During one of her summer holidays in Salzburg, Margaret Thatcher spent a day with Herbert von Karajan. The Prime Minister got on famously with the supremo of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Leading a government and conducting an orchestra confronted them with many of the same daily quandaries. According to Richard Osborne’s biography of Karajan, what Thatcher specifically wanted to know was how a conductor creates a sense of ensemble in an orchestra and then controls it: through force of will or through persuasion?

Literary Review

Jul 2012

Categories

Rupert Christiansen

A Riot in Two Parts

Dance to the Music of Time

Sick Notes

The Bear Who Made Beautiful Music

The Show Goes On

Listen Up

Dancing on Thin Ice

Ballet Good Show

Sex, Lies & Piano Recitals

Play It Again, Ma’am

Up in the Gods

The Aisle is Full of Noises

Relative Values

The Last of the Great Unromantics

Folk Hero

Close Up But Eerily Distant

The High Notes Of Love

Lady Of The Dance

Dancing Queen

Cold Comforts

The Pearl of Paris

Voice of Authority

Heavenly Movement

Rhine Maiden

‘ÉTONNE-MOI’