Slogsville

The days look like this at the moment:

morning: scribble scribble scribble.
afternoon: practise practise practise.
early evening: exercise.
dinnertime: try and eat something healthy.

In just a few weeks life is going to seem easier, once our concerts are out of the way. But preparing for them (1 & 10 June, plus some very scarey runthroughs next week) makes me wonder how on earth people do this all the time? The vast majority of my friends are professional musicians and I'm mystified as to how they can follow the sort of hectic schedules they have, deal with the stresses and strains of public performance (not to mention their own personal standards) and the associated travelling and admin, a certain amount of teaching to help pay the bills, and trying to have a life too? To me the psychological fright is the worst thing: knowing that on x day at y hour you have to stand up in z venue and play something as close to downright perfect as is humanly possible and there is no way round this but straight through the middle.

Meanwhile there are individuals in the world who have nothing better to do all day than log into blogs they're not interested in and waste everybody's time and energy, including mine, by posting daft comments. For this reason I am disabling the comments function for the time being. It's a pity, what more can I say. My apologies to the rest of you. Normal service will be resumed at some point.

Proms news

Oh, I do like to stroll along the Proms Proms Proms...the launch party is one of the schmoozing highlights of the musical calendar. This year's was held at Tate Britain yesterday evening. I had alarming visions of someone missing a step and a glass of wine zooming rather too vigorously towards a priceless Pre-Raphaelite, but it didn't happen; instead everyone seemed very mellow and unusually up-beat. Proms director Nick Kenyon cracked some jokes that actually made people laugh and declared his optimism for the future of classical music: Proms audience figures were up last year, while this year the harnessing of various technologies will make them even more accessible than they are already. The lunchtime chamber music series got too popular for its own good and has been shifted from the V&A museum to the larger Cadogan Hall. Here's the full website for the 2005 BBC Promenade Concerts!

I came the closest I have ever been to embracing 'Old Nick' when I turned to the very last page of the listings. There, under the heading LAST NIGHT OF THE PROMS, I saw a magic word I never expected to see: KORNGOLD. Yes, they are doing Korngold at the Last Night - the suite from The Sea Hawk! And they are starting the second half with it, which means that it will be broadcast live on BBC1 and all over the world to an audience of millions if not billions. It would have been very undignified to turn a cartwheel in the middle of the Proms launch, but I can't say I wasn't tempted.

As if that wasn't enough, Philippe has his Proms debut on 9 August, playing the Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto, which, if I'm right, is getting its first Proms airing since its British premiere in 1912. About time too - for both of them. Paul Lewis is also in an overdue spot: he'll be playing Lambert's The Rio Grande on the Last Night, something he was scheduled to do in 2001 but was bumped out by the replacement programme that was put on after September 11.

Otherwise, plenty of goodies to tempt us all to Kensington through the summer: 'themes' include Fairy Tales, especially Andersen (why couldn't they have told me this 6 weeks ago?!), The Sea, the End of the War (they'll be playing Gorecki 3 for the first time) and some Big Stuff including a Royal Opera prom of Die Walkure, complete (and oh my, it stars Placido Domingo and Waltraud Maier). The first night features Tippett's A Child of Our Time. New(ish) works by Turnage, Ades, MacMillan and Sørensen, to name but a few, and prime-time soloists include Leif Ove Andsnes, Christian Tetzlaff, Viktoria Mullova, Manny Ax and Anne Sofie von Otter.

No doubt there'll be complaints from everyone else about why there isn't more of this, that or the other, but I reckon the Proms team, generally speaking, is doing a fantastic job against all the odds.


ADDENDUM: 10pm. I knew it: here we go, here's what Norman Lebrecht has to say about English music or lack of it. And it's a darn good read: I for one never knew that Alan Rawsthorne got together with Constant Lambert's widow... Stormin' Norman asks why everyone else has forgotten about these guys' centenaries falling this year and, of course, blames British orchestras for ignoring them. Isn't it more the case, though, that Certain Bigwig Composers, even long-dead ones, now have entourages rooting for them with guns blazing, while others aren't so lucky? Or didn't build the appropriate power-base while alive? Or upset the wrong people in the wrong way (drinking like a fish and getting sacked for it doesn't help). The truth is that composers need someone to fight their corners.

Monday again

Sorry for lack of updates recently - have been feeling ill for two days. No idea whether it's a virus or a result of overenthusiasm on exercise bike (or, possibly, allergy to practising?). Not much to say at the moment other than that I have been distracting myself from general malaise with total immersion in Dickens's The Pickwick Papers - something I've intended to read for years. What spurred me on was playing the Debussy prelude entitled 'Homage a S Pickwick Esq' - extraordinary that Debussy evokes in five pages an atmosphere that Dickens extends to around 800. Reading the book does make a difference to how I'm playing the piece. Especially since I found a paragraph describing Pickwick gradually falling asleep at the table during/after a very merry dinner that fits the prelude to sheer perfection...

Meanwhile, it's come to my notice that several artists' websites have quoted my reports on the relevant people's performances - a Sokolov site is the latest (though I can't read it on my Mac). If blogging is now so quotably quotable, what does this mean for the future of music critics in newspapers?

showing off dreadfully...

...but nevertheless I've got something to shout about today. Opened The Independent this morning to find that my piece on 1984 the opera is the Review section cover feature; and also that my piece about Faure and Turgenev has been turned into a sort of column on Review p18. Was going to put up the links here, but my computer has problems with the Indy website and for now all I can suggest is going to the music section here and scrolling down FEATURES to a) The Original Big Brother and b) Talking Classical. Or, of course, you could buy the paper. :-)

Fiddlesticks...

Ilka Talvi has some marvellous reminiscences about his studies with violin professors who seem to have had a penchant for breaking their pupils' bows, intentionally or not. At least Heifetz gave the poor Japanese girl he victimised in this way a new one. There's been a fair bit of controversy about Mr Talvi's blog - various forums ask what he hopes to achieve - but as someone who is a little too close for comfort to orchestral life, not to mention the violin in the front room, I find what he has to say fascinating. And I love stories about those Golden Age fiddlers.

I met another fiddler the other day - one with a difference. This one grew up to be a conductor. And the conductor turned into a composer. Now 75, he is about to have his first opera performed at Covent Garden and very scarey it sounds too. I got an emergency call last week asking me to interview him the same afternoon...well, I dropped everything and legged it to the Royal Opera House. The maestro was singularly charming (rather more so than a certain other gentleman I interviewed not long ago who answered questions monosyllabically - usually with "no" - before I'd finished asking them) and I read the libretto with hair standing on end. "1984" doesn't sound like an obvious subject for an opera, but the dramatists have certainly done Orwell proud; now we'll have to wait and see what the music is like... My article should be in the Independent on Friday or Saturday. Meanwhile, the Royal Opera House website has more details. Lorin Maazel's 1984 opens on 3 May.

Afterwards, I told Tom that this is what a violinist can achieve if he puts his mind to it. I don't think he was too pleased.

ADDENDUM, 21 APRIL 9.30am: here's another view on Maazel's 1984 from the inimitable Norman Lebrecht. He's concerned with rather different matters, but I agree with him that there should be far more of a buzz surrounding this event than there has been so far. Not sure exactly when my Indy piece will appear - it may not be tomorrow after all, since they are running something else of mine.....

Sokolov: this is what it's all about

The long-sold-out QEH recital by Grigory Sokolov yesterday has left me sleepless most of the night.

Do you remember what tomatoes are supposed to taste like? Sometimes you go to the Mediterranean - Israel, Italy, the south of France - and you eat a tomato that has just come off its plant, as red as a garnet and with a flavour as rich as if it's been ripened inside a volcano. And you think 'ah...I remember now...that's what it should taste like.' Not the pallid greenhouse (conservatory?) ones we buy in the supermarkets here. Somehow you know - as if you're remembering, even if you've never actually eaten one like this before - that this is the real thing and that nothing else passing for a tomato can ever taste as good, because this tomato has grown to be everything a tomato can and should be.

Sokolov's playing is like that.

It's difficult even to decide where to begin. Tone quality, I suppose, is as good as anywhere. Sokolov is a hefty fellow and he uses big gestures. His tone is massive and mountainous when he lets rip, but at every dynamic level it keeps its richness and beauty. In the first arpeggio of the Schubert A major Sonata D 959, the first piece on his programme, the quality of tone was so pure and smooth and magical that I found tears in my eyes from that alone. And although he's a big bear of a man, he can be as graceful as a ballet dancer (take the hand crossings in the Schubert) and create sounds as delicate as a hummingbird. He often chooses to play slowly and deliberately, to the point of idiosyncrasy; but the most rapid, filigree, spidersweb playing of the Chopin Fantasie-Impromptu proved that he does only what he chooses to do.

Then there's the way he orchestrates at the piano. If every piainist played this way, we'd have no need for orchestras, because this instrument turned into a one-man Berlin Philharmonic (or perhaps Moscow). Who knows how he does it - but the subtlest shift in weight or nuancing brings in a new character, a newly invented instrument, a new notion or emotion that can suddenly cast everything you've just heard in a revelatory new light. The second half was all Chopin: the impromptus, the two Op.62 Nocturnes and the Polonaise-Fantasie; the G flat impromptu, taken about half the speed most people take it, had a tenderness and profundity that could stop hearts and the B major nocturne glowed from within, filled with deep, unimaginable colours.

But then, just when you thought you'd heard it all, he unleashed the Polonaise-Fantasie. It was like listening to an entire Tolstoy novel compressed into a few pages of music - so expertly structured that when the climax arrived it emerged as a shattering apotheosis that blew the emotional horizon away into something resembling heaven. I wasn't the only one moved past reason by this - one of my dearest friends, a piano-world professional, tells me she simply burst into tears at the end because she had never realised that the Polonaise-Fantasie could be played like that. Nor, I reckon, had the rest of us.

This was an evening that showed what art is for and what art truly is. It's all real; it does exist; it is possible. Every shade of nuance, every grand-scale emotion that you never quite believed in, is absolutely true; to experience them is the ultimate reality of being human; this is love in its most pure and ecstatic form and to transmute it into artistry is something worth living for and worth dying for. This is why we have great art and why we need great art. Nothing else should do.


ADDENDUM, 17 APRIL: Here's a review of the concert. from Ying Chang at Classicalsource.com.

Hotting up in the blogosphere

They're coming thick and fast, these music blogs. Today I've come across the first one devoted to ongoing life with an orchestra, namely the St Louis Symphony Orchestra - they can be found here - and also a blog named Of Music and Men by an individual who signs himself simply 'Talvi', but whom I understand from a bit of quick internet research is Ilka Talvi, the former concertmaster of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. I felt that the tone of his blog seemed inordinately familiar to me...oh, sing hey for orchestra life...or not! Fiddlers of the world (and their spouses) unite! I've added both of these to the blogroll, as well as On an Overgrown Path, whose author's thoughtful comment here the other day had unfortunately to be deleted along with the post to which it was attached.

I wonder whether our own LPO has thought of having its own blog.....A few years ago, long before blogging had really begun to take off, I began to write a little book called 'Married to the LPO'. I wrote about 100 pages and my agent kindly sent it off to a few publishers, all of whom said thanks but no thanks, it's too much like a diary. I didn't realise that what I was writing was, effectively, a blog! Sadly, it ended up joining the stack of manuscripts confined to the attic.

Fab CDs

My last post has been removed due to circumstances beyond my control. Sorry. I thought it was nice. Anyway, here are two wonderful new CDs for you instead.

As promised, details of Philippe Graffin's new recital disc: release date is now 18 April. Entitled in the shade of forests: the Bohemian world of Debussy, Ravel, Enescu, this is a disc that could only have been devised by a violinist with more than his fair share of intelligence and creativity, and the musical result is just as exciting, with Philippe's improvisatory sense of fantasy and glorious tone expertly partnered by the French pianist Claire Desert. The programme's inspiration is the image of the gypsy wanderer so long associated with the violin in its purest, most instinctive form, and the way that that image has inspired the three composers involved.

Enescu's Impressions d'enfance begins the disc, imbued with the notion of the wandering minstrel fiddler that Enescu carried with him to maturity; then there is, of course, Ravel's Tzigane, but played as you've never heard it before. Philippe and Claire employed not only the 'lutheal' - the mechanism, akin to a prepared piano, that provides the piano with a range of stops to evoke the sound of the cimbalom, the guitar and many stranger beings - but the original lutheal, fitted into a small 1919 Pleyel grand in the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels, on which the piece enjoyed its very first recording. Sounds completely different from Dan Hope's also excellent recording ('East Meets West'), which involved fitting the machine into a modern Steinway. The 1919 instrument sounds more like a guitar than a harpsichord and meshes into some extraordinary, mesmerising soundworlds with the violin. Then comes the Ravel 'posthumous' sonata (a beautiful early work written for the composer to play with Enescu while both were students of Faure) and, last but not least, Debussy's complete works for violin and piano: not only the wonderful sonata, but also an early Nocturne & Scherzo that Philippe has reconstructed himself, and a batch of lovely pieces - two preludes and two songs - in arrangements, approved by Debussy, by the American-Hungarian violinist Arthur Hartmann. With superlative presentation, a thorough and fascinating booklet written mostly by Philippe himself and, above all, matchless, poetic, 500%-committed playing from both artists, this is Avie Records' latest must-have.

Marc-Andre Hamelin has an amazing new CD out: Albeniz's Iberia, complete, filled out with more treats from this ever-underrated but truly astonishing Spanish composer-pianist. Albeniz himself realised just how difficult Iberia was - apparently he considered it virtually unplayable and almost destroyed the manuscript for that reason. Thank heavens he didn't. And thank heavens for Marc, someone who can not only play it but can imbue it with the poetry, evocativeness, warmth, passion, earthy rhythm and sheer, lush gorgeousness that it deserves. I couldn't get enough of this, especially since I once entertained fond ideas of learning 'Triana', only to find my eyes crossing in front of my nose at the sight of the termite-heaps of notes that comprise the score. You'd never guess its fiendish complexity from this apparently effortless rendition, filled with wit and colour and dreamlike beauty bringing out every inch of the extensive French influence on the composer. If Debussy liked to sound Spanish, then Albeniz liked to sound like a French symbolist (except that he, of course, had just a little too much of a sense of humour!). Iberia is a one-off - there is nothing else quite like it in the piano repertoire - and I think this new recording is likely to be regarded as definitive for some time ahead. It's Hyperion's Record of the Month, and they're not wrong.

More soon.

A warm welcome...

...to everyone who's logged on from the Octobass link at The Llama Butchers. Hi guys. I loved "Double-stopping is futile". Probably more like 'double-stopping is impossible'...What I would like to know about the Octobass is HOW IT SOUNDS. Anyone ever heard it being played?

A little while ago, I wrote a short piece for SOUTHBANK magazine about a sort of concert-experiment in which the performers were planning to use a machine to produce Infrasound. This involves soundwaves of such low frequency that the human ear can't hear the result. But, apparently, you can feel it. One theory suggested that this weird experience is the physical reality responsible for sensations of being haunted. Wouldn't surprise me if the Octobass was just one step along from this.

Meltdown

A succession of somewhat cataclysmic musical experiences over the weekend has left me reeling for a few days, in the face of the mystery of how on earth a human being with the usual human functions can create such marvels. The combined brick-on-head consisted of 1)Gotterdamerung (well, Twilight of the Gods), 2)an interview with Daniel Barenboim, who has proved beyond a doubt how the power of music can achieve healing effects that no politician would dare to touch, and 3) Philippe Graffin playing Ravel's Tzigane with the white-hot energy of some possessed, shamanic worker of black magic; the little Conway Hall didn't know what had hit it.

Of course, one is very, very lucky to experience even one of these three bricks, let alone the whole lot, within around 24 hours. It's not that I'm complaining. I've simply been lost for words.

Meet the Vuillaume Octobass

Octobass
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.

My blog stats tell me that I've had a few hits from various people seeking information about the Vuillaume Octobass. So here it is. We visited it last November in Paris, where it lives at the musical instrument museum in the Cite de la Musique. (We did NOT use a flash to take this photo!) It's a most extraordinary contraption and its controls work via pedals which unfortunately aren't quite visible here. Apparently the famous French luthier Vuillaume made it according to specifications from Berlioz (I think). I'm not entirely sure why Berlioz wanted one - but if anyone was going to, it WOULD be him, wouldn't it?! By the way, I share his birthday.

urgh...

...can't think straight to post properly at the moment because I have a nasty cold. None of my usual remedies seem to be working (lemsip, whisky etc). Anyone know any good ones to recommend (available or creatable in UK)?

Meanwhile, my sympathies to the person who found my blog through a search on the words "fell in love with my violin teacher"...

Wagnerama

Every so often, I write about Wagner. It's always a tad daunting because so many music writers spend their whole lives delving into this extraordinary world; I merely dip a toe in the water. But a commission from my boss at the Indy led to this article focusing on Wagner's women which came out yesterday (but the Indy's website didn't put it up until today). We currently have two Rings on the go in London: the Royal Opera House has got as far as Die Walkure, while ENO is about to start Gotterdamerung. My interview was with the latter's director, Phyllida Lloyd, and lead soprano, Kathleen Broderick.

It's easy to think that the Ring carries some kind of curse - mainly because it's so expensive - but anyone who does believe in a celestial conspiracy theory around it would have found grist in their mill yesterday. For the first time EVER, the BBC decided to televise a complete Wagner opera live - Walkure from the ROH, (it showed Rhinegold, not quite live, the night before). So guess what? Wotan - the redoubtable Bryn Terfel - went sick. And they only showed Act 1, which of course doesn't feature him. Acts 2 and 3 will pitch up at some point when Bryn feels better and the Beeb can clear another slot. I was most upset as I'd kept the evening free for the treat of seeing this - and the first act was absolutely stunning.

I hope that the Curse of the Ring leaves ENO in peace on Saturday's opening night, because I have press tickets for once. I haven't seen Gotterdamerung live since the week after Margaret Thatcher resigned...

Heaven is...

...in Oxford, and it's called Blackwell's. I can't work out exactly why this bookshop is different from all other bookshops - something to do with the layout - but I could spend all day in there, being tempted by all kinds of different books that don't leap into the hand in quite thesame way in any other shop.

I came out with a volume of Mallarme poems, but arranged so cleverly that it's hard to understand why it's not done more often. As well as copious notes, it includes both the original French AND an English translation, printed side by side. It makes perfect sense. Standard practice for opera libretti and Lieder in CD booklets, of course, but not elsewhere. Normally we have to buy just one or the other; and, if you're me, you either miss all kinds of words and nuances in the original through not knowing the language well enough, or you feel the lack of the poem's native music when it's lost in translation. I had a quick hunt to see if anyone had done the same for Rimbaud or Baudelaire, but they hadn't.

Oxford is wonderful. I often wish I'd gone there instead of the other place, where the wind comes straight from Siberia.

Fiction schmiction

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who got 'stuck' trying to read JD Landis's 'Longing' - Richard responds to the book quiz by wondering how I got along with this. While I'd hate to throw cold water over a book that has evidently taken so much research, immersion and general blood and guts from its writer, I just can't get into it. That started me thinking back over the handful of novels I've attempted to read that are based on the lives of composers. The results are not encouraging - not least because I've always kind of fancied writing one myself.

I ploughed through Janice Galloway's 'Clara' - like 'Longing', it is of course about the Schumanns. I had my doubts about it, though most people do seem to have loved it and it is a great achievement, exquisitely written too. I felt that she dodged all the difficult issues, however - whereas Landis jumps straight in with both feet, speculating almost immediately about whether Brahms could have been the real father of Felix Schumann. My main complaint over 'Clara', however, was that although it is poetic, it is also over-intellectual and pretentious and although it paints the most fabulous picture of a Schumann who is totally, utterly, stupendously nuts, it never truly touches the heart. The same is true - as far as page 60 - of 'Longing', which on the other hand tries to be poetic but never quite makes it. Its self-conscious intellect, clumsy sexual symbolism and a style that attempts much but doesn't flow easily prevents any real identification with the characters. What's more, unlike Clara, the writer doesn't seem to have managed to assimilate his research into a fictional world of his own. Footnotes that take about third of a page spin you off at a tangent and there's nothing more offputting in fiction than constant reminders that it is based on fact. It's like flying a plane without retracting the wheels.

Most other novels about composers that I've read have been about Beethoven and Mozart. I hated Leslie Kenton's 'Ludwig' so much that it put me right off even trying John Suchet's multi-volume effort, though I've been told it's rather good. There was a book about Mozart writing Don Giovanni in Prague that was quite fun but, in writerly terms, somewhat amateurish. I haven't ventured into Anthony Burgess's 'Mozart and the Wolf Gang'...or a more recent book called 'Igor and Coco' (what more can one say?).

Here's the nub of the problem: either the fictionalised biographies of composers appeal to the head and not the heart - perhaps because of a perception that their potential market loves to be intellectually pretentious - or else they are just plain awful. The question is WHY? Is that what comes of trying to base a novel on fact? Or is it more the case that in musical spheres we all have our own mental images of our heroes and don't particularly like to take on board someone else's interpretations of them? I don't know, but I do know that the tempting scenarios that whisper to me from the 19th century need to be handled with extreme care and are probably best left alone.

A nice book quiz from Helen

Helen has put up a lovely book quiz and declared she's passing it to me next, so here's my take on it.


1. You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be? 

See Helen's excellent explanation of it. Safe to say, it involves memorising a single book.

I'd choose Dodie Smith's 'I Capture the Castle' - which I love so much that I've nearly memorised it anyway.


2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes. I think a few of the men in my past were actually fictional, because their real selves turned out to be very far removed from who I'd thought they were. If you see what I mean.


3. The last book you bought is:

'Longing' by JD Landis. A novel (yes, another one) about Robert and Clara Schumann. I'm currently stuck, around page 60.


4. The last book you read:

'Ferruccio Busoni: A Musical Ishmael' by Della Couling.


5. What are you currently reading?

'My Sister's Keeper' by Jodi Picoult.


6. Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Vikram Seth: 'A Suitable Boy'
Ian McEwan: 'The Child in Time'
George Eliot: 'Middlemarch'
Tolstoy: 'War and Peace' (though if 'Anna Karenina' could be appended to it, that'd be nice)
A very large book of poetry, including as much as possible of Keats, Yeats, Eliot and Ted Hughes, ideally with some Verlaine and Rimbaud and Baudelaire thrown in in the original French, and some Lorca, preferably translated...does this book exist or is it the poetic equivalent of iTunes?


7. Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?

Will think about this and do it later because the people I wanted to suggest have already done it!




 

In today's Indy...

I had a lot of fun writing this article about Hans Christian Andersen's musical associations, which appears in today's Independent. The CBSO is doing a new piece by Denmark's leading composer, Per Norgard, on 2 April...all is explained therein! I had an interview with the marvellous Norgard and also with the American professor and author Anna Harwell Celenza, who's just brought out a book about Andersen and music. And Tom, resident Danophile, is thrilled that I suddenly got interested in all things Danish! Especially ducks.

Very fired up today by Tasmin's glorious performance of the Elgar Violin Concerto last night with the LSO and Richard Hickox. What an extraordinary piece it is - with an intensity that transmutes from mood to mood but never really lets up. Tasmin really went for it: wonderfully secure, beautiful eloquent tone, deeply involved in every moment of the work, and with a particularly impressive sense of ensemble with orchestra and conductor. She did indeed make the piece very much her own, as I thought she would; the result was that it seemed part of her and she seemed part of it. Fabulous.

I just wish the Barbican was a nicer place to spend a Sunday evening.

Roger's rare bit of Mozart

A nice CD hit my desk yesterday: violinist Daniel Hope & pianist Sebastian Knauer playing Mozart with the Camerata Salzburg under Roger Norrington. Dr Philip Wilby has seen fit to 'complete' a concerto for violin and piano that Mozart left unfinished. It seems that after the first movement Wolfie decided to write a violin sonata instead, so the second and third movements of the concerto are in fact orchestrations of that sonata (D major K306). And it's gorgeous. The CD is on Warner Classics.

The press release contains a fabulous quote from Sir Roger:

"It's interesting to hear this kind of 'second generation' historically informed playing: modern instruments, but completely digested performance practice, with pure tone of course from the orchestra, a very slight and informed vibrato from the violinist, and phrasing from everyone in sight! What a joy to realise that you can play stylishly with any instrument, whether new or old, and that 'early music' is in the mind rather than the hardware."

So has Sir Roger Norrington JUST NOTICED that early music is all in the mind?! Some of us could have pointed this out 20 years ago, and indeed have been trying to do so ever since... Never mind, it's a lovely recording.

Dates for the diary

The BBC weather forecaster has confirmed my suspicion that Spring Is Sprung. And a lot is happening this spring. Here are just a few things that Tom and I and our friends are up to that may be of interest!

20 March (this Sunday): Tasmin is playing the Elgar Violin Concerto with the LSO at the Barbican, conducted by Richard Hickox. I think this just might be "her" piece to a T...Book here.

28 March: release date for Philippe's stunning new CD from Avie Records. Hear Ravel's Tzigane as you've never heard it before! More details when it hits the shelves.

9 April: the London Philharmonic is, quite incredibly, giving a concert at the RFH that includes BOTH Korngold AND Faure, with Ravel thrown in for good measure! I'm not sure that I've ever encountered My Two Boys sharing a programme before, let alone with my orchestra-in-law. Emmanuel Krivine conducts and the programme is Korngold's Schauspiel Ouverture, both the suites from Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe and, to close, the Faure Requiem.

5 May: oh boy, trust Jess to clash with the (likely) general election...I am doing an open interview with the pianist Robert Taub at Kingston University as part of the Kingston Readers' Festival. Our title (an inspiration from Bob!) is 'Beethoven, his ears and you'. Bob is in the middle of that piano Everest, performing the complete Beethoven sonatas, so we'll start from there and see where we get to. More details of venue and how to get there when it appears on the website.

22-25 May: Tom joins the Razumovsky Ensemble for three of their concerts in a festival deliciously entitled Bacchus & Apollo in the middle of a vineyard close to Bordeaux. Lucky Tom!

25 May: Rustem Hayroudinoff plays the complete Rachmaninov Etudes-Tableaux at the Wigmore Hall. Since Rustem is one of the most sincere and engaging pianists around, especially in Rachmaninov, this should be quite an event.

1 June: Tom and I give the official Elgar Birthday Concert at the Elgar Birthplace Museum at Broadheath in Worcestershire. Our title is Entente Cordiale and we'll be playing - yes! - English and French music, including the Elgar Violin Sonata, the Faure Violin Sonata no.1 and some lovely stuff by Delius and Debussy. Book here!

10 June: As above, but this time in Music at Woodhouse in Surrey, close to Dorking. Wonderful venue, gorgeous gardens, a spot well worth discovering...More details here.

9 June: Krystian Zimerman plays the Royal Festival Hall. Do NOT miss this concert!!!

That should keep you going for a bit. Us too, for that matter.

Booked up...

I spent yesterday afternoon at an event associated with the London Book Fair, which is in full swing from today through Tuesday at Olympia. The Daily Mail Book Club sponsors a set of 'masterclasses': a conference hall of would-be writers gathers to scoop up pearls of wisdom from those in the industry. (Oh joy! I no longer have to go to the one called How To Get Published!!) Yesterday afternoon, two of my favourite writers, Rose Tremain and Graham Swift, were there to talk about contemporary fiction, though in the event the questions were more about the process of writing a book, especially the inner processes and the emotions associated with them. About 300 of us lapped up every word as Rose Tremain described finishing 'Restoration' on a diet of toast, yogurt and sherry and recalled how the pencil-scrawled draft of her second novel met a leaking bottle of olive oil in a suitcase on her way home from holiday.

Asked about narrative structure, Graham Swift described his approach as musical. He feels his way through the structure according to emotions, he explained (this is a rough paraphrase, by the way), and suggested that the emotional charge associated with different parts of the book is something close to music because it is beyond the words themselves; it has to exist as a driving force before the words come into being.

This does ring some kind of deep bell at the back of my mind and somehow relates to my pre-caffeine musings about the relationship between music and writing the other day. Would a composer set out to write a piece of music without having a pretty good sense of the kind of structure he/she wants to create?

For my new book, I've mapped out a detailed skeleton of What Happens When to guide me through the maze. RT and GS yesterday both said that they don't do this, however. A novel is an adventure and must be approached with an adventurous spirit, suggested Swift. They both have a good idea of where their story is going, but are willing to be diverted to some extent as they make discoveries along the way. I was reassured to hear that Malcolm Bradbury used to go for the skeleton approach!

Meanwhile spring is beginning here in London. The daffodils are coming out and Solti the cat is going nuts (even though he's been 'done'). It's a time for hope and for clearing out the filing cabinets and for thinking ahead rather than back. Nice...

Preoccupied with poetry

Just found an incredible poem by Margaret Atwood at a blog called Blindheit: clarity is overrated. Most of the blog is in Spanish, which isn't exactly my best language, but the poem is in English and it's out of this world. Thank you, Evelio, wherever you are - it made my day.

Speaking of poems, I saw a terrific poem on the underground the other week - on the Jubilee Line heading for Waterloo after a Wigmore Hall gig - and now I can't a) remember the name of the poet, b) remember the name of the poem, or exactly how it went, c) find it on the Poems on the Underground website, d) find it anywhere else either. It's a recent poem and in it the poet is trying to rent out his heart, as if in a newspaper property ad. Is this a consequence of getting older - that one's brain turns into a Swiss cheese? If I encounter it again, I shall copy it out.

More consequences of The Book Contract: I am now allowed to acknowledge openly that poetry, literature, indeed fine writing generally, means every bit as much to me as music. The two are, after all, closely related. I'm not going to start analysing how and why, or waxing lyrical about it either, certainly not before I've had my second cup of coffee. But I do wonder if it has something to do with precision of structure - the way content and form unite in a unique manner to make a statement that is both entirely personal and entirely universal.

Midweek

Huge, huge thanks to everyone who wrote in with advice about the laptop computer. My first choice is indeed 12" Mac Powerbook. I spent a happy afternoon the other day tapping away on keyboards in Tottenham Court Road and it was by far the best in terms of keyboard comfort, carry-around weight and ease of use. BUT...the other day I went back to try to buy one for real and found that there was not a 12" Powerbook in stock anywhere in central London! I'm obviously not the only person who wants one...Since then I've reassessed the situation and worked out that as I'm not likely to be going away for any length of time until September (ouch!), there's really no urgency about it after all. Hmmm...

I should really have been in the Royal Festival Hall listening to Mahler 6 right now, but the Tomcat has injured his back pulling the bag out of the kitchen bin (I kid you not) and has had to take some time off work. Bad backs are a nightmare, as I know only too well from my experience last May, and there's no way on earth I'm going to let him sit in one spot with fiddle at the ready for 6 hours' rehearsal a day in his current state.

More alarming is that I'm not so sorry not to be at this concert. Mahler 6 is Tom's favourite of Big Gustav's output, but it's one of those symphonies that leaves me thinking, 'Come on, Gus, go see Freud and stop inflicting all this angst on your poor old listeners...' And friends in the band tell us that the Maestro (or is it Madame Piano Soloist?) insists they play the Mozart piano concerto with no vibrato. Not even on the long notes, as is recommended by Leopold, if someone had but bothered looking.

How come Leopold provides exercises for practising what we today call vibrato, several years before Wolfgang was born, and gives ample indication that the fiddlers around him were using FAR TOO MUCH WOBBLE HABITUALLY, and conductors still come along bright eyed and bushy tailed telling orchestras to use NONE? Nine times out of ten, it sounds frightful. What I want to know is, how many of them have so much as glanced at this text, let alone dared to form their own interpretations of it based on facts rather than hearsay?!?!? To judge from the squeaks and moans being emitted by some of today's highest profile musicians, not a great many.

On the town, on the news?!

Reeling slightly after seeing an item on the 10pm BBC news about ENO's new production of 'On The Town'. Apparently it is newsworthy that a national opera company is putting on a marvellous piece of music theatre by a 20th-century genius who happened to use clever lyrics, jazzy rhythms and lots of dancing. The thing is, 'On the Town', shock horror, is officially classified as A MUSICAL! And an OPERA company is doing it! And, horror of ultimate horrors, the tickets are selling well! Oh my Gaaaaahd, we're all going to die......not.

I mean, really. This is great stuff. Why on earth shouldn't an opera company do it? That way we can hear the music played as well as it ought to be, singing that is above the average school production (which was the miserable level of what I heard when I went to see 'West Side Story' in a major London venue a few years ago) and enjoy a wonderfully refurbished opera house without having to nod off while someone tootles through some bel canto twiddling, and without wanting to commit rapid hari kiri after subjecting oneself to Berg. I know what I'd rather see. And hey, I'm supposed to be educated and well-informed about opera. Some famous composer (whose name I can't remember at this time of evening) once said that there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. Implication, ditch the stupid classifications that cater only for the ubersnobs. I say, bring on the Bernstein!

One year on...

Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of my blog! I still can't get over the fact that I can type this in the comfort of my south-west London study at 8.38am and by 8.48 am some total stranger may be reading it on the other side of the world.

I don't know exactly how many visitors I've had during this time because I've had some ructions with webcounters along the way (there's now an invisible one!), but currently I'm averaging about 100 visitors per day. There's usually a dip at weekends, which suggests most of you log on at work! :-). I had my highest number of hits when I posted a picture of my cat, Solti!

There have been hits from 59 different countries from Los Angeles to Taipei to Chile to Kyrgystan.

I've discovered that bloggers are marvellous, strong-minded, helpful and idealistic people! You're marvellous, the lot of you! Some will go to extraordinary lengths to help out other people whom they've never met and wouldn't recognise if they bumped into them. Everyone experiences - I think - a sense almost of relief that blogs exist. This is a medium in which you really can speak your mind and nobody can tell you what your opinions ought to be.

Having so said, I'm still astonished at the way anonymous viewers hiding behind self-appointed watchdog-type nicknames are simply waiting to leap out of the woodwork to tear you to shreds the second you dare to admit that you don't like Christmas...

My most unlikely referrer was probably: http://ecksteingirlsbasketball.blogspot.com/. And some of the strangest Google queries that have led people to the site have been, in no particular order: 'Where can I find magic mushrooms in Scunthorpe'; 'latkes en francais' (please note, they taste the same in both languages!); 'Serkin rowing' (did he?); 'Ukranian poppyseed cake'; 'Real tomcat meow recordings sound effect download' (is that what my husband is doing in his spare time?!?); and last but by no means least, 'violin fetish' (erm, not unreasonable, this...)

Of course, the danger is that one uses a blog as a way of keeping friends and family scattered all over the place up to date with one's news - so apologies to anyone who's found they get fewer e-mails from me these days - don't worry, I still love you all!

Finally, I wish I could say that my book deal is the result of blogging, but it isn't. I started that book over a year before starting the blog and the fact that it's going to be published is the result of little more than a fantastic agent and some extremely good luck!

Any suggestions?

I need to buy a laptop computer. A lot of running around this spring/summer, one novel to edit, another to write, plus articles, not to mention blogging = portable electronic pal required. I get completely boggled by the choice, though. Does anyone have any recommendations for a good one?

I need:

to be able to type on it easily (often typing on a laptop keyboard feels like playing the harpsichord when you're used to a Steinway);

plenty of battery time

something as light and carryable as possible

broadband internet connection anywhere/everywhere (I know there's a term for this, but can't remember it)

to get at e-mail no matter what & send large files via e-mail

readable screen

it would be nice to play CDs & DVDs on it

Would be nice if it was Mac compatible in some way. I adore my iMac, which is safely rooted to my study desk, but am not sure that I want to fork out the necessary ££££s for the laptop equivalent!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

Catching up

Rather a fallow blog-week for me, I fear. Here are a few things that have been happening...

Tom has been on tour - Ljubljana, three places in Germany beginning with F and, to end, Basel. The major excitement seems to have been some official list that was circulated to the orchestra inadvertently revealing everybody's normally well-concealed middle names and dates of birth. Plus lots of snow, beautiful European shoebox concert halls and excellent audiences, Tom says, and stunning performances by their soloist, Christian Tetzlaff, who makes a more beautiful sound on his inexpensive modern fiddle than most others do on Strads. It ain't what you've got, it's what you do with it.

I went to hear Piotr Anderszewski at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Wednesday. Completely sold out, and not an easy programme at all - the first half was the Bach French Overture and the Szymanowski Metopes (Chopin took up the second half). Glorious playing, especially the Poles; most of all, the Chopin B minor Sonata. Once again, anyone who insists that audiences are declining should really have been there; they should also note that Grigory Sokolov's next recital, which is not until 15 APRIL, is ALREADY sold out. Which is no less than this absolutely unbelievable artist deserves. I'm glad he's gaining the prestige that is his due.

Meanwhile I am staring at my computer screen with increasing terror at the idea of what I soon have to do with it...

Insomnia

I can't sleep. I've had quite a large dose of whisky and still can't sleep, mainly because my brain is overloaded. Also, it's snowing here - most uncharacteristic for London in these days of global warming - and I'm wondering how I'll get to the library tomorrow to look for the books I need for my next Indy feature. For those of you beyond these sunny shores, all we need here is an inch of snow and the entire infrastructure of the country grinds to a halt. "The wrong kind of snow" has gone down in history as ye late lamented British Rail's excuse for everything packing up at the slightest excuse...

A few scattered snow showers earlier this evening didn't stop me getting to the Wigmore Hall to hear Gidon Kremer, who was playing there for the first time in 21 years. Not only a fantastic chance to catch him in an acoustic that flatters his sound - I've only experienced him before in the RFH and the Verbier tent - but also a marvellous, apparently eclectic but well-planned programme that would actually have worked nearly as well in Ronnie Scott's. Lots of exciting contemporary & near-contemporary stuff based around the influence, in one way or another, of Bach. With Kremer was the Russian percussionist Andrei Pushkarev, who blended wonderfully with Kremer's intelligence and driven conviction, but nearly stole the show with his own fabulous, jazzy transcriptions for vibraphone of some of Bach's 2-part inventions. I was on the edge of my seat all the way through. And I think Piazzolla is TOP.

Kremer seems to perform as he does not because he's a violinist, but because he's a thirsty, questing, creative musician in every sense. So many violinists seem to be hung up on purely violinistic questions: wonderful sound, great technique, etc, which on this instrument are so complex that they risk becoming an end in themselves. Kremer goes way beyond that. Some of us loved his Bach Chaconne - completely unbaroquey, completely Kremer, completely convincing (apart from some odd upbow retakes that puzzled me a bit). Others didn't. Why is it that some concert-goers hear a so-called baroque fiddler play this thing with a curved bow and no vibrato and instantly think that anything different from that has nothing to do with Bach?!? (I was, as you can see, eavesdropping on the row behind...) That's the amazing thing about Bach, as Pushkarev proved on his vibraphone: this music can take any number of arrangements, updating, adaptation etc etc and still emerge as strong and vital and marvellous as it was the day it was written.

No wonder I can't sleep.

Images are haunting me too of snowflakes on Oxford Street - the only thing that can turn that place into something magical - and poems on the underground and half-glimpsed parallel universes and eleventh dimensions that, I understand, may exist, but then again may not.

Celebrations...

We DID have a nice evening yesterday... Started off at the cashmere sweater shop, where I plumped for the purple in the end. Then on to the Savoy for a glass of champagne followed by dinner at the Savoy Grill. Beautiful food; the most elegant surroundings with plenty of space; and superlative service, all just perfect for the occasion. I regret to say I became quite emotional from time to time, since I've been dreaming of this evening - buying my cashmere sweater and celebrating the imminent publication of my first novel - for 20 years or more. Tom handled it all very well, bless him.

I do have to stop daydreaming and do some serious writing now...life goes on and so do the music magazines!

Underdog schmunderdog

Big thanks to Tim for a link to the Atlanta remarks/quotes about yrs truly's blog. I guess I was a technotwit after all...

I do have to take exception, though, to the journalist's description of Tom's orchestra, the London Philharmonic, as the 'underdog' among the top 5 London orchestras. Everyone gets the names confused now and then, but the LPO is really in pretty good shape (one sole section currently lets it down with depressing regularity, but I'm not really allowed to write about that...suffice it to say that it ain't the violins!). No, the real underdog is actually the Royal Philharmonic - which is absolutely tragic.

This once great orchestra, founded by Sir Thomas Beecham, gave the first Royal Festival Hall concerts I ever went to. I'll never forget, aged 12, sitting in the RFH listening to them playing Strauss's Don Juan and feeling the socks flying from my feet as the trombones glistened and the bows scrubbed...I remember thinking, 'I want to be part of this...' - little suspecting that, instead, I'd someday marry someone who was! But today the RPO has been left out in the cold in terms of government funding. The LSO gets the lion's share, and its home in the Barbican in the City of London enables it to have around double the cash of any of the others. No wonder it sounds good. The LPO and Philharmonia share a residency at the RFH and get decentish government money at the next level down. They both sound jolly good too. The BBCSO is a law unto itself, as ever: sometimes it sounds great, sometimes it doesn't, but it's not often to blame for the latter as its raison d'etre is its often weird and taxing programming. But the RPO, not having a high-profile residency (though it does have a new Chelsea base at Cadogan Hall now), gets such paltry funding that it has to resort to many of the most miserable kinds of orchestral gigs to make ends meet. It sounds and feels seriously demoralised. A pal of mine played a concerto with them out of town a year or so ago - I went along, and sitting in a draughty, miserable hall in which I was the youngest person by 40 years, listening to a draughty, miserable orchestra, was really sad, especially when I remembered how they had sounded all those years ago. It's not that they don't try - they certainly do - and I have the greatest respect for the way they soldier on. But I think they are trapped in a vicious circle and I don't know how they can get out of it.

The LPO is off on tour to Germany, Switzerland and Ljubljana next week, with Paavo Berglund conducting and soloists including cellist Pieter Wispelwey and violinist Christian Tetzlaff. They'll have to wrap up warm because it's -11 degrees in some of these places. Tom & I tried to check the forecasts for Ljubljana on the internet last night. After trying to spell it three times, we had to give up and try 'Slovenia' instead.

British technotwit

Thanks to Scott and Nancy, both of whom mentioned in Comments that I got written up (or my Blog did) in the Atlanta Constitution Journal. Scott was surprised that I hadn't remarked on it. Well, guess why...can I log on to the Atlanta Constitution Journal? No, I cannot! OK, I'm the British technotwit of the year, if not the millennium. But for once, it may not be my fault.

The website demands that you register, and when you're doing so it wants to know your phone number and your home state & zip code. British phone numbers have the wrong number of numbers, it seems, and the 'home state' is required but only gives you a list of American ones to choose from! Therefore nobody outside the happy USA can ever read this newspaper! Since many of you guys are American, and I've adored the place every time I've been there (with the possible exception of Fort Worth), I'll keep my blogmouth shut about Bush, protectionism, isolationism et al. Suffice it to say that if anyone could possibly E-mail me the article, copied & pasted in to a message, I'd be most grateful!

Smugness still reigns supreme over here...today we are having our celebration dinner and I am also going to do something that I have been promising myself for a couple of decades. I decided, when I was about 18, that when my first novel got accepted, I would buy myself a cashmere sweater - and would not have one until then. And I never have. So we are going to a cashmere sweater shop before dinner. The big decision: black or violet?

Valentine news!

Happy Valentine's Day, everybody! Here's my news. My first novel is going to be published next year and I now have one year in which to write the second. RIGHT NOW I LOVE THE WHOLE WORLD!!! :)

Details will follow in due course. Tom and I are treating ourselves to a very posh dinner to celebrate, but not until Thursday.

Ist possible?

Just saw something in the Radio Times that produced a sensation of sinking horror, the emotion hitting home before I could work out why. Artsworld is showing Kenneth MacMillan's ballet Romeo and Juliet this week and it's nice to see it picked out as a top choice. But the blurb begins: 'It helps to know the Shakespeare play on which Kenneth MacMillan's ballet is closely based...'

My heart missed a beat and a few seconds later I understood: the implication of this sentence is that there are people out there, people who might enjoy ballet on TV, who DON'T know Romeo and Juliet, not even the story.

What is the world coming to? I had thought that Romeo & Juliet, like The Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, was an Essential: one of those stories that you can assume most people (most people who'd want to see ballet, that is) know - as part of themselves, almost as part of modern western folklore. Has all this changed? HOW? WHAT HAPPENED?


COMFORTING, PERHAPS, in the light of this, to have found the RFH packed for Bernstein's Candide last night. Fab show, funny, moving, sharp-edged, amazing music. I couldn't stop foot-tapping and must have annoyed my neighbours. Wonderfully sung, too, with a sensational Canadian soprano, Carla Huhtanen, as Cunegonde, the indefatigable Kim Criswell as The Old Lady and the latest hot property - fresh-faced, bright-voiced young US tenor Michael Slattery - in the title role.

New York Phil

My friend Philippe Graffin is playing at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, tonight at 8pm and on Sunday at 5pm. If you're in New York, do go and hear him. This man can play the fiddle! He is with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center playing the Ravel Violin Sonata and the Faure C minor Piano Quartet. His colleagues are cellist Gary Hoffman (Saint-Saens Cello Sonata No.1), violist Paul Neubauer and pianist Andre-Michel Schub.

The programme is called 'Favourites from France' and, bless them, they've got a wine-tasting at 7pm too. I hope this entire occasion indicates a gentle thawing of the icy waters between France and the US?

Reading?!?

Nice feedback today from my friend Beate in Vilnius. She's been showing off the piece I wrote for The Strad (February issue) about musical life in Lithuania, one of the articles I was able to do as a result of my visit to the Vilnius Festival last June, and it seems to be going over well with many of the individuals and institutions involved.

This is a great relief, because trying to encapsulate an entire culture, a whole history and its associated personalities and triumphs and tragedies after only 5 days in the place is no easy task - and squeezing even 5 days' worth of experiences into three pages is just as problematic (especially experiences like that!). I can't help remembering that the whole of James Joyce's Ulysses takes place in one day.

It's weird, but after 15 years in music journalism, I still find it terrifying to think that anyone actually READS what I've written. Writing these days is a remarkably odd process (perhaps it always was...). You sit in your study, type away at the computer, brush and hone and chop and change and try reading things aloud and eventually you get the word length about right; then you press a button and off it goes...and you forget about it until, a few weeks or months later, there it is in the programme/newspaper/magazine and you can't even remember what you wrote or how you wrote it. I did some programme notes for an LPO concert last week and it was pretty alarming to see people in the audience sitting expectantly with the relevant page open on their knees. The most frightened I've ever been on such an occasion was once when I'd written the notes for a song recital at the Wigmore Hall and on the night I spotted Vikram Seth, one of my favourite writers, sitting across the aisle, leafing through...

Blogging, by contrast, is in real time. Plus, you can go back and change things if you need to. And you don't have to watch while people go 'tut tut tut' and shake their heads sadly over your remarks. Much more friendly.

Midlife crisis?

Hooray, hurrah, yipee, the pop-ups have gone! We can get back to normal now...

A friend wants to borrow some rare Korngold chamber music from me, so I dug out a few CDs I haven't played for a while and have been listening to them. I'm wondering whether this is symptomatic of an imminent midlife crisis, but I'm not responding to them in the way I used to. There are things in old EWK that I love as much as ever: Die tote Stadt, some of the songs, The Sea Hawk, the Sinfonietta... But it has finally struck me that after 20 years, if I still can't quite get to grips with the Violin Sonata, the Op.23 Suite et al, then I probably never will. Finally I began to think the unthinkable: Am I Growing Out Of Korngold?!?

This is TERRIBLE. I feel as if I am being disloyal to my oldest and once-dearest friend, someone whose warmth and generosity used to light up my life, but whose shortcomings such as overambition, overcomplication and, sometimes, lack of focus have started to get me down. Perspective is provided by my other old and dearer-than-ever friend, Faure, whose music strikes me as more magical every time I hear it, with never a note out of place (even when there are lots!) and imaginative depths that reveal more and more wonders the further you explore them.

I used to think (if Tom will forgive me for doing so!) of Korngold as the husband to whom I've been long married and whose faults help him to be endearing, with Faure as a kind of elusive dream lover who can never quite be grasped and remains a shining, out-of-reach ideal. Trouble is, now I want to marry my dream lover - and just at the time when Korngold's big anniversary year, 2007, needs some serious attention and I ought to help plan some celebrations. Ouch.

Maybe I'm just getting older. Maybe I really am having a midlife crisis...

Let's see if this works

Thanks, Jaquandor, I'll remove the Free Webcounter and we'll see if that sorts out the problem.

Back to normal posting asap....have a nice Sunday, everyone.

Thanks, but also:

Dear unknown pop-up poster,
Thanks very much for getting rid of the pop-up as requested. But also, please could you remove the little box that comes up when one leaves the site saying 'Browse the net with Screen Shots'? You should be told that I have NEVER ONCE clicked on OK. If my readers have ever clicked on it, it will have been by accident. Much appreciated, thank you again. jd

THE POP-UP IS NOT MY DOING

Dear all,

PLEASE REST ASSURED THAT THE POP-UP THING THAT HAS ATTACHED ITSELF TO THIS BLOG IS NOT MY DOING.

I have absolutely no idea a) how it got here, or b) how to get rid of it, short of moving blog hosts (which would mean redirecting everyone to a new website and learning how to use a totally different template just as I've got used to this one...). My profoundest apologies for the irritation.

An appeal to whoever is responsible for planting these things: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GET RID OF IT. YOU WILL MAKE YOURSELF NO FRIENDS THROUGH PLACING UNWANTED ADS ON THIS BLOG.

If the pop-up has not gone away by the end of this month, I will indeed move my blog elsewhere.

January sun

Sorry for long silence, folks. Have been in Madeira for a week, doing as little as possible with sea views all around. Back at home now, trying to remember how to type.

Beethoven blues

Thanks to everyone who replied to the composition/groves of academe post! It's always nice to know that one is not alone in these kinds of experiences - what's more worrying is to realise just how widespread they really are!

Anyway, onwards and upwards. What think you of present-day Beethoven interpretation? I've been attending some of my hubby's orchestra's latest Beethoven series under Kurt Masur. Tom has thoroughly enjoyed the concerts and the audiences have been going bananas even if critics have been slightly grudging. The last is tonight and it's completely sold out.

I am not trying to be disloyal to my orchestra-in-law, but actually the concerts I've heard have left me a little cold. There were beautiful moments: bits of the Pastoral, a lovely light touch in No.1 and so on. But No.7, which is my favourite, felt relentless and the finale of the Pastoral, which has to be one of the most wonderful moments in musical history, didn't expand and sing and give thanks the way I long for it to.

On the other hand, I'm reluctant to put all of this down to Masur alone. I think it's a global trend. I certainly wouldn't trust any of the period bands with this repertoire (the clunky drums alone would put me right off, never mind the squeaky violins), but it seems to me that too many modern conductors just don't give the music room to breathe. Where are the Klemperers, the Furtwanglers, the musicians who don't need to sound as if they have to catch a train, who can bring to life the full measure and depth and breadth of the music? And I don't mean they have to sound like Karajan.

It's possible to give something breadth and depth without it being 'boring' or 'old fashioned'. You can still articulate the slurs and staccatos and shape the phrases without losing the big picture, if you try. You can capture the sense of worship, the transcendence, without fear of association with some bygone political aberration whose practitioners unfortunately liked this kind of thing. And yet I can't remember the last time I was able to listen to a Beethoven symphony and have the really good, exhilarating wallow that I want to have. I'd rather listen to a recording of Barenboim or Schnabel or Kovacevich playing the piano sonatas because they do achieve this atmosphere. Am I being obtuse? Am I missing something marvellous somewhere? Is my taste hopelessly outdated? I just don't know. But one way or another, I didn't feel inspired to go to No.9 tonight.

Composing memories

A particularly fascinating correspondence thread attached to my recent post about contemporary symphonies leads me to the following, in the wake of a comment about how audiences have been alienated by modernism. It's not just audiences that have been alienated.

I used to be interested in composing myself, believe it or not. Once, at high school, I was put into a corner at the emotional equivalent of gunpoint and instructed to write a setting of Psalm 150. It was to be part of a theatrical presentation on the theme of Music and Revival that the school was putting on to celebrate the opening (by a minor royal) of its new hexagonal theatre. I did it, somehow, and it came off rather well, mainly because the theatre had a beautiful resonant acoustic, the group performing were up in the balcony and the opening phrase had a nice arch to it which, especially in the dark, made a reasonably OK impression. The headmistress liked it and wrote me a glowing reference, without which I probably wouldn't have got into my university so easily (incidentally, that was 1983 and systems have changed here since then).

So I trotted off to college thinking I might try composing - until I discovered a few things about the composing scene. First, it was entirely male dominated. I did have one female friend who refused to be put off by this and went for lessons with one of the place's resident eminent composers, but it was very clear, very fast, that we were not welcome in the clique - meanwhile, the place was full of arrogant little s**ts (male ones) who thought they were the next Beethoven and strode around the music faculty saying things like 'Prokofiev's rubbish'. But the attitude towards music that did not match accepted party lines - into serialism/modernism/systematic crafting evident only on paper and never to the ear - was the most destructive element. I well remember one friend - an extremely talented fellow - coming round for tea and saying, thoroughly perplexed, that his professor had just told him that he thought too much about the way his music sounded.

I doubt that I'd ever have been suited to life as a composer, but the fact remains that I've never set note to page again even though, at least in student days, I probably could have (if to no great effect) had the climate been just a little more encouraging to those who weren't male or super confident or inclined towards serialism/nasty noises. I once heard that someone in this university, in the 1960s, had submitted a cabbage as his composition portfolio. I can't say I blame him. At least you can eat a cabbage.

Return of the native...

Tom is just back from a tour to Athens with the band & Kurt Masur, playing all the Beethoven symphonies in four concerts in four days. Knackering - not least because they had to get up at 5.45am today to catch the plane home, after an extremely late night post-No.9. But it was also more rewarding than he had expected. In over 20 years of orchestral slog, he says, he's never done the complete Beethoven symphonies in a few days before; having got through it successfully, he wouldn't mind doing it all over again.

It's an intriguing thought. Given that many critics here have given Masur's Beethoven RFH cycle short shrift (they think: it doesn't say enough/has all been done before/predictable programming), here's a London orchestra stalwart who's never done it before and absolutely loves it. I know that my hubby is perhaps unusual in being one of very few orchestral musicians who still get a tremendous kick out of the job and come home from rehearsals whistling the tunes. But maybe it's the critics who are the truly jaded, not the orchestras. Maybe all those accusations are merely projection!

In Tom's absence, Tippett has been taking pride of place. I've learned a lot by writing about him - not least that I don't always love music for its own sake. I'm actually not that crazy about Tippett's music and I don't go out of my way to hear him (although 'A Child of Our Time' does make me cry, and I'm one of few people who thoroughly enjoyed 'New Year'!). What I love is what he stands for. I love the fact that here is a maverick composer who always had enough conviction to do his own thing. Someone who isn't afraid to splurge in the face of a critical establishment that thinks splurging is naive and therefore Bad. Someone who sticks up for what he believes in, even if it ends him in Wormwood Scrubs. I don't actually like the fact that he was a conscientious objector, because I don't see how anybody on earth could conscientiously object to fighting the Nazis - but that's not the point. While Britten, the beloved of the British Establishment, slunk off to the States for the same reason, Tippett stood his ground and did time for it and I admire him for that in a weird kind of way. I like his humanity and the generosity of spirit that he puts across; it's very rare.

Funnily enough, Korngold had a similar generosity, naivety and overambition; and Korngold is often criticised in a remarkably similar way. There, though, I think that comparison ends!

Wagner in Australia

Ken Nielsen writes from Australia, eager to get a discussion going about the problems of Wagner. I'll let him speak for himself:


"We went to the Adelaide production of The Ring in November and I have been thinking since about The Ring phenomenon.
First of all, I have to admit that Liz and I enjoyed the production mightily. That was a bit surprising, as we are a long way from being Wagnerians. Our tastes start in the baroque (Bach was the greatest ever) then jump pretty much to the 20th Century with light hops through the classical quartet repertoire. (I sometimes think I might spend the rest of my life with LvB's
Quartets). So, for most purposes, Wagner isn't on my list.

"What we enjoyed was the theatre. When I want to annoy Wagnerians I suggest that his music is really like a film score -great at accompanying the action but not of much value on its own. That is an exaggeration of what I think, but it's fun to see the reaction. I think the key to The Ring phenomenon is that it is a fairy story for grown-ups. If you allow yourself to be drawn into the myth you can follow with great enjoyment the broad brush of the story. It is fairly simple, it isn't very subtle though by overlaying Freud and other myth makers some manage to manufacture complexity.

"The amazing thing is to realize you have sat through 16 hours of music theatre without any boredom or loss of attention. I can't think of anyone else who can make me do that. I know people who booked for all 3 cycles. I can't imagine doing that. (Though at the end of each of the 3 Beethoven Quartet cycles I have seen, I would have willingly turned up the following week to do it all again). But, having said that, I don't fully understand why the show works the way it does.

"The other aspect that needs study is why any city with pretensions to artistic taste wants to do a Ring Cycle. A quick look at operabase.com shows that they are breeding at alarming rate. It is alarming because the Ring is so expensive it takes up a huge amount of the financial resources available for music and opera. So that is not available for anything else.

"The Adelaide Ring began about 8 years ago when the city lost the Formula 1 Grand Prix to Melbourne. The City looked for another major event to bring the tourists. Someone thought of Wagner. In 1998 they borrowed a production of the Ring from the Chatelet in Paris which went over so well they immediately announced that in 2004 there would be a new production presented straight through in 3 cycles. And so it was.

"The cost ended up at $A19 million (about 7.6 million pounds). On my arithmetic that is $4000 a seat for each cycle. The highest ticket price was about $1000. The balance came largely from government with smaller contributions from corporate sponsors and individual donations. Is any opera worth $4000 a seat, no matter who is paying? The government justified the expenditure on an increase in economic activity from tourism, which (pardon me) is nonsense. I am sure more tourists could have been attracted at much less cost: imagine offering to give tourists $1000 in cash as they got off the plane. But then similar nonsense is used to justify the Olympics and the Grand Prix.

"Please don't misunderstand, I am not objecting (here and now, anyway) to government funding of the arts. I just think there are better ways of doing it. I would rather subsidise artists with something to say than audience members.

"Some of this explains why we started our own opera company (www.pinchgutopera.com.au ), but that is another story..."

Ken Nielsen
Sydney Australia


Off we go, then! Here's my contribution: Wagner is so demanding to stage, even at its simplest, that the cost without public subsidy would be prohibitive in any country that does not have the same levels of private money as America. That would mean that most countries would never hear any Wagner live. And I believe Wagner has to continue to be heard live; if such things are rendered eternally impossible, it will mean the end of real, educated, creative culture (as opposed to dumb&dumber TV-centric 'culture') in the western world.

So costs do have to be trimmed. What pushed up the cost in Australia? Generally, do conductors and big-name singers really need to be paid the kind of extortionate fees that they demand (orchestral musicians suffer freezes on their already low pay because of these greedy windbags). Time, I think, to re-read Norman Lebrecht. It may not have 'killed classical music' yet, but there's an evident risk that it could, at least at the pricier end. I do wonder why orchestras/managers/promoters didn't just say NO WAY ON EARTH when agents demanded ever-more astronomical sums?!?

Excuses

Current excuses for lack of frequent blogging are topped by a sprained ankle, a touring husband and rather a lot of Tippett. I'll be back online as soon as I can think straight.

Symphonic blues?

I am wearing sackcloth and ashes over missing the world premiere of Matthew Taylor's Symphony No.3 on Friday night. Helen played the harp at the concert and has a full report at Twang Twang Twang. I fear I had to stay in and practise/rehearse (we had a gig yesterday) and so it has been and gone and I feel desperately guilty. (Not least because Matthew once dedicated a very touching piano piece to me. Matthew being a great Schumann fan, it's called Blumenstuck. I remember thinking the title beautifully ironic because at the time I did indeed feel bloomin' stuck...but, thank goodness, that's a long time ago...).

Helen asks in her report why symphonies aren't generally being written these days; Lisa has some succinct and pertinent replies. But what's worrying me about Matthew's new piece is when we will ever have the opportunity to hear it again. Writing a symphony takes so much time, effort and spiritual blood & guts that it seems nothing less than tragic if there's to be only one performance. Sobering, of course, to think of symphonies over the centuries whose composers never heard them at all - Schubert's Ninth being the prime example. To Lisa's list of reasons, however, I should add that concert promoters who refuse to take risks must shoulder some of the blame. By being over-conservative, they have steered audiences towards further conservatism - if you feed people nothing but familiar music, they will come to expect and accept nothing but familiar music. As indeed, they now do.

Hats off to Matthew and his few symphony-writing colleagues who dare to stand their ground and speak their musical minds, even if it means swimming against the tide and even if it means busting every gut every day of their lives. Bravo.

Viva Jacqueline

My biggest assignment this Christmas was writing a mega-article about a mega-musician: a very substantial piece for the Indy about Jacqueline du Pre, who would have celebrated her 60th birthday later this month. The article is out today and turns out to be the cover feature for the review section. It's also trailed on the front page of the main paper. I may have been a journalist for 15 years but I still get a real kick out of things like this!....and I'm overjoyed to have been able to make some contribution to celebrating an artist like 'Jackie', who meant so very much to so many people - and still does.

Raphael Wallfisch is at the heart of this because he has organised two impressive days of commemorative concerts - on 25 January he and pianist John York play all the Beethoven cello sonatas at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and on 26th Symphony Hall Birmingham is hosting a whole afternoon & evening of special events with Wallfisch, Christopher Nupen and friends. All proceeds to the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Book now!

By Strauss

To the most stunning and luscious chamber music concert last night: the Razumovsky Ensemble at Wigmore Hall. The Razumovskys are a flexible-sized group of London's top orchestra leaders and freelance chamber musicians/soloists, given their much-deserved chance to play at the Wig and elsewhere in groups that show what astonishing players they really are. Last night the ROH leader Vassko Vassilev, LSO principal second David Alberman, LPO principal viola Sasha Zemstov, ROH principal viola Andrey Viytovych and cellists Oleg Kogan (who runs the whole thing to perfection) and Alex Chaushian got together to play an entire programme of string sextets: the one from Capriccio by Strauss, the Brahms G major and the Tchaikovsky Souvenir de Florence. We sat and wallowed all the way through. The sound quality! The vigour! The textures! The fabulous music that is never performed often enough! Glorious musical chocolate, 100% cocoa solids.

A thought about Capriccio: the crux of the opera is whether Countess Madeleine, pursued by a poet on one hand and a musician on the other, decides that music is more important than words, or vice-versa. We never learn what her decision is. BUT Strauss starts the opera with - a self-contained string sextet. He must have realised that it would be taken out and performed in chamber concerts as a work in its own right. Without words. Could this sextet represent Strauss's reaction to his story? The answer is music, music, music...

Essential reading

Thanks to Lisa Hirsch & Helen Radice, I've just come across Adaptistration, a blog by musician, teacher and orchestra manager Drew McManus in the US. It's part of Artsjournal and concerns the evolution of orchestral management, but using a sharp mind and fine arguments to do so. Well written, to the point and most insightful. Anyone in the music business, or with a serious interest in orchestras for any reason whatsoever, should read it.

Footnote: Drew, like me, is married to a professional violinist. Is there something about the instrument that induces its player's spouse to blog?!?

New year, new start

Among things that need a serious restart are our front room shelves, groaning with LPs that haven't been played for 20 years. Today Tom decided we should have clear-out. He has a vinyl buff friend who'll be coming round to take away most of our collection. So this seemed an apposite day, hangover notwishstanding, to sift out what we want to keep.

Ouch. Memories flood back. Tom kept anything that said JASCHA HEIFETZ on the front; I kept anything that said KRYSTIAN ZIMERMAN. Some of his early recordings have never been transferred to CD and the pictures of him aged around 21 are seriously cute. And many of them are signed (in 1982/83 I was a goggle-eyed teenaged groupie!).

Anything that has been transferred to CD went into the OUT pile - even things that nearly broke my heart because I remember listening to them again & again & again as a kid, years before my parents died: things like Mendelssohn ' A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Zukerman playing the concerto. There's a boxed set of 'Carmen' starring Teresa Berganza that has never even been opened...I remember buying it with my Dad on the day I took Grade VII piano aged 15 and somehow we never got round to playing it... All the Andras Schiff Bach recordings that helped me survive Cambridge in the mid 1980s (music faculty ethos in those days was Christopher Hogwood=God; Bach on Piano=Evil Subversive Forces) - I have them on CD now, but the big Decca double LPs were so lovely... Various recordings signed by musicians, not just Zimerman; others affectionately signed by ex-boyfriends with cryptic initials, meanings long forgotten. And recordings that have probably been transferred to CD but also possibly not...like Frederica von Stade, accompanied by Jean-Philippe Collard, singing Faure. Wonderful disc, surely, surely we must be able to find it on CD? But still, I haven't listened to it in over 15 years.

I can't quite imagine feeling this sentimental over CDs. Too much plastic, too many broken boxes, too small. But at least they don't warp.

We listened to one very special LP: Hugh Bean and David Parkhouse playing the Elgar Violin Sonata. Wonderful, rich,singing tone, masses of fantasy, perfect atmosphere. Warped, however. Have ordered it on CD now.

One end result, other than the agony of seeing one's childhood memories slung into the OUT pile, is that I want to get hold of the RCA Heifetz edition. Loads of CDs, but Tom deserves them for his next birthday. Unfortunately, though, as is so often the case in these alarming days, it now seems to be unavailable from Amazon and the various second-hand CD sites I've tried online have only bits and pieces from it. Anyone know where I might be able to run the whole lot to earth?

Solti does it again

Solti
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.

As I had the highest ever number of blog hits when I posted a photo of my cat Solti, I thought I'd wish you all a happy new year by posting another one.

Unfortunately, though, Solti's current state isn't too pretty. He got into a fight the other day and came in with a hole in his head. Today the vet dealt with the resulting abcess and now poor Sir Georg has a very bloody face, a bald patch and an enormous plastic collar to prevent him worrying at the wound. Not so much Long John Ginger this time as Shakespeare on an extremely bad day. Perhaps some disgruntled orchestral musician has been reincarnated as a neighbouring cat and wanted to get his revenge...So I'm posting the same old picture again instead!

Life isn't all bad, though: Solti got tuna for dinner. There's a moral in there somewhere.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE! Here's to a wonderful year of music in 2005.

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