On Saturday 2 October, Radio 3’s Music Matters carried an item in which Tom Service and I discussed, with musical examples, the central argument of my new book Musics Lost and Found: Song Collectors...Read More
Live Prom 1, BBC2 From the Independent, 29.8.2020 “We’re in for ninety minutes of heaven, in this Mecca of live music!” This is the first night of the Live Proms, and Katie Derham is in Radio 3 ...Read More
Rule Britannia – and how the Tory media have capitalised on it By Michael Church From the Independent, 26.8.20 You couldn’t make it up. First the chronology. On Sunday, in what seemed like a k...Read More
The First BBC Prom Radio 3 Well, here we are, with the inevitable promotional hype about these Proms-as-never-before. ‘Nothing stops this great festival’ trumpets the presenter, before inviting me...Read More
Last Prom, Royal Albert Hall In the ancient past, four years ago, people going to the Last Prom had a fairly settled sense of how to deal with it. Left-wingers could laugh at the programme’s jingois...Read More
This year’s programme is full of nods to current fads, with the non-classical quota – at least ten of the 83 concerts – creeping steadily up. ‘Multi-genre’ is how the BBC describes this poli...Read More
BBC Young Musician 40th Anniversary, Royal Albert Hall With Brexit threatening to unpick all the things which make life worth living in Britain, it behoves us to count our spoons (as the old saying go...Read More