. Sheila takes amazing liberties with the melodic line of a song, with time, with harmony, and yet she always manages to stay true to the original - perhaps because she is a true original herself. I spoke to her after her Saturday lunchtime gig at Ray's Jazz.

Listen to our conversation.

Listen to our conversation.

The great Sonny Rollins plays the Barbican on Saturday 14 Nov. Whenever he plays in the UK he always seems to have a knack for playing tunes associated with London or with his audience. Here I talk to Sonny about how he'll be approaching Saturday's gig at the Barbican.

Listen to our conversation.

A Season in Hell is an abridged radio reworking of French poet Arthur Rimbaud's intense masterpiece of spiritual disillusionment, narrated by Carl Prekopp with a soundscape by Bristol composer Elizabeth Purnell and poems sung by Robert Wyatt. The programme will be broadcast in Between the Ears on Saturday 14 November at 9.45pm. Here, producer Sara Davies gives a fascinating account of the journey from the idea of turning the work into radio, through various artistic twists and turns, to the version listeners will hear on Saturday. 

About thirty years ago I was in a bar in a small Mexican town where a French actor gave a thoroughly eccentric performance of some of Rimbaud's poetry to a musical accompaniment. He didn't include the prose poem A Season in Hell, probably because it defied even his eccentricity and powers of performance. Later, it seemed to me that radio was the ideal place to try to find expression for its insistent, wild, knowing autobiographical voice and emotional complexity.

I asked the composer Elizabeth (Liz) Purnell to read it, and she leapt at the chance to respond to such an extraordinary piece of writing. I knew I'd have to make fierce cuts to fit it into half an hour, and had imagined I'd drop the songs which appear about two thirds of the way through the piece, as they seemed to me to be the most problematic elements in a pretty knotty piece of writing.

But when we talked about it, Liz argued convincingly for at least some of them to be left in, and I realised when she talked about wanting to set them for Robert Wyatt that she was absolutely right. We decided on the three we both felt would work best, based on instinct rather than any literary judgement; literary judgements about the poem itself are so disparate and interpretations so varied that it was liberating not to have any orthodoxy to follow. Liz says she wanted the songs to suggest a kind of alter-ego Rimbaud, speaking from beyond the grave, and that she asked Wyatt to sing them because of his sense of spontaneity, his interest in poetry and the wonderful delicate nature of his voice in the high register.

She went to record them at his house in Lincolnshire, where she set up a microphone in his front room, ignored the background roar of passing lorries and played him the backing track on her laptop as he sang. Robert was keen to sing the songs mainly in the original French - something I hadn't envisaged, but was charmed when Liz brought the recordings back. Liz knew she was pushing him to the top of his register, but he went for it, and with lots of fag breaks and cups of tea, they got the recordings done over an afternoon and the following morning. One of the most enjoyable recording sessions she's ever done, she says - and not a lorry to be heard in the background.

It is a reception which honours the London Jazz Festival and takes place in the Terrace Pavilion in the House of Commons. It is attended by the jazz lovers of both houses and always attracts a large turnout of MPs and peers as well as the wider jazz community.

The London Jazz Festival begins this Friday evening and the main opening event is called Jazz Voice. It's at the Barbican and you'll be able to hear it on Performance on 3 on Tuesday evening (17th). It focuses on a century of song and the sumptuously arranged programme draws on significant anniversaries of jazz songs, films, singers and songwriters down the decades. Guy Barker's specially assembled London Jazz Festival Orchestra showcases brand new arrangements with an array of wonderful singers.At 'The House' event last night Guy Barker played and one of the soloists, Natalie Williams, sang as a taster of the evening - it promises to be very special indeed.

I talked to Cleveland Watkiss and he then went over to Guy and the other musicians and sang as well - and so gave us an additional preview - this time of his event within the festival - amazing that it is his 50th birthday party - he looks good on it and sounds in great form. Another date for the diary.

So we've left Berlin behind on Radio 3 and now move to London for great jazz - just a few days in the life of the station!

• The picture, by Philip Tottenham, shows Natalie Williams, who will be performing at the Jazz Voice concert at the Barbican on 13 November.
• This is a link to Radio 3's London Jazz Festival page.
• You can down load a pdf file containing the entire LJF programme by clicking this link.

Since Britten is Purcell's inheritor, I felt justified in going to see his Turn of the Screw at English National Opera on Friday. Sir Charles Mackerras wielded his baton like a ratchet as he tightened the fifteen orchestral variations towards the snapping-point climax and made my palms sweat with the creeping horrors of the opera's progress. Rebecca Evans as the Governess snagged herself convincingly on the horns of the dilemma: to know a dark truth but to be prevented from telling it. Her searing line spelt horror though she lacked the silvery resonance of Cheryl Barker's Miss Jessel who was made up for Halloween night. So was Michael Colvin's undead Peter Quint, stumbling around the stage with a hole in his head. Ann Murray's simple, cheerful Mrs Grose meanwhile tried hard to resist truth in the most painful scenes.

Charlie Manton played the boy Miles with creepy innocence. He's a drama school product rather than a chorister and while he was a convincingly sinister tease, he lacked power in duet with Nazan Fikret's pouting, spoilt Flora. The murky themes are almost too prophetic, the taboo of paedophilia hanging over the production like a Norfolk mist. The charming child who has forfeited innocence and embraced evil like a playground game is the enduring image, corruption of innocence the tragedy.

You can listen to English National Opera's production, until Friday 13 November, by clicking on this link.

'The umbrella cell cycle presented within the Operatic eukaryote provides fascinating examples of inverse mitosis, or reverse cell division; this is literally a case of zygotes amalgamating into larger organisms, with previously fertilised unicellular gametes 'clapping' in order to gain a form of genetic acceptance so that they can then become part of a greater life form.'

WHA???!! Don't worry - this is the way James Wright, an English National Opera Messiah Community Ensemble participant explains his 'motivation' - what he's meant to be doing, under the direction of Deborah Warner, during the performance. Various members of the production team, and community ensemble participants, are blogging on Messiah - producing a fascinating day-by-day account of the rehearsals leading up to the premiere at the London Coliseum on November 27.

• Messiah is linked to Radio 3's Sing Hallelujah project. You can find details here.
• And here is the link to the production blog.

Books and records ...

My bag of new CDs has turned up a particularly satisfying package in the form of a double-disc set from arch-violinist Leonidas Kavakos. It features the Violin Concerto with the Camerata Salzburg, which he conducts from the fiddle, and it is a beautifully judged performance: lovely tempi, clear textures, sweet and intimate tone. The second CD is of the two piano trios, in which he's joined by cellist Patrick Demenga and pianist Enrico Pace. They produce all the whooshing élan, drama and joy that you could wish for.

Kavakos's technique - for those of us who are violin buffs - is fascinating; I suspect he is inspired in certain ways by accounts and pictures of the playing of Joszef Joachim, whose bow arm does what most of our violin teachers told us not to do, allowing the shoulder to relax to the point that the elbow appears to droop. Kavakos is, furthermore, from a family of Greek folk musicians; he once described to me how he learned the joys of collective music-making from them (this was an interview for The Strad some years ago). Evolving his approach to tone, I feel he has favoured what one could call European Intimate over New York Force; quality and finesse are valued ahead of sheer volume. In combination with his intense musicality and intelligence, this goes a long way towards making his Mendelssohn a special experience.

Meanwhile Sheila Hayman's very fine documentary, Mendelssohn, the Nazis and Me, is now out on DVD. I'm reviewing it for BBC Music Magazine so we'll post the full review once it's out, but let's just say for now that it is a must-see job.

Check back at Felixcitations soon for more information on a new book about Fanny Mendelssohn, plus a little about another composer's anniversary which didn't make it to the big guns this year but really, really should have ...

Marginal scribbles or buried treasure?

The Juilliard School in New York is in the throes of completing a complete revamp worth $200m. Among the features of the new and much enlarged space will be a secure archival storage space for its collection of music manuscripts and according to a report in The New York Times, this in turn is about to be enlarged: in 2006 Bruce Kovner, the Juilliard's chairman and vice chairman of Lincoln Center donated a collection of 138 manuscript treasures to the school. He's a music-loving billionaire hedge-fund trader. One might at first think that the donation took place just in time, given the events of the past year, but now there's more news: he has donated two more, one of which is Beethoven's 'Kreutzer' Sonata, the other of which is a proof of Mendelssohn's Elijah.

It's an engraved proof copy of the piano and vocal score, with Mendelssohn's corrections and scribbles in the margin. And it could be anything but marginal: if he did more than correct a few 'typos', it could provide some real insight into his thought processes... To access it you do not have to be a full-time academic: it has been photographed and digitized to be posted online, together with the rest of the collection at juilliardmanuscriptcollection.org.

According to the NYT, Bruce Kovner has every intention of continuing to buy manuscripts for the Juilliard. I hope that any City traders and bankers reading this will perhaps consider some similar good usage for their forthcoming bonuses.

Read the rest of this entry

On Breakfast this morning (prompted by an article in today's Guardian) I asked any children or teenagers listening to the show to text in their favourite pieces of classical music. What a response! A wonderful, surprising and hugely encouraging list of works has emerged that reveals a lot about how we learn to love music.

In a recent top ten poll of children's favourite classical works, reported by Tom Service in The Guardian, John Williams' Harry Potter score and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf won the hearts of the young. From the flurry of texts from eager thumbs that came in almost immediately, it was clear that children's musical tastes are as rich and varied as those of the adults who listen to BBC Radio 3.

There was a broad sweep of popular works you'd expect to see, like Vivaldi's Four Seasons or Johann Strauss II's The Blue Danube. Some suggestions, like Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King and Mussorgsky's Night on a Bare Mountain, are obvious favourites for children - they appeal because of their vivid orchestration and narrative power, not just because they're familiar from television. But there were also some really unexpected selections: a Bartok piano sonata (from a listener aged 15), the Barber violin concerto (aged 16) and the mad scene from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (aged 18).

Reading between the lines, I'm struck by how these young people first came across the music they love. I think it confirms something I've always known: that nothing beats performing music as a way of falling in love with it. I'm sure the 10-year-old cellist who adores Bach's solo suites is learning to play them, or at least aspires to; and I bet the same is true of the 9-year-old who wanted to hear a Mozart piano sonata. I'm tickled pink by the text from a young chorister whose favourite piece of music is Rubbra's Magnificat in A flat - not an obvious choice, and definitely not one that would make it into a top ten chart! But it's music that he knows, that he loves to sing, and that he's open to loving without the preconceptions and reservations that come, inevitably, with musical knowledge and with age.

So, a spontaneous and unregulated sample of youngsters listening to Radio 3 one rainy November morning loves the music of Honegger, Haydn, Bernstein, Poulenc, Sullivan, Khatchaturian, Zelenka, Shostakovich and Elgar. Their ears are obviously wide open. The trick, and the challenge, will be to keep them that way.

This post appeared on the Radio 4 blog this morning. We're repeating it here for your information.

If you've ever left a comment here on the blog or on the messageboards you'll have signed in to the web site to tell us who you are. Over the weekend the BBC's sign-in system was upgraded. As a result, the next time you sign in something different will happen and you'll be asked to 'upgrade' your user account to the new system, which is called BBC ID. This will happen only once and it's a pretty easy process. It's all explained here on the BBC Internet blog.

• The picture, Masks, by Patrick, is used under licence.