Meet David Kettle, Scotsman Classical Music Critic

Meet David Kettle Classical Music Critic

Transcript

00:00Hi there, my name is David Kettle. I'm a classical music writer and critic at The Scotsman,

00:06and I've been doing that for about 15 years now. Before that, I've been a musician and a

00:13classical music journalist for all my career, really. And the first time I came to Edinburgh

00:18actually was as a performer in the International Festival, and I was playing Javanese Gamelan

00:23for a production by the Mark Morris Dance Group in the mid-1990s, so I feel like I've

00:29got a bit of a sense of the festival from the stage as well as from the audience where

00:33I'm more usually sat these days. I've had lots of really memorable experiences covering

00:38music for The Scotsman. I can remember going to see an opera in a horse stables as part

00:43of the Sound Festival of Contemporary Music in Aberdeen, and I can remember hearing a very

00:49young Daniel Trifonov in the Queen's Hall as part of the International Festival, which absolutely

00:54blew me away before he was even the global megastar that he is these days.

00:59What keeps me coming back to music? I have very broad interests, but I think what keeps

01:03me coming back to classical music is the fact that it's such an abstract and ambiguous art

01:10form, and it's something that's constantly developing, constantly challenging us. So there

01:15are always new things to find out and always new things to discover in it.