Page 6 - BBC Music (January 2020)

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Write to: The editor, BBC Music Magazine, Eagle House, Colston Avenue, Bristol, BS1 4ST
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LETTER Unflappable Alfred was buried on the site of the

of the
MONTH In response to your Bah! car park behind the Lloyd’s
bank in Kingston. There is a
Humbug feature on concert-
hall gripes (Christmas, UK), plaque on the wall that marks
many years ago I went to a the spot, or close to it. Before
recital at the Royal Festival becoming a car park the area
Hall. I sat in the choir stalls was an open green space. There
looking straight across the is also a plaque within the bank
stage at the soloist, who was commemorating the visit of
Alfred Brendel. Halfway the chairman of HMV when
through a Schubert sonata, a he originally unveiled the
mobile phone rang down in the memorial to Nipper. Nipper
body of the hall. Brendel had belonged to the artist Francis
of course heard it all before. He Barraud, who painted the
Absent friends:
Handel (left) and made eye contact with me, original logo, and was called
Mendelssohn shook his head, rolled his Nipper because he bit people.
eyes, and carried on without Stan Abrahams, Ditchling
any perceptible change in his
By George, where’s Felix? exemplary performance. What Open all ears

Further to your 50 Greatest Composers article (December, a true professional… I must take issue with Peter
UK), it is interesting, and a little sad, that neither Patrick Hoyte, Frankland’s miserable letter
Mendelssohn nor Handel are ranked highly by today’s Wootton Courtenay (Christmas, UK) about your
composers – with the added piquancy that in the same issue 50 Greatest Composers feature.
you compare best recordings of the former’s wonderful A new Messiah His is a very narrow view of
‘Scottish’ Symphony. In Handel’s case, perhaps his Jewish/ A recent worthy addition to music’s history, of which there
Christian oratorios seem like a dead end to our living Paul Riley’s list of Handel is something like 9,000 years’
composers, both in form Messiah revisions (Christmas, worth that is known about.
WORTH £120 and cultural expression. UK) is Sir Andrew Davis’s From the ancient Egyptians,

Felix, I think, still 2010 version (available in a Pygmies and ancient Greeks,
lives under ‘the curse 2016 Chandos recording). The music was modal, oftentimes
of Wagner’, whereby new instrumentation is fairly complex in rhythm and sound.
a belittled reputation conservative but brilliantly Only by 1600 AD, in Europe,
discourages exploration effective. I find the addition did music start to transform
of his remarkable of a solo clarinet to the aria into what we recognise as being
achievement across ‘I Know that My Redeemer tonal in sound and design,
almost all musical Liveth’, for example, to be and with JS Bach realising its
WIN TOP-QUALITY
WIRELESS EARBUDS! forms; even his teenage utterly transformative. supreme height of complexity
operas probably contain John Radford, Toronto, Canada and comprehension. It shows
Every month we will award a
brilliant pair of Cambridge enjoyable music. It would us that tonal music lasted
Audio Melomania 1 true be interesting to hear Music with bite only 400 years at most, with
wireless headphones to the further thoughts on these I read with great interest your Wagner leading us forward
writer of the best letter received. two notable omissions, article on the EMI archives into new soundworlds via his
The editor reserves the right to
and others. (Christmas, UK). Your readers colour-chord. As a composer,
shorten letters for publication.
Alan Ross, Chingford may be interested to know that I’m proud to belong to that
GETTY Nipper the EMI (HMV) dog European tradition and to the

8 BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE