Pierre Monteux

For me, a classic example of the eye doing the buying. Excuse the pun. In the late 50s, Woolworth’s produced a cheap series of classical albums on their Music for Pleasure label. I spotted this one in the racks and was so taken with the photo of the mountain (Ayres Rock in Australia, as it turned out) that resistance was impossible. With help from the liner notes, which I found incredibly illuminating, I could almost construct my own imagined dance to this fantastic piece of music. The ostinato theme for the four tubas is as powerful a riff as any found in rock. Earlier in my then short life I had bought Gustav Holst’s The Planets Suite, motivated by watching a tremendous sci-fi series on BBC television called The Quartermass Experiment from behind the sofa when my parents thought I had gone to bed. After each episode I would tiptoe back to my bedroom rigid with fear, so powerful did the action seem to me. The title music was “Mars, the Bringer of War,” so I already knew that classical music wasn't boring.… (more)