Someone once said there are two sorts of people in the world: those who divide the world into two sorts of people and those who don’t. Now call it a crude generalisation or a silly party game for pianoraks or, as I like to think, brilliantly perceptive, but I think you can divide concert pianists…
The Mikado, most popular of all The Savoy Operas, opened for business at the Savoy Theatre, London, on 14 March 1885. In Act 1, Ko-Ko, The Lord High Executioner of Titipu, declares that ‘there will be no difficulty in finding plenty of people whose loss will be a distinct gain to society at large’. He then sings his famous…
CASABIANCA was written by Felicia Hemans in 1826 and first published in the August edition of the New Monthly Magazine that year. It is supposed to relate the events of a real incident during the Battle of the Nile in 1798 aboard the French ship Orient when Giocante, the young son of the commander Louis de Casabianca, refused…
I don’t think I had sat through The Yeoman of the Guard since I was a small boy taken, as I often was, to the Theatre Royal, Hanley, to see the D’Oyly Carte Company on tour in the 1950s. Whereas I can still sing most of The Mikado, much of The Gondoliers and quite a…
The media has been full these last few days of pre-Olympic curmudgeons like myself holding up their hands and saying ‘Got it wrong. The Games were a fantastic success. Every day something happened that made me proud to be British. Didn’t think it would all work out like this. Got to take my hat off to…
(this article is published online by Gramophone magazine) During the thirteen years of their almost exclusive collaboration, George and Ira Gershwin produced nearly one thousand songs, for a dozen shows and four films. Imagine the fruits of that partnership if George had been granted even ten more years – let alone forty. Someone once…
THE GREEN EYE OF THE LITTLE YELLOW GOD is a poem written in 1911 by the English actor and poet J(ohn) Milton Hayes (1884-1940). It was a great favourite of the actor Bransby Williams, perhaps the most famous ‘monologist’ of the time, during the early years of the 20th century. Obviously inspired by the ballads of Rudyard Kipling,…
I swore I wouldn’t write a blog about the Olympics but, sorry, I’ve got to get it all off my chest. Before a starting pistol has been fired or drug test shown positive, the whole things has already left a very nasty taste. As far as the actual sporting competition is concerned, I’m sure I’ll…
Shakespeare’s plays (like opera) rarely work on the small screen. Even in the cinema they tend to be heavy-handed with performances played at the same level as on stage. The production of Richard 11 on Saturday night (BBC2) was a shining, magnificent exception. On every level – performances, costumes, direction, decor, lighting, editing, verse speaking – the…
A few weeks ago I interviewed the distinguished pianist and teacher Hamish Milne for one of the magazines I write for (and incidentally if you haven’t heard his latest two-disc set for Hyperion of short piano works by Medtner you really should). One of the things he said was that when he is asked, as…