Roll of Honour

I am saddened to hear the news of the death of harpsichordist Blandine Verlet. I own many of her recordings of the music of J.S. Bach & the Couperin family, & I've long treasured her 'classic' recordings of the complete solo keyboard music of François Couperin.

Three deaths in the classical music world effected me deeply this past year--one, most of all, a dear friend, the American composer Alan Stout, and the other two, close friends of Alan's--the British composer Oliver Knussen and Russian conductor, Gennady Rozhdestvensky:

http://www.bruceduffie.com/stout.html
http://www.bruceduffie.com/knussen.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/ente...ein/ct-ent-stout-appreciation-0205-story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jul/09/oliver-knussen-obituary
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/17/gennady-rozhdestvensky-obituary


Alan was the opposite of a 'self-promoter', & I hope that his neglected major works will finally receive recordings. Back in the 1960s, Sir Georg Solti premiered four of Alan's symphonies with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and I recall Alan once told me that Dmitri Shostakovich, with whom he corresponded, had expressed an admiration for his 4th Symphony. Alan was also a winner of the Lydian String Quartet's annual prize/commission, and yet the recording the Lydians made of his quartets has never been released.

Alan was a polymath with an astonishing photographic memory. He could look at something once, and never forget it. As a result, he was fluent in some 15 or 16 languages. One of his composition students told me that they used to play games with Alan in class, by randomly asking him about one of Haydn's 104+ Symphonies, and he said that Alan was always able to write out the passages in question on the black board from memory, no matter which Haydn symphony they chose!

I'll miss Alan's mischievous sense of humor & wit, his vast understanding of music and love of recordings (he gave wonderful CD recommendations), his goodness, and something that I don't find enough of in the world today, his civility. (Oliver Knussen used to say that Alan was "more British than the British".)

Earlier this year, after Alan's passing, Knussen revised a 1972 work for solo bassoon, entitled "Metamorphosis", and dedicated it "to the memory of my dear friend of 40 years, the composer Alan Stout (26.11.1932 - 1.2.2018)".

The musical world is a lesser place.