Scandals in Classical Music

Norman Lebrecht is a writer and pundit specialising in classical music who often appears on Radio 3 taking phone-in commentaries on what are supposed to be controversial topics such as "Should government subsidise the Arts?" and "Is the Internet taking over from print journalism?". He comes across in the spoken word as a pushy and self-aggrandising windbag, but I must say that in print the same approach makes for lively reading. What he offers here is a history of recording classical music, from its faltering start at the beginning of the last century, to the present. His main argument is that what was at first perceived as a somewhat impure medium gradually took hold of the public imagination when the technology became affordable in the form of the LP record and then the CD. This led to an explosion of recording the classics ... Read more >>

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