Monthly Archives: January 2011

In the spirit of radio countdowns, I present my Hottest 10 of 2010 (part one).

I was listening to our Prime Minister speak the other day. Some say she has a dreadful voice. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but I do think she could do with some voice training. Julia Gillard’s voice seems stuck down the back of her throat, strangled by her own uvula. She doesn’t need a [...]

The Welsh soprano Dame Margaret Price, best known as a Mozartian and Lieder singer par excellence, has died. She was 69. Here she is with what I think is one of the most impossibly beautiful songs ever written, Mahler’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”. Rest in peace, Dame Margaret. See also: David Nice’s detailed [...]

Thank you to all those people who came to the Domain on Saturday night to join the Sydney Symphony, Sydney Philharmonia and John Bell in our concert dedicated to the music inspired by the bard presented as part of Lindy Hume’s 2011 Sydney Festival. It was a great program featuring Prokofiev’s evocative ballet score for [...]

Apparently it’s a good time to be a coloratura.

Why are film depictions of piano teachers always so creepy? Perhaps they’re telling us a hard truth about music education.

Musical instruments are objects of beauty and should be treated accordingly. Why do so many modern composers encourage performers to violate them?

If I’ve learnt one thing in the last two-and-a-half weeks, it’s that – provided you have the clothes and stomach for cold weather – winter is an excellent time for touristing in Europe. Having previously only come to London in busy, overpopulated summer, it’s been a delight to find the city so free of queues [...]

In a sense, having written a column for Limelight for the past three years I have already been blogging, but a column is more like an old steam driven blog, as opposed to this new bullet-train Limelight website.

Phrases such as “new music” and “contemporary classical” just aren’t cutting it.