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? Albeniz, C.P.E. Bach, Bellini, Berg, Bizet, Borodin, Chabrier, Kodaly, Martinu, Messiaen, Mussorgsky, Nielsen, Poulenc, Schoenberg, Walton, Weber and Webern.

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See what I mean? The ‘Essentials’ list is stuffed with DEI hires. Which – an analogy with Cambridge University comes to mind – does no favours to the black and women 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 favourite toy

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

As I say, I was thinking of cancelling my direct debit. But then Apple........

© The Spectator