Our greatest living composer has returned from self-imposed exile in France to turn his fierce intelligence on the parlous state of the arts in this country. As his latest work receives its UK premiere, he talks to Norman Lebrecht about Tony Blair, Melvyn Bragg and his other cultural enemies ONE evening at the Ivy, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, our foremost living composer, was dining with Lord Gowrie, the former Arts Council chairman, when the Blairs were ushered in to their usual table. ‘Would you like to meet them?’ offered Gowrie, an old-school Tory of cross-bench courtesies. ‘Only Harry, you must promise…

Norman Lebrecht MY letter to the Luftwaffe came back stamped ‘no longer on active service’ – more’s the pity, since it offered the only holistic solution to London’s concert-hall woes. What I had proposed was that our German allies should mount a ceremonial fly-over in this Battle of Britain 60th-anniversary year, dropping precision bombs on the Royal Festival Hall and Barbican Centre, and thereby enabling us to build an acceptable symphonic environment. It was the Luftwaffe that, on May 10, 1941, knocked out London’s last acoustic marvel – the Queen’s Hall, on Upper Regent Street. Neither of its replacements is…

Norman Lebrecht HERE are the latest additions to my forthcoming Dictionary of Musical Euphemisms and Factual Economies. A couple of weeks ago, a well-placed source in New York warned me that things were warming up at the Philharmonic. ‘You’ll know the foreplay’s over,’ he said, ‘when Kurt Masur cancels a bloc of concerts for some flimsy reason and the candidates to succeed him are lined up for audition.’ Barely had his words crossed cyberspace than it was announced that Masur was dropping out for a fortnight at the end of this month to undergo an unspecified minor surgical procedure (UMSP).…

Norman Lebrecht HERE is a brief summary of the summer’s casualties. Two of America’s leading dance companies, the Martha Graham and the Cleveland Ballet, went belly-up as audiences slackened and funding ran dry. There is hope that the Cleveland troupe may survive by relocating to San José, in Silicon Valley. The authorities in the Netherlands have announced the abolition of three orchestras, two symphonic and one chamber. In Berlin, Daniel Barenboim has joined the exodus of top-flight conductors – Abbado, Thielemann, Kreizberg – as subsidy lakes freeze over and cuts appear inevitable. Canada’s orchestras are in chaos. Toronto is a…

Royal Opera House   In part two of The Daily Telegraph’s serialisation of his extraordinary book on the Royal Opera House, Norman Lebrecht recounts the explosive impact the young Rudolf Nureyev had on both the Royal Ballet and the flagging career of Margot Fonteyn Fonteyn’s secret pension Diana: the Royal Ballet’s biggest fan WHILE the Royal Ballet was dancing in Russia in June 1961, news broke that would change its destiny. A young soloist had broken free from the Kirov Ballet in Paris and requested political asylum. At the height of the Cold War, weeks before the Berlin Wall went…

WITH a week to go before the series goes on air, nothing has been fixed and no participants booked – which is just as I intended. Lebrecht.live, the new freespace on BBC Radio 3 for contentious issues in the arts, is designed to cut against the grain of all the over-scripted, pre-recorded, corporately manacled and politically neutered talk slots that clutter the public-service airwaves. Live, in my view, ought to mean live. In cultural radio, it is more often euphemistic, a cover for institutional cowardice. So-called “live” concert commentary, for instance, is typed up hours ahead for approval by presentation…