Archive for Editorial – Page 2
Where are the Women Composers?
Women Composers Bundle Time for a little controversy on this blog – but that’s not my aim, which is to try to understand why, when…
Rebels without a cause?
Is there really music after midnight? At Classical:NEXT in Rotterdam at the end of May I attended a panel discussion entitled ‘Music after Midnight’. I…
More Questions Raised than Answered
I approached Classical:NEXT 2015 – the trade fair for classical music – at De Doelen, Rotterdam, at the end of May, with an open mind…
Gary Brain Remembered
It has not been a good week. On Friday Yodit, my beloved fiancée, partner of the past seven years and mother of our five-year-old Alex,…
Teenage Truths
Professional involvement in an activity has its dangers: you can become so pre-occupied with the detail of the building you’re examining that you fail to…
John Kinsella: A Tale of Two Symphonies
My Symphonies Nos. 5 and 10 were premiered eighteen years and a millennium divide apart, in 1994 and 2012. They were also written in very…
Paul Mann: Solberg Sessions — A Report from Liepāja
Tucked away on the west coast of Latvia is the town of Liepāja, home to fewer than 100,000 people, but boasting an especially fine orchestra,…
A Visit to Elsa Respighi: Rome, May 1984
In May 1984 I was invited on holiday with some friends who had rented a villa in the hills outside Viareggio in Tuscany, were…
Remembering Alice Herz-Sommer
News has come through of the death this morning, 23 February 2014, of Alice Herz-Sommer, at the age of 110. Alice had become an icon,…
Maxim Vengerov, new Patron of Toccata Classics
I am delighted to announce that, hot on the heels of Sir Roger Gifford (see the blog posting on 24 January), now Maxim Vengerov joins…
Khodorkovsky’s Coat-tails…
Two days before Christmas I heard an interview with the recently released Mikhail Khodorkovsky where he was asked if he had missed going to the…
First Posting to the Toccata Blog: Opening-up Classical Music
Welcome to the first posting on my new blog. Quick introduction for those who don’t know me: I run the CD label Toccata Classics and…