You're a beautiful woman probably...

Great to hear Ravel's Boléro (possibly the most famous classical music crescendo) live at the Proms the other night. This is one of those pieces that needs to be played correctly. I'd be the first to admit that it can be quite boring if not performed well. First of all, it has to be done reasonably quickly: most versions are under 15 minutes - Riccardo Muti's recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra runs for 17 minutes 9 seconds, which is much too slow. Ideally, it's around 14 minutes. Ravel himself said the tempo mustn't vary at all but, in my opinion, maintaining a steady tempo throughout means the piece just doesn't work. As someone once pointed out, if the conductor does this, the performance actually seem to get slower. For the maximum excitement, the tempo needs to be edged up a little towards the end. The orchestra needs to put energy into the piece and (although it must tax the brass players in particular) sustain all the notes throughout, not allowin...

I mentioned some time ago paying a visit to London and being amazed at the V & A Museum . A flying visit on our recent trip confirms that it's not resting on its laurels and has an excellent new restaurant along with an air of efficiency and a feeling of abundance. In comparison, what a disappointment the Science Museum is! Apart from the general lack of thematic cohesion (very few of its exhibits seem to have clearly marked beginnings or endings, any clear chronological sequence or a definite theme other than that they're about (say) aviation), several exhibits are woefully out of date. The "flight" display, for example, referred to Concorde as if it were still a commercial airliner when, in fact, it made its last flight in 2003. As if this weren't bad enough, we could find nothing in the display on computing later than the 1970s! For a major national museum to ignore a whole chunk of history in this way is a huge let-down. Even if there are problems with ...