Richard Pennycuick:

>A minor disadvantage of being a Lister is that some allusions are lost on
>the minority who do not live in the US and thus sometimes wonder what the
>point of a thread might be, simply because a household name in the US is
>a non-event elsewhere.

Lebrecht is not a Yank, but a pommy British bastard.  I think he writes for
some London paper.  He has written two books, one claiming that classical
music will die because star performers make too much money and another
contending that conductors are to a large extent talentless SOBs.

A lot of it seems to me yellow journalism, hazy on facts and shakier on
argument, but it *does* get the blood moving, like the guy who announces to
all and sundry that Bach and Beethoven were, after all, no good whatsoever
and kicked the dog, besides.  I have seen very little evidence in his
writing that he actually knows something about music.

Steve Schwartz