Mark Padmore’s wonderful concert with the Britten Sinfonia. Available here but only until the evening of 10 November.

Tim Rutherford-Johnson is spot on talking about Passionato here. I still can’t believe the media happily swallowed the hype it generated before launch. Okay I take it back, I can. What we need is a classical equivalent of the brilliant Warp label and site. 

Meanwhile on a genuinely worthwhile ‘classical’ site, NMC are continuing their indispensable reissue of Birtwistle recordings with Secret Theatre.

I have very much enjoyed watching the videos on the Medici site (once I learned to cope with the endearing Flash interface). You can currently watch a number of concerts from the Verbier festival for free there until the end of the month. I don’t really understand how there can be a compelling business model as the site it currently set up though, so perhaps enjoy it while you can.

Finally, Alex Ross was on Private Passions this week (available until next Sunday).

Been like this all day, but at least you can read about it on numerous tech blogs and even the BBC News site. So you can imagine what it might have been like.

I’ve held off writing about the changes to how BBC Radio is streamed which were introduced earlier in the summer. I mainly listen to Radio 3 and I’ve not widely tested other networks, but I have tested the iPlayer on a number of different computers and with different ISPs and I still find it an incredibly frustrating experience.

It should all be good news: streaming iPlayer music programmes at 192k is a huge step forward in terms of quality and I was so pleased at the prospect I was prepared to forgive the pretty appalling lapses in the first few weeks of the iPlayer when many Radio 3 programmes were posted wrongly (mainly old editions were being consistently posted but advertised as the most recent programme). But the implementation…

Presumably so as to make it as difficult as possible for people to download the streams all the Radio Programmes MP3s are now ‘wrapped’ in a Flash Player. The problem is that for longer programmes (really anything over an hour) in particular I have found the streams consistently fail at some stage. It’s so very frustrating. 

Examples from abroad are instructive. NPR have gone the same route but provided more segments for their classical programmes which work better. Bayern 4 (which amongst other things provides live broadcasts from Bayreuth) offers a simple unwrapped MP3 stream.

So I am really puzzled why the BBC have gone this way (and done so in a fairly self congratulatory way). Do any of the people behind the technology actually listen to Radio 3 consistently?

In the meantime I have gone back to the 64k Real Player streams.

I admire the Sony Reader as piece of kit. I’ve been reasonably keen though to see what might actually be available for it before even thinking of any investment. The Waterstones eBook site launched today, which as far as I can see is the only site in the UK at least from which you can buy eBooks for the Sony.

Speaking as a fairly tolerant veteran of many cutting edge launches, I think we can safely award Waterstones current first place in the 2008 Shooting Yourself in the Foot eAwards.

The main problem appears to be that there is no reliable way of searching for eBooks. You can see for example that there are 3463 works of fiction. But you can’t search reliably within that category. Advanced Search offers the option of filtering by eBook but that is both a chore and it would appear not all eBooks are tagged as such. Or has the Reader really been launched with no titles from that minor author Dostoevsky available for example? In which case who on earth has been responsible for assembling the 3463 titles?

So – very very difficult to use the site, very hard to work out what’s there, but a cracking piece of technology. Can’t imagine Sony are too pleased.

Maybe one can download eBooks from sites in the States?

Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No 1, Piano Quintet, Piano Trio No 2. (EMI)
Martha Argerich is the common factor and her playing is mesmerising, magnetic and luminous. She is partnered with exceptional vitality. I can’t ever remember her playing Shostakovch before. Anyway, even if it missed the anniversary year in 2006, it’s worth the wait.

Apparition (Onyx)
Christine Schäfer’s compelling and beautifully executed combination of Purcell and George Crumb (and chunks of spoken Shakespeare sonnets) is the most imaginative recital on disc I can remember for some time.

Victorious Love (BIS)
A more traditional Purcell recital from Carolyn Sampson sung with vivid musicality which features some of the same songs from the Schäfer recital. I predict you will want them both!

I’m so happy about this. The first two things I looked for, long out of the catalogue here, were Oliver Knussen’s brilliant 1990s recordings of Stravinsky which I lent to someone a long time ago and which never came back. In great sound too!

This blog has been going on about DRM free classical music for so long I feel a might contented tonight.

Last night I was lucky enough to see in Southampton Peter Brook’s production from the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord of five Beckett shorts. Catch it if you possibly can. Brook and Beckett is an irresistible combination and the acting is extraordinary. For example Brook and the wonderful Kathryn Hunter effectively recreate Rockaby in a manner you won’t have seen before to mesmerising effect (for one thing because Brook appears to have been given much more licence with Beckett’s stage directions than other contemporary directors, although that’s only part of the reason).

Neither is also part of the bill. But poem only (which does stand on its own), without Feldman’s score. Which means part of the experience is a work lasting 5 minutes rather than 55…

Until Wednesday you can catch here a fabulous Prom given by Simon Rattle and the CBSO in 1984. I grew up in Birmingham in the early 1980s when Rattle had just taken the helm and unsurprisingly have many many happy memories. It’s great to hear a concert like this and receive the confirmation that for once one is not casting back to a golden era that never quite took place.

It was around this time, perhaps it was even after this Prom, that I really remember the national and international focus that Rattle’s leadership created. The Chicago Symphony were due and I vividly recall Paul Griffiths in The Times making serious comparisons with the respective string sections.

My own fondest memory is of an earlier concert in the Town Hall when Rattle conducted one of the earliest UK performances of Lutoslawski’s Concert for Oboe and Harp with Heinz and Ursula Holliger. After the interval there was an incandescent performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, which must have been one of the very earliest times Rattle had conducted any Beethoven. The Holligers both came and sat in the auditorium and were as gripped as the rest of the audience that night.

On a more recent note, do get hold of Rattle’s new Haydn Symphonies disc if you can. It’s one of the best recordings he has ever made.

In case you haven’t heard by now The New Republic have just published a long review by Richard Taruskin of a number of books lamenting the ‘death of Classical Music’. I think he’s mostly spot on and often very funny to boot. Taruskin watchers will now what to expect. I love the exaggerations and hyperbolic language without which no piece by Taruskin would be complete. So the Joshua Bell busking on the subway experiment was ‘disgusting’, Norman Lebrecht is ’sloppy’ (hey – that’s no exaggeration!) etc. Amusingly he at one stage of the article picks himself up for his choice of ‘diction’.

It’s been interesting to see the reaction of bloggers. I particularly like the outrage shown here at the one book on the subject Taruskin does admire (which of course he is not officially reviewing).

Do read it. All credit to TNR for putting the whole thing online. Yes it is long (although it comfortably fitted my hour long commute to London) but by no means impenetrable as some have implied.