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Music

One good turn deserves another

A good friend of mine who, even in his eighties, has never stopped working is now presenting his own show on the radio network Boom which concentrates on Sixties music and the disc jockeys are from that era. My friend “ Diddy” David Hamilton worked on Radio 1 and Radio 2. Others, like Graham [...]

May 27, 2022 // 0 Comments

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

Casting to type – an interesting aspect of modern sensitivities

In these modern times of saturation-coverage of fashionable issues such as  “levelling up”, diversity, equality, transgender rights versus those who argue these affect “women born as women” (if I’m even allowed to use that phrase) – just “wokedom” [...]

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

West Side Story (2021)

Not many directors would risk remaking such a celebrated musical on stage and screen as West Side Story but Steven Spielberg has the chutzpah so to do. Does he pull it off? Yes and no. Yes, he is brilliant film maker and sensibly sticks to  the original. No, because the original score and [...]

December 15, 2021 // 0 Comments

Modern life (Part 37)

Completely by chance, the other day I found myself ruminating upon which was the exact moment at which I began “falling off the pace” of modern life. This was against a background in which, in casual conversations over past decades, I have long used 1985 at my answer to this question because [...]

December 11, 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

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