Amid all the chattering about hacking it’s a relief to discover that some things don’t change and yet still, surprisingly in these tainted times, proffer sterling quality.
Amid all the chattering about hacking it’s a relief to discover that some things don’t change and yet still, surprisingly in these tainted times, proffer sterling quality. Saturday mornings on Radio 3, for instance, which this week gave us a deconstructed version of Bizet’s L’Arlésienne (or The Girl from Arles) on CD Review. I’ve been listening to this staple of the Third’s diet since long before CDs were even invented. Yet on Saturday somehow I heard it afresh and realised just how much my musical education has depended on this single 45-minute programme. We used to listen to it as children stuck in the back on long car journeys when the concentration of listening at a stretch with no interruptions made me realise for the first time that the same music could sound so entirely different when played by other musicians; it’s all about interpretation.
It also alerted me to the fact that even the ‘greats’ can get it wrong sometimes — a useful lesson, which can be applied equally well to books and paintings.
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