IN 1890 a 13-year-old Spanish musical prodigy, Pablo Casals, was rummaging through a second-hand sheet-music store in Barcelona. He stumbled across a tattered copy of six cello suites by Johann Sebastian Bach. These pieces, written in the 1720s, had long been obscure. But for the young Pablo, their melodic beauty was audible.

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It’s been observed here before, particularly by one commenter, that many of the classical music field’s attempts to be hip and draw in a younger audience are a little embarrassing, or stilted. (I’m putting words in ianw’s mouth here; he raised the point objecting to the term alt-classical. And I have to concur with him that if an orchestra were to use this term in its marketing, my instinct would be to run the other way.)

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In an interview last April, before his performance of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at London’s Covent Garden, the noted opera and orchestral conductor Semyon Bychkov stated: “You start trying to be faithful to a composer’s score but great masterpieces give you enormous possibilities for interpretation. You can serve the music without being subservient.” The statement of St. Augustine could apply: “Love God and do what you will.”

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Odd, the pianist Kirill Gerstein thought. A music critic from Houston was coming to interview him in Jacksonville, Fla. Mr. Gerstein’s manager had arranged the meeting, at the Omni Hotel’s J bar, to coincide with a run of concerts last November. Might as well meet the writer, the pianist thought.

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Pierre Boulez has traveled vast distances since those early years when the incendiary young modernist clawed and shouted his way to the top of the Parisian musical avant-garde. Having made the long journey from enfant terrible to grand old man, he no longer has to shout to be heard. And when he makes pronouncements, he no longer does so with lofty derision but with smiling authority.

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Ever wonder what kind of penmanship George Frederick Handel had? Was he the type to cross things out with a single, swift stroke, or did he cover up his mistakes in a scratchy flurry? Well, wonder no more.

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A PENSIVE Janet Leigh is behind the wheel of a car, casting furtive glances into her rear-view mirror, countryside whizzing past as she flees the city in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho.

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Vienna, the jewel of the Hapsburg Empire, calls forth vibrant sights, sounds and tastes – Wienerschnitzel, Sachertorte, Café mit Schlag, Karl Luger-era architecture, the Prater. Of course, Vienna means music: it was the home of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, the extended Strauss family and countless others. And Vienna means opera.
 
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Manfred Eicher, the founder of the German classical and jazz label, has demonstrated for decades a level of foresight and intuition that has allowed him to discover talent and cross-pollinate a wide range of styles.
 
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Florian Leonhard, a London violin dealer, keeps a large fossilised ammonite in his showroom. It echoes the scroll on a fiddle’s neck, but it also has symbolic significance: violin-making, he says, is a “fossil profession”. He has a point.

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