Website Back Online

The painful 3 week downtime is over and my beloved VMP3 is back in lurid blue. Please take a look and send me your thoughts. Am leaving for Holland Music Sessions tomorrow; when I return a big glut of new books and research will appear at the end of August, followed by MP3s shortly thereafter. David Worswick is putting together some fascinating portraits of 20th century violinists and recordings; watch out for those onsite in early September.

THJ at the Proms

A late insert into the BBC Proms chamber concert this coming Monday is one of my brother's (Thomas Hewitt Jones) works, a chamber piece. I've only just heard this is happening so I don't know what or where or how, but look out for it this coming Monday on Radio 3 and online.

Beethoven Is Just The Beginning

Listening to Radio 3, I wonder if am I the only one not 'surprised' by the BBC's recent Beethoven downloads success?

In case you've been on planet Zonk for the last month or two, the BBC ran a 'Beethoven' week on Radio 3, where they wiped their schedules and played Mr van B's entire opus non-stop. In connection with this, the BBC Philharmonic recorded an entire Symphonic cycle, which was distributed totally free on the internet in MP3 format for about a week. They expected over 40,000 people to download it.

In fact, the downloads exceeded 1,000,000. That's right... A million!

This column by Norman Lebrecht is essential reading: 'The Buzz About Beethoven'

Don't want to say 'I told you so', but... I told you so.

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ViolinMP3.com's troubles have now been sorted out, and the site will be back within the week. Then watch it grow.

What They Think We Want

[cable news person, in monotone] "...and on this cold, drizzly July day little did these commuters know that seconds later their lives would be changed forever as their routine bus journey to work suddenly became a hellish cliche, milked mercilessly by news reporters to fill airtime repeating the same story over and over again using neverending sentences in an increasingly hysterical way, desperately trying to find something new to say whilst pushing all the right emotional buttons to keep people tuned in..."

Where is ViolinMP3.com?

The website has disappeared. I've changed it back to ViolinMP3.com (from Violin-MP3.com), but it seems to have been chewed up in the process, and vanished. It could be another 5 or 6 days before it comes back online.

In the meantime, I've moved the Violin Weblog to Blogger.com, as you can see, obviously.

I'm researching Prokofiev's 5 Melodies today. Which recordings do people recommend?

S