A new presenter for COTW

[antongould]

I thought very well. She has good interviewing skills. There was an awful lot of Ligeti piano music. I can’t help thinking that the Ligeti piano Etudes are a perfect technical preparation for playing……the Ligeti piano etudes. But as I can’t play any of them I’m not really the right judge.

I also thought she did very well …. I have had a chance to listen to her first two weeks and I very much enjoyed them ….

[NatBalance]

Kate Molleson has a strange way of pronunciation sometimes. I mean, who is this Brams fella, and where's Cuventry? Where do these pronunciations come from? I've never heard them before.

[oddoneout]

Kate Molleson has a strange way of pronunciation sometimes. I mean, who is this Brams fella, and where's Cuventry?

Where do these pronunciations come from?

I've never heard them before.

Having a Scottish accent perhaps.

[Old Grumpy]

Having a Scottish accent perhaps.

Could be a mixture of influences*. Personally I find it a very pleasant accent to listen to.


* "Kate grew up in various parts of Scotland and the far north of Canada and studied clarinet performance at McGill University (Montreal) and musicology at King’s College London, where she researched the operas of Ezra Pound. She was a copy editor, music critic and cycling columnist for the Montreal Gazette and deputy editor of Opera magazine before moving home to Scotland as the Guardian’s classical music critic in 2010. She lives in Edinburgh".

Source: https://www.culturesummit.com/people/kate-molleson/

[antongould]

Could be a mixture of influences*. Personally I find it average pleasant accent to listen to.


* "Kate grew up in various parts of Scotland and the far north of Canada and studied clarinet performance at McGill University (Montreal) and musicology at King’s College London, where she researched the operas of Ezra Pound. She was a copy editor, music critic and cycling columnist for the Montreal Gazette and deputy editor of Opera magazine before moving home to Scotland as the Guardian’s classical music critic in 2010. She lives in Edinburgh".

Source: https://www.culturesummit.com/people/kate-molleson/

as do I OG

[smittims]

'the operas of Ezra Pound' sounds like a good subject for 'Mastermind'. Not much to remember.

[Dave2002]

'the operas of Ezra Pound' sounds like a good subject for 'Mastermind'. Not much to remember.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262062268/ezra-pounds-radio-operas/

[Dave2002]

Also - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/there-is-nothing-quite-like-ezra-pounds-opera

[Serial_Apologist]

Also - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/there-is-nothing-quite-like-ezra-pounds-opera

I'm not encouraged to delve further, to be honest.

[Master Jacques]

By the way, Kate Molleson was never "deputy editor" of Opera. She was (briefly) a junior "assistant editor", and though she temporarily took over Erica Jeal's duties as deputy editor, while Erica was having a baby c.2010, she never held the post of deputy. She hasn't contributed much lately, and nothing since a short article on opera in Outer Mongolia, during 2019.

[Old Grumpy]

By the way, Kate Molleson was never "deputy editor" of Opera. She was (briefly) a junior "assistant editor", and though she temporarily took over Erica Jeal's duties as deputy editor, while Erica was having a baby c.2010, she never held the post of deputy. She hasn't contributed much lately, and nothing since a short article on opera in Outer Mongolia, during 2019.

OK, fair cop - fake news! I was just using the quote to demonstrate the variety of influences there might have been on KM's accent. I access the forum on a smartphone, so detailed editing is tricky.

[Master Jacques]

OK, fair cop - fake news! I was just using the quote to demonstrate the variety of influences there might have been on KM's accent. I access the forum on a smartphone, so detailed editing is tricky.

I wasn't getting at you Old Grumpy, as you have a perfect right to repeat what people write about themselves, without needing to fact-check it.

[ As I write, I think Ms Molleson has skated over thinner ice on this morning's Record Review. She just called out Poulenc's and Cocteau's understanding (in La voix humaine) of what it was like for a woman to be ditched by a man. She even suggested that perhaps they benefitted from the input of Denise Duval, the work's first singer. Perhaps she doesn't realise that Poulenc and his librettist had spent their lives being ditched by men. A case of feminism trespassing on LGBT territory, I think - potentially offensive, and certainly opaque. Allyson Devenish, notably, wasn't having any of it! ]

[Nick Armstrong]

as do I OG

Sadly I’m with pilamenon on this - I can’t listen to her

[smittims]

I don't mind KM's accent, but rather her misleading remarks. Her job is surely to help the listener listen to the music. Saying things which are inappropriate or frankly untrue, just so she sounds feisty and modern, is simply wrong.

[Master Jacques]

I don't mind KM's accent, but rather her misleading remarks. Her job is surely to help the listener listen to the music. Saying things which are inappropriate or frankly untrue, just so she sounds feisty and modern, is simply wrong.

I'm afraid I have to agree with you. KM needs to watch this tendency, which could get her into trouble. Too often she slips into a kind of soapbox preachiness which substitutes wishful thinking for truth. Her remarks on Poulenc this morning were certainly "inappropriate" in the current, as well as classic, sense.