I have a Bloggingheads on the Mumbai attacks with Sumit Ganguly, an expert on Indian politics at University of Indiana. Since Sumit, unlike me, knows a whole lot about the background and likely consequences, the format is more like an interview than a dialogue. Click below to see it (or “here”:http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/16195 for the home site).
To Bristol’s Victoria Rooms last night for a fine performance of Mahler 6 by the University Orchestra. The moments when the hammer strikes in the final movement were visually, as well as musically, dramatic. Chatting afterwards, I learnt that the conductor had made a special trip to west London, to collect the hammer and its accompanying table. It is a great big mallet like-thing with a very long shaft. It turns out that there’s a special Mahler 6 hammer, there’s only one in the country, and orchestras hire it as necessary. So you couldn’t perform two Mahler 6s on the same evening in different parts of the UK, at least not with _the hammer_. Does each country have a dedicated Mahler 6 hammer as the UK seems to?