As a teenager, I used to be a ballet nut and now - after a long gap - I've resumed. Discovering a few friends who are also ballet nuts is a help - one of my more depressing experiences was watching my husband nod off quietly while Alina Cojocaru performed the Rose Adage, and discovering afterwards that he didn't know the story of The Sleeping Beauty. Upshot is I've been to see 'Mayerling' twice in two weeks.
'Mayerling', based on the true story of Prince Rudolf, heir to the Hapsburg empire, and his suicide pact with his teenaged mistress Mary Vetsera at the Mayerling hunting lodge, is real dance theatre. It achieves theatrical coups that you might not think ballet could deal with - the subtle (and less subtle) relationship between Rudolf and his ex-girlfriend; the frightening cross-currents in the various pas de deux (on his wedding night, after he has terrified his bride Stephanie with his favourite foreplay toys, a pistol and a skull, why does she still run after him and fling herself, literally, around his shoulders?); and ultimately the meeting of soulmates, even if those soulmates are people that most of us wouldn't want to go within 100 miles of. It makes you care passionately about the most unappealing of all possible characters, and cry when they kill each other. How does Kenneth MacMillan do it?
MacMillan was nothing short of a choreographic genius, but the answer - in part - has also got to be the music: Liszt, patchworked together by the expert arranger John Lanchbery. The late Lanchbery was a one-off. He made numerous arrangements for Frederick Ashton: La fille mal gardée, The Tales of Beatrix Potter, A Month in the Country and more. For 'Mayerling', he carefully selected, orchestrated and tailored to MacMillan's needs a tremendous range of Liszt - we spotted Soirees de Vienne, the Faust Symphony, Vallee d'Obermann, Funerailles, Chasse-neige, Harmonies du Soire, Paysage, a Valse oubliee, the Mephisto Waltz (brilliantly used in the tavern scene) and much more. Liszt was an inspired choice of composer - apart from the fact that he knew and performed to this whole bunch of mad, ghastly Hapsburgs, his music can steep you in romanticism and make you suspend your early 21st-century ironic detachment like nobody except possibly his son-in-law Wagner. Lanchbery is an undersung musical hero and deserves a standing ovation in his own right.
'Mayerling' is a powerful, at times devastating evening out - frighteningly exhilarating and cathartic - and I can't recommend it highly enough. Book online at the Royal Opera House link left.
PS - Delighted to find a Comment posting from harpist Helen Radice, a fellow classical music blogger. If you enjoyed the post about musicians' mad travel schedules, try hers - you ain't seen nothing yet! Link on the left.
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Wonderful books old and new
Hooray for the internet!
Good books on music are ever rarer and go out of print ever faster. When I was researching my Faure book, I stumbled across a volume in the Barbican library called 'Saint-Saens and his Circle' by James Harding. Published in 1965, it brings the era and its personalities to life with a vividness and elegance that eludes most of the more musicological writers. Of course, it's long out of print. I'm currently working on a piece to trail Steven Isserlis's Saint-Saens Festival, which begins next month, so a couple of weeks ago I headed for the Barbican to refresh my memory. Got there to find the library was closed...when it should definitely have been open. Westminster Music Library has strange opening hours which don't suit me too well. Local authority libraries here in South West London don't seem to have heard of Saint-Saens.
But I now have my own beautiful, good-as-new copy of this elusive little book, thanks to the internet. Devoted buyers and sellers of second-hand books have spurred on the creation of a number of sites that pull together huge numbers of second-hand book dealers all over the world - among them abebooks.co.uk (I also like usedbookcentral.com but it's based somewhere in the American mid-west and most purchases get sent there first!). You can search for a title or author and at once up comes a list of those outlets which have one to sell, everywhere from Leigh on Sea to Nebraska. You can write to the bookseller, or simply order and pay online and a day or two later the book is at your door - in this case, for the same price as two or three train trips from Mortlake to the British Library. I've also run to earth a long out-of-print biog of Turgenev by V S Pritchett and a lovely hardback of Turgenev's letters.
Now all I need is time to read them!
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, a brand new book arrived in a parcel from Classic FM Magazine: 'Claude Debussy as I knew him' and other writings by Arthur Hartmann. I hadn't come across Hartmann before, but it seems he was a well-known violinist in the first half of last century and knew everyone who was anyone; he was also blessed with the ability to write beautifully about his acquaintances. Born in Philadelphia to Hungarian parents, Hartmann did, however, reinvent himself, writing his own press releases and making out that he too was born in Hungary - even, apparently, speaking with a phoney foreign accent and apologising for his English! (But we know musicians who do this even today...). It includes a number of letters from Debussy and Emma Debussy to Hartmann, as well as meaty chapters about Hartmann's teachers Ysaye and Loeffler. A treasure of a book, published by University of Rochester Press.
Good books on music are ever rarer and go out of print ever faster. When I was researching my Faure book, I stumbled across a volume in the Barbican library called 'Saint-Saens and his Circle' by James Harding. Published in 1965, it brings the era and its personalities to life with a vividness and elegance that eludes most of the more musicological writers. Of course, it's long out of print. I'm currently working on a piece to trail Steven Isserlis's Saint-Saens Festival, which begins next month, so a couple of weeks ago I headed for the Barbican to refresh my memory. Got there to find the library was closed...when it should definitely have been open. Westminster Music Library has strange opening hours which don't suit me too well. Local authority libraries here in South West London don't seem to have heard of Saint-Saens.
But I now have my own beautiful, good-as-new copy of this elusive little book, thanks to the internet. Devoted buyers and sellers of second-hand books have spurred on the creation of a number of sites that pull together huge numbers of second-hand book dealers all over the world - among them abebooks.co.uk (I also like usedbookcentral.com but it's based somewhere in the American mid-west and most purchases get sent there first!). You can search for a title or author and at once up comes a list of those outlets which have one to sell, everywhere from Leigh on Sea to Nebraska. You can write to the bookseller, or simply order and pay online and a day or two later the book is at your door - in this case, for the same price as two or three train trips from Mortlake to the British Library. I've also run to earth a long out-of-print biog of Turgenev by V S Pritchett and a lovely hardback of Turgenev's letters.
Now all I need is time to read them!
Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, a brand new book arrived in a parcel from Classic FM Magazine: 'Claude Debussy as I knew him' and other writings by Arthur Hartmann. I hadn't come across Hartmann before, but it seems he was a well-known violinist in the first half of last century and knew everyone who was anyone; he was also blessed with the ability to write beautifully about his acquaintances. Born in Philadelphia to Hungarian parents, Hartmann did, however, reinvent himself, writing his own press releases and making out that he too was born in Hungary - even, apparently, speaking with a phoney foreign accent and apologising for his English! (But we know musicians who do this even today...). It includes a number of letters from Debussy and Emma Debussy to Hartmann, as well as meaty chapters about Hartmann's teachers Ysaye and Loeffler. A treasure of a book, published by University of Rochester Press.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Coleridge-Taylor and South Africa: a personal testament...
Written through a growing pile of tissues...My work doesn't often induce tears, but this is an exception.
Philippe Graffin's new CD landed on the doormat yesterday, fresh from Avie. As I mentioned before, it's the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto's world premiere recording plus its perfect companion piece, the Dvorak. Philippe is accompanied by the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Michael Hankinson.
Accompanied by WHAT, you ask?
The JPO was founded in 2000 after the disbanding of the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra. It represents a desperate struggle to keep classical music alive in South Africa at a time when the country is beset by vast and terrifying problems. Sheer determination on the part of the musicians seems to be behind this phoenix rising from the ashes of a cultural relativism from the state that is understandable but depressing. This is the JPO's first commercial recording. The booklet photos prove that the orchestra is racially mixed; their playing proves that they pull together towards one goal; and Coleridge-Taylor - racially mixed himself and with 'more talent in his little finger' than the rest of his composition class had in their entire bodies, according to his teacher, Stanford - is the perfect figure for this debut.
I got involved with this CD through a set of extraordinary coincidences. Back in August 2002, I was doing some freelance sub-editing for The Strad and on my desk landed an article about the history of the Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto, by the American president of the Maud Powell Society, Karen A. Shaffer. It was fascinating, but the editor felt it needed a little tweaking and some extra background. This was entrusted to me and I ended up taking it home to edit and research there. It was published in the November 2002 edition.
A year later, Philippe told me that he was about to record the concerto. That's funny, I said, I've still got an article about it by someone else on my computer, here it is by e-mail.... After another six months, I was thrilled to get a surprise call from Simon Foster asking me to write the booklet notes.
But it's only now that I've seen and heard the finished CD that the significance of this project has really hit me - and its significance for me personally.
My parents were both born in Johannesburg and left in the 1950s. They were both music-lovers, brought together by their passion for music and the lack of such enthusiasm in those around them. My mother once told me that she'd had the opportunity to come to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music and her father refused to let her go. They hated apartheid and also longed for the music, opera and ballet that was available to them in London. Later, when I was growing up, all my parents' friends in London were South African emigres too, many of them exiled for political affiliations, involvement with anti-apartheid campaigns or educational activities and consciousness-raising in the townships. My father, a neuropathologist, later told me he was an outside consultant in the Steve Biko inquest.
My father had studied at the University of the Witwatersrand - which happens to be where Philippe and the JPO made this recording. Dad refused to go back to South Africa for several decades; in his last years, however, after the fall of apartheid, he took to spending the winters in Cape Town. I spent two weeks there with him in 1996 when he was already terminally ill - a time that now provides treasured memories.
That visit was my first since childhood. I've always shied away from South Africa and all it represents for me and my family. A massive sense of guilt at my family background; a revulsion at the country that could invent and keep in place such a horrific system for so long; a hatred of the philistine outlook and lack of cultural appreciation; the introversion of so much of the Jewish community (even before I was 18 my grandfather was on at me about marrying a nice Jewish boy); the rift between my own interests and those of so many of my cousins, who no doubt think I'm barking mad. South Africa is a loaded issue.
So, when Philippe said to me last December, 'Don't you want to go to South Africa?' I could only say that I didn't. Yet any journalist with half a brain would have looked at this project and headed straight for Heathrow. As Philippe says in his introductory note, vast numbers of black children in South Africa are now learning the violin - he's seen this for himself - and he compares it to the ghettoes of Vilna and Warsaw where so many great violinists of the past originated. Many Jewish emigres from Lithuania went to South Africa; did they in some way bring passion for the violin with them and take it into the townships? Among those Lithuanian emigres were my father's grandparents...
This could have been a massive story: the concerto, the orchestra, the kids...and I didn't do it. Now I'm wondering whether anyone else will either. If not, it's tragic.
And yet, I find that I've ended up being a small part of a production that would have represented the fulfilment of my parents' dreams, had they lived to see it. In Johannesburg, where this CD will probably sell well, there are many people who remember them and will recognise our name. Can one dedicate booklet notes in a CD? If so - these are dedicated to the memory of my parents: Myra (1932-1994) and Leo (1928-1996).
That's why I've been having a good howl today.
Philippe - if you read this - thank you.
Philippe Graffin's new CD landed on the doormat yesterday, fresh from Avie. As I mentioned before, it's the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto's world premiere recording plus its perfect companion piece, the Dvorak. Philippe is accompanied by the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Michael Hankinson.
Accompanied by WHAT, you ask?
The JPO was founded in 2000 after the disbanding of the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra. It represents a desperate struggle to keep classical music alive in South Africa at a time when the country is beset by vast and terrifying problems. Sheer determination on the part of the musicians seems to be behind this phoenix rising from the ashes of a cultural relativism from the state that is understandable but depressing. This is the JPO's first commercial recording. The booklet photos prove that the orchestra is racially mixed; their playing proves that they pull together towards one goal; and Coleridge-Taylor - racially mixed himself and with 'more talent in his little finger' than the rest of his composition class had in their entire bodies, according to his teacher, Stanford - is the perfect figure for this debut.
I got involved with this CD through a set of extraordinary coincidences. Back in August 2002, I was doing some freelance sub-editing for The Strad and on my desk landed an article about the history of the Coleridge-Taylor Violin Concerto, by the American president of the Maud Powell Society, Karen A. Shaffer. It was fascinating, but the editor felt it needed a little tweaking and some extra background. This was entrusted to me and I ended up taking it home to edit and research there. It was published in the November 2002 edition.
A year later, Philippe told me that he was about to record the concerto. That's funny, I said, I've still got an article about it by someone else on my computer, here it is by e-mail.... After another six months, I was thrilled to get a surprise call from Simon Foster asking me to write the booklet notes.
But it's only now that I've seen and heard the finished CD that the significance of this project has really hit me - and its significance for me personally.
My parents were both born in Johannesburg and left in the 1950s. They were both music-lovers, brought together by their passion for music and the lack of such enthusiasm in those around them. My mother once told me that she'd had the opportunity to come to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music and her father refused to let her go. They hated apartheid and also longed for the music, opera and ballet that was available to them in London. Later, when I was growing up, all my parents' friends in London were South African emigres too, many of them exiled for political affiliations, involvement with anti-apartheid campaigns or educational activities and consciousness-raising in the townships. My father, a neuropathologist, later told me he was an outside consultant in the Steve Biko inquest.
My father had studied at the University of the Witwatersrand - which happens to be where Philippe and the JPO made this recording. Dad refused to go back to South Africa for several decades; in his last years, however, after the fall of apartheid, he took to spending the winters in Cape Town. I spent two weeks there with him in 1996 when he was already terminally ill - a time that now provides treasured memories.
That visit was my first since childhood. I've always shied away from South Africa and all it represents for me and my family. A massive sense of guilt at my family background; a revulsion at the country that could invent and keep in place such a horrific system for so long; a hatred of the philistine outlook and lack of cultural appreciation; the introversion of so much of the Jewish community (even before I was 18 my grandfather was on at me about marrying a nice Jewish boy); the rift between my own interests and those of so many of my cousins, who no doubt think I'm barking mad. South Africa is a loaded issue.
So, when Philippe said to me last December, 'Don't you want to go to South Africa?' I could only say that I didn't. Yet any journalist with half a brain would have looked at this project and headed straight for Heathrow. As Philippe says in his introductory note, vast numbers of black children in South Africa are now learning the violin - he's seen this for himself - and he compares it to the ghettoes of Vilna and Warsaw where so many great violinists of the past originated. Many Jewish emigres from Lithuania went to South Africa; did they in some way bring passion for the violin with them and take it into the townships? Among those Lithuanian emigres were my father's grandparents...
This could have been a massive story: the concerto, the orchestra, the kids...and I didn't do it. Now I'm wondering whether anyone else will either. If not, it's tragic.
And yet, I find that I've ended up being a small part of a production that would have represented the fulfilment of my parents' dreams, had they lived to see it. In Johannesburg, where this CD will probably sell well, there are many people who remember them and will recognise our name. Can one dedicate booklet notes in a CD? If so - these are dedicated to the memory of my parents: Myra (1932-1994) and Leo (1928-1996).
That's why I've been having a good howl today.
Philippe - if you read this - thank you.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Fame: are they gonna live forever?
Great musicians...oh yes, they exist and many of them are properly recognised. Argerich, Barenboim, Zimerman, Lupu... But the way the wheels of the music business turn, on the next strata down there's a lot of confusion about who is a great musician and who simply looks good on a front cover or has a journalisable hobby such as keeping fierce wild animals. The famous artists are not necessarily the great ones; and vice-versa.
Andrew Clements wrote an absolute stinker of a review about Leif Ove Andsnes in The Guardian the other day, saying, basically, that he can't see what all the fuss is about. Andsnes is a really sweet guy and various of my female colleagues think he's gorgeous. But compare him on purely artistic grounds to a pianist like Grigory Sokolov...hmmm...
Hopefully, if you're reading my blog, you already know who Sokolov is. In case not: he is a big Russian bear of a pianist, a one-time protege of Gilels. His face on a poster is not going to make teenagers swoon, but he is the one pianist I've heard in the last couple of years who has made me rethink everything I ever thought about the piano. His playing is so intense, so concentrated, so beautiful and so wide-ranging in style, dynamic and imagination, from Couperin to Prokofiev, that most others look pallid in comparison. He has a following among the cognoscecnti. But shouldn't people be queuing out past the Thames to hear artistry of this calibre? Meanwhile I've heard about one award a few years ago that involved a shortlist of fine musicians...allegedly selected not least because they also looked good on magazine covers.
I don't think there's any secret about any of this - the music business has worked like this for years - but it does get up my nose because it seems that the way to have your piano recital album hit the charts is now to hug wolves in your spare time. With too many competitions and too much corruption in the awarding of prizes, means of making sensible, independent choices about rising stars have diminished somewhat. Therefore decisions about who gets the recording contracts and the promotion campaigns seems to be increasingly a matter of one person's whim somewhere at the top of a company. That person has to know what they're doing and one can't help wondering, occasionally, whether they really do.
Actually they know exactly what they're doing. But that doesn't always involve signing up musicians on artistic grounds alone.
On that merry note, I'm off to Berlin to interview one of the exceptions: Daniel Barenboim.
Andrew Clements wrote an absolute stinker of a review about Leif Ove Andsnes in The Guardian the other day, saying, basically, that he can't see what all the fuss is about. Andsnes is a really sweet guy and various of my female colleagues think he's gorgeous. But compare him on purely artistic grounds to a pianist like Grigory Sokolov...hmmm...
Hopefully, if you're reading my blog, you already know who Sokolov is. In case not: he is a big Russian bear of a pianist, a one-time protege of Gilels. His face on a poster is not going to make teenagers swoon, but he is the one pianist I've heard in the last couple of years who has made me rethink everything I ever thought about the piano. His playing is so intense, so concentrated, so beautiful and so wide-ranging in style, dynamic and imagination, from Couperin to Prokofiev, that most others look pallid in comparison. He has a following among the cognoscecnti. But shouldn't people be queuing out past the Thames to hear artistry of this calibre? Meanwhile I've heard about one award a few years ago that involved a shortlist of fine musicians...allegedly selected not least because they also looked good on magazine covers.
I don't think there's any secret about any of this - the music business has worked like this for years - but it does get up my nose because it seems that the way to have your piano recital album hit the charts is now to hug wolves in your spare time. With too many competitions and too much corruption in the awarding of prizes, means of making sensible, independent choices about rising stars have diminished somewhat. Therefore decisions about who gets the recording contracts and the promotion campaigns seems to be increasingly a matter of one person's whim somewhere at the top of a company. That person has to know what they're doing and one can't help wondering, occasionally, whether they really do.
Actually they know exactly what they're doing. But that doesn't always involve signing up musicians on artistic grounds alone.
On that merry note, I'm off to Berlin to interview one of the exceptions: Daniel Barenboim.
Friday, March 12, 2004
Korngold rides again
Opened The Guardian this morning to find a massive article about Erich Wolfgang Korngold and his two finest operas, Die tote Stadt and Das Wunder der Heliane, staring back at me. By Martin Kettle! Not a moment too soon, EWK's going mainstream. There's a new production of Die tote Stadt in Berlin, which seems to have prompted this latest article, and the year 2007 will mark the 50th anniversary of his death and the 110th anniversary of his birth. Read Martin's article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1167046,00.html
Someone needs to do something about the anniversary. Lots of people need to do lots of things. Most of all, someone needs to stage Die tote Stadt in Britain. In its illustrious lifetime, this absolute bloody masterpiece has received just one concert performance in Britain - by the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, essentially a bunch of highly talented amateur musicians (extremely good it was too!). Last year I badgered Glyndebourne about it for all I was worth, only to receive the rather glum outlook that the orchestra pit probably isn't big enough.
Come on, ENO, come on, Covent Garden, what are you waiting for?
Someone needs to do something about the anniversary. Lots of people need to do lots of things. Most of all, someone needs to stage Die tote Stadt in Britain. In its illustrious lifetime, this absolute bloody masterpiece has received just one concert performance in Britain - by the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, essentially a bunch of highly talented amateur musicians (extremely good it was too!). Last year I badgered Glyndebourne about it for all I was worth, only to receive the rather glum outlook that the orchestra pit probably isn't big enough.
Come on, ENO, come on, Covent Garden, what are you waiting for?
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Music, scheduling and international travel...
It's been a busy couple of days and looks like being a busy few weeks.
I am flying to Berlin next Wednesday to interview Daniel Barenboim, who can see me at 1pm on Thursday. That morning, I'm seizing the chance to interview Pascal Devoyon (see Ravel day report, 2 March) who lives there but is flying home just the day before. I fly home straight after seeing Barenboim.
This Thursday I need to see Steven Isserlis to talk about his forthcoming Saint-Saens Festival. He has just half an hour to spare between rehearsals and other interviews before setting off on weeks of international touring. The festival isn't until mid-April, but he's only home this week.
Today I've been writing up an interview with the Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa. She tells me she has just reached the highest notch of Air Miles customership because she spends so much time flying between London and Japan.
How does anyone cope with the possibilities of modern travel? In the music business, most of us have careers that are to some extent international. But this dilemma faces Tom every time the LPO goes on tour. You travel; you perform. Both are deeply exhausting, require total commitment and are somewhat unnatural. Oftener than not, you have to do both on the same day (extra day = extra pay, not what the promoter wants). How can you perform well if the same morning you have to get up at 5am to catch a plane from Stansted and then sit in underventilated aircraft cabins for x hours? How can a normal human body stand it? Soloists mostly have more leisure than orchestras...well, sometimes...but where is the musical inspiration in travelling from city to city playing the same concerto or recital programme over and over again?
Not that I'd fancy being cooped up on a ship on the North Atlantic for days on end, but I can see the attraction of the era when Rubinstein would go on tour to America for several months - it wouldn't have been worth going for less - and could relax on the boat, practise the piano, talk to Stravinsky or Picasso for light relief on board; and at the end of the tour, enjoy a chance to chill out on the ocean wave with a glass of something cold and bubbly.
Because today's crazy travel schedules are possible, they've become necessary. Of course they enable musicians to earn a better living than they otherwise might (today Croydon, tomorrow The World), but if this is a way to ensure engaged, sensitive, insightful musical performance on every occasion then my name is Myra Hess. The musicians suffer; the music suffers; the audience suffers and, dare I say it, may not come back if they don't find what they hear exciting enough.
I hate to post a message that doesn't bear some constructive suggestion, but this one is quite a conundrum. Does anyone have anything sensible to say on the subject? For the moment, perhaps it's enough just to remark that it's incredible that we can hear musicians such as my marvellous interviewees playing as wonderfully as they do anywhere in the world - and exhort them to take good care of themselves!
I am flying to Berlin next Wednesday to interview Daniel Barenboim, who can see me at 1pm on Thursday. That morning, I'm seizing the chance to interview Pascal Devoyon (see Ravel day report, 2 March) who lives there but is flying home just the day before. I fly home straight after seeing Barenboim.
This Thursday I need to see Steven Isserlis to talk about his forthcoming Saint-Saens Festival. He has just half an hour to spare between rehearsals and other interviews before setting off on weeks of international touring. The festival isn't until mid-April, but he's only home this week.
Today I've been writing up an interview with the Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa. She tells me she has just reached the highest notch of Air Miles customership because she spends so much time flying between London and Japan.
How does anyone cope with the possibilities of modern travel? In the music business, most of us have careers that are to some extent international. But this dilemma faces Tom every time the LPO goes on tour. You travel; you perform. Both are deeply exhausting, require total commitment and are somewhat unnatural. Oftener than not, you have to do both on the same day (extra day = extra pay, not what the promoter wants). How can you perform well if the same morning you have to get up at 5am to catch a plane from Stansted and then sit in underventilated aircraft cabins for x hours? How can a normal human body stand it? Soloists mostly have more leisure than orchestras...well, sometimes...but where is the musical inspiration in travelling from city to city playing the same concerto or recital programme over and over again?
Not that I'd fancy being cooped up on a ship on the North Atlantic for days on end, but I can see the attraction of the era when Rubinstein would go on tour to America for several months - it wouldn't have been worth going for less - and could relax on the boat, practise the piano, talk to Stravinsky or Picasso for light relief on board; and at the end of the tour, enjoy a chance to chill out on the ocean wave with a glass of something cold and bubbly.
Because today's crazy travel schedules are possible, they've become necessary. Of course they enable musicians to earn a better living than they otherwise might (today Croydon, tomorrow The World), but if this is a way to ensure engaged, sensitive, insightful musical performance on every occasion then my name is Myra Hess. The musicians suffer; the music suffers; the audience suffers and, dare I say it, may not come back if they don't find what they hear exciting enough.
I hate to post a message that doesn't bear some constructive suggestion, but this one is quite a conundrum. Does anyone have anything sensible to say on the subject? For the moment, perhaps it's enough just to remark that it's incredible that we can hear musicians such as my marvellous interviewees playing as wonderfully as they do anywhere in the world - and exhort them to take good care of themselves!
Saturday, March 06, 2004
CD news
FERVENT FAURÉ ON THE FIDDLE
Not just one wonderful disc of Fauré violin and piano music but two!
Alban Beikircher and Roy Howat have just released the complete Fauré violin and piano music on the Arte Nova label. Alban is the leader of the Arion Quartet and director of the Tonkunst Bad Saulgau music festival. Roy is a highly respected scholar and pianist, remarkably combining two fields of musical activities that British educational establishments used to do their utmost to keep separate! This joyous disc, played with energy, sincerity, respect and beauty, includes both violin sonatas and the short pieces, closing with the rarely heard Air de danse from 'Caligula' in Roy's own arrangement.
ARTE NOVA/BMG CLASSICS 74321 92763 2
Gil Shaham's first CD on his own label, Canary Classics, is called The Fauré Album: with pianist Akira Eguchi and cellist Brinton Smith, Gil plays a wide range of Fauré's finest, including the A major Sonata, the Piano Trio, the short violin and piano pieces and superb transcriptions of several songs. Sound and packaging alike are beautifully produced by Eric Wen, formerly founder of the Biddulph Records historical label. This isn't Fauré the way we usually think of him - not French, self-contained and subtle, but highly expressive and overflowing with heart and soul. But it's so beautiful that I don't think Fauré would mind! Programme notes by yours truly.
CANARY CLASSICS/ARTEMIS ATM 1239
Catch Gil playing the Barber Concerto with the Philharmonia at the Festival Hall, Sunday 7 March.
RED-HOT RACHMANINOV
Krystian Zimerman's new disc of the Rachmaninov First and Second Piano Concertos burns the spots off most competitors. As you probably know, Krystian never does anything by halves and as he told me in our interview that accompanies this recording, 'You don't play the Rachmaninov concertos, you live them'. Forget cool, classical restraint: it's hard to imagine more emotional and romantic playing than this.
With the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa.
Deutsche Grammophon DG 459 643-2
Not just one wonderful disc of Fauré violin and piano music but two!
Alban Beikircher and Roy Howat have just released the complete Fauré violin and piano music on the Arte Nova label. Alban is the leader of the Arion Quartet and director of the Tonkunst Bad Saulgau music festival. Roy is a highly respected scholar and pianist, remarkably combining two fields of musical activities that British educational establishments used to do their utmost to keep separate! This joyous disc, played with energy, sincerity, respect and beauty, includes both violin sonatas and the short pieces, closing with the rarely heard Air de danse from 'Caligula' in Roy's own arrangement.
ARTE NOVA/BMG CLASSICS 74321 92763 2
Gil Shaham's first CD on his own label, Canary Classics, is called The Fauré Album: with pianist Akira Eguchi and cellist Brinton Smith, Gil plays a wide range of Fauré's finest, including the A major Sonata, the Piano Trio, the short violin and piano pieces and superb transcriptions of several songs. Sound and packaging alike are beautifully produced by Eric Wen, formerly founder of the Biddulph Records historical label. This isn't Fauré the way we usually think of him - not French, self-contained and subtle, but highly expressive and overflowing with heart and soul. But it's so beautiful that I don't think Fauré would mind! Programme notes by yours truly.
CANARY CLASSICS/ARTEMIS ATM 1239
Catch Gil playing the Barber Concerto with the Philharmonia at the Festival Hall, Sunday 7 March.
RED-HOT RACHMANINOV
Krystian Zimerman's new disc of the Rachmaninov First and Second Piano Concertos burns the spots off most competitors. As you probably know, Krystian never does anything by halves and as he told me in our interview that accompanies this recording, 'You don't play the Rachmaninov concertos, you live them'. Forget cool, classical restraint: it's hard to imagine more emotional and romantic playing than this.
With the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Seiji Ozawa.
Deutsche Grammophon DG 459 643-2
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Ravel Day, Wigmore Hall, 29 February 2004
There can't be many nicer ways to spend a freezing Sunday than sitting in the Wigmore Hall listening to Ravel, Fauré and Debussy. When Philippe Graffin and Pascal Devoyon's 10th Anniversary Concert evolved into two concerts in one day entitled 'Ravel: A Masterly Pupil' - placing the great man alongside his most eminent teacher, Fauré - I was very touched to be asked to give the pre-concert talk.
I swotted Ravel like mad, ended up writing an article about him for The Independent (see link) and discovered some excellent musical comparisons. For example, did you know that the opening of Ravel's Sonatine is virtually modelled on the opening of Fauré's A major Violin Sonata? No, neither did I until a couple of weeks ago. So much in music is simply waiting to be found. We know so many pieces so well by ear - parrot fashion, if you like - yet to have the opportunity to stop, look and notice such things is all too rare. To emerge feeling as if you really know these pieces for the first time is incredibly valuable in a world where we take them so much for granted.
The concerts were marvellous. Philippe and Pascal joined forces with Nobuko Imai and two fabulous Finns, cellist Martti Rousi and his violinist brother Tuomas Rousi. In the coffee concert they played the Fauré Second Piano Quartet and the Ravel String Quartet; the afternoon was mostly duos - Ravel's early Violin Sonata, short pieces by him and Fauré, the Duo for Violin and Cello; then, to finish, the Debussy Cello Sonata and the Ravel Trio. Philippe has a sound all his own - never one to play safe, he takes risks and discovers marvels at the top of the slide... Pascal's exquisite pianism is deep and crisp and even...and Martti has to be seen to be believed, a larger than life personality whose involvement in and projection of the music is mesmerising. In case you haven't come across him before (I hadn't), he runs the Turku Chamber Music Festival in Finland and has won a Silver Medal in the Tchaikovsky Competition.
I was happy that Philippe and Pascal came to join the talk and allowed me to turn myself briefly into Parkinson for a short open interview with them. Philippe talked about Ravel's classmate Enescu, mentor to one of Philippe's own mentors, Yehudi Menuhin; Pascal offered some fascinating insights into Ravel and Debussy's contrasting styles of piano writing; and they both had some interesting contributions to make on the issue of what makes a good duo. I hope I didn't wreck the whole thing by saying 'Cassez une jambe'!
And what makes a good concert? Several of you have said to me that the Ravel experience will 'stay with me for a long time'. Really, that says it all.
See links on left to my Ravel article in The Independent, and websites for Philippe Graffin and Pascal Devoyon.
LOOK OUT FOR:
Philippe's new recording of the violin concertos by Dvorak and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is about to be released on the Avie label. It's the world premiere recording of the Coleridge-Taylor, a gorgeous, gorgeous piece by an extraordinary figure, a black British composer from the early 20th century. Philippe recorded it in South Africa with the Johannesburg Philharmonic - no doubt a story in itself.
Philippe and Pascal have recently made a new recording for Hyperion of rare sonatas by Canteloube and Pierre de Bréville. Scheduled, I believe, for release in June.
Links on left to Avie and Hyperion.
I swotted Ravel like mad, ended up writing an article about him for The Independent (see link) and discovered some excellent musical comparisons. For example, did you know that the opening of Ravel's Sonatine is virtually modelled on the opening of Fauré's A major Violin Sonata? No, neither did I until a couple of weeks ago. So much in music is simply waiting to be found. We know so many pieces so well by ear - parrot fashion, if you like - yet to have the opportunity to stop, look and notice such things is all too rare. To emerge feeling as if you really know these pieces for the first time is incredibly valuable in a world where we take them so much for granted.
The concerts were marvellous. Philippe and Pascal joined forces with Nobuko Imai and two fabulous Finns, cellist Martti Rousi and his violinist brother Tuomas Rousi. In the coffee concert they played the Fauré Second Piano Quartet and the Ravel String Quartet; the afternoon was mostly duos - Ravel's early Violin Sonata, short pieces by him and Fauré, the Duo for Violin and Cello; then, to finish, the Debussy Cello Sonata and the Ravel Trio. Philippe has a sound all his own - never one to play safe, he takes risks and discovers marvels at the top of the slide... Pascal's exquisite pianism is deep and crisp and even...and Martti has to be seen to be believed, a larger than life personality whose involvement in and projection of the music is mesmerising. In case you haven't come across him before (I hadn't), he runs the Turku Chamber Music Festival in Finland and has won a Silver Medal in the Tchaikovsky Competition.
I was happy that Philippe and Pascal came to join the talk and allowed me to turn myself briefly into Parkinson for a short open interview with them. Philippe talked about Ravel's classmate Enescu, mentor to one of Philippe's own mentors, Yehudi Menuhin; Pascal offered some fascinating insights into Ravel and Debussy's contrasting styles of piano writing; and they both had some interesting contributions to make on the issue of what makes a good duo. I hope I didn't wreck the whole thing by saying 'Cassez une jambe'!
And what makes a good concert? Several of you have said to me that the Ravel experience will 'stay with me for a long time'. Really, that says it all.
See links on left to my Ravel article in The Independent, and websites for Philippe Graffin and Pascal Devoyon.
LOOK OUT FOR:
Philippe's new recording of the violin concertos by Dvorak and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is about to be released on the Avie label. It's the world premiere recording of the Coleridge-Taylor, a gorgeous, gorgeous piece by an extraordinary figure, a black British composer from the early 20th century. Philippe recorded it in South Africa with the Johannesburg Philharmonic - no doubt a story in itself.
Philippe and Pascal have recently made a new recording for Hyperion of rare sonatas by Canteloube and Pierre de Bréville. Scheduled, I believe, for release in June.
Links on left to Avie and Hyperion.
HELLO EVERYONE!
Welcome to my new blog. I hope that this will become a space where I can entertain, inform and engage in discussion over all aspects of music, musicians and the music business. Also, to give out a few pointers over exciting concerts that are coming up and report on ones I've been to in a way that no newspaper would necessarily find suitable. I'll load up some interesting links to musicians' websites and the occasional interesting press article (no, not only my own!) and as often as I can I'll add new diary entries about the goings-on in my musical universe...
Enjoy, write back, join in!
Welcome to my new blog. I hope that this will become a space where I can entertain, inform and engage in discussion over all aspects of music, musicians and the music business. Also, to give out a few pointers over exciting concerts that are coming up and report on ones I've been to in a way that no newspaper would necessarily find suitable. I'll load up some interesting links to musicians' websites and the occasional interesting press article (no, not only my own!) and as often as I can I'll add new diary entries about the goings-on in my musical universe...
Enjoy, write back, join in!
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