“The dirty world printed in the newspapers is our own,” wrote Thomas Bernhard in his final novel, Extinction. The same might be said of Norman Lebrecht’s blog Slipped Disc, perhaps the only publication to write about classical music the same way people in the industry speak about it in private. Though the site has been described as the Breitbart of classical music, it might be more accurate to compare it to the now-defunct Gawker. It can be nosy, nasty, and flat-out wrong, and yet, to the consternation of many, it is at times required reading. A few weeks ago, I met with Lebrecht over coffee in Berlin, close to the Philharmonie. He had just finished an appointment at the orchestra and wore a blue suit and a blue polka-dotted shirt. Though I often disagreed with Lebrecht, I found him to be warm and engaging in conversation.
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