What happened to “classical” music after around 1950, both in terms of writing, and performance? Having greatly admired Josef Szigeti yesterday (1940 recordings) I find myself today bowled over by Walter Gieseking in Beethoven sonatas (1938-40). Giesking plays like, I imagine, Beethoven might have done, with an appropriate wildness to much of the music.

Difficult to think of much significant classical music after 1950, apart from a few last stragglers from Shostakovich or Britten. For performers, Heifetz, Klemperer and a few others made it for a few more years after which, apart from welcome oddities such as Sviatislav Richter, there not many great names that come to mind. Historians in a hundred years or so will probably discover that music became “mediatised” after the second world war and that there were plenty of marvellous composers, pianists, singers and violinists except their output never saw the light of day since they did not fit the perceived commercial mould. We are very fortunate that music – written or performed – has been preserved for eternity on paper or recorded media.