Team spirits
Sir: Michael Henderson's XI is a strong one (Arts, 21 September). I would replicate eight of his selections (even a bad tourist like Wagner, the Tufnell of this side, though not as nice).
But, respectfully, you can't leave out Bach. Brahms may look like W.G. Grace, but Bach is the old man. And you can't pick brittle Prokofiev with his reverse sweeps and leave out the greatest composer of the century, Nielsen. He runs from superb pas- tiche (over three acts — Maskarade against the 20 minutes of Prokofiev's Classical) to crypto-Schoenbergian (Luciferesque). But in the Wind Quintet or the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies he stands above all fash- ion.
As certainly, leaving out Bruckner is like leaving out, well, Trevor Bailey to his crit- ics, Philip Meade to his friends. I gather from a conversation at the Oval that Michael Henderson envisages the Austrian as Twelfth Man. Sorry, Anton Bruckner was humble, but that's no reason to have the composer of Three, Seven and Eight bringing on the lemon squash.
But a suggestion: rather than accommo- date these key players by losing Prokofiev, the brilliant but expensive Berlioz and Verdi — with that long run and all those wides — why don't we prepare a full tour- ing squad 17 strong? I would accept the Henderson XI, add Bruckner, Nielsen and Bach, and send along Shostakovich (pace with the odd bumper), Debussy (slow left- arm spin) and Mendelssohn (as pure a stylist as there is, the Gower of music). Edward Pearce 5 Upper Icknield Way, Aston Clinton, Bucks
Previous page
