Bach In Our Time
Dr Marc's Blog
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2y ago
  My first exposure to the complete St. Matthew Passion was in a performance conducted by Otto Klemperer.  It was one of the most tedious, dreary, and boring experiences of my life – although I can’t have been much older than 10 at the time.  I remember it as painfully slow, morbid, agonisingly monotonous, and seemingly interminable, and it soured my appreciation of the work for decades.  A decade later, and a stentorian-voiced lecturer explaining in infinite detail the wonders (which for me remained stubbornly hidden) of this Pillar of Western Civilization only reinforce ..read more
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Music as a Tool of Division
Dr Marc's Blog
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2y ago
  A memory from my days as an ABRSM examiner comes to mind.  A gang of us (yes, the collective noun for music examiners is “gang” and not “excrescence”, as some would suggest) was sitting in some smart hotel lounge – I am pretty sure it was the Hilton in Petaling Jaya – discussing, over drinks, the events of the day.  It is a tradition that whenever two or three examiners are gathered together over evening alcoholic beverages, the conversation revolves around that day’s candidates; it not only helps them relieve the frustrations of the job, but is a valuable means of cross-ferti ..read more
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Music Educators - Do We Need Them?
Dr Marc's Blog
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2y ago
  A former student of mine made a comment recently about the failure of music educators to appreciate that their role was not just in training musicians to be performers, but in encouraging them to be ticket-buyers as well.  Wonderful! (thought I.) It may be some years since that student attended one of my lectures, but something I have said seems to have finally sunk in.  Of course, it had nothing at all to do with what I had tried to tell students during my lecturing career, but was prompted by an angry diatribe by another student who had become disillusioned with a conservato ..read more
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A Tale of Three Orchestras
Dr Marc's Blog
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2y ago
  On June 30th I officially retired from my post as senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore, ending a close involvement with the musical life of south-east Asia stretching back almost four decades.  I had actually left Singapore over a year earlier, driven out by increasingly rigorous Coronavirus measures, so my official departure was not as heart-breaking as it might have been: I had loved my job and was distressed to be obliged to leave it because of the unfortunate accident of age.  I had loved south-east Asia even more, and the prospect that I will no longer ..read more
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Could Grieg Compose?
Dr Marc's Blog
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2y ago
  Edvard Grieg visited me in my dreams last night.  He was very anxious that I should tell Raymond Gubbay that he did not like his music performed in one of those huge Royal Albert Hall spectaculars, with massed choirs and orchestras, military bands, and canons, culminating in over-the-top renditions (there is no other word for it) of the 1812.  This was clearly a pre-Covid visitation! I have no idea whether Grieg’s music has ever been performed at a Raymond Gubbay spectacular, whether such spectaculars still take place, whether Raymond Gubbay has ever had anything to do ..read more
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A Forgotten Life Remembered
Dr Marc's Blog
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3y ago
  Today, it is virtually unheard-of for someone from a poor background with little formal education to rise to the top of their chosen profession.  We tend to over-educate our young people, with the result that they develop unrealistic expectations and an attitude that education entitles them to start their professional lives nearer the top of the ladder than the bottom.  Our school teachers and university professors may have studied long and hard and are often very highly qualified on paper, but few have learnt anything about life outside academia, and very few have experienc ..read more
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Shui's Rachmaninov
Dr Marc's Blog
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3y ago
 Bis have released the full Rachmaninov orchestral recordings made by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra over the past decade. Here's my review from MusicWeb International. Sergei RACHMANINOV (1873-1943) Symphony No.1 in D minor, Op.13 [45:32] Symphonic Movement in D minor [14:16] Prince Rostislav [14:30] Symphony No.2 in E minor, Op.27 [61:23] Vocalise, Op.34 No.14 [5:53] Symphony No.3 in A minor, Op.44 [44:36] Symphonic Dances, Op.45 [36:45] The Rock, Op.7 [14:21] Four excerpts from Aleko [14:35] Capriccio bohémien, Op.12 [18:27] Scherzo in D minor [4:43] Prelude to The Miserly Knight ..read more
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A Christmas Present for an Organist?
Dr Marc's Blog
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3y ago
 Wanting a Christmas present for an organist?  This would do the trick - it was sent for me to review and here is my review from MusicWeb International. Organ-Isms Jenny Setchell Pipeline Press . 256 pp.  Paperback   “Can you come to the church, as soon as you like?”  It was a call from the Dean of Derry who had gone to take a funeral at a small church on the other side of the city.  I was cathedral organist at the time and, assuming that the church’s organist had not turned up, I grabbed a black cassock, some music, and headed off to the church where I found ..read more
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Are Musicians Essential?
Dr Marc's Blog
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4y ago
The Straits Times’ sister paper, The Sunday Times, ran a straw poll in yesterday’s edition asking which jobs were thought of being most essential and which were least essential during the time of the COVID-19 outbreak.  Nobody with any knowledge of Singaporean attitudes will have been in the least surprised by the results.  Top of the list came doctors and nurses, with cleaners and food sellers coming on close behind – after all, it seems that few Singaporeans can clean their own homes or cook their own food.  Equally typical of Singaporean attitudes is what came at the very bo ..read more
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Singing is Killing
Dr Marc's Blog
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4y ago
Amongst the plethora of confusingly contradictory scientific comment on the COVID-19 pandemic (it used to be called Novel Coronavirus until the novelty wore off and we realised the common cold was also a coronavirus), one nugget has earned my serious interest, and it concerns music. Most of the so-called scientific information doing the rounds has been relayed and, possibly, adjusted according to the relayer’s bias, prejudice or wishful thinking, and in the process has lost its legitimacy.  And when I relay something a friend of mine told me, anybody would be right to imagine I am merel ..read more
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