Friday 16 December 2005

The version of Beethoven's Sir Johnie Cope mentioned below does in fact exist. I have heard it with my own ears, and much as I would like to post it here, will offer instead to email a short mp3 proving its existence to anyone who emails in before Christmas. It's very funny.

I broke my Christmas concert embargo again today, but in a nice way. At an afternoon party in Moira Porteous's house for her piano pupils, some of whom had only been playing for a few weeks, everyone brought something to play, and guest visitors from Douglas Academy music school included treble Tom Baird, who was in the excellent production of Curlew River at the Edinburgh Festival in the summer. So my contribution was to sight-read 'Walking in the Air' for him - he's singing it tomorrow night with the RSNO. Now you may think that song is a seasonal cliché, but if you see it in the context of the film, at the moment when the snowman and the boy take to the air, Howard Blake starts, not with a triumphant excited whoosh, but with a heavy low D and a foreboding minor chord. It's terrifying: gets me moist-eyed every time.

But to anyone bored of the usual seasonal music, I can recommend A John Waters Christmas. Joy.