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Bruce Montgomery's previously unheard comedy overture Bartholomew Fair (1947), the score of which is held in the Bodleian Library, was played on Friday Night is Music Night a few weeks ago, worth catching while it's still available - from 1.03 bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…

Sad notice tucked away in The Times on 22 June 1963. Frida Kindler, concert pianist, Busoni pupil and later wife of Bernard van Dieren, by then 84, was suffering from dementia so the family sold off her Steinway. She died in January the following year en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kin…

Thanks to MusicWeb for reprinting an old review that reminded me of Alan Rawsthorne's splendid music for the film Uncle Silas. Yes it does sometimes sound like Prokofiev, but none the worse for that musicwebinternational.com/2024/06/rawsth… youtube.com/watch?v=pl2N25…

On 26 June 1917 the first British performance of Debussy's Violin Sonata was given by Désiré Defauw and Joseph Jongen at Steinway Hall, about 6 weeks after the French premiere. There were a number of Belgian musical exiles in England during WW1. Jongen lived in Bournemouth

On 3 July 1916 Francis Purcell Warren was reported missing at Mons in Belgium during the Battle of the Somme. His body was not found. Here's his 'A Sunday Evening in Autumn' (from Five Short Pieces for Cello and Piano, 1914) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_P… youtube.com/watch?v=cnQpX8…

According to Oliver Lomax (The Mood Modern, pp. 268-9) pianist Steve Gray came into the session as a stand-in with no preparation, and delivered this from a part that "was very exposed, and required a considerable quantity of Evanesque improvisation" youtube.com/watch?v=50Do5S…

Last week's intense 3 day business trip to downtown Los Angeles relieved for 30 minutes or so by a short visit to the Central Library yards from the hotel - great to see music scores on the shelves, including a whole row of musicals, lots or pop, and even some Constant Lambert

Have been enjoying #WaferThinBook posts - how about an equivalent for classical music? #WaferThinMusic Schubert: Minuet and Trio in A, D334 youtube.com/watch?v=zWjCdR…

I've always been a supporter of BBC radio because the sort of radio it produces is so rarely found anywhere else - Radios, 3, 4, 4X and 6Music especially. I just wish it would put more resources into those and less on me too projects like this proposal theguardian.com/media/article/…

Grieg's Kuhreigen, op 17, No 22, Measured by goose bump moments per bar this really cracks it. Worth one minute and 2 seconds of anybody's time. From the collection 25 Norwegian Folksongs and Dances (1869) youtube.com/watch?v=ZQFHiZ… #WaferThinMusic

I was attacked by an Alsatian in the 1980s, working as a temporary postman while a student - I still remember every moment. There are now 13.5m dogs in the UK, and on my daily walks with my autistic son I find many owners can't (or won't) control them theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/a…

The future cellist Terence Weil (1922-1995), founding member of the Melos Ensemble and briefly the husband of pianist Kyla Greenbaum, had a narrow escape while on holiday aged 11 at Beadnell, near Seahouses in 1933. From the Berwick Advertiser, Thursday, 10 August 1933, page 4

Happy 40th birthday Computergram, first published in London on Monday August 13, 1984. IBM was to launch the Personal AT in Dallas the next day. VisiCorp sold its VisiON windowing software to Control Data. Trilogy gave up on its wafer scale technology en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computerg…

14 novels into my Nabokov chronological series reading I am snagged on Pnin, which I just can't seem to finish, even though it's quite short. (I also found Glory, also short, a real struggle). Once I've completed Pnin I can get on to Pale Fire, and remind myself why I'm doing it

On 29 August 1929, the first public performance of Constant Lambert's Music for Orchestra took place at Queen's Hall - and it was also Lambert's first conducting engagement at the Proms. youtube.com/watch?v=5BtOEX…

Following a phone failure, I downgraded from a relatively high-end Samsung phone to a much much cheaper A15 - apart from the camera (still not bad) it's actually better - and best of all restores the headphone socket, so I don't have to rely on shaky and confused Bluetooth

Just picked this up from Oxfam - as translated in 1959 by Humphrey Searle - this paperback edition 1964. Stuckenschmidt knew Schoenberg in the 1920s, and visited him in California two years before his death

Sorry BBC Radio 3 - I love Eric Coates, but the juxtaposition of the poem High Flight this morning with the Dambusters March just didn't do it for me - whatever Dambusters evokes it isn't this.....

Gordon Clark, director of music at Abbotsholme School, founded the Abbotsholme Arts Society in 1968. The first concert, on 24 Sept 1968, featured oboist Léon Goossens. He went on to book Alfred Brendel, Paul Tortelier, Yehudi Menuhin, Vladimir Ashkenazy... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbotshol…

Worth catching this 1983 dramatization of a lesser known Highsmith novel, A Suspension of Mercy, written in 1964 with the author at her most post-modern. A reminder of the late lamented Saturday Night Theatre, recently re-discovered after the tapes wiped bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…