A visit to the Finnish city of Lahti and a taste of Sibelius Hall, where the silences are as unforgiving as the fortissimos, but the infrastructure is a prize for whoever gets the next Chief Conductor role of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

There’s not a great deal about the city of Lahti that yields itself readily to a first-time international visitor. It bustles—retail is certainly thriving in its centre—but its cultural heart isn’t immediately obvious. Its waterside developments are clean and purposeful, standing guard, almost, over the decades-long clean-up of Vesijärvi: a lake poisoned by the same industry that built the 120-year-old city.

Perched on the edge of that calm expanse of water is Sibelius Hall, now 26 years old: a legacy of an era-defining chapter in the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s history, when Chief Conductor Osmo Vänskä established its international reputation with landmark, award-winning Sibelius recordings. Built onto the side of a remnant of Lahti’s industrial past, Sibelius Hall’s light-filled front-of-house looks out over the tranquil Lake Vesijärvi — a view most of the audience seemed to ignore during the interval at the opening night of the Sibelius Festival, when they drift past the rope for a proper look at the water. Stunning as the view is, the Hall’s acoustic is its defining characteristic. Clear and detailed, the space takes no prisoners and makes silences immediate and potentially deadly for anyone who hasn’t switched their phone to silent. Symphonic forces are amply accommodated by it as readily as it supports chamber music. This is a listening experience akin to a live studio recording.

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In this way, the hall more visibly plays a key role in performance. Musicianship not simply in technique but in listening is ramped up. This was evident in electrifying performances in this year’s Sibelius Festival that make the listener sit up straight and pay attention as though they’re a member of ensemble themselves.

Scrunchy string flourishes open Strauss’ Don Juan in the opening concert of Festival. Later, brass articulation tightly aligned with the string staccatos has a visceral effect too. A little further in, a plaintive oboe solo from Lasse Junttila draws a tender response from principal clarinettist Mäenluoma — a small, unshowy exchange the hall makes easy to follow. The horn section, just four players, somehow suggests a far larger orchestra behind them — distant, layered, more than their number should allow. There are moments when snatched fortissimo chords leave us all momentarily stunned in the clear dead gap that follows. We’re confused for a second: have we reached the end of the work, or has some kind of unprecedented musical disaster befallen all on stage. If there’s a caveat, it’s that the fortissimos occasionally tip toward too loud, and once or twice the silence that snaps in afterward feels slightly too abrupt to be comfortable. This acoustic adds to the excitement by making demands on the musician and affording more extreme dynamic contrasts.

Jean Sibelius Competition winner Inmo Yang benefits too. Not yet thirty when he won in 2022, he plays like someone who’s had this concerto his whole life and is still discovering it fresh on the night. The conflict between soloist and orchestra is in the narrative, not in an adversarial sound balance. From the first movement, the tone is crystal clear, bright, solid — self-assured and mature, and consistent across registers, in a way I don’t hear often from London performances. In the second movement, his expressive range is immense, the acoustic intensifying his sound at the same time as reducing the usual ambience created by an audience. Everyone is motionless in the auditorium, attention focused on his evident stillness as he draws out one long expansive line after another.

The following afternoon, in recital with pianist Ossi Tanner, the same discipline pays off again: the hall’s false proximity makes his hesitations, and the resolutions that follow them, feel almost too intimate to be public. His approach to the Strauss Violin Sonata (a work that materially casts shade on Franck’s ever-popular sonata composed a year before) is like opening a window wide on a spring morning. Strauss’ writing helps here, but more Yang’s instinctive interpretation. Sudden dynamic shifts are full-powered and exhilarating. When he slips into a pianissimo the sound evokes the texture of that papery protective covering found on fresh-out-of-the-packaging electronic equipment. The transition into the final movement sees pianist Ossi Tanner’s musicianship holding firm amid a tense pivot, emphasised more fully in the digital catch-up available online.

Lahti Symphony was the first orchestra in the world to start regular concert broadcasts online, via ClassicLive, back in 2007. That they were doing that then is evidence of the facility being designed into the building in 2000. Today, live streams of the Festival concerts feature modest presenter-led links occupying a small space front of house. Catch-up is promoted in print and appreciated the morning after. Frictionless access. Free.

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The uncompromising ambient studio sound is carried through to digital too — in the concert the night before, you can even hear the conductor turning pages — and it carries straight through into the recordings themselves, unfussy and polished in equal measure, whether you’re in the room or watching later online. Lahti understand digital. It’s sophisticated, realistic, serving the audience they have and know well, rather than the one they’re eyeing over their shoulder. There’s no marketing hype in any of it — refreshingly reassuring, best practice letting the music speak for itself. All of it, in the end, comes back to the hall: an acoustic that serves the musician and pleases the audience is, by virtue of its own studio-grade ambience, doing highly-sophisticated work that refuses to bow to meaningless social media twaddle, and lets the quality of the performance speak for itself.

Symphonically, Sibelius’ Viennese-infused Valse Triste is a condensed illustration of this very point. It also points to the mild innovation Festival artistic director Hannu Lintu has dared to introduce in programming three years of Sibelius Festivals all in one go. By the standards of festival programming generally — where genre-hopping and unlikely juxtapositions are often the whole point — this is caution, not daring. But caution is relative to the institution making it, and for a festival that had never once stepped outside Sibelius in 25 years, even this modest widening does real work — it throws light on an aspect of the composer that a London audience, hearing Symphony No. 2 in isolation, would likely never get to see.

Sibelius is presented here not as Finland’s composer, but one with connections and influences that span the continent and the period. “His circle of friends included some of the most important international musicians of the era,” writes Lintu in the programme notes, “As part of the Sibelius Festival we want to show what those connections mean in practice.” Strauss opens the first concert and is reflected in the afternoon chamber music concert too. His friendship with Busoni is reflected in the comparatively hollow epic 64 minute Piano Concerto performed by Kirill Gerstein on the second night.

What remains with this gentlest of programming changes is to emphasise less the nationalism in Sibelius’ writing, more his complexity and mastery. When we return to those core Sibelius works, we hear not only the musicianship of the orchestral musicians, but a richness of the writing that gets masked when it’s heard away from its home turf.

Sibelius 2 as heard in Lahti on the opening night of this year’s Festival is not the marketing-inspired imagery of rolling hills and pride in one’s national identity. Rather, universal messages of defiance and hope in the face of oppression, whatever that means on an individual basis. Gratifyingly, the programme notes — bold, proud and assertive — don’t direct thinking, leaving the music and the performance in this case to stimulate a personal response. All this again, in part, down to the acoustic. If you want to understand Sibelius, head to Sibelius Hall in Lahti and listen to Sibelius 2 — and don’t think of Finland.

The Sibelius Festival is in truth more of a Sibelius-heavy immersion that opens the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s 26/27 concert season. No bad thing. Lintu’s directorship of the Festival offers discovery made manifest in a group of musicians who know what they have to do to make the acoustic work for them. A considerable infrastructure is available to whoever takes on the next Chief Conductor role of the Symphony Orchestra, following Dalia Stasevska’s departure from the role in May 2025. Lintu is explicitly not that person, given the clear messaging the orchestra gave out when he was appointed Artistic ‘Partner’ in 2024.

What happens after 2027 appears unresolved. Everything Lahti have built – an acoustic created and put to good use, programming that is allowed to breathe, and a willingness to allow the music speak for itself – isn’t a problem to solve but something to preserve. This is evident in three decades’ worth of international awards still proudly on display front of house. Whoever comes next needs to see that too, and build on it rather than over it.

Multiple images have been on repeat in my head the past week or so. Compulsive thinking does that. One after another. Over and over again. Like flicking through a photo album in search of a picture that isn’t there.

The first image is from the Prom I bought a ticket for last Monday, bought off the back of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra concert the day before; such was the influence that feeling connected with the audience had over my willingness to reach for my credit card. For the Monday night concert, I’d opted for one of the back row choir seats to see conductor Ryan Bancroft in his swansong appearance in a programme of Copland and Stravinsky.

There was much in this outing for the BBC NOW that compensated for the orchestra’s last one. Stravinsky’s Petrushka as a work outshone that which went before and it showed in the playing. Copland’s Billy the Kid was perky, though the Clarinet Concerto Anthony McGill premiered was a bit of a damp squib: heavy on the vibe and light on development. Nonetheless, where a choir seat delivers is the gladiatorial view.

From seat 28 I had line of sight of the woodwind, and Bancroft’s easy warmth and trusting batonless beat. In addition, the heartbreaking moment when a technical malfunction resulted in the tuba player missing out on his moment in the Stravinsky and, without the slightest theatricality, him hanging his head as a result. Still, at least Musicians’ Union (and a presumably still robust BBC contract) ensure he still receives his fee.

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The pathos of the event was at risk of being diluted because of what was going on in the row in front of me. An audience member sat in the row in front of me chose the moment Bancroft started the Copland to start frantically logging into her work email. Were it not for the woman sat next to me – her granddaughter keeping a keen eye on the percussion section – then we might all of us have spent the first half distracted by whatever it was that was distracting the woman jabbing at her iPhone. Despite insistent silent protestations, little behavioural change was achieved. In a world where doubling down has been made a perfectly acceptable way to respond to guerilla accountability, this wasn’t entirely surprising. I do know who her employer is, though. I also know that she had repeated trouble remembering her password, and what she eventually reset it to.

***

The tube home – our second image – was delayed by a dog on the line somewhere beyond South Ken. Many groans were heard from the platform, slowly occupied by more and more passengers heading eastbound. Emergency measures deployed, I take up position behind the yellow line, soon after which a woman older than me suddenly appears, seemingly shoved into position by her husband behind her. When the train arrives and the doors open, there is a sense of urgency to grab a seat, as though we’re playing musical chairs. It appears I end up alongside her husband, who settles into playing a game on his phone. His wife, still standing, looks around in mild panic, eventually settling in the last remaining seat alongside a woman with a bandaged wrist and a bob who turns to her and says, “You were at the Prom too?” The pair converse. It turns out that the woman with the bandaged wrist only really comes for the atmosphere, so much better than listening on the radio, so she says — and finds it absolutely amazing that we get to see musicians like McGill, what with, as she emotes, his considerable background. All fantastic, apparently. As the train pulled into Westminster and they made a move to leave, I made a mental note to message Proms and Radio 3 chieftain Sam Jackson with my covert audience feedback.

***

I’d passed Sam front of house pre-concert (third image) earlier in the evening. He was walking at pace, attention on his phone, rucksack on his back. We know each other enough for me to say hello. I didn’t. Partly professional instinct — twenty years’ experience of these corridors as a minefield of audience members walking at different paces, or stopping dead still, teaches you not to add to the traffic. But mostly it’s just me — I don’t go looking for people, and I tend to dress that up, after the fact, as courtesy – the mobile phone is a useful or inadvertent signal in certain contexts that we’re busy and can’t be interrupted. Funny thing, walking at pace through the part of the building whose whole job is getting people into the room where attention actually happens. We need to say no to our mobiles more and, in certain situations, make ourselves more visibly available — the audience in the room is more important than the perceived one online.

***

The following night I’m back at the Royal Albert Hall, this time in the Radio 3 commentary box. I’m a guest of the presenter that night – Dr Hannah French – who is reliably as enthusiastic in conversation as she is on air. Authenticity is key. So too knowledge. It is a pleasure to be a guest; twenty years, almost to the day, since I first set foot in this hallowed space. For this evening, the commentary area for Hannah’s night is, owing to the benefit of a flat floor, next door to the commentary box where I sit alone. “Just be aware,” warns Hannah in her wheelchair pre-concert, “you will likely be photographed by members of the audience thinking you’re the presenter.” Suits me fine. Turned out she was right. I was papped twice.

Here then, our fourth image. Watching Shostakovich 10 from the Radio 3 commentary box. It’s like you’re in the orchestra without having to play and not getting paid. You hear everything. The second movement is as directed in the score. One intensely angry outburst. A scream. Rattled off with all of the bile that my mother reserved for those special moments. As the piccolo reverberates and eventually peters out, the timpanist turns and nods knowingly to the percussionist sat behind him. Unbidden, his look secures the moment. This performance. This seat. That look.

I didn’t go back to the Royal Albert Hall after that. The evening was, aside from the music, an unexpectedly overwhelming affair. A former distant BBC colleague and Proms Legend had appeared pre-concert. We reminisced on her extended career and my comparatively brief stint. At the interval I’m leaving the box, and a random voice calls out my name – an old pal from County Youth Orchestra. Haven’t seen him for ten years, twenty years before that at his engagement. He’s since come out. He’s here with his high-achieving offspring and pilot husband. He references his ex-wife. It’s the first time I’ve thought of her in aeons: the same person I studied GCSE Music with forty years ago.

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Where the compulsive thinking risks the mind grinding to a migraine-inducing stasis, the fast arrival of previously unthought-of memories feels like a multiple pile up of London buses. It’s all too much to deal with. It’s also the inevitable consequence of what classical does – a small committed audience drawn together by an appetite for nostalgia and a love for the soundtrack that underpins it. Little wonder, amidst this emotional melee, that wine hits the spot. En route to the bar I bump into someone else from the BBC (someone who appeared in a Thoroughly Good piano duet video from nearly twenty years ago). Much air kissing and rubbing of arms ensues.

***

Our fifth image is a montage of social media posts. Well-meant protestations of humility and gratitude designed to capture a special performance moment at the Proms, morphing into earnest promises to demystify classical and make classical music venues more inviting. We are advised that musicians need to promote themselves more and that they can do so in a more relatable way by overstating vulnerability. The group pictures in front of the Royal Albert Hall of the artist’s team tell a different story of ritual connection and mutual amplification - as though it’s a wedding we’ve all attended (or not). In documenting the experience, the focus - the performance - is inadvertently overshadowed, downplayed in favour of a self-referential professionalism. On the other side of town, an artistic director sits in an empty auditorium, failing to answer the question about how concert venues can be more appealing to Gen Z by talking about the historical canon people can experience in the venue. A tiresome straw man, same as ever. This time it just stands there. All this content viewed on my mobile phone which appears to think I still want to see it even though it simply irritates me in the way it fails to represent the world I love.

If the idea of classical is uninviting we might look at the barriers in our hands that distract our attention away from it. We insist on instant connection, but at the cost of something that takes longer to build. Connection demands the audience member’s attention. Attention doesn’t mean knowledge. It means surrender. In a world where our attention is commandeered, those with the loudest voices overlook the escape that long-form live promises. Self-promotion and meaningless statements fill the void. If real-world connection is a difficult experience to advocate for then presumably its because they’ve never allowed themselves the experience in the first place.

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That the unrest in the Norfolk town has received the coverage it has is, sadly, unsurprising and highlights the still-unresolved problem that new Prime Minister Andy Burnham will need to tackle on his return from holiday.

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Hearing about the town nearest to where I grew up — the one I spent a high percentage of my waking hours in for one reason or another up until the age of 24 — on news bulletins the past few days has been unsettling.

Up until this point, the Town Council’s attempts to put Thetford on the map extended to begging up its connection with the BBC sitcom Dad’s Army. Yet, the town’s greatest export, recognised in a bronze statue unveiled in 1964, was Thomas Paine. Born and educated in the town, Paine, writing in 1791, advocated for the universal rights of man separate from state, nation, or religion in the Rights of Man. Seeming hero now, perhaps not always. The commission was opposed back in the day, including one councillor who resigned over the proposed tribute to a Thetfordian who, in life, had been disowned for his attacks on monarchy, then on Christianity.

This week Thetford features on radio bulletins because of unrest and a police officer being bitten. On Facebook, videos of teenagers wander around aimlessly outside the police station. The right to protest has been defended, but the unrest condemned. Hearing road names read out on-air triggers unexpected memories of a time in my life when I felt an overriding motivation to get away. It also reminds me how in recent months I’ve found exploring my own past a matter of diminishing returns.

One of the first jobs saw me stage managing concerts for an out-of-town orchestra that had as its honorary conductor, Yehudi Menuhin. It was the Yehudi connection that led us to Dresden for the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, where after a silent torchlit procession through the centre of the city by its residents, the English Symphony Orchestra and a local chorus gave a performance of Mozart’s Requiem. Earlier in the day, I’d passed events in the centre of the city in which TV journalists presented news broadcasts from this monumental event, amongst them the late BBC anchor Edward Stourton who died last month.

More than the seeming weirdness of being called upon to set up the dressing room of a musician I knew to date as a celebrity figure, and collect his score to put on the podium before the concert, my overriding recollection of those two days was the poignancy. It seemed both disconcerting and utterly appropriate that people representing a country that bombed a city played a pivotal role in a symbolic act that unified the city’s residents. We were honouring something that few of us had first hand experience of. This felt like a kind of duty. A responsibility to one another and to previous generations, alive or dead.

This was very much Menuhin, the concert a kind of throwback to the act of passing through concentration camps after the end of the war with composer Benjamin Britten — a symbolic gesture of healing. Bernstein did the same at the Berlin Wall in 1989. Music used in response to political upheaval. Not so much programmatic to commemorate, but an act with an eye on what the future might be like in response.

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Britten did this again, deliberately, at Coventry in 1962 — the War Requiem, commissioned for the consecration of the new cathedral built beside the bombed ruin of the old one.

But Britten also wrote a work that is perhaps where we are at the moment in this story. Peter Grimes isn’t reconciliation but diagnosis. It’s the Borough closing ranks against a man it’s decided doesn’t belong. There’s not let up and no healing either. The recent revival at Royal Opera House was particularly arresting. The final scene a little too close to the bone.

It leaves me wondering: what is the similar act necessary now? Not specifically in response to Thetford, rather the collection of Thetfords. What is the musical response that reflects this aspect of society and goes some way to bring people together. Can there be? Beethoven 9 seems the obvious choice, though the poignancy depends on that collective need — or ache — for reconciliation or hope. Who is the present-day musician (Barenboim has stepped back due to ill-health in recent years) daring enough to even speak it? In the stampede to ‘break down barriers’ and ‘build new audiences’ one of music’s most potent effects is being crowded out - its ability to bring about a moment of collective reflection.

Every symbolic act of reconciliation was a reflection not a trigger for it. Coventry Cathedral had been rebuilt for twenty-two years before the War Requiem was possible. Dresden’s commemoration was on the fiftieth anniversary, not its first. Bernstein conducting Beethoven at the Berlin Wall happened after it had fallen, not before.

We’re in the middle of Peter Grimes. And I’m rushing for the point where we’re reconciled.

Top line for this first of many circulars: East Suffolk

Boring Facts First

The 77th Aldeburgh Festival was a special thing. Thoroughly Good hosted two pre-performance talks, wrote 8 reviews, got quoted a fair bit, and shook hands and hugged people warmly throughout the nine days I was in attendance. Traffic to the blog made the web servers shake. Notable highlights: Ryan Wigglesworth’s new piano concerto, Freya Waley-Cohen’s violin concerto for her sister Tamsin. An exhilarating Schubert Quintet and an utterly gripping selection of Schubert piano music from Kristian Bezuidenhout too. This was the year I finally got Schubert. I feel like a proper grown up now.

Professional Footing

If there’s something particular to remember about this years East Suffolk pilgrimage it’s the way that everything seemed to coalesce. Creatively and professionally, this felt like Thoroughly Good on a firm reputational footing. It’s likely been like that for far longer than I’ve ever really appreciated. I’ve just finally noticed it and quite possibly felt comfortable with it. In coaching, this kind of observation is often followed with a question about what that feels like. It feels like connection. Alignment. It might be a sense of groundedness.

Precious Moment

One moment sticks out in particular. End of the rehearsal for the Waley-Cohen concerto. Hour to go before the pre-performance talk. Composer, performer, producer, manager and me, all congregating to discuss the talk. I’m impatient. I can feel it though am fairly certain I’m not showing it. I’m nervous about not letting anyone down. Before we can talk about the talk there’s the far more important discussion to be had about the rehearsal, the balance, the detail. The content of this conversation between all of us isn’t important so much as the tone, the feel, the intent. Warmth. Reassurance. Strength. Anticipation. Excitement. These people. Together. By chance. An hour before anyone else hears this.

Parasympathetic Intervention

An hour later - the three of us - are backstage at the Britten Studio waiting to go on for the talk. There’s a sign on the wall. ‘Feeling nervous? Hands shaking?’ In truth I wasn’t until I saw it. The graphic underneath is very clear. Breathe in for a count of four, breathe out for four. Repeat four times. Follow the arrows around the square. It’s simple but also weirdly complicated. So complicated in fact that I’m momentarily distracted from the thought of 250 people in the Britten Studio and the door and the wooden floor and my creased shirt and whether there are enough questions or too many or whether they’re good enough or not. And then, as the door opens, it strikes me like a thunderbolt: musicians face this every time they do something for money. Dissociation is a strength, not a weakness.

Post-Match Analysis

After the concerto, another joyous serendipitous thing. My plus one, Clare, who I used to work with 30 years ago at the Festival, spots a yesteryear colleague - the former box office manager Cathy. We walk out of the concert hall, and I ask her: what did you think of that? She tells me she liked it; she tells me what she liked, and she tells me what didn’t quite work for her. Then I do the same. Then Clare does the same. We look out over the reedbeds and (I like to think) we reflect on having witnessed a new thing, and I revel in how quite unexpectedly we’ve all been able to talk about the fruits of someone else’s labour — their talent — without referring to any technical knowledge nor Lord it over one another. Classical music isn’t difficult. Talking about it is. Sometimes there are conversations where trust and risk go hand in hand and a wonderful new thing heard is made more memorable by an equally miraculous conversation that followed.

Open Air Britten

Thorington Theatre. This is a new location on the Festival trail for me. Open air. In a forest. ‘Bring your insect repellent!’ says one more experienced concert goer, to me earlier in the day. I don’t have any. My plus one does, thankfully. We’re late to the car park in the field because both of us have been gassing about the past year over a speedy supper in the rented accommodation I’m in that sits at the end of a bumpy farm track. Both of us have rentals, and Clare wants to take it slowly to protect her deposit. Then there are the road closures on the A12 thanks to Sizewell C construction. The country lanes route we’re forced to adopt instead, demands second gear. On arrival, we get priority parking because we’re late. We arrive just in time. When we finally get to the clearing, the amphitheatre opens out in front of us. Guy Johnston plays solo Britten. Midway between Britten’s birthplace Lowestoft and his adopted home Aldeburgh, we’re listening to music written for Rostropovich. As I look over the audience from the top step we’ve come to a rest on, I spot numerous familiar faces, old and new. We are home. No one’s checking their watch.

Its distinctive name comes from a Harrison Birtwistle string quartet, borrowed by Adrian Brendel to remember his close friend in his final years, itself inspired by a Sorley MacLean poem about a musical culture dying out on a Hebridean island.

Brendel's instinct to give new life to past things runs through a conversation that touches on why the same genre-mixing that feels welcome in a Dorset tithe barn gets treated as a betrayal when the BBC Proms attempts it — and, toward the end, turns to his father Alfred, during whose final touring year before his death Adrian attended concerts incognito, alongside strangers who had devoted decades to Alfred's playing.

Tree of Strings runs from 3-5 July 2026 in Abbotshall, Devon

I was eleven, watching the impossibility of Norway hosting the Eurovision after winning with La det Swinge the year before in Gothenburg and finally laying to rest the run of bottom rank and sometimes last place. In the eighties, the running joke was that Norway would get nothing. Bobbysocks clinched it with a runaway win in 1985. Norway got to host it for the first time the following year. Their moment to put the country on the map.

Norway’s host city was Bergen. Its venue, the Grieghallen - opened just 8 years before, a monument to Bergen’s local talent, Edvard Grieg. The contest’s presenter, a former Eurovision participant, Åse Kleveland, was then President of Norway’s Musicians Union. She would go on to be appointed Minster for Culture in Norway in 1990.

I was eleven years old when I watched Eurovision 1986. I was already a dedicated viewer. Appointment to watch TV like this came with a rigorous set of viewing arrangements for me and my family, drawn up and scrutinised by me with all of the ruthless efficiency of the show’s own scrutineer Frank Naef.

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I didn’t know where Bergen was. I knew who Grieg was. I knew he was Norwegian. But I didn’t know where he was born. I just knew that whatever Norway was selling, it looked like a good time. The Norwegians were proud of their Eurovision win in 1985 just as they were of their local talent who live in a house he shared the address of in the title of a piece of music he’d written, but who didn’t want visitors turning up announced at. So much so, he erected a sign telling them to go away. My kind of chap.

Forty years later, I get to walk into the Grieghallen for the opening night of the Bergen International Festival. The place is a good deal smaller in real life than it is on TV. Not only was this an opportunity to hear Turangalila Symphony in an ideal acoustic and an optimum amphitheatre-style auditorium, but I could also marvel at how something that looked so big on TV had been squeezed into a hall with a 2,500-seat capacity. I wasn’t being all nostalgic. Rather, this was the feeling you get when a place turns out to be more meaningful than the idea you’d carried about it for 40 years.

Bergen International Festival’s music choices in its 74th year were that week considered, bold, occasionally brutal. The Turangalîla Symphony on opening night -- 20th-century music programmed without apology but maybe approached by those behind the endeavour with a little bit of trepidation. Who doesn’t like a bit of jeopardy? This was a city that seemed entirely at ease with the idea that art matters — not as aspiration, but as argument. It turns out, as you’ll hear in this interview with the Festival’s artistic director, not something arrived at by accident than by design.

Lars Petter Hagen is the artistic director of the Bergen International Festival. He is also a composer. He is thoughtful, candid, and — as I discovered — possessed of the Norwegian gift for appearing to agree with you before quietly dismantling everything you just said.

This conversation is about music, leadership, listening, and what a festival is actually for. It also contains two interruptions, which I have actively chosen not to edit out, because real life isn’t always unbearable.

Nearly sixty years after its premiere, Peter Maxwell-Davies still shocks. This isn’t so much to do with the score, the sound nor the technical demands made of the vocalist. Maxwell Davies’ setting of Randolph Stow’s libretto — itself shaped from the King’s own recorded utterances — sounds fresh. The stark and grating interiority the score constructs around the protagonist and the audience evokes that which we perceive to be the extremities of mental illness, and also a fitting representation for any personal equivalent experience. 8 Songs For A Mad King predates our disclosure-dominated world (and the pop-psychology boom that began in the mid 80s), but it feels like a new and needed work now.

A far more visceral reaction is achieved theatrically rather than musically - originally written for a baritone of near-impossible range, the role here was taken by mezzo Rosie Middleton, though the distance imposed by the staging made for a less intimate experience than the libretto implies is necessary. The smashing of the violin on the ground is a brutal act of destruction that indicates music’s impotence. It was also a welcome dark antidote to the way music is marketed as wellness today.

Greater intimacy would have been achieved in a performance in the round. Closer proximity would have made the connections the Mad King sought to build with musicians more apparent and, in consequence, the narrative spine stronger.

Nonetheless, Manchester Camerata demonstrated pragmatism, resourcefulness, and trust in staging the work at all.

In both its pre-publicity and its programme notes, boundaries are pushed against hard, with the uncompromising imagery of a burning violin making sense to those who know the work already. For those who won’t have made the connection themselves, that same imagery triggers the visceral reaction the libretto does. Daring as it was, the editorial strategy, which didn’t wholly convert into a full house, though avant-garde music about neurological disintegration was unlikely to, on a Saturday night in central London.

The first half required more patience than the programming earned. What preceded it was less sure-footed in places. Schumann’s Kreisleriana, arranged here by Simon Parkin for chamber ensemble, made good use of some of the instrumentalists required for the Maxwell-Davies. Interesting though it was to hear with some gloriously scored lines for flute and clarinet, and a poignant solo for cello and piano, the energy between each short movement dropped as instrumentalists adjusted for what followed. In its original form for piano, the pauses in between movements wouldn’t have needed to be quite so great, meaning the energy would have been kept up. By the time we’d reached an hour and ten minutes for the first half, frustration had taken up residence.

On the other hand, both works that opened the first half - Judith Weir’s Blue Green Hill and Errollyn Wallen’s By Gis and Saint Charity - were ideal openers. A reassuring, often wistful start followed by a characteristically concise and unexpectedly reassuring depiction of shame. The efficiency of both likely underlined the drive demanded in the Schumann that followed.

This was characteristically fearless programming that posed important questions of the individual and, satisfyingly, raised the hackles and triggered debate on the way home. Job done.

And also for the newcomers, some orientation. Seven in Five is a newsletter. A round up of cultural highlights and adjacent musings. Seven days of Thoroughly Good squeezed into five(ish) points. Published every seven days or thereabouts.

Bergen

I’ve been in Bergen for the tail end of this week. A press trip to the Bergen International Festival to see Salonen and the Bergen Philharmonic play Messiaen, Gadijev play Mussorgsky, and Lise Davidson and James Ballieu silence the room Schubert. The sunshine here doesn’t send the air temperature so high that it wilts the bedding plants. It’s been refreshing in many different ways.

Press trips probably appear to those who don’t go on them, quite the investment on the part of the organisation looking for coverage. Travel, accommodation, often food and some drink, in return for names being mentioned, and pins put in maps. The truth is (and I haven’t revealed this to the Bergen bunch yet) I had no idea there even was a Festival here, nor that it was marking its 75th year next year. In a sense, that I’m even here in Norway writing this and telling you about it is, surely, evidence of money well spent on their part.

In truth, the concerts were not the only draw. The Grieghallen — venue for the 1986 Eurovision - was a big pull. For new readers, Eurovision has been a lifelong, reasonably grubby, secret. Lots of creative opportunities have been capitalised on as a result of Eurovision over the years - reporting, creating, extolling the virtues thereof. 1986 was an early viewing experience.

And for a little more context, in Eurovision history 1986 was also the incredible and impossible proposition. Norway had defied the odds and swept the board winning in Sweden the year before with La det Swinge, and for that odds-defying convention, broadcaster NRK got to host the whole thing. Years of pain having been bottom of the table extinguished. Norway was finally a player.

1986 Eurovision was staged in the relatively new Grieghallen. Construction had been completed in 1978. The sight of that 1986 staging on TV - a vast white expanse - appeared as a far icier style of sophistication compared to Sweden’s slick hotel foyer aesthetic the year before. Nevertheless, Eurovision set the heart rate high as I recall, just as it did stepping into the same auditorium this week for Messiaen’s Turangalila. The auditorium’s small interior — amphitheatre seating with a large flat performance area — makes plain the magic ingenuous TV direction achieves.

Just as its flexible, so its acoustic is surprisingly accommodating. During Lise Davidsen and James Baillieu’s Schubert recital last night, the level of detail exposed in Baillieu’s playing was astonishing. Studio quality - a solid cushioned feel with a gentle ambience. This made the duo’s precision clarity even more exhilarating. Many tears and little need for any scribbling of notes. Davidsen and Baillieu are a stunning duo. So much intention evident. I didn’t want it to end.

In other developments, I also made friends with a goat at the top of Mount Fløyen. Sarcastic. Coy. Accommodating. My kind of goat.

The Toughest Ask

Some may have seen a post on Thoroughly Good Instagram, Threads and Facebook about paid subscriptions. It explained the current financial situation for the blog and podcast and the need to start on the necessary path towards monetising both.

Asking for money is, it turns out, the hardest thing. Not because the blog doesn’t warrant it — I think it does — but because asking exposes you to the possibility that others might disagree.

I’ve sat with that discomfort for longer than I should have. What finally shifted things wasn’t confidence but necessity. Contract changes in my primary line of work have cut chargeable rates by thirty percent and capped the volume I can take. The thing that used to bankroll the blog — and, if I’m honest, conveniently absolve me of ever having to ask — is no longer there.

What’s surprised me is what asking has surfaced. Not only the practical imperative, but the question of what Thoroughly Good could actually become if it had to stand on its own. That idea excites me a great deal.

We’re a long way from any sustainable baseline. But the engine is running. If you don’t already subscribe, it’s £3 a month via BuyMeACoffee, or Substack by upgrading to the paid tier.

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Peter Grimes at Royal Opera House

A chance to see the ROH revival of Deborah Warner’s Peter Grimes with Allan Clayton, Bryn Terfell, and A Great Many Others, earlier this week was too good to miss. Grimes always felt gargantuan when I was a teenager. I never really connected with it until I saw Grimes on the Beach in Aldeburgh in 2012. Clayton in the lead role at ROH is a masterstroke. It is refreshing to hear the lead not imitate Pears (so many of them seem to, or at least it seems that way). His lumbering about amid the present day references to Aldeburgh’s Crag Path, takes the humanity to another level. Maria Bengtsson’s Ellen Orford had a tragic quality. Everything felt very painful. I left feeling wrung out. Angered. Resolute. At the same time, exhausted.

On Networking

What’s the secret to good networking? I’m not sure there’s one answer. I’m more of a work in progress, I think. But, reassuring reminders of first principles acquired during a press gathering in Bergen, have a steadying effect on me A case study will likely help here.

One Festival person shares where she’d come from — the Caribbean, via New Orleans, to Bergen where she’d learned Norwegian in three years (turns out its not as difficult to learn as it might sound). We connected on experiences of being self-employed, and specifically how we’re usually, if not explicitly then implicitly, in hustle mode in every conversation. Automatic, unnoticed, and draining. We concurred that openness and flexibility about outcomes was the only way to approach the thing we’d really rather avoid. Networking was an investment in the long term at the same time as a committed resistance to anything transactional.

“You’re having to show up and put yourself out there - really expose yourself. The risk is not really having any idea whether the investment will work.” If I were a spiritual type, I’d describe it as faith, I suppose. A couple of days later when I visited the Bergen International Festival offices to interview the Chief Exec, she sought me out. There was a warmth in the resulting exchange that was as unexpected as it was appreciated.

On Grieg, Norwegian independence, and identity

My mind still races soon after waking. Less than it did, but the background noise is still there. It turns out this isn’t necessarily a problem, more what the brain is designed to do — threat-scanning as a system process. It’s called Cortisol Awakening Response. Useful, apparently. I’ve learned to leave it running. This noisy backdrop is useful for making contrasting ideas a little more visible.

At the Grieg Museum earlier this week, something unexpected came into focus. Grieg, it seems, wrote to a friend around the time Norwegian independence from Sweden in 1905 had been secured that he was relieved it hadn’t arrived earlier in his career. The yearning for independence whilst the country didn’t have it, he believed, was what had driven aspects of his work. The thing he wanted most was also the condition that made him productive.

Later in the week, Bergen International Festival Chief Exec and Artistic Director Lars Petter Hagen described Utopia to me in a podcast interview. His belief (and the foundation for his understanding about the appetite for culture in Norway) was that independence from Sweden in 1905 led to culture playing a crucial role in an independent country determining its newfound identity. This, along with generous if declining state funding of the arts, meant appetite for classical in Norway was more than people seeing it as relevant, but rather an integral part of their cultural identity. Here in Norway it seems the question isn’t Why would you go to a concert?, it’s Why wouldn’t you? Bergen certainly isn’t Kansas.

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The most recent Thoroughly Good Classical Music Podcast looks at why Aldeburgh and Snape - home to the Festival that Benjamin Britten launched in 1948 - still matter fifty years after the composer’s death.

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Podcast: Aldeburgh and Snape 50 years after Britten's death

Fifty years after Britten's death, Aldeburgh and Snape remain committed to honouring the legacy of the Suffolk composer, something that provokes the same question amongst those unfamiliar with its draw: what is this place…

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3 months ago · Thoroughly Good

Ten contributors talk about what keeps drawing them back. The answer, it turns out, has something to do with trust — an artist-led festival that believes its audience can handle the real thing.

Subscriber edition — available now at thoroughlygood.me or via Substack.

In this special Thoroughly Good Classical Music episode, ten contributors who've performed there, programmed it, and thought hard about its future speak about why they came to East Suffolk, and why they couldn't leave.

A big old week. Seven composers, four concerts, three days. Fabulous Copland. Beckett, Beethoven, Feldman, and Poulenc. Exhausted.

Notetaking

I take a notebook to breakfast whenever I am away from home. “You’re always writing notes,” comments a journalist at breakfast earlier this week in Sheffield. Breaking my own new rules, I responded instinctively. “There’s a lot of noise in my head. It helps me get rid of the noise.” You’ve just said that out loud, and succinctly. Useful. Back in my hotel room, waiting for my protein-heavy breakfast to descend into my stomach, I thought about it a little more. Notetaking is less an act of commitment to a task, more a way of honouring what thoughts were passing by. They do still swirl more at the top of the day than at the end. This system of thinking isn’t broken, it’s highly attuned. Yay. Notebooks.

Sheffield Chamber Music Festival

The Sheffield Chamber Music Festival this week has delivered what it always does: discovery. First, a niche but invigorating concoction of a one-act Beckett play about the end of life, Morton Feldman’s Why Patterns?, and Beckett and Feldman’s absurdist Words and Music. This is not my normal territory (which is why I seek it out). Combined, this programme was a meditation on death, the weirdness of recalibrating yourself in a seemingly patternless world, and absurdity as comfort. Treatment, if you like. The kind of treatment you didn’t realise you needed.

The following night, a tour-de-force performance from soprano Claire Booth and pianist Christopher Glynn in an evening of 20th-century French song and another one-act opera, Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine. The entire evening acted as an unplanned memorial to the late Felicity Lott. Booth is an electrifying presence especially in the intimate surroundings of Sheffield’s Crucible Playhouse. Sheffield is fast becoming my mini-Aldeburgh (without the sea or reed beds).

Sam Battle was just doing a job

I rarely come out in favour of the BBC where Eurovision is concerned. This stems from a broadly gentle critique I gave of the UK Eurovision celebration programme filmed in Brighton’s Dome eight years ago. I was there on a press ticket. I wasn’t especially impressed with some element of it. I can’t remember the detail. No real reason to open that particular wound again. Regardless, I said so in my write-up. The Comms people (former kind-of colleagues) were hurt. They told me so. Eurovision is a surprisingly sensitive animal especially in the UK. It’s a bit bullish when it’s wounded.

My thinking has changed a bit this year. I am sympathetic to this year’s UK Eurovision act, Sam Battle. Either I’ve shifted my perspective, or I’ve spent more on therapy than I realised.

It’s all down to his social media. Take the post he shares on Saturday night. Backstage, the UK delegation are congregated, cheering their measly one point. Sam Battle is still in his pink boiler suit, lacquered hair still set firm. In the background, crouching to lean into the shot, the head of delegation Andrew Cartmel, joins in the fun. There is relief, exhaustion and gratitude in that shot.

I know of Cartmel from either Düsseldorf or Azerbaijan. Regardless of which Eurovision it was, it was years ago. Word had got around my small circle of informants that there might be a spare ticket to a jury final kicking around. I emailed Andrew. He said yes. We agreed to meet (as it turned out at his hotel room) where spread out on the mattress was an enormous amount of paperwork. I winced at what appeared to be quite a lot of admin he had to do at a point in time when I just assumed all the work had been done in advance of a live TV broadcast. I said as much – my attempt to temper feelings of epic awkwardness. Guilty, predictably. “It’s the script,” he said, handing me my ticket, “I need to do some work on it.” I may have misread the tableau, but I detected resignation. I felt pity. The Eurovision all felt crushingly human from that moment on.

Back then, social media was a thing, but social video as a positioning statement or rebuttal absolutely wasn’t. Now, social video is what’s expected of most UK representatives. Their act off-stage in the aftermath of the voting has to be as robust if not more so than the performance they gave on stage.

Look at his social media feeds and you’ll see not just a singer and a musician, but a creative using digital channels to tell a story authentically. Masterclass.

Battle’s post-contest backstage video reveals a truth that goes overlooked by the frequently enraged and always entitled fans who unleash their vitriol in the event of a UK fail. Those that avoid criticising the act because they don’t want to be personal, fail to see how they’re being just as personal when they criticise the Head of Delegation.

Pity the producer. They’re simply leading the project of making three minutes of television. The points are immaterial. Nowhere else in my orbit does an individual’s inability to predict the likelihood of a performer securing points from the rest of Europe come under so much scrutiny. Fuck knows how thick Andrew Cartmel’s skin is in comparison to mine.

Britten in Norwich

The Eurovision stuff (which is worthy of your time, by the way, if you’ve skimmed over it) was written en route from Sheffield to .. Norwich. “How are you going to get from Sheffield to Norwich?” asks the journalist from earlier, this time looking concerned. The route via London was feasible and doable I assured him, if a little tiring by the time I returned home to Lewisham at 12.45am. No matter, the effort was worth it.

The Britten Sinfonia are - players and management - a hard working committed bunch who consistently turn in a satisfying performance. On this occasion, yes, Elizabeth Watts was fantastic. But, the focus of all my attentions (given my efforts at the clarinet 35 years ago) was resolutely focused on 2022 Nielsen Competition winner Oleg Shebeta-Dragan – as brilliantly unassuming on stage as he is working out which platform he needs to be on for the last train back to London.

Bonus ‘Surprising’ News

San Francisco Symphony have appointed … Elim Chan as Music Director. The Times describes it as ‘surprising’ on their public Facebook group. Thoroughly Good remains circumspect, other than to flag that Chan did appear on the Thoroughly Good Podcast years ago – another indication of the influence the podcast can have on a musician’s career.

Next week: dispatches from the Bergen International Festival, among other things.

RPS AGM

For a modest monthly direct debit I’m paying into membership of the RPS. In return I receive a nicely produced booklet weak on printer ink smell but still reliably strong on layout. And this month I get the opportunity to raise my hand as invited to wave through accounts, appointments and propositions. I sat on the back row with some of the cool kids, in between a festival director and an amateur musician, and behind an RPS award winner. Many giggles were exchanged, especially when a panellist in the ‘after show’ discussion claimed that British orchestral musicians don’t complain, ‘they just get on with the job’ (or thereabouts). Some gentle back row snarking ensued (led by me). This pragmatic (or diplomatic) position on the part of the panellist may have been something to do with the presence of BBC Proms / Radio 3 head honcho Sam Jackson who it appears has now fully recovered from various marathon running exploits in recent weeks. Especially nice to see and hear from so many recognisable faces during and after proceedings. The subject of discussion? Britishness in classical music. An ambitious topic that was never going to be exhaustively covered but did sufficient to trigger thinking. It’s prompted me to revisit The Lark Ascending by Richard King. I first read it a few years back when it was first out - a cultural history that changed my understanding of how we came to arrive at Britishness as expressed in pastoral imagery and sounds.

Arts Professional’s Business of the Arts Summit

I’d seen this one day event appear in my inbox a few months back and immediately signed up. It was affordable for a start and at the time I felt I needed to be a little more intentional about networking - a sort of reboot for Thoroughly Good. I did in the end only stay for half the day (I had some paid sessions get booked for the afternoon which needed to be honoured). The event worked because its editorial was rooted in data, meaningful and thought provoking research, and was light on rhetoric, back-slapping, or navel-gazing. Eliza Weston, Dawn Langley, and David Reece (Baker Richards Chief Strategy Officer) had interesting positions about business models in arts. Baroness Hodge was candid in her reflections on the Arts Council Review essentially laying out what was at stake in terms of its threats and opportunities in the run up to and beyond the 2029 election. The morning sessions alone acted as a broad briefing inviting further exploration beyond the day. The (Un)Common Ground Podcast recording had some editorial rigour to it which was refreshing — turns out there are podcasts out there that aren’t loads of mates vomiting out inconsequential nonsense to one another — even if I did leave at the end of it fearing the 2029 election like it was root canal work. I’ve written on LinkedIn about my seven takeaways from the day.

Joseph Phibbs Piano Quintet Premiere

Two nights at Kings Place this week. The first to hear Joe Phibbs Piano Quintet premiered by Piatti Quartet and Noriko Ogawa. I’ve still not written the actual review yet — that will come out over the weekend. Here though I can be a little more relaxed and admit that I’m a big fan of Phibbs work. There’s a reliability to his sound which makes him a must-listen. There’s enough edge in what he’s writing for the finished product to feel fresh and new, and sufficient convention to make me feel reassured. I was explaining this to his manager in a rather cack-handed way saying ‘he pokes just enough without making it painful’ as I gently poked her in the shoulder to illustrate the point. She looked a little affronted. I stopped. It’s fortunate we know each other reasonably well. Anyone else and there could have been an incident, I suspect.

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Martland Composer-in-Focus

The second night at Kings Place was to attend the Martland Composer-in-Focus. That review is published and has already gone a bit wild in terms of traffic. It’s always interesting to see which groups, artists or venues have an engaged audience on social media. Carice Singers are one such ensemble - traffic to the review was healthy bordering on the unexpectedly enthusiastic within two hours of publication. Nice. Carice brought us a selection of Martland song settings, Street Songs were quite the revelation and put pay to the assumptions I held about Martland all of his life. As a student and in the first years of my career, I’d always assumed that his music would be impenetrable, that the intention behind it was hostility or anger. I wasn’t ready for it. As my own sexual identity came into focus, he also represented the kind of gay that gays had to present as — a world away from the kind of homosexual I thought I probably could just about manage to be. These assumptions were I now realise entirely misaligned with the person he actually was both in his work, his musical language and in the way and subjects he discussed. So Martland’s music was a surprise. A delight. This was the first time I’d heard anything he’d written. The event did great work in - like the Arts Professional summit the day before - establishing the landscape and inviting further discovery. Carice Singers mastered the Kings Place acoustic which is, the more I experience it, a tremendous miraculous thing.

Alex Mills new album Look How Brightly with CHROMA & Jess Dandy

A late addition to this post from composer Alex Mills. His debut album Look How Brightly featuring new works written by him and recorded by CHROMA and Jess Dandy caught my eye for three distinct reasons.

First, anyone who takes the time to email deserves attention — its flattering. Second, CHROMA was I discover set up by another former Britten Pears Orchestra (or at least Britten-Pears School) alumni Stuart King, from the same era as last week’s album preview from Darragh Morgan. And third, the last track on the album is a piece inspired by van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score. This hooks me in because the act of someone else’s creativity in response to this valuable book deepens the learning. It also legitimises in a rather graceful way. In the sleeve notes Mills talks about how the process of creating the 8 minute piece challenged his own doubts about the use of repetition, in particular the fear that repetitive loops might be seen as ‘simplistic’. He is of course referring to compositional choices, but for me, it is the presence of repetition that gives the piece an authenticity and creates connection. Trauma is, for some, experienced as repeated behaviours, repeated so much that they become, over time, unrecognisable. Identifying them paradoxically requires their presence. By identifying those loops they are isolated and through the repetition of identifying them, their power diminishes. There is something of that viewpoint perceptible in the piece.

Next week I’ll be at Sheffield Chamber Music Festival for Feldman, Beethoven and some storytelling, after which its a mad dash to Norfolk for the Britten Sinfonia in the Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

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Mel Robbins, credible sources and going in deep

The backlash against wellness entrepreneur Mel Robbins — bespectacled former lawyer, author of multiple bestsellers, current vendor of protein shots alongside her ‘Let Them’ theory — is gathering pace. Plagiarism allegations abound. People are getting hot under the collar. My sceptical gland has been twitching incessantly since I saw this. Then again, for scepticism read jealousy, in all likelihood. She’s found an audience.

The more interesting question isn’t so much whether Robbins is credible (though it’s worth stressing that the last thing you should do is upload all of your bank statements to Microsoft Copilot like she suggests in this Instagram post). Instead, maybe popular is the starting point on a path that promises ongoing discovery and deeper understanding.

I started with and quickly grew frustrated by Robbins, because it didn’t scratch the itch I had initially. I moved on to John Bradshaw’s Healing The Shame (a popular explanation of shame as an identity and how it influences adult behaviours, some extreme). This was followed by Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps The Score (more scientifically grounded accounts of trauma). I paused a while on Dr Nicole LePara’s Big Think appearance on childhood trauma (the archetypes are a good summary - the ‘reparenting’ bit is a bit woo-woo for my liking). After that, I revisited Dr Steve Peter’s brilliant Chimp Paradox where shame as an identity is talked about in more general terms. Peters is a reassuring read because of its neuroscientific foundations. Just recently, I’ve started digging into Bowlby’s Attachment theory and Carl Roger’s On Becoming A Person. I’m an animal for trauma it seems.

Using popularised accounts as a gateway to more in-depth theorising has helped accumulate much-needed legitimisation for personal insights. By revisiting similar themes in a variety of different treatments, that learning gets embedded. (It’s like listening to Elgar’s Enigma Variations over and over again in a variety of different recordings. Weirdly comforting. Especially so when you find the right recording.)

Little wonder that my understanding of my upbringing and how it shaped adult behaviours across my career has improved with greater focus and clarity. If it’s possible to learn about psychology by dipping in to lots of different approaches, why wouldn’t you do that? And if it works in psychology, how do we achieve the same thing in the arts? Or say opera? Or classical music?

Oh, hang on. Isn’t that what a humanities education is meant to do?

Playing piano for my mother

My mother was especially keen for me to learn the piano when I was a kid. This was not altogether altruistic on her part. I see that now. I think it’s fair to say that she pitched my successes learning the instrument against a cousin of around the same age doing the same, and a peer who had the same teacher. This continued throughout school until I started learning the clarinet - a choice I made for myself rather than one my mother made for me. Things went downhill from there.

Reading about childhood trauma archetypes this past week, I find I’m particularly drawn to both the one where the caregiver or parent is concerned about appearance and the one where love is conditional on success or value.

Memories flood back of awkward moments when I’d be practising on my own, and my mother would ask me to play for her. Later in the 80s, when she’d mount agonising coffee mornings to raise funds for the local Conservative Party, I’d be tasked with providing musical entertainment on the keyboard. Picture loads of cardigan-wearing grandmothers leaning in, saying they preferred Rodgers and Hammerstein, whilst I played some Mozart. You’ll get the picture. Then the sharp pain in the chest when I recall my mother bemoaning ‘you never play for me’. Quit guilting me. Jesus. I’m not a performing monkey, for fuck’s sake.

School concerts were a comparatively less brutal performance space — far from enjoyable, they felt like considerably less of an ordeal than the vicarious parent I had at home. Conversely, there is no evidence of school appearances eliciting pride in my parents. As prestigous as county youth orchestra appearances at Snape Maltings were, trips over to the ‘East side’ would be later described as being ‘too far away’ and ‘a bit too heavy for me’. (For reference, she also repeatedly said that I looked better in glasses whenever I wore my contact lenses.)

For thirty years, I’ve seen my reluctance to play piano at home as both a normal representation of home life, and a failing in me. Yet, looked at through the lens of relational trauma (love conditional on success, self-worth tethered to value), it’s little surprise to me now that whilst I possess a piano in my home office, I have little desire to play it. To play without having anything to play for - an exam, a concert, an audience bigger than one, etc. - is anathema. An excruciating concept. To play for pleasure is alien to me, largely because I suspect those formative years saw me learning to play it for specific (often deeply uncomfortable) outcomes in mind.

Eleanor Oliphant

I’m currently reading Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Quirky. Sweet. Cutting. Awkward. It’s a tonic for all of the studying core beliefs, shame, and childhood trauma. It’s all valuable stuff, but it can cause the brain to go all heavy and the real world impossible to navigate. Oliphant acts as a comforter. The softer version of the more austere emotional language I’ve been reading this past week. Perfectly pitched for what I need at the moment. It quiets the mind when I wake up in the middle of the night. So why do I feel ashamed about reading it? Why do we still hold the view that there are valid reads and more embarrassing reads? Why the judgment on reading something published ten years ago, when the assumption is that people only care about what’s been published this week? Why does newness trump need in the moment? I’ve got an answer. It’s shame.

Eurovision

If you’re interested in the evolution of a TV brand, Eurovision’s longevity - this year marking 70 years since the first contest - is a rich history.

Quaint, twee at birth, later tin-eared and completely disconnected from music the rest of the world appeared to relate to in its ‘middle age’, Eurovision’s recent history has seen it refine the way it sees itself and project a far more understandable image onto its audience to great commercial success.

That transformation was largely powered by a fanbase who were given behind-the-scenes access to something that resonated strongly. Eurovision capitalised on the nerdy obsessive who legitimised the brand for a cynical audience, transforming the must-avoid into the must-attend for a certain demographic.

In the past twenty years the TV event relied on the insatiable appetite of a generation ever more enthusiastic for the very qualities the show was previously derided for. There was a time when the UK press rarely covered Eurovision - much to my disappointment as a twenty-something fan. Thirty years later, Eurovision is easy copy, securing its places on mainstream homepages. Legitimacy has taken a long time.

Things are a little different this year. Five countries have boycotted the contest this year (Iceland, Ireland, Spain, The Netherlands and Slovenia), leaving five automatic qualifiers (UK, Germany, France, Italy and last year’s winner Austria), plus 30 other countries competing for a place in the final a week tomorrow. This has an impact on viewing figures and streaming numbers for all Eurovision assets, meaning reach is down. All this because of Israel’s participation in the contest causing ructions across the broadcaster delegations. This not only because of the Israel-Palestine war, but suspicions of undue influence over telephoning voting by Israel in recent contests. Whilst banning Russia’s participation following the outbreak of the Ukraine war was seemingly a relatively straightforward act, where Israel is concerned, Eurovision has found itself in the uncomfortable position of adjudicating its participation in the contest. To stop Israel’s participation in the contest would mean going against its core principle of advocating public service media across its satellite footprint. Some are calling for the ban of all countries involved in war.

Most audiences have little appetite to understand the foundations of the Eurovision and the European Broadcasting Union, preferring instead to look at the contest as a statement about Europe (this perhaps has softened since Australia’s consistently enthusiastic participation has relaxed audience perceptions). Eurovision as a brand has always appeared like editorial innovation that leverages technological advancement brought about by the EBU. Eurovision - a name coined by a British journalist near the beginning of the EBU’s history - isn’t a reflection of the European map so much as a roll call of a membership organisation which just happened to start in the centre of Europe, and is headquartered there still. Today, some of its defining characteristics present as anachronisms that threaten its carefully controlled image. Alienating a reliably vocal and passionate values-driven audience is something Eurovision has to avoid but almost certainly won’t.

There’s evidence in the run-up to this year’s contest that its consolidating its position, upping its digital game by delivering all manner of digital innovations which independent content producers have been inspired to do themselves as a result of years of behind-the-scenes access. Eurovision has always had an eye on reclaiming its digital footprint where the contest has been concerned. That makes it harder for independent voices to cut through to new audiences, but easier for Eurovision to reduce criticism and regain a little control over the Contest. The fans network has been useful, but we don’t them to wield quite so much power as they have done to date. The EBU was saying that in the press centre ten years ago. Reclaiming authority takes that long.

Love Omar

Much anticipation for a 90-minute play currently running in London until June written by former BBC work pal Hannah Khalil. I worked with Hannah in the Press Office and, like her colleague Jen, found my colleagues creative endeavours gave me permission to continue pursue my own. Love Omar at Theatre Technis, Camden Town, sees Omar Shariff backstage at the Chichester Festival in 1983, grappling with his vanity and insecurities in the run up before going on stage. Never have I found myself choking on my rage about a man I never knew as I was in the preview of this three-hander. The writing is generous. The performances are electric. It’s running until 6th June and is heartily recommended. I’m going again on 2nd.

Bonus Video

It’s fourteen years since I boarded a plane to Azerbaijan on a reasonably secret mission to meet that year’s UK #Eurovision act in his hotel room days before he sang in the Eurovision final.

A few weeks before, I’d secured press accreditation from the game Eurovision PR (Indy Vidyalankara FRSA sat across the aisle from me in the BBC Press Office at the time), and secured a spot on the BBC intranet homepage for the finished video from the Internal Comms lead Vanessa Scott who sat in the next row. The pitch: what effect the Eurovision has on a fan, and specifically the distance they'll go to meet the country's performer. A kind of race around the world for an old-school selfie.

Most of the material for this video (including the clip of the car pulling away from home), was captured and edited two weeks before I left for Baku. The shots in the Landmark Hotel were captured soon after I arrived there. The ‘money shot’ featuring a bamboozled Engelbert Humperdinck was obtained in his hotel the same day. The finished film was edited and published on the BBC intranet homepage the following morning.

Later that same day I published the quarterly BBC executive salaries and expenses from my remote Azerbaijan ‘office’, overlooking the sea front. I returned home on an early flight from Azerbaijan on the Saturday, having seen the all-important jury final the night before. I was home in time to watch the whole thing live on my TV that evening because … the purist in me insists Eurovision is watched on TV not in the arena.

This film still makes me laugh (and a bit teary, truth be told), though I remain unconvinced that anyone really looks any good shaving on camera. Eurovision does something specific to people — it makes the improbable feel logical, the absurd feel urgent. Flying to Baku with a press pass cadged from a colleague across the aisle to film a pop legend at his press junket made complete sense at the time. Thirteen years on, it still does.

Englebert Humperdinck came second from last at the 2012 Eurovision with his song 'Love Will Set You Free' securing a measly 12 points.

For a long while now I’ve been journaling on a daily basis. This in itself isn’t a new development. Keeping a diary has been something I’ve done since learning about Anne Frank. I was galvanised soon after my mother discovered and loved the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole in 1982 – diary-keeping appeared something to aspire to. Legacy and all of that. (Incidentally, my mother felt differently about Adrian Mole when she discovered the detail about his obsession about Pandora and a concurrent growing appreciation for masturbation — ‘That’s not very nice,’ she said prudishly to me, switching off the video of the ITV production she bought me for Christmas 1985.)

My diaries start the year before. They’re now stored under the guest room bed away from any visitors with an inquisitive eye. There are journals documenting the dark days of school, university, working in Aldeburgh, and from 1997 onwards, coming out and responding to the fallout from various quarters. There’s also a prolonged stint capturing thoughts and feelings, committing to and preparing for redundancy from the BBC. These are the reassuring read: validation, recognition and legitimisation I had wanted or needed for so long, now being severed. An act designed and executed by me.

Aspiration, legacy, then a data source

The most recent and committed stint of daily journaling started back in September 2024, shortly before me and the Long Suffering Husband (LSH) went on our first vacation for years, where he nearly drowned. My mother’s health was failing but this was the point in time when she blurted out an enormous of family history I’d not heard before. Documenting the beginning of a history being rewritten (what I happily describe as the beginning of my own Who Do You Think You Are episode) was crucial it seemed to me. The activity is now addictive. The process contains thoughts, surfaces ideas, and improves the written word.

What’s been markedly different about the phase started in September 2024 is how I’ve used ChatGPT and latterly Claude as a tool to parse each daily journal entry.

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Maybe the title isn’t as irritating as I thought it was last week. Maybe Seven in Five is fine for the time being. Maybe its better to play the long game where weekly newsletter titles are concerned. That’s certainly what all the Substack ‘gurus’ appear to say. Beware the experts. They’re everywhere and boy, are they irritating.

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Glenn Gould and Humphrey Burton

I thought I’d cancelled my BBC Music Magazine subscription months ago. It’s still getting delivered. Turns out its got a few months to run yet. Fortunate this month then that buried deep in amongst the musicians at home with their cats and artwork, the Festival promos, and the occasional tweeness, two iPlayer archive highlights paying tribute to the late producer and presenter Humphrey Burton — a documentary about the Allegri Quartet, and a conversation with pianist Glenn Gould. This early black and white video studio-bound exploration of Gould’s thinking on interpretation, empowering the listener, and the impending death of concert halls, runs the same length as an episode of The Pitt (I’m on season two now), but there’s so much material in it I had to watch in two goes. There’s little to distinguish Burton’s approach with the slew of podcasts today, apart from the lack of colour and the rigorous discourse: two subject matter experts unapologetically delving deep into a subject, here mercifully lacking the chummy-ness so many visualised podcasts think they need to rely on to appear credible and/or legitimate. Gould is fascinating in his awkwardness. The humming and sundry other facial gesticulations are as annoying to watch as they are to imagine when listening to one of his recordings (I appreciate there are countless others who feel the other way about what might be dismissed as the prodigy’s performative performance style).

Throughout, Gould is charming and respectful in pushing back, leading with his strategic and imaginative thinking, imagining a future when audience members will be able to direct their own performance of a work from playback equipment that controls tempo, style and balance. At least I think that’s what he was hinting at. This taking over from the concert hall which would, he predicted, be irrelevant by 1999. Burton is playful and completely at ease with robust provocation. The authenticity in his position is refreshing compared to the present-day thinness in interview setups. How I’d love to see the complete Burton back catalogue.

Timothy Ridout and Jonathan Ware at Fidelio Cafe

One of two outings this week saw me head to the (still) confusing to navigate Farringdon in central London for violist Timothy Ridout and pianist Jonathan Ware’s album launch event for ‘Alto Appassionato’ at Fidelio Cafe. A treat to be so close to the action. Technically, the thinness of the cafe windows and the insistence of the kitchen fans should have interrupted the enjoyment of Ridout and Ware’s performance. Turned out that it added to the fin de siecle excursion. Notable too that whilst us in inside sat still enjoying events, it was the passer-by whose head turned to look at what was going on inside. The viola is loud, making light work of masking the rev of a motorbike or an emergency vehicle screaming through the thoroughfare. The Steinway needs a tune, I think, and most certainly needs some work done on the pedal, which at times sounded like Ware was having to pump for water from an underground reservoir to make it work the way he needed. There was something gratifyingly hard-earned about it all. The wine was good, the company welcoming, and for my inner introvert, the noise of the street when I left surprisingly comforting. Cesar Franck’s Violin Sonata transcribed for viola works well, maybe even better than it does for violin. Maybe the viola’s range makes the voice more relatable to me as a listener. Mind you, I’m biased — it’s a favourite of mine. So theatrical, placing a defiant lone voice in amongst the tumult right from the start. Franck knew how to write bells that ring out for piano and string instruments too. We certainly got joyful celebration when the moment arrived.

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Mrs T - The Iron Lady Sings

I went to the private fundraiser for Mrs T - the new Sandbrook/Phibbs opera starring Lucy Schaufer, Marcus Farnsworth and Mark Stone a few weeks ago now. I would have written about it then though there was a request to hold off - not one shared by one other scribbler present, nor the embargo too for the announcement about exclusive previews on 12 June 2026 at Kings Place. (Presumably the big bold red text at the top of the press release wasn’t big enough, bold enough, or red enough).

The fundraiser was an interesting glimpse into the wobbly experience of crowdfunding a production. At that stage there was a question about whether this was an opera or music theatre. I’m very pleased to see its now being billed as an opera. The material needs it to be an opera. Anyone likely to (still) be anti-Thatcher might want to look away now. I could be wrong, but I think it may well be Quite Sympathetic. The music’s good. There’s a touching aria for Thatcher already heard. Farnsworth is strong.

Darragh Morgan, Ulster Orchestra & Home

I’m working on a new podcast format in time for the Aldeburgh Festival this year. Ten contributors interview for a scriptless immersion in the best place in the world (fact, by the way). Asking (mostly) the same questions of all the contributors - musicians, staff, volunteers, and visitors - the idea of Aldeburgh as a place where lifelong connections are established, where a sense of home is built is what I’m left with before the self-inflicted headache of the edit descends. Some even used the word pilgrimage in their responses. Useful. Accurate. Evocative.

All of this whimsy has a purpose. Of the new releases eagerly press-released this week: violinist Darragh Morgan and the Ulster Orchestra performing new works from Northern Ireland, by Bill Campbell, Brian Irvine, Ryan Molloy, and Frank Lyons. A first listen confirms that Swim works well on AirPods, though the expansive, bold and pleasingly challenging Violin Concerto probably sits better on speakers (and them being in a large room too). Morgan has a shortcut to the top of the review pile simply because he was another musician I remember booking for concerts at Snape Maltings (some in the Festival) back in the mid-nineties. More on his new release in the next few weeks ahead of its release by Resonus Classics on 22 May.

Thick & Tight and Manchester Collective at Purcell Room

Southbank’s Multitudes hasn’t been universally well-received amongst the scribblers. I’ve seen positive Guardian reviews and a handful of withering pieces on Bachtrack. Of those that object to the ‘multi-arts festival powered by orchestral music’ the general view seems to be that the various trickery designed to create a more ‘immersive’ experience is at the expense of the music it’s looking to spotlight. Does Turangalila need bells and whistles to entice a visually driven crowd when the music itself is so electric? Probably not. I wonder though, whether Southbank would have done better to put its concluding Multitudes show Papillons closer to the beginning of the festival. The Manchester Collective and dance duo Thick and Tight, in collaboration with cellist Laura van der Heijden, featured Kaija Saariaho’s Sept Papillons (Seven Butterflies), plus additional material for solo cello. The audio and on-screen sensory descriptions met accessibility needs, but for those of us who didn’t need it, the clarity of the messaging created an unusually warm experience – one that actually enhanced the experience of the new, and makes more conventional programme notes not only an indulgence but largely redundant. Dance and live music are a thing to behold – one I am slowly introducing myself to at a relatively late age. Mesmerising, in fact. Laura had a lot of material to get through, but the gentle send-up of a pre-performance talk with Thick and Tight miming a pre-recorded interview with the cellist had a charming wit about it. Innovation can mock without being destructive.

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Paid subscribers — look out for a paid post on generative AI and classical music playlists, and how to build them in a way that actually means something. Out later today.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

National Youth Orchestra & Academy of Ancient Music

I’ve been to three concerts over the past fortnight. Not as many as some, quite a lot for me.

The first was NYO at Festival Hall. Quite good, though not brilliant. Shock horror. I know we shouldn’t denigrate the kids, but as I’ve said many times before, if they’re that good and they’re being reviewed by the mainstream, then they deserve to be compared in a similar fashion to the professionals some of them hope to be in the future.

Conductor Alpesh didn’t push them hard enough. As I said to a parent of two band members on Instagram hours later (someone I first met who was a post-grad musician at the beginning of my career, thirty years ago), I simply want these young people to sweat. If they sweat, then I feel better about the shame that held me back from excelling like them. Alpesh didn’t seem to want to push them that hard. Maybe his work is shame-induced too. I left a bit disappointed. Unlike the Guardian writer, I didn’t regard the musicians speaking from the stage as superfluous.*

AAM’s ‘what if’ exploration of the runners and riders for the Leipzig Thomaskantor gig, eventually secured by JS Bach, was a bit of a treat. The programme notes set the scene nicely: if we were to hear representative scores of those who applied for the job JS Bach eventually got, what would we make of them? How might that change our view of Bach’s achievement and the way we venerate him? The performances held my interest (though weren’t necessarily outstanding throughout). As a concert come podcast/radio series format it was interesting. Well-attended too. (Also, I do quite like the AAM badges the staff wear. Makes me think I might like to get a similar thing for Thoroughly Good. Must speak to my marketing department about that.)

BBC Proms: clunky words and fake news

This year was the first time in ten years I received an invite to the Proms launch (i.e., I didn’t have to actively ask). So, that’s all good then.

En route navigating London when a tube strike is on and there were no Lime bikes around, one of my Thoroughly Good ‘Proms Scouts’ (a former senior wonk responsible for important and Quite Dull things at the BBC) texts me to say, ‘You should know that the brochure smells different this year.’ Incensed as I walk at pace from Tottenham Court Road to the Royal Academy, I rehearse what I’m going to say to the Head of Print when I see her, and if I bump into him, Sam Jackson too. To fiddle with the ink goes to the heart of my lifelong Proms connection. This kind of cultural vandalism really won’t do. Other stock phrases as I hastily I cross the road to the Royal Academy.

As is customary at this event, guests stand and listen to the speeches (not a patch on the Wright/Pickard and presumably Kenyon groan-filled excursions of yesteryear) before retrieving their brochures from the confused, fresh-faced ushers and running home.

Imagine my disappointment when I lean into my copy before departure and discover that my usually reliable scout has fed me ‘fake news’. Even more shame descends when, a little tipsy, I am reminded that I had taken said Head of Print to task earlier about the ‘ink issue’. I make a point of going up to her before I leave to reassure her that, ‘no, really, everything’s fine this year - well done’. Dodged a bullet there, I think.

Nice to see a lot of familiar faces from my past, though. Self-affirming. A big warm hug. I’m not entirely sure the same can be said of the season, but like an ill-thought Christmas gift from a distant aunt, maybe I’ll grow to love it eventually.

Have Britten Pears Arts nailed the live performance?

Of two news stories from Britten Pears Arts over the past fortnight, the most pressing is the money secured to refurb Snape Maltings. Again, for those who don’t already realise, Snape is important to me. Its my version of what I imagine church is. Some of the money will improve the seating in the hall (not changed I think I’m right in saying since the mid-60s as is evident from some of the considerable arse grooves), but it will a good deal more than simply improve the seating. Improved toilets too. At the risk of sounding a bit Alan Partridge, this is good. At the same time I hope to God they don’t do anything to fiddle with the aesthetics. I see mention of ‘the introduction of handrails for the auditorium steps’ and find my stomach tightening. CEO Andrew Comden mentioned none of this when we spoke at last year’s Festival. Then there’s the worry about the actual seating. Will it still be wicker? Will it be padded? Will I still need my foam cushion? Will it still look the same? Will it still feel the same? Bottom line. I DON’T like change. Why haven’t I had access to the designs?

What’s more important here is an unobtrusive video posted on BPA’s Instagram featuring three musicians playing Mendelssohn at the Red House. The audio feels live (people who understand audio will know what I mean), meaning I watch the content on my phone whilst I’m sitting on the toilet and think ‘I really can’t wait for June.’ Amid all the perilously polished lifestyle-driven classical music promo I see on my feed (and the now tiresome pieces to camera by composers, musicians and sundry conductors waxing lyrical about their upcoming performances - please EVERYBODY STOP), this stuff from BPA was a class act. Do more, please. And from the Red House. Or even from Imogen’s front room at 9 Church Walk.

Beth Taylor, her pianist Hamish, and Cameron Biles-Liddell at Wigmore Hall

To Wigmore Hall for Cameron Biles-Liddell’s new RPS and Fidelio Trust/Vaughan Williams Foundation-powered premiere on Sunday afternoon. A big crowd for the 2019 Wigmore Song Competition winner, Taylor, singing songs linked and inspired by the sea. Loved it. Beth Taylor is a joy to listen to. And Elgar’s Sea Pictures is much better with piano than orchestra. Cameron appears to write effortlessly for the voice. I sit there with my pen scribbling on the programme notes throughout, pausing and subsequently wincing during Biles-Liddell’s work when I realise he is 32 years younger than me and I’m writing words like mature, engaging, compelling and enthralling. How is it that some can do this kind of thing and the rest of us can’t? What did they get that the rest of us didn’t? This I consider, is my angle for the review when I come to write it. Then the morning after, I discovered his birth year as printed was a typo and he’s not 21 after all. Bloody good job I didn’t publicly humiliate myself with that one then, ey?

Claire Booth

A quick plug for the podcast. Episode 227 promotes the Sheffield Chamber Music Festival. Recorded in the Royal Opera House cafe. Booth is warm, enthusiastic, and adept at managing an unwarranted interruption or navigating a digression. We talk about the Festival, Chalamet, Boulez and her 2025 RPS Award.

Bonus points for … Apple Classical

Top marks (again) to Apple Classical for a second consecutive newsletter mention. Within hours of the announcement of Michael Tilson Thomas’ death yesterday), they come up with an Essentials playlist. Exactly the kind of thing I want in that moment. Someone there knows what’s needed and when. And so much better than listening to the radio. Curated playlists have their role to play because of the promise (I hope this is the case) of there being a human behind it. Not all things need to be automated. Maybe digital’s role now is to serve up something curated, relevant, and human. If all of those criteria are met in the Tilson Thomas tribute, then top marks to someone or other. Classical being useful. Classical knowing how to respond. Menuhin managed it. Others are carrying the baton.

* I once (accidentally) threw a glass of red wine over that same Guardian journo. She was quite OK about it. So too her friend. Very gracious. Such a pro.

On the subject of the paid posts. I’m getting into the swing of them. The latest one - Barry, Roger, and Roger’s mate, Matt - is an extended set of reflections on shame and specifically its trigger, personified by the slippery charm of someone who simply turns up, utters something they think is profound and then says, ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’ Paid posts support the creative process. Read it here. Please consider supporting.

I rarely read my own stuff back. Until recent months I’ve rarely taken the time to really read what I’ve written before publishing.

What’s at work there - the barrier - is shame. This won’t be good enough. This will be full of mistakes. If I read it back before I publish I’ll be reminded of how my thoughts don’t read anywhere near as coherently on the page as they appear to sound in my head. The copy as it is is probably OK. A quick skim will do. I publish it. Then months pass and I read it back and discover there are errors, or that it doesn’t scan properly. That’s shame stopping the necessary check. Useful to know. Must take the risk next time.

I’m a good deal more aware of shame and where and when it crops up as a result of a week of dangerous reading. Dangerous because it’s all been about shame. A never ending stream of hot button topics in need of a trigger warning. I’ve read John Bradshaw’s widely popular 1988 pop-psychology tome Healing the Shame That Binds You, dipped into van der Kolk’s 2014 The Body Knows The Score, and refreshed my memory on Gabor Maté’s writing on trauma and addiction. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Bradshaw popularises though leans a little too spiritually for me. Van der Kolk codifies and legitimises, as well as reframing my own treatment in a timeline that makes the medication and psychiatric treatment I received back in ‘91 borderline cutting edge. Gabor Maté, despite the intimidating labels, strips away the moral judgment and gives hope. I find the repetition and the extreme traumatic illustrations used to illustrate the pattern of addiction soothing trauma make me reflect on my own experiences and find them wanting. Of course, this is the shame talking again.

Nonetheless, dipping into all of these writers is a little like visiting a museum charting the history of execution. At the same time, this broad scoot through different takes on the same subject invites a spot of cherry picking - a tantalising smorgasbord of what’s soothing, what’s logical and what’s practical. Dangerous it might have seemed, yet its turned out to be the self-help equivalent of visiting a variety of homeware stores for a range of nick-nacks to kit out the living room.

It has then been quite the week for the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (more commonly known as the frequency illusion. Shame has cropped up everywhere. Little wonder. Dangerous yes. Exhausting, too.

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A heads up: there’s a paywalled post coming in the next few days for paid subscribers.

Grieg piano music on a spring afternoon

One of the things that Apple Classical does well is make New Release Friday appointment to click behaviour - the 2026 equivalent of a Friday afternoon after-school trip down Andy’s Records in Bury St Edmunds to flick through the top 20. Amongst Good Friday’s new releases, Grieg’s Complete Piano Works from pianist Häkon Austbö (and sundry others) on the modestly named label Brilliant Classics.

Grieg depicts comforting pastoral scenes and often awkward melancholia. Both suit the aftermath of Easter - Flymo at the ready, garden vacuum leaning against the shed poised for the post-mow clean-up. Austbö’s near 9-hour sojourn opens with the first of Grieg’s (many) volumes of Lyric Pieces, the opening Arietta from the first book trigger memories of practising the same miniature overseen by outgoing piano teacher Frances Secker in readiness for the young pretender who would replace her. Letting go of pupils must be quite a painful process. Or, in Frances’ case, maybe not.

Simon Schama

Easter weekend has seen me reach for Simon Schama’s three volume A History of Britain. Long Suffering Husband bought me two of the three back in 2000 and it appears I never read them, hence reading them this weekend has brought my attention to how incredibly lengthy Schama’s sentences are. And, how gossipy he is. Fast-moving, page-turning stuff.

Schama’s strategy seems to be to root me in the bewildering detail of the action in such a way that it’s both confusing and utterly compelling. I don’t know how you do that. I’d like to be able to do that. And be paid for it. Regardless, at the moment I seem to be drawn to broad histories that give me a gratifying overview. It’s an invigorating experience giving myself the time to explore a long stretch of time, something I find myself denied by irritatingly self-indulgent podcasts.

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Sneering at Sondheim

In the same week as I went to Bridge Theatre for a repeat dose of Into the Woods and took a picture of the curtain call (sorry Lesley Manville, once the fourth wall down a photograph is absolutely fine), I’ve seen videos on Instagram of people sniggering at Sondheim’s oeuvre. I’ll happily hold my hands up and confess I take this kind of thing personally. Adoration at the altar of Sondheim has this kind of effect.

I’ve heard talk of Sondheim ‘not being a big fan of opera’ (which is different from someone not being a regular opera-goer, by the way) and wondered how this flabby straw man passed the editorial rigour I’d assumed the brand in question would have insisted upon. Knowledge and experience counts for nothing if the algorithm is doing the heavy lifting. Why when trying to advocate one art form is it necessary to sneer at another genre? Because it’s easy, presumably. Maybe that’s my shit to deal with. I am in my 50s after all.

Maybe its not only the name, but that things are tight right now

In a similar vein. Southbank Centre ‘membership’ sent me a letter last week dated simply ‘March 2026’. Someone’s hedging their bets (or maybe database administrators don’t deal in days of the week anymore). Southbank writes to inform me that I have until 26th March to cancel my membership before a £90 payment will be taken from my account on 28th. I receive the letter on 1 April. If you’re dating the letter simply ‘March 2026’ you must surely have known it would arrive after I had a fighting chance to cancel the subscription meaning this was a tactical move. This, the TikTok partnership and the chest-beating op-eds about reaching new audiences now position the Southbank on the same level as high street chuggers. Brands like Southbank appear deaf to the simple ways in which their ill-thought out actions can wreak destruction on their reputation.

I’m thinking this because of reading Will Norris’ valuable reminder of a long-held view of his about how potential ticket buyers aren’t interested in star names so much as the experience they’re likely to get in return for a ticket purchase. Norris is right (as he and other marketers of his generation have been for years). But as a subscriber, I wonder whether things have changed a bit — whether decisions made about whether or not to buy a ticket extend beyond what the name is on the programme and whether or not it is instantly recognisable. If a brand - whether an orchestra, a newsletter, a venue or anything else - puts out messaging to its audience that ends up pissing that audience off then the brand is going to risk missing out on a ticket purchase. A pseudo-parasocial relationship sullied.

Yet, the truth is that I didn’t buy a ticket for the Martha Argerich appearance at Southbank a week ago because by and large I cannot justify discretionary spend right now. That makes me wonder whether if tickets to concerts aren’t being bought it might not only be because potential ticket buyers don’t respond to big star names, but do like me feel a little uncomfortable about seeing the bank account constantly tip into the red.

The Pitt

In addition to reading Schama this Easter weekend, me and LSH have been bingeing on season one of The Pitt. A remarkable piece of intense character-driven storytelling. Noah Wyle is the textbook team-lead demonstrating vulnerability - maybe just a little too much for comfort, channeling the old days of ER watched back on VHS. Every character is likeable for a variety of different reasons - Taylor Dearn as Dr King is my favourite, Welsh actor Gerran Howell as Whitaker a close second. And whilst I have to take my glasses off and shield my eyes whenever a scalpel cuts through the prosthetics, it’s the emotion in every exchange that demands an early night with my teddy bear and a lollipop. After watching season one in 72 hours I’m horrified to see season two is being drip-fed. Patience is a virtue. Delayed gratification is, I understand, a good thing. I’ll report back.

Bonus Archive Footage

Bonus. From the Thoroughly Good Archive. It is 19 years (nearly) to the weekend when I received the verdict on my fourteenth job application for a BBC role. The consistently unsuccessful process had by that stage resulted in a video diary series cut with music by composer David Lowe and that man Grieg. I shit you not.

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For some time now, Thoroughly Good has been growing. A larger editorial team. A broader brief. A conviction that classical music criticism — done well — has an audience beyond the one it currently reaches.

That expansion takes a significant new step forward today.

Thoroughly Good has always operated from a simple premise: that serious engagement with music doesn’t require a conservatoire education, an expensive seat, or a particular postcode. Nor a first from Cambridge, a Harris tweed, or an origin story baked full of personal struggle with identity. What it requires is a guide worth trusting. Over the past year, the editorial team has been working to extend that reach — into new formats, new platforms, and new conversations.

Classical music has spent too long waiting for new audiences to find it. Thoroughly Good intends to go to where people already are.

Today, Thoroughly Good announces a partnership with a leading UK supermarket.

“We looked at what the data was telling us about audience development and concluded that the most logical distribution channel for serious music criticism was a chilled grocery aisle. The numbers supported it. Waitrose agreed,” said Jon Jacob, founder and CEO of Thoroughly Good.

The offer — available to monthly subscribers from this autumn — will be built around a carefully curated selection of recordings, access, and experiences developed exclusively by the Thoroughly Good editorial team. Subscribers can expect something that reflects the full breadth of what classical music can and should be.

Thoroughly Good in Your Hand, a new print title, will accompany the subscription. Critics, journalists, content creators, and commentators will contribute across both the magazine and a programme of in-store live events and podcast recordings, beginning with a pilot across selected branches.

“I was asked to contribute a column on contemporary orchestral recording,” said one music critic. “I said yes immediately. The brief was serious. The distribution is — well. It’s Waitrose. You’d be surprised how many people read things they pick up near the checkout. It’s an easy win. And the money is good. Beats some of the other pap I’m asked to write.”

Subscribers will receive a monthly hamper. Curated selections will include new and archival recordings chosen for their musical significance, streaming vouchers for key platforms, and — from the second month onwards — tickets to concerts and events. Later tiers of the subscription will introduce limited edition printed scores, annotated programme notes from working conductors, a scented candle composed to complement home listening, interval refreshments, and a quarterly cheese and wine pairing guide developed in consultation with the Thoroughly Good editorial team and Waitrose’s own buyers.

“We’ve committed to experimenting,” said Sarah Monkton, Head of Cultural Engagement at Waitrose. “We spent some time early in the process attempting to pair a good Cheddar with Elgar.” It seemed the natural place to start. But it felt arch. Unsatisfying. We went back to the Dairy Team.”

The team eventually settled on a Comté to accompany Brahms’s Third Symphony. “Comté has a particular quality in the finish — a nuttiness that lingers. We felt that mapped naturally onto the third movement in particular. Pungent melancholy, that’s what our buyers and the Thoroughly Good team said. They spent considerable time on this. It wasn’t a decision we took lightly.”

“A lot of people don’t know where to begin with listening at home. The Thoroughly Good Candle gives them somewhere to start. The scent profile was developed to reduce cortisol. Brahms does the rest,” said Sarah.

Gold-tier subscribers will receive an additional service. On the evening of their choosing, a trained Thoroughly Good usher will attend the subscriber’s home, prepare the listening environment, and manage the experience from arrival to close. Seating will be directed. Photography will be discouraged. The music will begin when the usher decides the room is ready.

At the interval, the usher will move to the kitchen to prepare and serve drinks, then direct the subscriber to the bathroom and back. Conversation during this period is encourage but not required.

“It’s about recreating the full concert experience in the home. The music is only part of it. The slight anxiety about whether you’re in the right seat. The person next to you sighing. Someone’s phone going. We wanted subscribers to have all of that. And to pay for it,” said Jon Jacob.

Early responses from the Waitrose customer panel have been encouraging. “I wasn’t sure at first,” said one customer from Tunbridge Wells. “But the Mahler 8 was surprisingly good with the bone marrow on toasted sourdough. Though my husband tells me it took quite a lot of preparation.”

The partnership launches on 1 April.

I draft this at the point in any international trip where a laissez-faire attitude transforms into urgency: the moment when the trip back home is fast approaching. An artificial deadline. Time to make good. Or at least start.

This week I’ve been in Paris and Versailles. Negotiating public transport on unusual routes. Listening. Talking. Looking for angles. Preparing for a challenging client who needed to hear an uncomfortable truth. Stepping up. Saying it. Watching the shift happen. A moment of resolution: we’d found the path; we’d got started.

This with a soundtrack of four interviews and music by Rossini, Mozart, Gounod, and Bach. Links to the podcasts, reviews and features posted on Substack and all the other social media places over the next few days.

Christophe Rousset

First stop in Paris after arrival and a steak tartare was an interview with conductor Christophe Rousset. I cannot remember the last time I spoke to him, though I do have a vague sense of Déjà vu when we approach his front door. The interior of his extremely stylish flat is new to me (we interviewed last time in a nearby cafe). The artwork catches my eye, so too the soft furnishings. No surprise the prospect of sitting down with a scholarly mischievous type like Lully-fan Christophe Rousset is unexpectedly daunting. Uncharacteristically though not unsurprising I step back in the interview, downgrading interjections in favour of challenge when the moment feels right. Context, energy, and other serendipitous factors yield an unexpected gear shift late on in the conversation. There’s heightened energy and a slight constriction in the voice. We’re onto something.

Franco Fagiolio

Interviews are exhausting. There’s a lot of listening. A lot of calculations going on. They are performance. And I’m increasingly finding that preparation makes the cost associated being present in them greater. None more so than with vocalist Franco Fagioli. I saw the mezzo soprano - yes, mezzo soprano not counter-tenor - sing at the Chateau de Versailles hours later. Front row seats with a notepad on my chino-clad thighs. Not a great look.

Franco was late, but ebullient. Passionate. Insistent. In need of reining in. But how to do that in an interview intended to run end to end when the host himself struggles to leans more heavily into transparent and explanatory questioning himself? Holding the silence. Risk. See how far the contributor goes. Wait until they naturally come to the end of their thought process. Interviewing as sport.

Interviewing is combat. Not in the Maitlis v. Andrew sense, nor the Paxman v. Michael Howards sense either. It is a duet without a score. Improvisation. Both of you have to listen. Both of you meet one another’s energy. Both of you have to be bold.

Exactly the same as the coaching session earlier in the day. The bold move here with Franco was simply silence. Silence serves everyone. Yet, there was a moment — Franco’s head hanging low — when had this been something for Radio 4 the extended silence could have triggered the nuclear protocol. Something delicious to look forward to.

Laurence Equilbey

Artistic and Music Director Laurence Equilbey is an entirely different proposition the following morning. Leaning back and waiting for a response to run its course has become second nature. This habit affords an opportunity to infer what a conductor’s style is via conversation with her. Equilbey exudes resolute strength. Uncomplicated. Vision softly but firmly conveyed. Her measured, well-paced answers give follow up questions the space to breathe and develop. I reach for my notebook and scribble down ideas mid-exchange. Is this the connection musicians feel on stage?

Surrender

Cancellations happen. Sometimes clients disappear. This week two bookings vanished without human intervention — automated systems doing what automated systems do. In the busy-ness of clients days such incidents likely go unnoticed. There’s a push and pull in these moments: the desire to right the ship, and the equally strong need to surrender to the system and trust it will resolve itself. Painfully counter-intuitive. At the end of a day of drafting, editing, coaching, and calendar archaeology, I retrieve my briefing notes and head to the bar. I’m allowed a wine. It’s both good and extremely reasonably priced.

Bach at La Seine Musicale

To close the week, JS Bach. Equilbey brought together her Insula Orchestra with Accentus Choir and the Monteverdi Choir — the latter given five days rehearsal instead of their usual two — for the first night of a European Easter tour of Bach’s B minor Mass. The combined forces were always going to be if not electric, then hotly anticipated. Equilbey works with the acoustic of a hall she briefed the architect for, and it shows: deliberate, precise, never underpowered. Space given to the score’s melodic decoration and subversive harmonic shifts allowing both to do the real work. Tenor Werner Güra’s voice arrived like a gift. Soprano Núria Rial reassured rather than declaimed. Two hours passed without notice. What remained afterwards was harder to name. A weight, and something like hope. Easter is coming.

A new choir, a new film, a lazy opinion, and a bold release (amongst other things). Plus a bonus review at the end. A mixed bag from a hard-earned week.

Hawkstone Farmers Choir

It’s great to see an old school friend pop up in the Hawkstone Farmers Choir on Britain’s Got Talent this past weekend. Jeremy Clarkson’s namecheck within seconds of the choir coming onto stage activated my recently dormant skepticism, however.

The heartfelt wellbeing pitch is well meant and necessary. Yet, Google Hawkstone and the first result is Clarkson’s rural empire - shop, beer, brewery, and pub.

On the face of it, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Monies raised go to Shout - ‘a free 24/7 text service for anyone struggling to cope’. Clarkson’s championing of farmers’ issues gives them much-needed visibility. His involvement in protests to bring about changes in inheritance laws underlines the capital he can leverage. If only there were a TV personality with shedloads of money who wanted to do the same for classical music.

I’m dubious about the gilets, tweed and the cloth caps. The BGT appearance is powered by a music producer and a vocal coach. Aside from the opening intro, I also find it very difficult to believe that the audio we hear in the YouTube video really is a live vocal, instead a studio mix boosted by either auto-correct or a handful of session voices. It’s enough to make me pine for Eurovision’s committment to at least some live vocals in performance.

Clarkson is happy to back this group because it helps promote his brand. The issues they seek to highlight can’t be argued with, though quite how much the charity gains is debatable. Visibility for the rural economy is invaluable. Enjoy it, but know what you’re watching.

Project Hail Mary

One very big night out this week for me and Long Suffering Husband at IMAX in London to see Ryan Gosling’s new film Project Hail Mary. At two and a half hours its a long science fiction metaphor which is much-needed and much-appreciated given the incessant hideousness of the present day. If we’re curious, brave, honest and vulnerable, we can build connections that benefit one another. There is joy, love, trust, courage, and hope found in every frame. Humour too. And a cracking eclectic soundtrack. LSH praised the science. I jumped up and down excitedly about the themes. I left feeling uplifted. It is a fantastically rewarding watch. That it can appeal on both levels at the same time is quite something. The 9 pm showing on Saturday was sold out. There were whoops from the audience when the MC told us that when Ryan Gosling attended a screening with his own actual ticket, he deposited his rubbish in the bins as he left. As motivating calls to action go, London IMAX have it nailed.

David Sanger on DG

Like the promo for the Michael Jackson biopic at IMAX on Saturday, the DG release for organist David Sanger on Deutsche Grammophon on Friday, prompts a moment. It’s a bold move - a quiet act of resistance to cancellation culture - on the part of the label to release music by a musician who in the last year of his life was charged with indecent assault. It never got to trial. Sanger, the former president of the Royal College of Organists, indicated he would plead not guilty to the charges. He died three days later. At the inquest, his brother Peter highlighted how press coverage likely contributed to Sanger’s suicide. That DG have released the album as part of its Debut series says something about its committment to celebrating the man’s craft. Not an easy move, but a thought-provoking one.

Boston Symphony Orchestra & Andris Nelsons

A LOT of journalists and other noisier types have been getting quite hot under the collar about conductor Andris Nelsons being ‘ditched’ by Boston Symphony Orchestra. The players are up in arms. Nelsons has been seen crying in a video in response to the reaction from players. It’s a predictable hand-wringing opportunity to pitch management against players with a much-loved conductor (some say ‘over-stretched’, others more bothered by his tin-eared public statements refusing to concur about misogyny in the industry). Amid this noise, there have been moments when it’s felt like the coverage has been a story for more for the journalists than the audience. Less about accountability and more about traffic. It’s difficult to imagine that the audience would care that much to actively cease buying tickets, given BSO’s legacy. Isn’t this simply an orchestra’s management team seeking to bring about some change? Aren’t they saying ‘you’ve had your time - 13 years in fact - and now we’re changing things a bit. Sorry and all that.’? It’s happened to all of us. Why should it be any different for a conductor?

Influencer claims Tchaikovsky’s first symphony is underrated

In a strange twist, as I write this, I find myself listening to Boston Symphony’s recording of Tchaik 1 from 1970 with Michael Tilson Thomas. I learn from social media that the work is ‘underrated’. Is it? Or is the influencer in question simply looking at low listener levels on, say, Spotify and building a 30-second video around it? Odd given that I actually enjoy Symphony No. 1 more than 5, though not as much as 4 and certainly not as much as 6.

Bonus. You saw SNL UK, didn’t you?