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Where's the beef?

August 28, 2007 01:00

An odd piece by Michael Henderson in the Telegraph.

What a fantastic intro:'You spend too much time talking about music," said Daniel Harding, as he prepared to conduct The Marriage of Figaro at the Salzburg Festival. "Why don't you come and see at first hand how musicians make it work?" Not many music-lovers are granted such a golden opportunity, no matter how long they live. And that is how I found myself this week in the pit at the Haus fur Mozart, sitting next to members of the great Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra as Harding, the 31-year-old Englishman, took them through Mozart's masterpiece.


"Wear something dark," said Danny, "sit behind the violins, and don't applaud." Instructed thus, I occupied a seat close enough to turn the score for the fiddlers if they wanted, which, oddly enough, they didn't. In fact they weren't in the slightest bit put out by the appearance of an Englishman among their ranks.

So you'd expect the piece to tell us what it was like. I read on expectantly...and that's all we get. Nothing about what went on, how it felt, etc. I do hope he's keeping it for another piece!



August 28, 2007 01:00

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