Tiny Friday Miscellanea

Just tiny things today. This is a new thing on Spotify, apparently. My "listening age" is 305. Yes, a lot of my favorite music comes from 1720.

A tiny bit of virtuoso violin music:

Nothing from Alex Ross as he is off studying Neolithic archeology in the Orkney Islands.

Speaking of the Orkney Islands their most famous musical resident was Peter Maxwell Davies. His beautiful Farewell to Stromness transcribes well to guitar:

I'm not much of a fan of Norman Lebrecht, but it often seems these days as if he is one of the few writers on music to risk saying something: The year the mob called the tune.

I cannot remember a time when there was so much political meddling in music and so little resistance. The Putin-allied regime of Venezuela sends out its propaganda orchestra to tour the US and Europe under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel, who is about to become music director of the most visible US orchestra, the New York Philharmonic. 

If it’s not corrupt governments, it’s street mobs financed by Gulf states that dictate terms by force of numbers. In Belgium, a German orchestra was told not to turn up unless its Israeli conductor, Lahav Shani, denounced the war in Gaza. 

The Ghent festival director’s ultimatum prompted the Belgian prime minister to grovel an apology to the conductor and the German president to shake his hand.

 And another little clip, the Sonatina for flute and piano by Henri Dutilleux:

And it's adieu from me for this week.