JDCMB is 15 TODAY

They certainly didn't tell me I'd be doing this for 15 years when I signed up to Blogger on 2 March 2004.

Here's a little glimpse into the State of the Art, involving one of those "you couldn't make it up" moments that happened to me the other day when I

David Dolan coaches YMS cellists
on structure in Bach

went down to the Yehudi Menuhin School to look around, talk to the head, watch some teaching and hear a lunchtime concert by some of the students.

To a visiting journo, the school seems a haven of peace. It has impressive facilities: a magnificent wood-lined concert hall, a Fazioli grand, a range of super studios. And here you can meet the absolute values of musicianship at the highest, specialised level, matters communicated exceptionally effectively in the lesson on Bach I listened to, given by pianist, analyst and classical improvisation guru David Dolan.

This place - one of sadly few specialist music schools in this country - has been subjected to some serious misrepresentation in the press, in particular ridiculous charges of that pernicious concept "elitism", which leaves you wondering how, if a young person has a talent and vocation, he or she would ever to be permitted to develop it with the necessary hard work. The vast majority of the children - around 90 per cent of them, according to the head teacher, Kate Clanchy - are on close-to-full scholarships, as talent does not correlate to a parent's economic situation, unless it correlates by landing upon those who can't afford to fork out for instruments and lessons. And it's a struggle to provide the scholarships, because the support from the government's Music and Dance Scheme does not increase at even half the same speed as the spiralling costs of running the place. These schools, including (but not limited to) YMS, Purcell, Chets and some of the cathedral schools, are the engine-room of musical life. Remove them and you cut off the nurture at the source, a future that many young musicians need in order to grow and flourish.

There's no doubt that boarding schools are not for everyone at the best of times; and some exciting young musicians simply attended their local comprehensive (the Kanneh-Masons) or ended up being home schooled from about 14 (Benjamin Grosvenor). I know one exceptionally successful musician, now in her sixties, who ran away from music school. But in the meantime the Menuhin School can count among its alumni such figures as Tasmin Little, Alina Ibragimova, Melvyn Tan, Nicola Benedetti and many, many more, figures without whom musical life in the UK would not be all it is today (which is, seriously, among the world's finest. Enjoy it before Brexit rips out its heart.)

Yehudi Menuhin's grave, in the school grounds. The inscription reads:
"He who makes music in this life makes music in the next".

Then came the "you couldn't make it up" incident. I was just waiting for my lift back to the station when my phone rang. There's a journalist on the line from BBC Radio Essex. They have a story on their patch, he said, and were looking for a comment. There's a primary school in Basildon at which the pupils are asked to listen to ten minutes of classical music every day over lunch. What did I think about music being used to discipline kids? I explained that I don't really feel qualified to talk about that, as it's not something of which I have direct experience. Well, then, he said, what about "why should we give classical music the time of day in any case?"

I looked around at the young people off to their next lessons, and Menuhin's grave (pictured above) just in front of me. And I cracked. I gave him a bit of an earful about how I was speaking to him from a specialist music school that's chock-full of some of the most talented kids in the country, youngsters who simply live and breathe music, and hearing them play, hearing the joy oozing out of their music-making, is so inspiring - it's simply incomprehensible that anyone could think that playing and listening to music is, in principle, not a wonderful thing.

It highlighted the extreme divides in opportunity that our kids face in the rather haphazard lottery of the UK's educational life. But it also highlighted something possibly even worse: a divide in attitude based on misinformation, misunderstanding and prejudice. The school in Basildon has sparked "controversy" in some tabloids. Apparently getting children to listen to music for ten minutes a day is controversial. (Funny, it used to be called "music lessons"...) Trumpeting this as controversial is the triumph of the type of playground bullies we've all met.

I think the programme used a snip of my interview very early yesterday morning (here), but the most interesting thing I heard listening back was an interview with the primary school's head, explaining that the children were not being asked to listen in silence, only to "use quiet voices"; that no parent has removed a child from the school because of this; that a few parents shouting about not liking the idea are not speaking for everyone; and that basically the whole thing has been badly distorted in a way that doesn't reflect its reality. Their lunchtime sessions introduce a "composer of the week", with pictures and information: they've just had Vivaldi and she says the kids absolutely loved it.

It still seems incomprehensible that anyone would think kids shouldn't have the chance to encounter music. Without any opportunity to be introduced to it, you risk missing out on one of the most wonderful experiences available to us.

And then I came home to the news that André Previn had died. We will never forget such a musician. Where are today's communicators on a comparable level? I know of no total, top-level  all-rounders of that calibre: composer, conductor, broadcaster, jazz pianist and equally magnificent in every one of them.

"Something must be done," says Jess, but what? How to keep the communication of the marvel of music alive? Diversifying the imagery certainly helps to get the word out, but it's only the beginning; it won't solve  everything. International Women's Day next week has sparked a celebration of women in music that gets bigger every year, and seems - to me - to be taking root in our culture at long last. It certainly didn't exist 15 years ago. The arrival of Chineke! and Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his family are helping, too, and the communicative joys expounded by orchestras like the format-pioneering Aurora and Manchester Camerata, and the repertoire-busting Southbank Sinfonia, are making waves as well. None of this was happening 15 years ago. Next I think some of the things we need to tackle are the issue of concert start times, the availability of food and drink at venues - affordable, with choice and quality, and not too much queuing, please. And call a meeting with the Department of Transport (once they get rid of their current minister...). But above all, music education. Of quality. For all. We can dream...

So there is hope. One might argue that the playground bullies have always been with us and always will be, and it's up to us to be tough enough to hang on in there. Still, it's not getting any easier.

And yet, and yet...let's finish with the thought of a little Menuhin School pianist, 11 years old, performing in the lunchtime concert the other day: she played the Schumann Abegg Variations and part of Mozart's K414 with gorgeous tone and absolute identification with the idiom, which seemed remarkable. She's Anglo-Chinese and her name is Claire Wang. I keep thinking she's called Clara.

Debussy for Nice

It's impossible to offer adequate musical responses for the atrocities we're seeing around the world - from Syria to Dallas to, today, Nice.

So this doesn't pretend to be adequate, but I hope it offers a moment of meditation and solidarity: Debussy's Violin Sonata in G minor - the composer's final work, written during World War I and signed simply 'Claude Debussy, musicien français'. Here it is played by Yehudi Menuhin - an artist who devoted a lion's share of his time and energy to bringing music to those in suffering and training young musicians to do so too; and Benjamin Britten - whose superb pianism remained much underrated beside his compositions - a pacifist and conscientious objector, with whom Yehudi played to survivors of Bergen-Belsen after its liberation.

Ghost Variations: The Other Violinist

My newest post at the Unbound Shed for Ghost Variations is about another violinist deeply involved in the story of the Schumann Violin Concerto. It's none other than this month's anniversary giant, Yehudi Menuhin. If you have made a pledge to the book, Unbound automatically emails you every post in my Shed, but you can also dip in of your own accord at this link.

Menuhin: a protégé speaks

This year marks the centenary of one of the 20th century's most extraordinary musicians: Yehudi Menuhin. A plethora of events and recordings surround this anniversary and in yesterday's Independent I had a piece exploring his legacy - essentially, how his pioneering creativity changed the musical world. It's here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/yehudi-menuhins-centenary-year-a-maestro-with-many-strings-to-his-bow-a6919356.html

The violinist Daniel Hope, who was a protégé of Menuhin from the word go - his mother was the great man's PA - has made a new CD paying tribute to his mentor, and I have an e-interview with him to discuss it. Daniel talks about the perfectionism and iron will that underpinned Menuhin's heavenly musicianship - and tells us about the time his father left Menuhin's violin on a plane.

JD: Daniel, Yehudi Menuhin strikes me as not merely a musician, but a great humanitarian and, in many ways, a visionary whose preoccupations with bringing music to the people, training young musicians and collaborating with other genres seemed ahead of his time. Please can you tell us something about the various different ways in which he inspired you?

DH: Menuhin taught me that being an artist is more than just playing your instrument as well as you can. He believed that music had a strong social aspect and that musicians should use it to help others. Of the many wonderful organizations that he created or inspired, I think Live Music Now is the most impressive. Yehudi created LMN in 1977, and the organization works with a very diverse range of people that rarely, if ever, have the opportunity to experience live music - some of whom are very disadvantaged. They often face difficulties in communicating, cut off from the joy and pleasures of participating and sharing with others. LMN's approach to overcoming these barriers is very simple: talented young musicians are given the chance to gather early and essential performance experience, by sharing it in a social context, for example playing in hospitals, retirement homes or for children who are mentally or physically handicapped. LMN now has branches all over Europe: in Germany, where I often give fundraising concerts for them and am on their Honorary Committee, there are 20 branches alone giving over 5000 concerts a year. Worldwide LMN has reached more than 2 million people, with over 50,000 participatory performances for people with special needs.  

JD: What sort of a person was he? Do you have any favourite memories of him or anecdotes about him in daily life (rather than playing/teaching)?

DH: There was a magic about Menuhin and his aura as a musician was inspiring. Though physically of small stature he had a majestic charisma on stage. For a gentle man he was never ever satisfied he got things as good as he wished. He had a habit of turning and staring at the soloist’s fingers during cadenzas. So it was that in the summer of 1998, I was playing Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Philip Dukes on the viola. Menuhin was conducting when, without warning, he turned and fixed his eyes on Philip’s left hand - even his baton stopped.  He leaned over and got so close to Philip that the poor fellow blanched. He was watching Philip so raptly we wondered if he’d forget to turn back to the orchestra at the end of the cadenza, and only at the very last moment did he do so. 

Along with gentleness that nonetheless masked an iron will, Selbst bei größeren Zwischenfällen war Menuhins Humor unerschöpflich.Menuhin's humour was inexhaustible. On one occasion my father was entrusted with taking his priceless Guarneri del Gesù, a violin made in 1742 and known as the ‘Lord Wilton’, on an Alitalia flight to Rome. Menuhin was at the front of the plane and went straight to the VIP room.  When we got to passport control at Fiumicino airport, I asked my father where the violin was. My father looked at me with shock and came out with an expletive. He had left the violin in the baggage compartment on the plane. He ran like an Olympic sprinter back onto the runway and up the stairs of the aircraft - (you could do that in those days). When Yehudi heard about the incident, he giggled like a little boy. Thanks to some kind carabinieri he got his violin back after a tense half hour – tense for my father, anyway. 

JD: I understand he experienced a difficult patch, after his prodigy days were over, during which he virtually had to retrain his technique - can you shed any light on what happened to him and why, and how his playing after this compared to the recordings he made before?

DH: I think like many child prodigies, Menuhin reached a stage in his life where he began to question his astonishing talent. What had seemed entirely natural to him until that point suddenly became a struggle. From what he told me, this seems to have been compounded by emotional problems in his private life and the exhaustion of playing literally hundreds of concerts for the allied troops during the war. He did indeed teach himself to play the violin again, but this ‘crisis’ also led to a new journey of discovery on so many levels: yoga, Indian music with his collaboration with Ravi Shankar and a peace of mind which grounded him as a human being for the rest of his life.

JD: How would you describe his legacy?

DH: One of the greatest violinists of all time, and by far the most vocal classical musician of the 20th century.

Farewells to too many people

In the past week we have heard of the deaths of SIX musical legends. The beloved composer Jonathan Harvey (73). The marvellous jazzer Dave Brubeck (91). Charles Rosen (85), pianist and author, whose books are required reading. Then the great sopranos Lisa della Casa (93) and Galina Vishnevskaya (86). Now Ravi Shankar (92). Here is a tribute to each of them.


Jonathan Harvey's Tranquil Abiding:



 Dave Brubeck and his quartet in 'Take the A Train' (1966):



Charles Rosen talks about Schoenberg and emotion:



Lisa della Casa sings Strauss's 'Frühling'




Galina Vishnevskaya sings Rachmaninov's 'O ne grusti'



Ravi Shankar - with Yehudi Menuhin. 'Tenderness'.

It's Schumann's birthday

It's Schumann's birthday, so for a Friday Historical I'd like to play one of the most exquisite and heartbreaking recordings I know. This is Menuhin in the slow movement of the Violin Concerto. A much-maligned work that might have lain forgotten in a Berlin library forever, had Clara and Joachim had their way, it's a piece that can baffle on first hearing; but the better you know it, the more there is to discover, especially in the cyclic nature of its themes - for instance, a pattern that sounds like a curving, linking melody in this movement is derived from the second subject of the first movement and forms the main theme of the third. That's just a taster idea; listen and go deeper. Much deeper.

Recorded in 1937 with Barbirolli conducting  the New York Philharmonic. (It cuts off rather abruptly at the end - this movement, of course, leads straight into the finale.)

Yehudi plays Handel in 1929

You know that feeling when the captain says "Cabin crew, ten minutes to landing," and they dim the lights...but 25 minutes later you're still reeling about over Stansted in high winds and for once the Ryanair staff have stopped trying to sell you burgers or scratchcards and are eerily quiet? Oh - you don't? Lucky you. Me, I thought we were all gonna die.

Glad to be alive the next day, so it seems a good idea to celebrate. I was looking for a nice historical clip of Handel's Messiah so that we can be suitably seasonal - also, I, er, gatecrashed a rehearsal of it in in Aarhus yesterday and, um, it's a really, really good piece, even without the singers. The adorable Maestro Giancarlo Andretta was filling in the vocal lines quite spectacularly from the podium.

But while I was looking for Messiah, I found this. It was recorded by the young Yehudi Menuhin in 1929. Let's have it instead, because it's to die for (only not in a plane...).