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Articles by Michael Stuart

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About Michael Stuart

After university, Michael spent twelve years working for MELODY MAKER before going freelance. He claims to keep doing it because it is all he knows. More Posts

Elmer Bernstein

Donald Macleod’s Composer of the Week on Radio 3 this week is the film composer Elmer Bernstein. His most famous score is The Magnificent Seven but he also  composed the scores for The Ten Commandments, The Great Escape, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Man with the Golden Arm, The Sweet Smell of [...]

April 6, 2022 // 0 Comments

Ruler of the Queen’s Navy/HMS Pinafore

The other day I was sitting next to a fellow over dinner who turned out to be a professional tribunal chairperson adjudicating on military cases. He spent a good deal of time in Plymouth on naval cases. For this he had earned the honorary title of Rear Admiral. This made me think of the humorous [...]

February 12, 2022 // 0 Comments

Sir Edward Elgar

I would lay a penny to the Pargiter tenner that if anyone had to cite the quintessential English composer it would be Edward Elgar. He composed five versions of Pomp and Circumstance and Land of Hope and Glory – written at a low point in the Boer War – is the most stirring of anthems. [...]

February 5, 2022 // 0 Comments

New Years Day Concert/ Vienna

My favourite ritual on New Years Day is the annual concert in Vienna. Tickets are gold dust- all the more this year as because of the pandemic the audience in the Golden Hall was limited to 1,000. The concert honoured Daniel Barenboim who was conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. He is 80 now and I [...]

January 2, 2022 // 0 Comments

Late Mozart and The Rest is History

One of my favourite presenters is Donald Macleod who on Radio 3 at midday presents The Great Composers.    Occasionally it will be a composer of whom I have not heard but, as often as not, I have. Last week he covered the late period of Mozart’s life. For me, Mozart is the greatest of them all [...]

December 25, 2021 // 0 Comments

A bird in the hand is worth two in the Bush

Last night – upon a last-minute whim and with not a little anticipatory excitement – my wife and I went to the small-stage Minerva at the Chichester Festival Theatre for the last performance of three at the venue given by Sarah-Louise Young of her one-woman show conceived with Russell Lucas [...]

December 4, 2021 // 0 Comments

Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony

In my music class on the rise of the Symphony we studied this week Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” symphony – composed after a visit to that country by the German composer. Our tutor explained that Scotland exercised a powerful romantic appeal in the 19th century. This was because it [...]

November 26, 2021 // 0 Comments

Age and perception

I sometimes feel sorry for the Beatles. So great was their musical excellence, so all-pervading their impact upon 20th Century culture around the world, that (perhaps alongside Elvis Presley, whom of course did not write his own songs) they occupy such an exalted position in the public [...]

November 7, 2021 // 0 Comments

Just about anything goes

We all eventually succumb to the ‘sense’ that the world isn’t fair – after which life becomes largely a matter of how we cope with the knowledge … and the effects. I came to the realisation quite early. I was five or six years old at the time and taking part in my [...]

November 1, 2021 // 0 Comments

What’s in a tune?

The other night I awoke at 1.00am with that uncomfortable feeling that I would not be getting back to sleep for some time. I came across an archived Desert island Discs featuring as the Castaway Andrew Lloyd Webber. He has written more memorable melodies – including Memory – than most [...]

October 30, 2021 // 0 Comments

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