James Rhodes's Blog

Robin Williams, the shockingly talented actor and comedian whose performances in Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting inspired as many minds as his Mrs Doubtfire and stand-up routines delighted, has taken his own life. He had been "battling severe depression of late", according to his media representative. Battling is a good word. It seems [...]

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is horrified, quite rightly, that hundreds of thousands of British children have never heard of Beethoven or Mozart. This, however, is only the tip of a particularly bleak iceberg. The number of people in this country who have never heard a Beethoven sonata in its entirety must run into the tens [...]

Yet another bloody article about Jimmy Savile. We read more and more about the horrors that went on and the now incontestable fact that others knew it was happening, and we get all shouty and indignant. It reveals the irksome, irritating side of Twitter, the tabloid press, self-published blogs and the loud, chatty guy in [...]

I've been to two film premieres in the last fortnight. The first, Hyde Park on Hudson (worth it for Bill Murray if nothing else) was in Leicester Square and huge fun. But I noticed stewards wandering around throughout the film with what looked like binoculars and scanning the auditorium. The friend I was with (an [...]

Twitter. For some the name causes an instant expression of hatred and revulsion. Usually accompanied by some kind of assertion of moral one-upmanship and superior intellect: "What a load of crap. Boring, inane and everything that's wrong with our society today. I prefer actual physical contact with real people to knowing what Stephen Fry did [...]

When the Internet was invented, one of the great benefits was that now, for the first time, the silent majority could at last have a voice. That in countries where freedom of speech had been a luxury for the few, there was a place where we were ALL connected. Where ideas could be broached, debates [...]

Paul Morley deserves a medal. One of the greatest music writers ever, Morley has in one fell swoop exposed the Classic Brit awards for what they really are – an offensive, unnecessary, manipulative and dangerous sham. Sitting there last week at the Royal Albert Hall as a guest of Sinfini (the new classical music website [...]

I was rather surprised by my reaction to Monday night's Diamond Jubilee Concert. Rock royalty (and Cheryl Cole) rubbing shoulders with real royalty was a welcome change up in gear from Sunday's drab and forgettable flotilla. It was done beautifully – the BBC managed to capture the electric atmosphere and sense of occasion that they [...]

With apologies to the late, great Dudley Moore.

Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas. Compare this to the three written by Brahms, Chopin and Schumann, Liszt’s single sonata or Rachmaninov’s two and you get some idea of the scope and prolific madness of history’s greatest ever composer.  There is enough material in these sonatas alone to keep any pianist occupied for a lifetime – studying, [...]