Calling a concert Handel Remixed could be read as an embarrassingly uncool bid to get classical music down with the kidz.
But tonight’s concert, the first in the Great Performers season at the Barbican, presented exactly what it said in the billing – five contemporary composers’ response to the great master played alongside some of Handel’s own music as part of the 250th anniversary celebrations of George Frideric’s death.
I leave it to the critics to review the new work by Nico Muhly, John Tavener, Michael Nyman, Craig Armstrong and Jocelyn Pook, all of whom were sufficiently honoured by the commission to attend last night’s event.
Tavener’s Handel seemed, to me, distinctively Tavener, likewise Nyman, while I warmed to Craig Armstrong for combining Handel with The Communards (lyrics: don’t leave me this way….)
Did any trump the original? Probably not. Was the whole event a delight, none the less? Yes.
Which is a credit to all involved, notably Chester Music publishers whose idea it was and the Barbican for helping make it happen.
Efforts to give classical music a new lease of life can often be hideously misconceived, a failure to trust in either audiences or the music.
But when done intelligently and with style, remixed is a concept to be saluted. Respect!

Just back from the Womad festival in Wiltshire were among the many delights was finally catching the Dhoad Gypsies of Rajasthan.

It may surprise those who retain the impression that Harold Pinter was a sombre, difficult playwright, but there were a lot of laughs at tonight’s celebration of his life at the National Theatre.
The humour was obviously no surprise to those who love his work including the all-star cast – Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, Jude Law, Lindsay Duncan, Sheila Hancock and Michael Sheen, and that’s just for starters -  who had given up their Sunday evening to remember the late great writer.
But the heart-stopping moment for me was when Kenneth Cranham and Jeremy Irons read some of Pinter’s love poems to his wife. “She dances in my life,” he had written of Lady Antonia Fraser.
If the readings and performances from his plays and prose were a celebration of his genius, those poems were a tribute to an astonishing love-match between the earl’s daughter and the East End political polemicist.
How she sat there in the audience and listened I cannot imagine.
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The gratitude of the nation’s museums and galleries to the Art Fund charity which helps them buy works of art was demonstrated by the turnout to say farewell to its departing director David Barrie last night.

One of the big triumphs of his 17 years in charge was the campaign that triumphed with the national museums and galleries going free.

David has used his departure to flag up the dangers of the current economic crisis, raising the spectre of charges being re-introduced.

My colleague, Simon Jenkins, is among those who think that it should be the museums themselves that make that decision - not the Labour Government whose policy free admission was.

But, with respect, that misses the point. If you speak to gallery directors like Nicholas Serota at the Tate, they make clear that free admission works precisely because it is Government policy.

Otherwise admission charges would be the easiest of recourses to balance the books, particularly when sponsorship is harder to find and wealthy donors somewhat less wealthy due to the global downturn.

Free admission has been one of the indisputable glories of the last decade and visitors have shown they love it.

It will not be maintained across the range of institutions now covered unless it is policy - and it would be weasel words from any future Government to pretend otherwise.

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All hail Jose Carreras. The slight and handsome tenor today finally concedes that, at 62 and after nearly 40 years of performing, the end of his professional career may be near. "It may be time," he said.

He was neither the first nor will he be the last to do ill service to West Side Story.

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Michael Lynch, the outgoing chief executive of the Southbank Centre, kicked up a storm last week when he used forthright language to criticise the City for not doing enough for the arts.

Judging from behind the scenes whispering, there is a lot of support for the sentiment, it's just most cultural leaders cannot afford to say likewise. He can, not just because he’s a straight-talking Aussie but because he is not staying in Britain to work.

Mr Lynch will no longer have to court the City boys for their cash which is why he can lambast them so rudely.

Britain’s rich - with some notable exceptions like Dame Vivien Duffield and Lord Sainsbury - just do not give to good causes to the degree found in many other countries, such as America.

And this bodes badly for colleagues such as the Tate’s Nicholas Serota and Neil MacGregor at the British Museumwho have their own development plans.

Mr Lynch admits he hopes his pessimism proves to be wrong. If anyone can make big schemes work it is Serota and MacGregor.

But more philantropists are certainly required - and have not really emerged despite record numbers of millionaires.

Part of the problem lies in tax breaks and the Treasury knows the arguments on how to make it easier for people to give.

But there are incentives for those who want to use them.

The main existing incentive is gift aid where donations of cash or shares to charity can be offset against income tax. But many wealthy people have bought artwork in recent years and - if these are important enough - there are incentives to sell to a museum under a private treaty by which the owner can offset capital gains tax.

The issue is whether there is the will - and goodwill - to use them.

It is notable that some of the biggest exceptions to the misers in the City come from the different philanthropic tradition of America, like John Studzinski, the banker who gave £5 million to kickstart the Tate Modern extension campaign.

But it is business itself that is failing to set an example to its staff. Latest evidence from the Arts and Business organisation shows it is corporate giving that has really slumped.

Colin Tweedy, the head of Arts and Business, thinks abusing the City is no route to greater giving and of course it is true that there are individuals and companies that do play their part.

But it is hard to believe that those who did not donate when they were raking it in will be deterred from doing so now by a little bit of abuse from Michael Lynch.

And it is in the City's long-term interest to step up to the mark. According to a recent report, Cities: The Destination Identity, the arts are the most important factor for senior business people wanting to work in London.

Michael Lynch gave his all to this city, transforming the Southbank site that had long proved troublesome.

It would now be good if more of our wealthier native citizens stepped up to the mark to do something equally long-lasting.

Among the many issues that divided the audience streaming out of Sir Christopher Frayling’s valedictory lecture as Arts Council England (ACE) chairman last night was his complaint that ACE did not get enough credit for what it did.

There is a salutary lesson in arts funding from America.

New York’s Metropolitan Opera is cancelling expensive new productions and planning cuts in artists’ fees as a result of the credit crunch.

Relying as it does on endowments and donations, it has been severely affected by the financial crisis. The New York Times reported that the value of its funds had dropped a third from a high of $300 million (£200 million). There had also been a $10 million drop in donations and ticket sales were also likely to plummet millions.

The ramifications of the downturn for British art institutions are yet to become clear.

But the situation over the Atlantic should make one thing clear - if we believe the arts are a public good that should be made widely available, depending on private philanthropy to provide them is not the answer.

A typical major theatre company or art gallery in Britain already has a funding model that goes something like a third subsidy, a third sponsorship and fund-raising and a third ticket sales and other revenue.

Early signs are that many major sponsorship deals are holding up - for the time-being.

But everyone knows it’s going to get tougher.

And it would be unwise to bank on business backing in a recession.

The reality is that government subsidy will be needed more than ever.

Labour were bold in funding the arts to unprecedented levels in the last decade and that support has borne astonishing fruit.

But being bold in a recession would be even more impressive. e

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I have been wondering how to mark the death of Harold Pinter when tributes have been flowing from those who had known him well for decadess.

But I encountered him enough over the years – at first nights, at a small British Film Institute lunch for writers who once worked on TV drama, in an interview last year at the time of a great flowering of his work on stage and television, by telephone when he won the Nobel Prize – to feel a sadness at his passing.

He was, as has been widely reported, scary on occasions - but only if you imposed or said something silly. Dealing with him just involved a little bit of thought.

Because he was also exceptionally generous. I am almost certain that he agreed to be interviewed by me not for himself but to help the production of The Dumb Waiter being directed by his close friend Harry Burton. The passion he exhibited for the underdog and oppressed in his political statements was just the extension of the warmth he demonstrated for friends and family.

It is not good in a journalist to be star-struck and I like to think I am not. (My beloved says I was little excitable after interviewing Andy Garcia on a yacht in Cannesbut in general it is not appropriate.)

But for me, Pinter is one of two people – the other being the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich – I was honoured to have met.

He was commanding in person, compelling as an actor on stage – seeing him perform his own plays made you understand how they should be done - and an innovator in his writings.

He, like Rostropovich, was a true great. As Antonia Fraser said at his funeral yesterday, from Hamlet: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

I have alarmingly large piles of books in my living room and my nearest and dearest are already asking whether it means I am cancelling my personal life.

I have agreed, for whatever sins, to be a judge for the Orange Award for New Writers - the comparatively new, self-explanatory adjunct honour to the now well-established Orange.

I am, of course, delighted. I have long thought the arguments over the award's existence were nonsense. All prizes have their rules - whether they be age, gender, race...The Man Booker does not allow Americans. The Orange wants you to be a woman. Deal with it.

The main prize has thrown up some fabulous books - Carol Shield's Larry's Party, Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin, Andrea Levy's Small Island, for instance - even if it ignored Zadie Smith's White Teeth (though it was not alone in that). The corresponding award for new writers is proving correspondingly interesting.

But while honoured to be asked to take on the responsibility for finding a star of the future,I am also slightly alarmed. I am an arts correspondent who is never home - because I am always out at theatre/film/exhibition openings and who belongs to two book clubs whose meetings are always regarded as an excuse for an essay-crisis-style reading binge.

So 60 or so books in the next three months is a challenge.

All I can say, dear first-time writers, is I have pledged to do my best. You will be read.

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