This is my highest-scoring post ever. I think three-quarters of Romania must have logged on. Seriously, though, I'm delighted so many of you enjoyed discovering the life and work of this extraordinary musician, and if you went to see Oedipe, I hope you loved it as much as I did.
The excellent Kathryn Stott has a very nice new post, taking over the artistic directorship of the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville from Piers Lane.
The Chineke! Orchestra is not only a splendid multicultural force in classical music, but a truly excellent ensemble, drawing together BME players from all over the world and pulling together with a splendid unity of musicianship.
A large post-Brexit-vote post about its implications for the arts. This is not a pretty tale. Brexit is the biggest con-trick in the history of the British Isles.
Mark Wigglesworth stepped down as music director of English National Opera after not very long at all. A grim sign of the state of the place, and a major loss to London's musical life.
She survived disease, three concentration camps, communism and its associated anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia, yet plays the most life-affirming Bach you could hope to hear.
My articles about Zuzana Ružičková are out now, one in the JC and one in the January issue of BBC Music Magazine. The interview transcript following my visit to her in Prague a couple of months ago runs to the length of a small book, so it was great to be able to write two different pieces (the BBCMM one containing more of the Bachy, harpsichordy material). The JC's is out this week and online now, here. You can order a copy of BBC Music Magazine here.
Friday, December 23, 2016
Here is a rare moment of harmony.
Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings and many purrs.
Hello there, come on in. It's at my place, cyberversion, this year. None of us were in the mood for a cyberposhplace. I'm sorry to report that my mother-in-law, Gisela, died two days ago. She was 91 and had had a turbulent yet very good and very principled life. Aged 13 she was sent to Britain from Berlin on the Kindertransport in 1938; she never saw her parents and one of her brothers again as they were murdered in the Holocaust. She was tough, scrupulously fair, intellectually rigorous and an absolute brick in a crisis. We will miss her very much. Please toast her in some cyberbubbly.
This year has had more than its fair share of upsets and I'm afraid we can't expect anything to get better any time soon, so we'd better celebrate the good things while we can. It's the winter solstice and let me remind you that every year on 21 December we have the JDCMB Chocolate Silver & Ginger Stripes Awards to thank everyone who has made wonderful music in the last 12 months and helped to keep our spirits alive. It's good plain fun, the choices are entirely personal, it serves as a retrospective of the year and all you need is a smile and a willingness to enjoy some great music. Quiet, please...quiet... thank you. First, a big round of applause for every musician who has touched the hearts of his or her audience this year. You're wonderful. We love you. Thank you for all your inspirational music-making. Now, would the following artists please approach the platform where Ricki and Cosi are ensconced upon their silken cushions. They will let you stroke their chocolate and silver fur and are ready to give you each a very special purr.
ICON OF THE YEAR
Yehudi Menuhin, whose centenary has been lavishly celebrated.
PIANIST OF THE YEAR
The incomparable Martha Argerich, whose Schumann Piano Concerto at the Royal Philharmonic's 70th anniversary concert I won't forget in a hurry. Here's some footage of her playing Liszt in 1966.
STRING PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Please step forward, Renaud Capuçon: one of the finest advocates for the Schumann Violin Concerto. Thank you for bringing it the passion, virility and dignity it deserves in your performance with the LSO a few weeks ago.
SINGER OF THE YEAR
Renée Fleming. Please don't go just yet!
CONDUCTOR OF THE YEAR
Andris Nelsons. His Rosenkavalier is overriding pretty much everything right now.
FESTIVAL OF THE YEAR
The Munich Opera Festival, and not only because I got to say hello to a rather wonderful tenor at the last-night party. What a feast of treats this is: the greatest singers meet the most interesting and intelligent of productions and we can gulp it all down as greedily as humanly possible.
YOUTHFUL ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the thrilling young cellist who is now the BBC Young Musician of the Year.
ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Zuzana Ružičková, the only person ever to have made me fall in love with the harpsichord. She survived Terezín, Auschwitz, Belsen, the Czech communist regime and censure by leading lights of early music puritanism, but she is nearly 90 and her Bach - now released on CD for the first time, by Warner Classics - is the most radiant and life-affirming that I know. She is also my INTERVIEWEE OF THE YEAR. I have articles about her coming out shortly in tomorrow's JC, and another in BBC Music Magazine. I've met many inspiring people, but none more so than this remarkable soul.
And one STUFFED TURKEY
Sadly, Patricia Kopatchinskaja in the Schumann Violin Concerto back in January. Just because Schumann was about to have his final nervous breakdown when he wrote it, that doesn't mean you have to play it as if you are the first Mrs Rochester.
Personal highlights: PROUDEST MOMENTS: 1) Ghost Variations coming into being and being named Books Choice in BBC Music Magazine's latest issue (which is out tomorrow). 2) Performing Alicia's Gift with Viv McLean at the Wigmore Hall. 3) Roxanna Panufnik has finished composing the "people's opera" we've been writing together for Garsington, Silver Birch, and hearing it through for the first time was astonishing. She's produced some very beautiful stuff, it packs quite a punch and we hope you're going to love it when it hits the boards in July.
WEIRDEST MOMENTS: 1) In said Alicia's Gift concert, actually playing the piano in the Wigmore Hall. 2) The paper I'd written for for 12 years, which used to be a great national newspaper, decided to shut its print operation, sell its profitable offshoot and make a heap of people redundant. Discovering this by reading about it in another paper was pretty bloody weird.
Have a very happy Christmas, dear JDCMB readers, and may 2017 bring much music and joy.
I had many of my most important formative musical experiences at the Dartington International Summer School as a teenager and have never ceased to marvel at the thrill of its melting pot, its gorgeous surroundings, the virtually "sacred space" atmosphere inside the Great Hall and more. Its history is as astonishing as its music. Imagine my joy, then, on discovering that Unbound has taken on a new pictorial history of the summer school by the music journalist Harriet Cunningham. I've jumped in to contribute to its funding - I'll take the full-whack hardback, please! - and hope that all my fellow Dartington fans will consider doing so too. You can find it here. All photos (c) the Dartington International Summer School.
Meanwhile, I asked Harriet what set her off on this wonderful project.
Stravinsky and his wife at Dartingon, 1957
JD: Please tell us something about your own experiences of the Dartington International Summer School? What do you think makes it such a special place?
HC: My experience of Dartington Summer School goes back way, way before I was even born. My parents met at Dartington sometime in the late '50s/early '60s. She was a student, he was a trog [Dartington's student-assistants]. So by the time I first came to Dartington, aged 4 months, in 1967, it was already in my blood. We continued to make the trip down the A303 then the M4 (once it was built) every summer. I am told that at the age of 4 I listened, transfixed, to the Amadeus Quartet playing Haydn and then demanded to learn the violin. It’s a nice story. I can’t remember it at all! My first memories of the Summer School are of wasps on danish pastries, rides on the Donkey and swimming in Aller Park pool.
I do, however, remember sounds and artists and concerts. Like the sound of the choir warming up in the Great Hall every morning; like Jacqueline du Pré, beautiful and difficult, teaching cello; like being scared witless hearing ‘The Soldiers Tale’, and listening to the two pianists rattling out the orchestral accompaniment for the Schubert Mass. As I grew older I participated more - I sang in the choir, I worked in the kitchens, I trogged and, eventually, played in the orchestra for the conductor’s class, under the lovely Diego Masson.
What makes Dartington special? I’ve thought about this a great deal. Of course, there’s the beauty of the surroundings, which everyone remembers, even if we gloss over the rain and grey skies in our memories. But I think it’s also to do with the mix of people, and with mixing people. There’s something about shoving a diverse bunch of musicians into a space and saying ‘play’ that can act as a catalyst for some amazing creative leaps. Or not. But there’s always the chance!
Benjamin Britten & Peter Pears at Dartingon, 1958
Why did you want to write a book about it?
I didn’t! I emigrated to Australia 25 years ago and felt happy to have left the Summer School behind me. But then it weasled its way back into my life when I was visiting my father and he showed me the archive, which he’s been curating for many years. It was quite an emotional experience, looking through all the old programmes, reading letters from artists and lists of bursary students. (All the usual suspects are there! Imogen Cooper, Simon Rattle, Stephen Hough...) My father was making plans to have the archive transferred to the British Library, and I decided that before it went I wanted to make something for my father to have, something to hold in his hands. Then, of course, I got completely sucked in by the many stories in the archive, and here we are...
Janet Baker & Viola Tunnard, 1965
What aspects of its history have "jumped out at you” most strongly?
1950s Britain is fast becoming something of an obsession for me. Post-war Britain underwent a social, economic and intellectual revolution, and the Summer School, and Glock’s approach to music and education were very much part of that revolution. I’m also fascinated by the characters — Glock, of course, and people like Imogen Holst, Nadia Boulanger, Hans Keller and George Malcolm, so many others — who make up the story.
Which images have you most enjoyed discovering in the archives?
Silly, random things have caught my eye in the photos. The 1950s fashions — hats, gloves and, for men, jackets and ties at all times, except if you are violist Cecil Aronowitz, in which case you only wear shorts. The smoking - pipes and cigarettes. The posing, and the lack of posing. People often seem uniquely relaxed and expressive in the photos - as if being immersed in music and musicians allows you to be who you want to be. Perhaps that’s part of Summer School magic.
I also enjoyed finding pictures with personal connections, although I don’t think I’ll ever forgive my mother for allowing me out dressed like that.
A very young Harriet in a violin masterclass with Roger Rafael
