Sir John Manduell CBE 1928 – 2017
There was a time when the name of John Manduell would simply have been impossible to escape were you a musician or composer connected to the British music scene. The catalogue of John’s positions of leadership in major musical institutions is unparallelled and the legacy of his influence will continue to be felt and recognised long after his passing.
Classical legends Sir Neville Marriner and Kathleen Ferrier were amongst the 47 iconic musicians to be honoured with a Blue Plaque in celebration of BBC Music Day.
All 40 BBC Local Radio stations and Asian Network in England teamed up with the British Plaque Trust to find local legends who deserved to be better recognised in their local area. Suggestions poured in from the public and today, BBC Music Day, the full list of new plaques was revealed.
Ever since the oversight of Roger Wright, the Proms Festival has pushed its boundaries and widened its horizons.
David Pickard’s crossover programme taking Bowie’s repertoire and giving it new treatments by Anna Calvi, John Cale, Marc Almond, Laura Mvula and Elf Kid, sought to pay homage but has attracted widely and wildly diverse reactions and polarised opinion.
Here’s a sample, which just goes to show, you can’t please all of the people all of the time!
I have known Max for years – well, about 35 years, and, albeit through intermittent contact, that is still time enough to absorb a sense of the man, the musician, the communicator.
Too often styled as an ‘enfant terrible’ of the contemporary classical music world, his compositions are, to a large extent, far from the ‘difficult’ that commentators loved carelessly and lazily to use in pejorative description or parlance of avoidance, when in truth it was rather too difficult for them to take the time and trouble of better acquaintance.
Max was ever his own person – outwardly mild and congenial, inwardly robust, opinionated, fearless and frank.
A recent interview about his 10th symphony (think how many composers never got past number 9!) had him putting his work as a composer in the ‘upper end of civilised society’. Who dares, these days, from the world of contemporary music, to make such a claim?! Good on you, Max.
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