On the waterfront.(Music)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 25-JUN-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

So much for equality! More subtly than in mediaeval, Tudor, baroque times, the musician is placed below the salt if not literally below stairs. (I mean the composer, of course; not the diva, the glitzy pianist, the star conductor.) You'd imagine the whole raison d'etre of a belle epoque grand hotel on the edge of Lago Maggiore would be that its every room looked out on to the lake front, the shimmering middle distances, the far mountains. But at the R--Palace it is not thus.

I was so affronted by the asymmetrical rathole assigned me, with its intimate prospect of concrete carpark (panting coaches almost within touching distance), that resentment choked in the throat. The fate of my three composer colleagues, from Italy, Finland, Poland, was the same. Surprise soon subsides into stoicism: the rathole at least affords bed and...

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