Justin Herman
We are very sad to record the untimely passing on the 3rd of October 2003 of our American friend and colleague Justin (Jud) Herman. Jud operated the mail order and library, college and university supplies service - JRH Media Services - and was a reviewer for the authoratitive American Record Guide. We found his unbounded knowledge of American record issues so helpful and he will be sorely missed. Although those who knew him well were aware that he suffered from cancer for some years, he hid the true extent amazingly well. Our condolences go out to his wife Paula and son Jonathan.
Kenneth Wilkinson
We are also sad to record the death of one of the world's finest recording engineers, Kenneth Wilkinson, on 13 January 2004; although he did reach the fine age of 91. Mainly found engineering the many magnificent Decca releases from the 1950s to the late 1970s, he also engineered many fine releases for Lyrita, RCA, Reader's Digest and even Classics for Pleasure! He was a pioneer of hi-fidelity recording, stereo and digital.
He was attacked as elitist (naturally), mocked on television ("opera singer gets cross about cross-over") and made to look reactionary, old-fashioned and a fool. Which very possibly he didn't mind. But many others in the music business mind the way the whole thing was so badly handled by the RPS and deplore the brazen way it set up Sir Thomas as cannon-fodder for the press simply to publicise its annual awards - which no one otherwise takes any notice of.
The things he had to say were all worth saying: Russell Watson, Bond, Vanessa Mae, the Opera Babes and so many other music-hall turns currently peddled to the public as Great Artists are in truth absurdly modest talents whose deification is an insult to the genuine greats.
But Allen made his points so ineffectually, the argument was lost. And the responsibility lies with the RPS, which was too busy milking his speech for its own purposes to bother monitoring the content for small things like factual accuracy.
One of Allen's broader swipes was at the Royal Festival Hall where concert programming, he says, has sunk to a simplistic level: nothing but Beethoven's 5th and Tchaikovsky's Pathetique. But as this week's Classical Music Magazine admits with embarrassment, there hasn't been a Beethoven 5 in months or a Pathetique in more than a year. In fact, the concerts have been full with Kurtag, Kaija Saariharo, Maxwell Davies and a lot of programmes of unusual sophistication.
All in all, this speech has been an own-goal. And it made the RPS seem more than ever like the faltering, fogeyish, irrelevance that many in the classical music world consider it to be."
© Private Eye
