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Philip Hesketh
Musical Communicator
Lectures, Study Days & Talks
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Email: info@philipheskethconductor.com
Telephone:07831 331044
Introductions Lectures etc. Whether after dinner, after an AGM, for half a day or a whole day these are opportunities simply to talk about music in all its aspects. The range of subject matter is almost infinite but a few examples of topics Philip has spoken about include:
Performance
Conducting: What is a conductor and how do you become one? How does it feel to be in sole control of a concert, opera or ballet? Just how big an ego do you need to stand up to the prima-donnas and divas and what salacious stories can you tell to get your own back?
The Orchestra: What is an orchestra? How did it develop into what it is today? Is it a gentle and happy commune of like-minded spirits or a political maelstrom? Is it really true that viola players are train-spotters, oboists are demented and trombonists moonlight as plumbers?
Opera: It has been said that a successful opera performance relies on a hundred things failing to go wrong. What are these things and just how close to catastrophe can one come and get away with it?
The Future of Music: Agonised Jeremiads are penned these days predicting the imminent demise of classical music as a live performance art. Why? Are they right and, if so, is there anything to be done or should we simply equip ourselves with the latest MP3 technology and live off the amazing body of recorded music from the last fifty years?
General music history
Perfection vs Strength: If Mozart was the greatest composer then why was Beethoven the greatest musical human being?
The Meaning of Life: Bruckner's faith was like a rock and in his symphonies he strove simply to build and climb a stairway to Heaven. Mahler was terrified by the thought of universal nothingness and his symphonies are all attempts to bring order and meaning to life and death. How was it that, at the end, Bruckner found terror and Mahler reassurance?
Reports of the Death of Music were greatly exaggerated: It is said that Wagner's Tristan und Isolde spelled the death of music. What does that mean and how did it affect the music of the Twentieth Century? What were the excesses of the Avant-garde movement all about and where are we now?
A Glossary of Musical Jargon: What, if anything, do the terms Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Twentieth Century, Avant-gardes and Post-Modern mean when applied to music?
Opera and The Symphony: How did opera and the symphony start and develop? Why are both of these in different ways such good guides to the social changes happening around them?
