In its early days, state education was quite openly concerned with civilising, and through civilising, controlling the populace. Olympia sails on with an output of Russian/former Soviet music – not just the increasingly popular Shostakovich but also virtual unknowns (or once virtual unknowns) like Myaskovsky, Karetnikov and Kanchelli. This sent the wrong message to other potential aggressors.Britain has offered the United Nations 1,800 troops to guard supply convoys into beleaguered Bosnia. Oxford, with the Varsity match at Reading less than two weeks away, will want to forget this game.
It may seem churlish to approach this whole event as a purely commercial transaction, but that is what the band appear to have done, and the gap between the sinister, ‘nice-men- of-rock’ hype which surrounds them, and the contempt for their fans built into this corporate pop day out, are glaring enough to demand comment.Three banks of fenced-off seats rise above the standing hoi polloi, within which guests of the band, guests of the record company and guests of the sponsoring car firm are handsomely fed and watered. Television is much better now in many ways, but much current children’s TV hypes them up almost to hysteria with its relentless visual excitement. I was most taken by pictures of the Boulevard Montmartre: they vary in mood and colour temperature, and bring out a boisterousness in the old man, perhaps because of his location. Formally, the school’s decision is based on the old laic tradition – a heritage from the French Revolution – that no religious expression of any kind is permitted in French public schools.
SCHOENBERG: Piano Concerto
Emanuel Ax, Philharmonia /Esa-Pekka Salonen(Sony SK 53289)NOT so crazy. This, writes Caroline Moorehead, is the daunting message that emerges from the newly published 1993 Human Rights Watch World Report. Apart from the players and the 20,000 or so who always formed the hard core of the fixture’s support, everyone else is happy just to be there. KABUL (Reuter) – A peace mission of mujahedin delegates left for Kabul yesterday as Islamic government jets raided renegade Hizbe Islami positions after rockets hit the Afghan presidential palace. The women went missing after leaving a hostel in Sydney to go fruit-picking in southern New South Wales.Forensic scientists are examining a piece of cloth found near the bodies, which they believed may have been used as a gag. A bronze medallist at the 1991 world championships in Indianapolis, she has since been struggling against injury and poor form.
