I'm seriously behind here on all the summer activities. I've been to the wonderful Tuscan music festival Incontri in Terra di Siena and Bard Summerscape's 'Korngold and his World' and a few Proms, but have so many stories and experiences to "process" that I've not written any designated blogposts about them yet. You can read my review of Incontri here (though you will probably need a subscription to do so): https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/theartsdesk-incontri-terra-di-siena-galloping-concertos-and-stravinsky-starlight
A clever programme, a vivid premiere, a Proms debut for an exciting young conductor and the first appearance there by Catriona Morison since she won the 2017 Cardiff Singer of the World: all this provided grist to the mill for a sold-out Prom that was more than the sum of its impressive parts.
Elim Chan, who won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition (the first woman to do so) in 2014, was on the BBC National Orchestra of Wales’s podium for pieces themed around the sea and pictures. The 33-year-old conductor from Hong Kong is a tiny, pleasingly charismatic figure – offering ideas that were not only sizable but often inspiring, even in repertoire that otherwise could sometimes seem too well worn for its own good.
Romanticism was the musical land that historical performance forgot, at least until recently. Designated researchers have been delving into real 19th-century styles of late, and if you think it has nothing to do with rigid rhythm, you’re right. What’s emerging instead is the sort of flexible and intense characterisation that Chan brought to Mendelssohn’s Overture ‘The Hebrides’. This was long-lined musical thinking, the softest moments replete with a hushed glow, sometimes slowing to a rapt stillness, and the vigorous episodes ratcheted up the tempo, balancing them out... Read the rest here.
Joszef Lendvay (son) and Joszef Csoci Lendvai (father) in full flight with Fischer & the BFO Photo: BBC/Chris Christodoulou
I reviewed last night's Budapest Festival Orchestra Prom for The Arts Desk: Brahms, Liszt and Lisztes! Wonderful to see the audience pretty much eating out of the hands of some real Gypsy violins and the phenomenal cimbalomist Jenö Lisztes, to say nothing of Iván Fischer's heavenly Brahms. And as a show of unity and strength in contemporary Hungarian context, it couldn't be bettered. Read the whole thing here: https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/prom-55-lisztes-lendvai-lendvay-budapest-festival-orchestra-fischer-review-unity-and
The PRS for Music Foundation's Europe-wide Keychange project, a large-scale initiative to tackle gender equality in the music business, has spectacular news today: it has achieved commitments from 45 (yes, forty-five) different international musical organisations to make their proceedings gender-equal (yes, 50-50 male-female) by 2022. The organisations in question include the Cheltenham International Music Festival - which has been ahead of the game on this for the past few years, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Manchester Jazz Festival, the Aldeburgh Festival, Roundhouse Rising, Spitalfields Music and, indeed, the Proms. These are just a few examples. Everyone knew it was time for change; the question was how to make it happen. A century after the first small tranche of women were granted the vote in Britain, it was clear that change of this type doesn't happen on its own. It takes big and ambitious thinking, initiative, imagination, negotiation, tenacity, strong organisation and some active, solid support (in this case, a €200k grant from Creative Europe). Now this splendid development will point the way forward in no uncertain terms. Speaking to Music Week, Vanessa Reed, CEO of the PRS Foundation, says: "The Keychange network of female artists and industry professionals and the festival partners’ idea of establishing a collective pledge will significantly accelerate change. I hope that this will be the start of a more balanced industry which will result in benefits for everyone.” Naturally there are some cynical reactions going on - on one side from a certain type of bloke who doesn't like this sort of thing, on the other side from those who wonder why it will take until 2022 in any case (er, FYI, big international festivals usually do start planning several years ahead).
But there's no doubt that the weight of opinion has demonstrably shifted. Imagine all that splendid music we could have had if women had, over the centuries, been accorded the respect and self-respect for creative work that was granted their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons. Imagine those families who would have been happier and more balanced if the mothers, daughters and grandmothers were not angry and frustrated by being kept 'in their place'. The world shot itself in both feet by keeping women down and it's been walking hobbled all this time. Time for change. Thank you, PRS Foundation, and count us in.
Here's a list of the organisations involved:
53 Degrees North (England), Aldeburgh Festival (England), Blissfields (England), Bluedot (England), Borealis (Norway), BreakOut West (Canada), By:Larm (Norway), Canadian Music Week (Canada), Cheltenham Jazz Festival (England), Cheltenham Music Festival (England), Eurosonic Noorderslag (Netherlands), FOCUS Wales (Wales), Granada Experience (Spain), Hard Working Class Heroes (Ireland), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (England), A2IM Indie Week (USA), BBC Music Introducing Stages (UK), Katowice JazzArt Festival (Poland), Kendal Calling (England), Liverpool International Music Festival (England), Liverpool Sound City (England), Manchester Jazz Festival (England), Midem (France), Norwich Sound and Vision (England), North By North East (Canada), NYC Winter Jazzfest (USA), Off The Record (England), Oslo World (Norway), Pop-Kultur (Germany), BBC Proms (England), Roundhouse Rising (England), Spitalfields Music (England), Sŵn (Wales), Trondheim Calling (Norway), Waves Vienna (Austria), Westway LAB (Portugal), Wide Days (Scotland), Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Festival (France)
Barenboim raises a hand with his Berlin Staatskapelle. (Photo: bbc.co.uk)
Three days into the Proms and it's already clear that the world's leading musicians are more clued in to the folly of the flat-earth idiocy in Brexit Island than our own politicians are. Igor Levit played the Ode to Joy as an encore after his performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.3 on opening night. Yesterday Daniel Barenboim followed the questing, Schumannesque lament for a vanishing world that Elgar's Second Symphony evokes with a speech about the dangers of isolationism, identifying the overarching problem that causes religious and political fundamentalism as a failure in education. The usual howls that politics and music don't mix have been curiously quiet - perhaps because Levit didn't say a word, but let Beethoven do all the speaking; and perhaps because Barenboim is, quite simply, right. [Update, 3.30pm: they've now stopped being quiet, but it was only a matter of time... and Barenboim is still right.]
In the interests of our unfortunate country, I think it's time we kicked out the government and replaced them with people who know what they're talking about through music. It can't be any worse, after all. Following the Proms Coup (as opposed to the more usual Queue), here is the new cabinet.
PRESIDENT:
Ludwig van Beethoven. The greatest ideals and the biggest vision. Also, given his hearing disability, a fantastic symbol for inclusion and equality.
PRIME MINISTER:
Daniel Barenboim, one of the world's few true statesmen, working together with Beethoven.
FIRST SECRETARY OF STATE:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for a balancing human touch at the top of the power tree.
CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER:
Giacomo Meyerbeer, who made a great deal of money - and used it magnanimously.
FOREIGN SECRETARY:
Felix Mendelssohn, who could charm and befriend anyone and everyone, including royalty.
HOME SECRETARY:
Sir Edward Elgar, who works closely with Beethoven and Barenboim. A "home-grown" composer whose influences were chiefly European, including Schumann, Brahms and Strauss.
EDUCATION SECRETARY:
Zoltán Kodály, music's arch-educator with an outlook for both inclusiveness and expertise.
WORK AND PENSIONS SECRETARY:
Johann Sebastian Bach, who knew a thing or two about hard work and should have left Anna Magdalena a proper pension. (She ended her life destitute. Bach should fix this before it happens.)
DEFENCE MINISTER:
Franz Schubert, who had pacifist leanings.
ENVIRONMENT SECRETARY:
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, whose Scottish island landscape and terrifically powerful personality would be a valuable asset.
EQUALITIES MINISTER:
Dame Ethel Smyth. Cross her at your peril.
HEALTH SECRETARY:
Frédéric Chopin, who would evince a profound interest in making sure antibiotics remain effective and available to all.
TRANSPORT SECRETARY:
Antonin Dvorák, who'd enjoy sorting out our trains and would also ensure that everything ran smoothly on the transatlantic front.
SPORTS MINISTER:
Frederick Septimus Kelly, who was not only a fine composer, but also an Olympic gold medallist in 1908, for rowing.
BREXIT SECRETARY:
This department is abolished, because we ain't leaving.
The American tenor Michael Spyres has taken an impressive and unusual highway through the operatic world. Hailing from a musical family in Laura Ingalls Wilder's little town on the prairie, he is 38 yet has already tackled 64 different roles, from baroque to bel canto to Berlioz. He is convinced he has sung the latter's Faust more than anyone else alive. And it's not exactly that he doesn't like Puccini, but...
Michael Spyres as Mitridate at the Royal Opera House. Photo ROH/Bill Cooper
JD: Michael, lovely to meet you. How are
you enjoying Mitridate?
MS: The role itself is absolutely incredible.
People don’t realise, simply because it’s not done enough in repertory, but
it’s so difficult. As a character
it’s comparable to Otello, or to any of the truly great characters in the
repertoire. The real Mithridate was one of the most mythic people who ever
lived. He was 72 when he died and he thwarted the Roman army for 39 years –
which is 39 years more than most people ever did! He was a famous polyglot and
spoke 22 languages: he owned the Black Sea and everything around it, there were
22 different regions and he made it a point to learn all the languages.
There’s also a word in French and high
English – “mithridisation” and “mithridatism” – which means to take small
amounts of poison in order to be immune to it. He believed that if you take
small amounts of poison every day then as you get older you do become immune.
One of the main dangers for kings was patricide or death by poisoning – nearly
everyone died of poison! – so he grew up in a strict regimen of taking poison
every day so he would be immune. But when the Romans were finally
defeating him, he tried to poison himself and couldn’t die from that, so he
either stabbed himself or had a friend do it so that the Romans couldn’t. He was
this epic, amazing person and even if some of his story is exaggerated nowadays,
it doesn’t matter; he was a real king and was able to hold off and defeat the
Roman army.
(Here, a different interpretation: Save Pontus, Change Europe)
JD: Mozart’s portrayal of him is
extraordinarily sophisticated.
MS: From the beginning you get to see the heart
and the beauty of him, but in the recitatives you can also see this cunning,
brilliant man who would pit people against each other. In his first aria, he
says: “Thank God I’m back home – I thought I’d never see this place again. It’s
OK to lose but I still hold my head high…” And you find out just afterwards, in
the recitative, that this is totally a ruse, because he’s sent false information
to his sons to test if they’re loyal or not. In the recit you hear him say he
faked his own death just to see if they were traitors. Wooah!
About half way through you start to see his
inner turmoil and the anger he feels because he knows he’s ageing. He
died when he was 72 and usually kings died when they were about 30, killed by
their brothers or their sons. But the way Mozart and Metastasio wrote the
character, based on the Racine play, it shows he’s an old man used to
conquering everything, but the worst thing for him is not losing the battle but
losing his heart, losing his love. You see this throughout the opera. He’s
scared, just like all of us, that nobody’s going to love him again…
There’s a
wonderful scene between him and the queen in which she says, “Yes, I’ll go to
the alter as your slave and do whatever you want.” He's so incensed: “So I
have to drag you to the altar – you don’t want to marry me, you’re just going
to do it out of spite?” And you see this crazy rage and jealousy in him. But
then at the end he gives his sons freedom and says that at the end of his life
he wants to be again the great lion that he is. “Please marry her, and I’m
sorry I’m a terrible person, but I’m showing you how to live. This is how a real
person should live - no regrets…” At the end he says “I can die happy now because
I’ve done what I need to” – and he just dies. I can’t think of a more complex
character. You’re a god among men, a god personified. Hoffmann or Otello would
be comparable, but there’s only a handful of characters who run the gamut of
what a Shakespearean character is and this is definitely one of them.
JD: Mozart was only 14 when he wrote it –
what an astounding thought…
MS: Mozart had three major influences: Mysliveček,
JC Bach and another I only found out about because I did an obscure
baroque opera in Lisbon called Antigono,
by Antonio Mazzoni. I did the modern revival a few years ago and we made a
recording. The only time people had ever heard it was three performances
in 1755 – it’s an incredible piece, but it was lost because of the terrible
fire in 1755 in Lisbon. When Mozart, aged 12, was travelling through Italy with
his father, Mazzoni taught the boy counterpoint in Bologna. Antigono was almost
the same kind of story as Mitridate – it’s a formulaic thing but a large
character. But the fact that Mozart was able to write such touching and
beautiful music was just beyond compare. To anyone who thinks it fails in comparison
to his later works I’d say: no, it’s something completely different. You can’t
compare it and you shouldn’t, because it’s raw, amazing emotion. Some of his
duets, Aspasia’s arias and the vocal writing with the recitatives – there’s
nothing like it.
At the last full rehearsal before we went
on the stage, Graham Vick, who’s one of the greatest directors I’ve had the
pleasure of working with, got us all round and said: I want you to realise that
26 years ago I premiered this here, and now I see this in a completely
different light and I see the absolute genius of Mozart – this little boy who
was shuffled around and hauled out by his father all over Europe. You can see
the animosity in the letters, you can see his wish to be just a normal boy –
all the angst and the problems between father and son is written into the music.
He was a mature being already at that age, because he was forced to be and he
had the genius to do it.
JD: Your particular type of tenor is
something unusual and special. What was your path towards finding your true
voice?
MS: Everyone finds their own path, but I had a
different path than anybody! I started as a baritone. And I wanted to be Mel
Blanc, who was the voice-over person for all the Loony Tunes cartoons. When I
was young I’d imitate everything, all the time and growing up I sang with my family
every kind of music there was – church music, bluegrass, folk. Then when I was
in college I made money by doing commercials and I was a radio DJ and I would
do commercials in different characters – and then I started getting into the
idea that “Oh, you can make a living being an opera singer, that’s weird…” Obviously
I couldn’t do what they were doing, so I thought “I’ll just take the recordings
and start imitating the best”.
The big thing happened when I was 20 years
old – and it was with this production of Mitridate. In my two years of vocal
study, 18-21, we had a VHS of this production and I heard Bruce Ford for the
first time. I didn’t know you could sound like this as a tenor. I’d never heard
a sound like it – it’s like a baritone, but it’s obviously a tenor role, and
that’s what I want to do. Low notes were the easiest things in the world – high
notes, ugh, they were so hard! But this was totally different from anything I
heard in Verdi and Puccini.
In the US, everyone said you can’t make a
career out of this, you just cannot – and that’s still true if you’re in the sticks.
So I decided that if I really wanted to learn to sing I needed to go to Europe
and try to figure out this weird baritenor kind of repertoire. It took another six
years of auditioning to think OK, I can do this weird trick of different mixed
techniques, so I started doing a lot of Rossini roles.
Michael Spyres. Photo: Dax Bedell
JD: It sounds like it wasn’t an easy
beginning?
MS: I was in Vienna for two years at the
conservatory, and it’s a very Mozart-heavy town, so it was an invaluable
experience. That was the first time I got to sing these arias in public and I
crashed and burned. It was so hard! I was 26 and it just didn’t work. I went
back to the drawing board and started doing lots of Rossini again. This is my
third time doing Mitridate in the last year and only now is it starting to feel
good and right.
This is one of the most difficult fachs of
tenor, because you have to do a real mix of baritonal and tenor sounds, but you
have to keep it up in the extreme highs, the same kind of colour as a baritone
but not using the full voice. It’s a voix
mixte and it’s really tricky to navigate and very technical, but you don’t
want people to know you’re doing it! So that’s how I got into it: years and
years of practice and failure and finally things started to click. And now,
depending on repertoire, I change my technique. You have to, because it was
written for different people with different techniques.
JD: Next up, you’re singing Berlioz’s La
Damnation de Faust at the Proms?
MS: There’s a huge misconception about Berlioz!
He was a big admirer of the tenor Adolphe Nourrit, he admired Rossini and you
can hear it constantly in his music. Everyone thinks of Berlioz as these
unimaginable, gigantic pieces that are ultimately verismo – and it’s absolutely
false. In order to sing Berlioz, you have to be able to sing full voice, high,
and get over the orchestra, but the majority of his writing is for a lyrical
voice. He had Nourrit, who was known for doing a lot of voix mixte and had various kinds of colour-changing sounds, not
full-voice high Cs. He had him in mind for Benvenuto Cellini. But Nourrit was
having vocal problems and tragically then killed himself that year and Berlioz wrote it for Gilbert Duprez instead. But a work like Lélio is so lyrical and
beautiful, I can’t imagine some Puccini singer trying to sing it: it’s all
lightness and is based completely on the text.
There’s a great quote from Berlioz. He used
to say: “Above all, resonate”. He meant that both literally and figuratively. I
sang the Grande Messe des Morts in this massive cathedral that it was intended
for [Les Invalides], and in there Berlioz had realised that he needed more
people, it was too big a place, so the choir’s about 180-200 people and the
orchestra’s 120. I had friends at the performance and they said when I opened
up and started singing they could feel the sound resonating.
Berlioz was this great artist and dreamer
but although he had a giant ego, it was all about the art for him and he connected
everything to the text. He believed in art permeating society and being an
infectious thing, but it always has to be for a reason, it’s not just
superfluous. He was unlike anybody else and I love him!
JD: This isn’t entirely your Proms debut?
MS: I did the Beethoven Missa Solemnis with John
Eliot Gardiner two years ago. I’ve never done solo stuff there before, though,
so I’m excited. I love the Proms because it’s an awakening of classical music
for ‘everyperson’. I’m not saying that opera isn’t an elitist thing – because
it is, as it takes so much money to be able to put on an opera. But the coolest
thing about the Proms is that for many people this is their only possibility
that they might see something that’ll change their lives. So that’s why I love
the Proms. And I’ll give ‘em a good show, because now I’ve done Faust more
than, as far as I know, any other living person. I could conduct it with my
eyes closed – but all I have to do is sing, so it’s great! I love the piece so
much, mainly because I did the production with Terry Gilliam in the original
French in Belgium and that changed my life.
JD: What’s it like to work with Gilliam?
MS: He’s a madman and he’s wonderful! He seriously
reminds me of my uncle. We’ve kept in really good touch. We’re very much of the
same kind of mind – we’d start talking and still be there four hours later. We
have similar ideas and that’s also why he’s taken a liking, like me too, to
Berlioz. There are so many accounts of Berlioz being a true artist – ‘I don’t
care what you think of me, I’m going to do this because the art demands it’ – and
I’ve done that many times in my life. Of course I’ve failed – but I’ve
succeeded too!
As Faust in Gilliam's production
JD: The production was brilliant, but quite
controversial, involving a concentration camp…
MS: To me it’s one of the most poignant
productions I’ve ever been a part of. I have many friends and colleagues who
say ‘Oh, opera’s going in such a bad direction, all these director things that
kill the production’ – but you have a choice to take that or not, and we have
to do the projects we believe in. I’ve been fortunate that out of my 64 operas
I’ve done, there have only been two or three that I haven’t been really
thrilled about.
JD: You don’t mind ‘Regietheater’, then?
MS: It depends on the director and the ideas.
I’m a director myself, I have my own opera company in the States that I run
with my family. We’re basically the von Trapps – we put on the shows, my
brother helps run the company and my sister’s a Broadway singer. I take it very
seriously, I can see when a director is just doing something for their own ego and
I choose not to be around those kinds of people.
It’s a difficult thing, being a director. Today
they’re in a weird position where these are major decisions, it takes huge
amounts of money to put on a project and everybody’s under pressure to do a
brand-new, original idea. Many people have an idea, but it doesn’t necessarily
work with the music. Many directors are not musicians to start out with –
they’re dramatists, which is a great concept on paper, but if you have to listen
to a piece for four hours and you don’t take into account the audience – you’re
gonna die! So I’m fine with any project as long as it’s well thought out and it
makes sense with the music. Because the whole reason you’re there is because of the music.
It’s gone crazy in certain places. I won’t
name names, but there was one instance where L’Italiana in Algeri was being
produced and the director wanted to have his name bigger on the poster than the
composer’s name or the opera’s title. Fortunately the festival director said no.
That’s how crazy people get!
JD: Do you see yourself moving more into directing
in the future?
MS: Yes, absolutely. I’m so inspired, the more
I read about the origins of opera. From Jacopo Peri, who wrote the first opera,
until the late 19th century, all singers were actors and directors. Nowadays
things are so specialised that people say “I’m just a singer” and some don’t
even act! It’s completely the opposite of what it should be. All of us need to
be acting, dancing, singing, learning as much as we can. That is why opera
created this wave of art because it was the first artform where everyone came
together, with the idea that we’re all part of it, we all need to be able to do
a little bit of everything.
Michael Spyres
That was the great thing, growing up in my
family. We built our own amphitheatre. We built the stage first and everyone
sat on hay bales. I’m from a famous little town called Mansfield, Missouri – it
was the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House of the Prairie books. Because of the books, we have
many visitors come through there. My mother wrote a musical about Laura Ingalls
Wilder when we were growing up and it’s now in its 28th year. At its biggest we
had about 120 people involved, which was 10 per cent of the town! So I’ve grown
up around this and I’ve been so vindicated reading about the origins of opera, what
got me into opera and how it split from its origins.
JD: The idea that you can do just do one
thing and the world owes you a living, that’s going nowhere fast…
MS: Of course! And people are tired of that.
One of my favourite futurist speakers is Michio Kaku, a fantastic theoretical
physicist. A big subject now is what’s going to happen when people become obsolete
in jobs. In the next 30-50 years half the people are going to be cut out
because of robots, so what’s going to happen? What are the jobs that will be
left? You’ve got to be an artist, a musician, someone who comes up with new ideas.
For a long time everyone wanted to have a good stable job, but now people are
being replaced by robots. But a robot will never be able to be an artist or a
musician – that’s what’s so exciting.
JD: I hope you’re right!
MS: They can try! But we are such complex
creatures in music. You can hear a piece that’s done by a robot and it doesn’t
feel right, it’s just algorithms. That’s why I’m so excited about the future of
music and art. I feel I came at the right time because by the time I’m in my
later years more and more people will be coming to art, because that’s where
the ideas come from. The same thing applies to the computer programmers – they
have the technicality and the vision for what needs to be done. Opera is
basically the computer of the art world.
JD: You sing, you act, you direct: are you
also tempted to write an opera?
A few years ago my brother wrote a
libretto, my mum helped – we took the music from The Magic Flute and created a
story based on Alice in Wonderland to take to all the kids in the area who’d
never seen opera before, in 32 schools that were among the poorest in the
community. Yes, someday I want to write an opera – that’s what I’m leaning
towards.
JD: What about future roles to sing? Any
big dreams?
MS: I’ve basically done every role I wanted to
do, except Verdi’s Otello. I’ll do that someday – but like Kaufmann, I’m smart and
I’ll wait. I’ll wait until I’m 50 for that, so I’ve got over a decade – but the
other dream roles are Monteverdi’s Orfeo and a lot of Rameau and Gluck, great
epic works on Greek stories. But modern opera for the most part is not as
appealing to me as a singer.
I like Puccini. I love Puccini. But it’s
like he put down pure gold on paper and if you want to do him justice you’ve
got to do what he wrote – and if you live within the characters that he wrote
there’s not a lot of freedom. I’ve taken a lot of flack for saying that – people
say, ‘Oh you just don’t like Puccini because you can’t sing it’ – but actually
I can sing it, I just don’t like it, because I believe in doing what
the composer wanted you to do and for my character there’s very little in Puccini
that I find interesting as an actor and singer. I love it when other people do
it, but for me personally I get angry because I want to do my own thing, but I
shouldn’t – he wrote it so perfectly and beautifully that it’s just right! So
that’s why most of the verismo period doesn’t appeal to me – there’s not enough
freedom for me,
As far as dream roles go, I’ve done most of
them and I know it’s crazy to say that. But I’ve done 64 already and I’m 38:
operas from modern to the earliest stuff, and a range from the lowest operas
written for a tenor voice to the highest, so I’ve lived out all my major
fantasies as far as roles are concerned. Now I’m just looking for true content and
characterisation. I find many of the more obscure things much more rewarding.
I’d love to do Die tote Stadt – that’s
a dream. I love Die tote Stadt – Korngold
was one of the greatest. The same with Massenet: he came on the heels of
verismo and was able to marry the two, and Korngold did the same thing. Korngold
is so overlooked, just because he went into film. But have you listened to his
film scores? They’re better than anything! Come on, you can’t write better than
that.
JD: You just made this Korngold biographer
very happy! Thank you, Michael, and toitoitoi for the final Mitridate.
And – as Loony Tunes would say – that’s
all, folks!
The final performance of Mitridate is on
Friday 7 July at the Royal Opera House – booking here. Michael Spyres sings
Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust at the Proms on 8 August – booking here.
Let's just explore the business about the Proms' new music on TV a little more, as a lady from the press office has sent me a lot of information.
The Proms contains no fewer than 30 pieces of music that are receiving world, European, UK or London premieres. This is an admirable count and one would expect them to be proud of it and wish to relay those works to the widest possible audience on TV.
Last year several composers of my acquaintance were utterly shell-shocked to discover that while the Proms in which their music was being done were to be televised, their pieces had been cut from the TV broadcast and moved to a designated area for new music online. At this year's Proms press launch, Edward Blakeman was challenged about this and he offered a robust defence of "curating" Proms for the TV audience (the concept of "curating" is maybe a topic for another time).
Apparently this year 16 pieces of music will be filmed for online only, but just three of those are new works. Apparently I am therefore off the mark to say that "certain pieces of music that are filmed will be viewable online only".
The three new works that will be filmed but not televised are by John Woolrich, Tansy Davies and Luca Francesconi. (So: certain pieces of music that are filmed will be viewable online only.)
Here is how new music from the Proms on TV will look:
New music really is an important part of the Proms television offer across BBC Two, BBC Four, CBBC and online this year. New commissions by Gary Carpenter (world premiere of BBC commission Dadaville) and Eleanor Alberga (world premiere of Arise, Athena!) feature in the live First and Last Night TV broadcasts on BBC Two. New music is also broadcast within BBC Four’s weekly curated programmes on Thursday, Friday and Sunday evenings throughout the festival including: a concerto and recital series on Thursday evenings which will devote an episode to the world premiere of HK Gruber’sInto the open… and also feature the world premiere of Hugh Wood’s BBC commission Epithalamium; a series on Friday evenings featuring European premieres of works by Jonathan Newman and Eric Whitacre; and an 8-part symphony series presented by Sir Mark Elder and Katie Derham on Sunday evenings which will devote 5 episodes to 20th century music, 2 episodes to new symphonic works (the first Proms performance of Brett Dean’s Pastoral Symphony and the world premiere of James Macmillan’s BBC commission, Symphony No. 4) and the world premiere of Anna Meredith’s BBC commission Smatter Hauler. The London premiere of Anna Meredith’s Connect It will also be included in the broadcast of the Ten Pieces Prom on CBBC.
So, it looks as if around a third of the new/newish pieces will find their way onto our TV screens in one form or another, which is good news. Thanks, chaps.
Some very welcome news yesterday from the Proms, which has appointed a new director at long last. And it's not a BBC insider with an axe. It's David Pickard of Glyndebourne - a charismatic, well-liked, forward-thinking, online-aware guy who seems, to many of us, an inspired choice. I've expounded a few thoughts on the task ahead of him in today's Independent.
Here is the Director's Cut, a slightly longer version.
The BBC Proms has named its new director at
last: David Pickard, who is currently general director of Glyndebourne. The
appointment process has been lengthy – it is 14 months since Roger Wright resigned
from the job – but one hopes that the organisation has taken its time in order to
find just the right person.
Pickard’s appointment has surprised many in
the music world; it was widely expected that a BBC insider would be chosen, possibly
one ready to wield an axe. Instead, this decision appears to signal a
willingness to be open to the new, the forward-looking and the creative. Pickard
has brought all these qualities to Glyndebourne; and that opera house’s continuing
success despite the crash years suggests that he is no stranger to helping an
institution weather a blast.
Wright’s shoes at the Proms won’t be easy to
fill. His determination to think big reaped dividends, bringing to fruition
ambitious projects such as a tie-in with the 2012 Olympics and, the following
year, a complete Wagner Ring cycle for the composer’s bicentenary year,
conducted by Daniel Barenboim and featuring some of the world’s finest
Wagnerians singers – each opera accessible to promenaders for a mere £5.
Pickard is bound to face thorny challenges.
The BBC licence fee is due for a rethink next year; any changes to the funding
model can scarcely help but affect the Proms. At Glyndebourne Pickard has
presided over an institution that receives public funding only for education
work and touring – the opera festival relies entirely on private money. He will
now need to apply the diplomatic skills he has honed during 14 years dealing
with sponsors, donors and patrons to fighting the Proms’ corner in the boardrooms
of the BBC.
The Proms’ position as “the world’s greatest
classical music festival” – as it trumpets itself – will demand maintenance in
the programming department and requires a fine balance between the new and
risky and the tried and tested. Expectations land on the festival’s shoulders
from every direction – some call for more premieres, others for more Mozart;
some may demand more BBC tie-ins, while others regard the occasional foray into
pop or musicals (each happening about once a season) as the End of the World As
We Know It. Pickard must steer a slalom course through all of this.
Then there’s the brave new world online.
Almost every year the Proms announces further digital initiatives – this year’s
innovation is a Proms App – and Pickard must make sure that they keep pace with
the ever-more digitally aware younger audience. Under his direction
Glyndebourne was the first UK opera house to stream performances live online
for free and to send its productions to cinemas for HD relay. All of this is
surely a must for the Proms to consider in the years ahead.
But above all Pickard needs to embrace the
scale of vision for the Proms that Wright established. This means not only
continuing the mission of bringing world-class classical music to the widest
possible audiences. It also means doing so with a flair that can make the
finest events an experience to remember for a lifetime.
Meanwhile, there's a very nice job up for grabs in East Sussex. Arts administrators fond of opera, picnics and sheep should form an orderly queue.
The thin end of one wedge is webcasting. I was supposed to be in Verbier now. Long boring story about storms, leaks and missed planes. I was planning to hear a tetralogy of my piano gods, and more, but am running after builders instead. Gutted to be missing Ferenc Rados and Grigory Sokolov - the latter still the man I regard as the greatest living pianist, and tragically one we will not hear in the UK any time soon (I understand he refuses to go through the visa rigmaroles that we require). But the good news - if wedgy - is that the concerts these past two nights featuring respectively Martha Argerich and Stephen Kovacevich are available to watch online at Medici TV and tonight's recital by Daniil Trifonov will be webcast live as well. Starts at 6pm. So that's a bit of a comfort. Sokolov, as far as I know, is not due for the webcast line-up.
To cheer myself up for lack of mountains, I took myself off to the Wigmore Hall instead last night to hear the adorable Simon Trpceski in recital. One shouldn't complain about missing a festival elsewhere when there is so much great music to hear right here on the doorstep, and Simon didn't disappoint. His recital of Brahms, Ravel and Poulenc was a marvellous treat and I ended up reviewing it for The Arts Desk, so here is the link.
Last but by no means least, it has come to my attention that some very fine new music at the Proms is being sequestered away on its own website - "an exclusive iPlayer New Music Collection" - rather than enjoying a TV broadcast with proud trumpeting to the nation as a whole, even if the rest of those programmes will indeed be televised. I made an enquiry and received this back:
As you know we're constantly evolving the way we cover the Proms - from the introduction of the newly themed strands on TV through to increased online and Iplayer collections in an ever multi-platform world. This year we are exploring new ways of curating and presenting the filmed performances across the season with more Proms than ever before available online, both audio and visual. As part of this, and new for 2014, we are creating an exclusive iPlayer New Music Collection, celebrating all the new music filmed across Proms 2014, bringing it together in one place for our audience with context provided by special filmed introductions by Tom Service. We will be showing the performance of Roxanna Panufnik's Three Paths To Peace in this collection and Jonathan Dove's Gaia piece in this collection. Both pieces will be available on iPlayer as soon as possible after the performance (we hope within a few days) - and will be available to view for longer for the first time, for a special 30 days, giving them access to a wider audience. We will be pointing our audience towards the New Music Collection from all our other platforms, including Proms Extra as soon as they are live...the Proms Extra iPlayer Collection, and our TV broadcasts.
So apparently it is A GOOD THING that we CAN see good, accessible, listenable, beautiful new music AT ALL, isn't it. Wedge, end, thin.
Shouldn't the BBC be championing British composers to the rooftops? Did someone, somewhere, perhaps consider that the poor old wider public is too stupid to appreciate contemporary music on TV, however enjoyable and downright pertinent it is? Hiding it from wider view sends out an oddly mixed message from an institution that prides itself on supporting today's composers with plentiful commissions. I would put up a link to that "exclusive iPlayer New Music Collection" - only I can't find it.
Roxanna Panufnik's piece about peace opens tonight's Prom. It is the first time her music has been played at the Proms and it's long overdue. Listen live on Radio 3.
Over at Independent Towers there's a certain pride in this piece. A few years back, when Josh Bell did his famous busking-in-the-Washington-CD-subway experiment, the arts ed called me and said how about we ask Tasmin Little to have a try.
We did; she was, by some miracle, in town and free; and I went along with a notebook and a photographer to document the fun. But what came out was a revelation. It resulted in a light-bulb moment for Tasmin that literally changed her life.
The sun is shining, Andy Murray's in the final and next week it's time for the Proms to begin. This season is stuffed full of Wagner operas and I have just one word to start you off: footwear. My guide to how to make the most of the Proms is in today's Independent, along with my personal pick of ten unmissable events. And yes, there will be Korngold.
Alma Schindler/Mahler/Gropius/Werfel was born on this day in 1879. As her first husband did not exactly encourage her compositional activities, her beautiful songs have never been as well known as they deserve to be. Here is Thomas Hampson singing the top-notch Die stille Stadt, on a poem by Richard Dehmel.
Meanwhile, don't miss Gustav's Symphony No.6 at the Proms on Sunday: the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra is here, with Riccardo Chailly at their helm. Book here.
For those requiring a little bit of do-lighten-up-there-Gus, here is another tribute to Alma - from Tom Lehrer.
It was a difficult night to award a star rating - but eventually I felt that the sense of occasion and the power of the music-making deserved this 5-er. It was only a couple of the solo singers who didn't, and that may not be their fault: one was a late replacement and, besides, they may all have been fazed by their placement alongside the choir, having to sing clean across the orchestra.
This Prom is being televised on Friday at 7.30pm on BBC4 - at which point Barenboim & co will probably still be in full swing with the Ninth inside the hall, a short concert with an early start so that we can all get home to watch the Olympic opening ceremony. Some of us might find the WEDO a bit more interesting than 70 sheep in a stadium, but... hey ho.
Yes, it's Pierre Boulez. Hearing his Derive 2 at the Barenboim/WEDO Prom somehow resembled discovering a new deep-sea creature that cast radical new light on all our assumptions of what marine life really is. I was riveted from start to finish. Its weaving of countless ideas, its progression of entirely aural and nonspecific narrative, its amazing colours (what a collection of instruments!), all conspire to challenge one's ideas of what music is, what it means and how we listen to it.
I'm holding the fort, more or less, with the Indy's classical reviews this week - Michael and Ed are both on their travels. Here's my write-up of last night.
Obviously not everyone is going to agree about the Boulez, which is as long as, or longer than, a big romantic symphony and requires a heap of concentration. So, for a way in, try reading Tom Service's brilliant introduction to the man and his music; and then catch the concert on the BBC iPlayer (UK only) here.
Here they are in the Schubert 'Trout' Quintet first movement, with an ensemble from the WED - Daniel Barenboim (piano), Michael Barenboim (violin), Orhan Celebi (viola), Kyril Zlotnikov (cello), Nabil Shehata (double bass). Enjoy.
Tasmin talked about her passion for Hamlet, Hesse's Siddartha and the verses of Hillaire Belloc, as well as terming Hungarian Dances "gripping" and "very exciting", and telling a wonderful story about how she inadvertently made her debut in Budapest in a restaurant, playing Monti's Csardas with the resident folk band's cimbalom player after half a bottle of Bull's Blood... And she said some rather nice things about my writing about music that I am waaay too modest to repeat on my own blog, though you can hear them in the broadcast. What you won't hear, though, is Anne's priceless Freudian slip when, signing off at the end of the session, the wrong word emerged instead of "Belloc"! A fine time was had by one and all.
"When 5000 people pay to listen to Bach on a solo violin, there's hope for Western civilisation," says The Times. My colleague Ed Seckerson at the Indy says it was 6000 people, so the news is perhaps even better. Either way, bravo Nigel Kennedy. The markets are in turmoil, people have been looting in Tottenham, Enfield and Brixton, but over at the RAH, or in front of our own radios, we're listening to the Proms and feeling lucky to be alive.
Honest to goodness, guv, I really believe the world would be a better place if we could all spend more time making or listening to great music and less time on greed, envy, accumulation, materialism and...oh well. It's worth saying now and then, even if only one person takes it on board.
How anybody could have failed to take the lessons of the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra on board with that Mahler 2 on Friday is beyond me (pictured left: the queue at 1pm). Music for all. Music as the resurrection of hope (to quote Gustavo's words to me). I went to the rehearsal and sat mesmerised by them - these guys give everything. So, too, did the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, so you don't have to be Venezuelan... The churlish have been out in force, predictably, carping on about tempi being too slow, edges being too rough, and so on. There's still an element in British life that loathes anything too successful. Most of us saw past that to the essence of the event, and took it all to our hearts, where it belongs. The point of this Prom was not to offer benchmark Mahler to compete against the recordings of Tennstedt, Bernstein et al. What had to be definitive was the honesty and passionate nature of the music-making, the symbol, the life-affirming pulling-together of it all. Yes, it was the event that came first, and there is nothing wrong with that - not when it's an event you'll remember until your last breath. If every concert could be an event on such a scale, nobody would ever have talked of classical music 'dying', because it couldn't be clearer that that is not true, never was and certainly won't be as long as these guys are around.
Hope resurrected? You bet. Besides, give Gustavo another ten or 15 years and he could potentially grow to be a figure comparable to Bernstein. I can't think of another conductor working today who has quite that type of energy. It's easy to forget that he's only 30 as he is so much a part of the musical landscape at present. Watch that space. (Right: The Dude in rehearsal, flanked by Miah Persson and Anna Larsson, and in discussion with assistant.)
It's been one thing after another at the Proms, and yesterday I caught up not only with the Mahler but also with the National Youth Orchestra with Benjamin Grosvenor and Vlad, plus Nigel's very late-night Bach. Benjamin played the Britten Concerto - a terrific piece and much underrated. It's very much of its 1930s day, a British cousin to Bartok and Prokofiev, and Benjamin's coolly ironic eye and deft, light-sprung touch suited it to a T. Vlad wrought dynamic stuff from the orchestra, too - they're not the Bolivars, but they're the creme-de-la-creme of what young British musicians can be. And full marks to everyone for bringing Gabriel Prokofiev mainstream, putting his Concerto for Orchestra and Turntables centre stage in the Royal Albert Hall. Sergey's grandson may have 'Nonclassical' as his brand-name, but the piece, even with all its 21st-century irony, humour and imagination, still reminded us at times of The Rite of Spring. Character, precision and charm were everywhere; and the Radio 3 announcer's apparent bemusement about the whole spectacle had a type of charm all its own. He even considered DJ Switch's light-blue tee-shirt worth remarking upon.
I missed Saturday evening in London because I went to work with Tomcat. Which means I cried my eyes out over Rusalka. Watch out for the marvellous Dina Kuznetsova (left), a big Russian voice with a great heart to match, her every phrase serving Rusalka's searing emotional journey. Melly Still's production is magical - a timeless fairy-tale taken on its own terms, mildly modernised and exquisitely imagined. We know the Freudian ins and outs of the story's psychological implications well enough these days to add our own interpretation, if desired - it's refreshing that directors need no longer bash us over the head with it, and we can enjoy Dvorak's folksy joys and quasi-Wagnerian ventures with a view to match.
And Nigel? He's still working his own brand of magic; and it's as irresistible as ever because beneath the famous image is a passionate and phenomenally accomplished musician. He has not only magic, but the staying power that comes from true underlying solidity. Others may try, but there's still only one Nigel.
Congratulations to STEPHEN LLEWELLYN, winner of the JDCMB 'Chacun a son gout' competition. Yes, bizarrely enough, that is indeed the same Stephen Llewellyn who was the proud champion of Miss Mussel's first #operaplot competition. Stephen, you will be the lucky recipient of the new CD by Joseph Calleja, 'The Maltese Tenor', which will be sent to you straight from the offices of Universal Classics.
The correct answers: 'Chacun a son gout' is featured prominently in Johann Strauss II's opera Die Fledermaus. And it is sung by Prince Orlofsky. I am impressed that everybody who entered the competition - and there were lots of you - got it right.
The prize draw took place last night in the concertmaster's dressing room at the Royal Albert Hall, just after the London Philharmonic had completed its 'Vladothon' all-Hungarian Prom, which involved Kodaly's Dances of Galanta, Bartok's Piano Concerto No.1 with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist, and to end, Liszt's Faust Symphony.
We asked the orchestra's one actual Hungarian violinist, Katalin Varnagy, to select the winner's name from the many entries that mingled in the violin case... You can see the very glam Kati talking about her Hungarian musical heritage in the Prom interval when the concert's televised on Thursday evening.
Then, since the occasion was also Tomcat's birthday and, besides, marked the 25th anniversary of him joining the LPO (odd, as he's only 21...) everyone came along for a drink, including the adorable and stupendous Mr Bavouzet...
...and also Vladimir Jurowski and concertmaster Pieter Schoemann (pictured below - l to r, Vladimir, Tomcat, Kati and Pieter). The flag is Hungarian - there's a green stripe at the bottom.
I'd just like to reassure any Hungarian Dances fans that the characters of Karina (semi-Hungarian) and Rohan (South African) were not actually based on Kati and Pieter. It's all pure coincidence, honest to goodness, guv. These things happen with books sometimes. Life imitates art. It does.
Quite a late night. Please excuse the JDCMB team while it adjourns to the kitchen for extra coffee....
