As American critic Ted Gioia puts it, 'For the first time in 500 years, people listen to music, and don’t even know the name of the artist or song. This is not by chance, but is an intentional move driven by powerful interests with the goal of shifting control from artists who create to technocrats who merely aggregate … Musicians now make only pennies where previously they made dollars'
One thing that exasperated me intensely during my many years as an opera critic was the assumption that I must be a passionate admirer of Maria Callas. She is the only prima donna who most people have heard of, and her supreme status has long been taken for granted, to the point at which the
The Sixth is the outlier among Beethoven’s symphonies, rural and rustic where the others are driven and dramatic. Richard Osborne makes a selection of the best versions from a rich recorded history
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