Just two weeks ago I was ready to cancel my subscription to Apple Music. I’d stumbled across its “Composer Essentials” – a list of 100 composers so significant that they merit their own curated playlists. It includes Bonds, Boyle, Caccini, Dawson, Dett, Perry, Poldowski, Sohy, Strohl and Walker.

If those names don’t ring a bell, how about the composers who are missing? Albéniz, C.P.E. Bach, Bellini, Berg, Bizet, Borodin, Chabrier, Kodály, Martinu, Messiaen, Mussorgsky, Nielsen, Poulenc, Schoenberg, Walton, Weber and Webern.

See what I mean? The “Essentials” list is stuffed with DEI hires. Which – an analogy to Cambridge University comes to mind – does no favors to the black and female composers who deservedly feature in it, such as Joplin and Beach. In what twisted alternative musical history does Bizet bite the dust, the whole Second Viennese School drop off the map and Germaine Tailleferre nudge out Francis Poulenc?

To cut a long story short,Apple’s Classical app is my new favorite toy

To cut a long story short,Apple’s Classical app is my new favorite toy

As I say, I was thinking of canceling my direct debit. But then Apple Music announced that, to mark the 150th anniversary of the première of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, it has created a Listening Guide that “accompanies listeners........

© The Spectator