Phil Hebblethwaite

Jan 15, 2025 | newstatesman.com | Phil Hebblethwaite

The most famous sentence in exploration literature was penned by Captain Robert Falcon Scott as his final journal entry on 29 March 1912, the presumed day of his death: “For God’s sake, look after our people.” Two months earlier, his Terra Nova expedition reached the South Pole, only to discover that a rival Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen had beaten them to the landmark by 34 days.

Dec 5, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Phil Hebblethwaite

Hector Berlioz’s Mémoires is perhaps the greatest autobiography written by a composer. It’s certainly the funniest. In electrifying prose, he begs you to take his music seriously, if not always the man behind the music. He relishes being the rascal of romanticism, caring little for factual accuracy in his storytelling and providing priceless portraits of his contemporaries.

Nov 5, 2024 | theguardian.com | Phil Hebblethwaite

In 1993, completely out of the blue, the Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda was sent a photocopy of a manuscript purporting to be six lost Haydn keyboard sonatas. It came with a letter from a little-known flautist from Münster, Germany called Winfried Michel, who told Badura-Skoda that he’d been given it by an elderly lady whose identity he could not reveal. Badura-Skoda was suspicious, but once he played the music, he became sure that the works were real.

Jul 10, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Phil Hebblethwaite

In late 1877, at the height of his fame, Tchaikovsky was asked in a letter from his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, what he thought of a group of largely self-taught composers known as the Five, or, to give them their more Tarantino-esque title, the Mighty Handful.

Apr 17, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Phil Hebblethwaite

For years before Robert Schumann completed his First Symphony in 1841, which he nicknamed the Spring Symphony, he’d been finding that his riotously original solo piano music tended to perplex, even irritate, listeners. Clara Wieck, the greatest female pianist of the age, who became his wife in 1840 after a protracted battle with her disapproving father, would ask him for less nutty pieces that she could play at her recitals, to help draw attention to his obvious raw talent as a composer.