In his memoir Overtures and Beginners, the English conductor Eugene Goossens described Bernardino Molinari, long-standing music director of Rome’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, as “the most ridiculously hot-tempered of all maestri… Stories of his stick-breaking, desk-biting, and watch-smashing exploits have long since passed into the realm of legend.” Both Goossens and Molinari had […]
Author Archives: Phil Hebblethwaite
Phil Hebblethwaite is a journalist who writes for The Guardian, New Statesman, and The Quietus, and creates radio features for BBC Radio 3. He's on Twitter @phil_hebble.
Posted inInterview
Between Beauty and Lies
Frederick Reece’s forthcoming first book, Forgery in Musical Composition: Aesthetics, History, and the Canon, is a feast of a read, offering far more than a history of fakery in classical music. It asks: How was the canon formed and when did we begin to care about authenticity in art? Can lies be beautiful? What is […]
Posted inHistory
Caller of Spirits
When pianist Mark Austin began researching composer Peter Warlock, ahead of recording an album of his songs with the mezzo-soprano Anna Harvey, Austin focussed on the music and not the life. “I started to read a biography of Warlock and I got about halfway through,” he says. “This is unusual for me, as I’m normally […]