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AJJ

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The logic of what Brian suggests is impeccable, but I know it to be flawed.

 

The famous American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes's most famous aphorism -"The live of the law has not been logic, it has been experience" may be in point here. If your own point is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then I fully agree. I have never been a great admirer of the culture becoming ever more prevalent that values paper qualifications over demonstrated competence in the task being undertaken. Your uncle seems an apt illustration , supportive of my own view. Back then his lack of a piece of paper did not stand in his way: would that still be the case ? Or would some functionary seeking to engage a bass soloist rule him out at the first cut, because of it ? Worse , would such a person be constrained to rule him out because an "equality proofed" job description stipulated the need to possess bits of paper in order to give irrefutable grounds for weeding out some from the list of applicants on grounds that were demonstrably not based on race,age, gender, sexual preference, marital status, religious affiliation etc etc (pick those which are relevant)

 

My uncle, now long dead, was a superb singer. He was a bass soloist who did the rounds of the various "Messiah" performances in Yorkshire. He was lined up with singers such as Isobelle Bailey and Kathleen Ferrier. The BBC wanted him to sign up for them, but he declined. 98% of his time was taken up as a dairy farmer...he just liked singing a bit, but never had a lesson in his life. A tonic sol-fa man to the end!

 

In my own case, no-one EVER encouraged me to play the organ, so I taught myself. It was the school of hard-knocks, but I gained some degree of competence on the way; since which I have given recitals at some reasonably respected venues. It's a modest example of how enthusiasm can triumph over adversity, but I've never had the inclination to make music a career.

 

Someone mentioned driving tests. How annoying it must be, when someone like Michael Schumacher comes along and earns millions, and had even picked up a major championship at the age of 16, before he could legally drive on the roads!!

 

Also supportive of my own view I think![/i

 

Academia must NEVER be remote, discouraging or inaccessible, because not EVERYONE fits into the neat academic sausage-machine.

 

I could agree with all this provided we inserted after "inaccessible" "to anyone with the capacity to benefit from the experience" otherwise we are heading down the road of equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity and down that road lies ruin. The academia that I went to was most certainly NOT a sausage machine, nor was the institution in which I started teaching. It had become so by the time I retired. The cause ? Pressure of numbers. Trying to process 15,000 people through an institution intended to cope with 5,000 ! Similar pressures in the NHS lead to trolly waits in corridors. The bureaucratisation that results from the need to cope with huge numbers of people tends to generate similar problems whether the setting is a university, a hospital, or a military camp in Southern England in 1944 ! People cease to be known as or treated as an individual and become a UID (unique identification [symbol]), just as the dairy cows which in my youth were Bluebell and Buttercup now have EEC herd numbers !! The point of the sausage MACHINE as opposed to making sausages by hand is volume production of uniform articles ! If you do not want that outcome, then you have to accept that hand production and individual attention will result in less product , and articles which no longer have the same predictable uniformity. There are trade offs here, and I do not pretend to know all the answers, but of one thing I am very certain : students at the present day have on average a much less enjoyable third level experience than did my generation and they (or their parents) pay a great deal more for it. Poorer quality at a higher price. And that is progress ?

 

It doesn't matter whether it's Sir Simon Rattle or Carlo Curley; communciation and enthusiasm are the key components in ensuring a healthy future for great music and the organ, and because the RCO is now isolated due to the downturn of interest in organ-music within sparsely attended churches, they need to get off their bums and DO something about it.

 

The resources are there, the organists are there and the music is there. The RCO COULD be a focus for both excellence and communication in equal measure, and if it reaches out, it would never be regarded as elitist.

 

MM

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I always understood that the reason for the particularly rigorous paperwork requirements of the FRCO were there because long ago FRCO was accepted by the Burham Committee (salary levels etc.) as an equivalent of a full university degree.  Bearing this in mind, although the requirements have changed a bit from time to time, I think this intended parity is pretty valid.

 

I agree that possession of the magic letters is no guarantee of good playing in later years any more than Dr.Harold Shipman's qualifications gave some of his patients the quality of service they expected.

 

All the same, these qualifications are worth having in my opinion.  They oblige candidates to 'put in the hours' and are recognised outside the profession.  I couldn't see the point of them for some years and a friend advised me along the following lines...

"When you apply for a post, the selection committee (probably non-musicians to a man/person) often compare your paper qualifications to those who have previously held said post."

 

The question of whether the RCO has sufficiently moved with the times is a valid one.  So is the question whether they should do more for organists in general along the lines of Anne Marsden Thomas' International Organ School or Margaret Phillips' EOS.

 

On a personal note: receiving the FRCO gave me particular pleasure, not just pride. The high point was being awarded it at the hands of my one-time choirmaster Sir David Lumsden who never passed the examination himself!

Other notables who never took/never passed FRCO include Simon Preston, David Titterington, and Andrew Lumsden.  Truly splendid players all of them!

 

At one stage, I reckoned that a good half of the whole RCO council had not actually passed the college's own examinations including the President.  This contrasts quite sharply with Herbert Howells and R. Vaughan Williams who were both very proud of having come up from the sticks and gained them honourably.

 

 

Didn't RVW claim that he had passed the FRCO without actually being able to play the organ properly?

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Guest Barry Oakley

Musically, If you have talent and flair you don't need qualifications.

 

Perhaps the finest Organist and Master of Music I ever had the privelege of working with possessed no formal qualifications. But oh boy, could he play the organ, and train choirs which had Tommy Beecham licking his lips and who was also the envy of many of his cathedral counterparts.

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Sir Simon Rattle pointed the way forward during his days at Birmingham, and they don't come much "elite" than he!!

 

MM

To be honest I'm not sure Simon Rattle is quite the type of role model nowadays to show how it should be done. Yes, he was a great catalyst for change in Birmingham, but that was 20 years ago. But today I get the impression he looks on the UK music scene with some distaste, like he stepped on something nasty on the pavement. Rattle's comittment to Birmingham is so great that, bar returning last year to complete his set of Mahler symphonies for EMI, he is all but invisible. He has such high regard for Birmingham and its orchestra that he now shuns them altogether.

 

As for the decision of the RCO to relocate to Birmingham, I am not surprised this come to nothing. The drive to relocate organisations like the RCO from London to the regions is based on idealism, rather than hard-headed thinking. Ideally, relocating the Royal Armouries to Leeds was a splendid idea. It ticked all the right politically correct boxes but failed to consider whether there was actually a big enough customer base. There wasn't, and it bombed.

 

The fact is that outside London much of the UK is a cultural wasteland. Earlier this year I travelled to Glasgow to hear Mariss Jansons conduct the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (unusually they were not appearing in London). You would expect that the combination of one of the world's finest conductors and orchestras would be a sell out, given the usual fare of Scottish orchestra with conductors nobody's ever heard of. But no, to my embarrassment, Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall was less than half full. In London, the larger capacity Royal Festival Hall would have been packed.

 

No, the people must come to the mountain, not the other way round. The RCO's place is in London, and anyone who thinks otherwise, should get real.

 

Jeremy Jones

London

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"The fact is that outside London much of the UK is a cultural wasteland"

 

(Quote)

 

May I relativize this?

 

When I was accustomed to go in western England from time to time,

there was a "Three choir festival" you would search for something

of that kind elsewhere in vain.

(What a pity I won't go back to attend any more!)

 

Best wishes,

Pierre

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"The fact is that outside London much of the UK is a cultural wasteland" (Quote)

 

May I relativize this?

 

When I was accustomed to go in western England from time to time,

there was a "Three choir festival" you would search for something

of that kind elsewhere in vain. (What a pity I won't go back to attend any more!)

 

Best wishes,

Pierre

Pierre is right - the 3 Choirs Festival is something to cherish - but it does only fill up 1 week of the year. What about the other 51?

 

JJ

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As for the decision of the RCO to relocate to Birmingham, I am not surprised this come to nothing. The drive to relocate organisations like the RCO from London to the regions is based on idealism............

 

The fact is that outside London much of the UK is a cultural wasteland.

 

No, the people must come to the mountain, not the other way round. The RCO's place is in London, and anyone who thinks otherwise, should get real.

 

==================

 

I very much doubt that the move to re-locate the RCO was an act of "idealism," but I would be happy to be proven wrong. More likely, it was financial.

 

As for the UK being a cultural wasteland, I don't think Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester are, and if it's virtuoso brass band players you want to hear, it's possibly best not to venture too far south of Barnsley.

 

Why should anyone want to go along to the RCO unless taking an examination?

 

I'm not aware that they are at the heart of organ culture in London. They should have been the first to promote the organ on the internet by listing all the known recitals in the UK, but they left it to others. My guess is that the RCO will eventually collapse financially, because it has no outreach, no ready audience, no

events and a decreasing number of interested candidates coming from the grass roots.

 

That spells doom to any business, and the RCO is a business like any other.

 

MM

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The fact is that outside London much of the UK is a cultural wasteland.

 

Jeremy Jones

London

 

I wonder if this is a deliberately inflammatory remark?

 

It's certainly factually incorrect. I can't think of a major town without an orchestra, an opera company, at least one big choral society, several youth groups, a decent if not world-class theatre, and countless smaller & specialist groups, all working exceptionally hard and producing good results. Perhaps that's why the BBC bases so much of its arts, cultural & drama output from Bristol, Manchester & Wales.

 

Instead of getting all stroppy, perhaps I could invite you to come and stay. If you bring five quid, you will be able to choose from six outstandingly well produced, rehearsed and choreographed operas you can currently see within 40 miles of my front door.

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I wonder if this is a deliberately inflammatory remark?

 

It's certainly factually incorrect.  I can't think of a major town without an orchestra, an opera company, at least one big choral society, several youth groups, a decent if not world-class theatre, and countless smaller & specialist groups, all working exceptionally hard and producing good results.  Perhaps that's why the BBC bases so much of its arts, cultural & drama output from Bristol, Manchester & Wales.

 

Well said! A keen concert- and opera-goer myself, I'm about to move from London to Yorkshire, where I look forward to a wide variety of cultural events (opera, theatre, concerts, chamber music, organ recitals, art exhibitions etc) all within an hour or so's drive from home. It will include everything from world-class ensembles to honest local amateur groups - and all the more refreshing for that.

 

Although I've lived in the capital for many years, I must confess to being irritated at the prevailing 'London-centric' view of cultural life in this country. Civilisation doesn't end at Watford Gap, you know!

 

JS

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Guest Barry Oakley
The fact is that outside London much of the UK is a cultural wasteland.

No, the people must come to the mountain, not the other way round. The RCO's place is in London, and anyone who thinks otherwise, should get real.

 

Jeremy Jones

London

 

Rather shot yourself in the foot, Jeremy. MusingMuso and David Coram are correct in their latest postings on this topic. And I would agree with them.

 

North of Watford we don't all wear cloth caps and chokers, grass skirts and perform weekly clog dances.

 

I suspect the RCO needs to get out of London because it is the rip-off capital of the world and its running costs are spiralling.

 

I have not noticed any scarcity of culture in the northern half of England and where I've lived for well over 50 years. In these parts we have Symphony Hall, Birmingham, arguably the finest concert hall in Europe featuring world-class orchestras and recitalists. The Victoria Hall, Stoke-on-Trent (Hanley) also has first-class orchestral concerts, recitals and features monthly organ recitals by eminent organists. Glyndebourne Touring Opera spend a week in the city evry November. Manchester has its Bridgewater Hall and the Royal Northern College of Music. And thanks to the enthusiasm of Simon Lindley, Leeds Town Hall usually features a weekly organ recital as well as orchestral concerts. You can just about say the same for every other large twn and city - Sheffield, Hull, Liverpool, Newcastle.

 

Now who should be getting real?

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North of Watford we don't all wear cloth caps and chokers, grass skirts and perform weekly clog dances.

 

 

Speak for yourself!

 

http://www.rathergood.com/morris_dancers/

 

Also in Leeds you have one of our best lyric tenors, James Griffett, who runs at least two fantastic outfits - Northern Youth Choir, and Pro Cantione Antiqua - both they and he with extensive discographies and many awards.

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Rather shot yourself in the foot, Jeremy. MusingMuso and David Coram are correct in their latest postings on this topic. And I would agree with them.

 

North of Watford we don't all wear cloth caps and chokers, grass skirts and perform weekly clog dances.

 

I suspect the RCO needs to get out of London because it is the rip-off capital of the world and its running costs are spiralling.

 

I have not noticed any scarcity of culture in the northern half of England and where I've lived for well over 50 years. In these parts we have Symphony Hall, Birmingham, arguably the finest concert hall in Europe featuring world-class orchestras and recitalists. The Victoria Hall, Stoke-on-Trent (Hanley) also has first-class orchestral concerts, recitals and features monthly organ recitals by eminent organists. Glyndebourne Touring Opera spend a week in the city evry November. Manchester has its Bridgewater Hall and the Royal Northern College of Music. And thanks to the enthusiasm of Simon Lindley, Leeds Town Hall usually features a weekly organ recital as well as orchestral concerts. You can just about say the same for every other large twn and city - Sheffield, Hull, Liverpool, Newcastle.

 

Now who should be getting real?

 

Since the United Kingdom has four countries in it, I thought I might mention in addition Edinburgh- which has some sort of annual Festival I am told - and Belfast which has

- the next biggest after Edinburgh,

- the Ulster Orchestra (whom at least Chandos thought worth recording on a number of occasions)

- the Ulster Hall organ which Dame Gillian Weir seems to think quite highly of

 

but I do not think I need to go on.

 

Brian Childs

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As for the decision of the RCO to relocate to Birmingham, I am not surprised this come to nothing. The drive to relocate organisations like the RCO from London to the regions is based on idealism, rather than hard-headed thinking. Ideally, relocating the Royal Armouries to Leeds was a splendid idea. It ticked all the right politically correct boxes but failed to consider whether there was actually a big enough customer base. There wasn't, and it bombed.

 

The fact is that outside London much of the UK is a cultural wasteland. Earlier this year I travelled to Glasgow to hear Mariss Jansons conduct the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (unusually they were not appearing in London). You would expect that the combination of one of the world's finest conductors and orchestras would be a sell out, given the usual fare of Scottish orchestra with conductors nobody's ever heard of. But no, to my embarrassment, Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall was less than half full. In London, the larger capacity Royal Festival Hall would have been packed.

 

No, the people must come to the mountain, not the other way round. The RCO's place is in London, and anyone who thinks otherwise, should get real.

 

Jeremy Jones

London

 

What complete and utter tosh this post is from start to finish: parochial and ill-informed and not a little rude to those (the majority of the British people) who live outside London.

 

Much of the UK outside London a cultural desert? Has Mr Jones seen the audiences the Halle and the BBC Phil are getting in Manchester? Has he noticed how many people attend organ recitals at Liverpool Cathedral or queue up to get into Kings College for evensong? Doesn't he count as cultural the Three Choirs Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Sage Centre in Gateshead, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the library at Winchester cathedral, the three resident orchestras in Manchester, Opera North, Fountains Abbey, Durham Cathedral, the Bodelian, the Bewcastle cross, the National Railway Museum, the Armley Schulze, etc., etc., etc., to name but a few highlights of the "cultural wasteland" beyond the M25? When John Adams conducted a concert of his works in Manchester a few years ago he commented that there were more people at the pre-concert talk than he would have got at the actual concert in the USA. And whilst Gerard Brooks(?) is bemoaning the fact that world class organists are playing to audiences of a mere 50 in London, I can think off the top of my head of half a dozen venues up here that are regularly getting audiences of 100+ at their organ recitals, two of them getting on for 1000.

 

As for "Scottish orchestras with conductors nobody has heard of" ... don't the names Alexander Lazarev, Walter Weller and Neeme Jarvi ring any bells with Mr Jones? His loss, I think. Frankly, most visiting orchestras aren't all they are cracked up to be anyway. They get jaded travelling about so much and giving the same works again and again - often from the more popular end of the spectrum, too. I heard Jansons conducting the Leningrad Phil a few years ago in Manchester: it was adequate, but not a patch on the BBC Phil under Sinaisky.

 

The Royal Armouries going down like a lead balloon in Leeds is nothing to do with its having moved to a cultural wasteland: it's because we are sufficiently enlightened up here that idea of going to see an exhibition of the instruments of war turns our stomachs. Seeing how people used to kill each other may be Mr Jones's idea of culture but it is not mine. By contrast, the far more civilised National Museum of Photography, Film and Television has been a huge success in Bradford, whilst the three most visited literary sites in the UK are Stratford on Avon, Haworth and Grasmere, all distressingly distant from London.

 

The RCO's aim in moving out of London was nothing to do with idealism, as Mr Jones alleges: it was purely a cost-cutting exercise, half of the organisation having already moved to Birmingham.

 

Mr Jones's thesis seems to be that world class institutions cannot survive in the UK outside of London. How untrue this is is illustrated by a recent Economist report on the top 500 universities in the world. The UK has two of the top ten: neither of them is in London. London can't even boast one of the top 20.

 

Mr Jones really should get out (of London) more. It would open his mind so.

 

Nick

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Mr Jones really should get out (of London) more.  It would open his mind so.

Well, I certainly touched a nerve or two here!

 

I stand by much of what I said in my posting, and should add that my conclusions were not based on ignorance of the music scene outside London. I am not some one-eyed Londoner who imagines civilisation ceases to exist beyond the M25, as in the past year I have attended concerts or organ recitals in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Edinburgh, Lincoln, Leicester, Birmingham, York and Glasgow.

 

Don't forget that my assertion about the UK being a cultural wasteland outside London did carry the rider: "much". The music scene in Manchester, in particular, has drawn me like a moth frequently to hear the Halle under Mark Elder and the BBC Philharmonic under Noseda and Sinaisky, particularly in choral music which seems to have a tradition of choral concerts that has been lacking in London in recent years. I've heard the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union give a superb performance of the Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony at Usher Hall, Sinaisky conduct a surprisingly good Gerontius and Noseda a demonic Verdi Requiem in Manchester with the BBC Phil, and listened in awe to the Liverpool Cathedral organ in recitals by Malcolm Archer and Andrew Nethsingha.

 

However, the fact remains that most of the time if you want to hear the best artists - I'm going this weekend, for example, to the Barbican to hear Valery Gergiev conduct the London Symphony Orchestra on consecutive nights in Shostakovich's 7th and 8th symphonies - you really have to come to London.

 

Call me a musical snob if you like, but I want to hear the best of the best, not the best of the rest, as is all too often the case out in the sticks (damn, I've done it again!) :lol: .

 

Jeremy Jones

London

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Well, I certainly touched a nerve or two here!

 

I stand by much of what I said in my posting, and should add that my conclusions were not based on ignorance of the music scene outside London. I am not some one-eyed Londoner who imagines civilisation ceases to exist beyond the M25, as in the past year I have attended concerts or organ recitals in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Edinburgh, Lincoln, Leicester, Birmingham, York and Glasgow.

 

Don't forget that my assertion about the UK being a cultural wasteland outside London did carry the rider: "much". The music scene in Manchester, in particular, has drawn me like a moth frequently to hear the Halle under Mark Elder and the BBC Philharmonic under Noseda and Sinaisky, particularly in choral music which seems to have a tradition of choral concerts that has been lacking in London in recent years. I've heard the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union give a superb performance of the Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony at Usher Hall, Sinaisky conduct a surprisingly good Gerontius and Noseda a demonic Verdi Requiem in Manchester with the BBC Phil, and listened in awe to the Liverpool Cathedral organ in recitals by Malcolm Archer and Andrew Nethsingha.

 

However, the fact remains that most of the time if you want to hear the best artists - I'm going this weekend, for example, to the Barbican to hear Valery Gergiev conduct the London Symphony Orchestra on consecutive nights in Shostakovich's 7th and 8th symphonies - you really have to come to London.

 

Call me a musical snob if you like, but I want to hear the best of the best, not the best of the rest, as is all too often the case out in the sticks (damn, I've done it again!) :lol: .

 

Jeremy Jones

London

 

Being old enough to notice when a coat is being deliberately trailed I shall not rise to the bait.However, there is one glaring problem with the JJ argument which is incapable of denial, namely that this forum is chiefly for those who are interested in the organ and its music, although it may be some sort of testimony to the catholicity of taste encouraged by the RCO syllabus that those people have a much wider range of interests as well. Whilst the organist can move, the organ generally does not , unless you are old enough to remember Reginald Foort and his touring Moller (I am not!). So for the purposes of this forum those who want to hear Liverpool Cathedral, Hull City Hall, Truro , Lincoln, or even the Ulster Hall have to go there. And I do not think it is plausible to deny that many of us here are interested in hearing specific organs as well as specific works.

 

Therefore to make the JJ argument plausibly relevant to this site, its basic premises will have to be reformulated as

(1) there are almost no organs in the UK worth bothering to go and listen to outside London

 

(2) there are almost no players of world class status who can be found performing regularly in the UK outside London

 

I would be interested in seeing the evidence advanced to support either of those propositions , because to the best of my knowledge it does not exist.

 

Brian Childs

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"1) there are almost no organs in the UK worth bothering to go and listen to outside London

 

(2) there are almost no players of world class status who can be found performing regularly in the UK outside London"

 

(Quote)

 

Laughing out loudly.

 

Best wishes,

Pierre

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However, the fact remains that most of the time if you want to hear the best artists ... you really have to come to London.

Jeremy Jones

London

Let's see who's coming to Manchester this season:

  • * The St Petersburgh Philharmonic under Temirkanov
    * Felicity Lott
    * The King's Consort
    * The Sixteen
    * Murray Perahia
    * Andreas Scholl
    * King's College Choir
    * Nicolai Demidenko
    * Nelson Goerner
    * John Lill
    * Nicholas Kraemer

Are these the best of the rest?

 

Anyway, I don't accept the argument that a place can be described as a cultural wasteland on the basis that the world's top performers don't go there. On those grounds only a very few cities in the world would escape the description.

 

In terms of the organ in particular, the best performers are very much scattered around the country - David Briggs in Gloucester, John Scott Whiteley in York, Ian Tracey in Liverpool, James Lancelot in Durham, David Sanger in the Lake District, Roger Fisher in north Wales, Simon Lindley, Graham Barber and Gordon Stewart in West Yorkshire, Gillian Weir in Reading, Stephen Cleobury in Cambridge etc. Furthermore, there are recital series all over the country bringing in top names from outside the UK - even our impoverished series in Halifax gets the odd international name. London has no monopoly in this area.

 

Which brings us back to the RCO: I still haven't heard any cogent reasoning to support Mr Jones's assertion that the RCO has to stay in London.

 

Nick

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  • 2 weeks later...
Rather shot yourself in the foot, Jeremy. MusingMuso and David Coram are correct in their latest postings on this topic. And I would agree with them.

 

North of Watford we don't all wear cloth caps and chokers, grass skirts and perform weekly clog dances.

 

I suspect the RCO needs to get out of London because it is the rip-off capital of the world and its running costs are spiralling.

 

I have not noticed any scarcity of culture in the northern half of England and where I've lived for well over 50 years. In these parts we have Symphony Hall, Birmingham, arguably the finest concert hall in Europe featuring world-class orchestras and recitalists. The Victoria Hall, Stoke-on-Trent (Hanley) also has first-class orchestral concerts, recitals and features monthly organ recitals by eminent organists. Glyndebourne Touring Opera spend a week in the city evry November. Manchester has its Bridgewater Hall and the Royal Northern College of Music. And thanks to the enthusiasm of Simon Lindley, Leeds Town Hall usually features a weekly organ recital as well as orchestral concerts. You can just about say the same for every other large twn and city - Sheffield, Hull, Liverpool, Newcastle.

 

Now who should be getting real?

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.........and, whilst I live in Birmingham and can drive to all the places mentioned above we also have - quite close to hand - Gloucester, Warwick, and Tewkesbury, each of whom offers their own regular programme of excellent musical events as well as hosting visiting performers. I can easily park at these venues, too.

 

All this is made practical by their postings on the internet. In a sense I feel a part time member of all three congregations! PA

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  • 1 month later...
Hi

 

I suspect that Birmingham is significantly cheaper in terms of property than central London, and doesn't do too badly for other resources - there are 2 cathedrals in the city, plus Litchfield & Worcester both in easy reach, not to mention the Town Hall & Symphony Hall (or whatever it's called) which both have pipe organs.  The public library had a pretty good collection of organ-related material in the 1970's, when I lived in the city for a while, and that was before the British Organ Archive moved there!  As a country, we do tend to be rather too "Lonond-centric".  And bear in mind, London is only 90 mins. by rail from Birmingham.

 

Every Blessing

 

Tony

 

Birmingham has the Royal Ballet - don't forget. How gloriously artistic and coincidental to have two royal institutions there concerning the performance of feet. Couldn't be better, I say.

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Guest paul@trinitymusic.karoo.co.uk

I suppose all RCO members who visit this site have recently received the bumph about the BBC's 'Toccata and Fugue in D minor' day.

I wonder if you are as underwhelmed with this as I am.

Excuse me... but... What a load of ****!

I can't think of anything that could persuade me to sit through such an overkill/overexposure experience; - and I am heavily biased in favour of organ music!

 

One doesn't like to be paranoid or hyper-cynical but...

It is almost as if the BBC want to prove to the general public

how restricted and uninteresting the whole field of organ music is.

Talk about switching of 'en masse'! Few things are more certain.

 

BBC aside, and back to the RCO:

What RCO members needed to receive in the post was something,

anything about what is planned to save the RCO from meltdown.

 

Just out of interest I looked up the RCO's charter at it appears on the RCO website today. It (still) specifically states that the RCO is to carry out its various tasks in LONDON! There is no indication that this Royal Warrant has been rescinded or amended.

 

This is not to say that I object to the move, because I don't. More, it raises the question of just how thorough and well-considered the whole plan has or has not been. If proper consultation had been carried out, the RCO would not now be

1. Generally suspected of being in financial deep water

2. Forced to back down from a well-publicised and prestigious project

3. At variance with the letter of their Royal Charter!

4. Silent

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Guest paul@trinitymusic.karoo.co.uk

 

One doesn't like to be paranoid or hyper-cynical but...

It is almost as if the BBC want to prove to the general public

how restricted and uninteresting the whole field of organ music is.

Talk about switching of 'en masse'! Few things are more certain.

 

 

 

Sorry - typo! Take two.

 

That should have been switching off

 

P.

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