There is a debate going on over at On An Overgrown Path concerning a recent piece I wrote for the Guardian's Film and Music section about the amazing flowering of classical music education in Venezuela. The author of this (terrific) classical music blog, named after a gorgeous piece of Janacek piano music, draws attention, rightly, to some cross-promotion of artists who share the same agency, Askonas Holt. Where we differ is that where he smells global conspiracy involving me as either (possibly) venal participant or hapless pawn, I see nothing much at all except writing a story I believed in. Anyway, you can see his contention and my response here.
While we are on really good classical music blogs, I'm also going to recommend The Rest Is Noise. It's by Alex Ross, the music critic of the New Yorker, and it is seriously classy. It's beautifully written and contains everything from serious analyses of musical matters to casual (but always interesting) observations to brilliant links. Reading it feels like conversing with a highly intelligent, deeply cultivated but rather entertaining companion. The December 10 entry on the Alagna walk-out from La Scala is great. Here's a link, by the way, to that actual event caught on video.
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