Solti's Radio 3 debut

Back for a moment - have spent most of day on sofa lapping up R3 Mendelssohn weekend (well, lapping up some of it, and spending the rest thinking about what I would have done differently. I'd have got rid of the creaky stuff on the Early Music Show, which was neither by Felix nor very Felixcitatious, and I'd have encouraged Ivan and Harriet to be less polite about a certain violinist on CD Review).

As I've been behind on Mendelssohn blogging, I decided to catch up by discussing a few tasty tidbits. "FELIX HELPS CHOIRS PROVE THAT THEY ARE THE CAT'S WHISKERS" had arrived from Derbyshire re the Wings project (if you haven't clocked this yet, it's aiming to get massed choirs up and down the country singing 'O for the Wings of a Dove' simultaneously - a sort of Mendelssohnian human chain which may or may not benefit the karma of the planet). Suddenly Blogomaster requested a picture of my cat as illustration.

So Solti is making his Radio 3 blogosphere debut - breaking the unwritten blogosphere rule that you should only post pictures of your cat when he is sitting next to your newly published book (and only post pics of book when accompanied by cute feline).

bother

Apparently I've got pleurisy, so I've had to miss all kinds of wonderful stuff this week. Apologies for absence. At home taking antibiotics and pain-killers. Back in the blogosphere asap.

Sorry state?

Distressing news from English National Opera of a type that's becoming worrying familiar. The Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami was supposed to be coming to London to stage his production of Cosi fan tutte, first seen at the Aix-en-Provence Festival last year, for the company. He has just pulled out - due to UK visa trouble. His British associate producer Elaine Tyler-Hall will take over.

ENO tells me this:

* He found the whole process unduly time consuming and hugely complicated.
* He does not feel he was treated in a respectful way.
* He works freely in both France and Italy and doesn't have these problems to get there.
* The Ambassador did try and intervene at the last minute but by this stage Abbas wasn't prepared to pursue the matter any further.

It takes approximately 30 seconds on Google - hardly rocket science - to discover what a distinguished guy this is. Controversial, influential, the most, alive, all the adjectives are there. He's 68. He was a leading figure in the Iranian New Wave movement in cinema of the 1960s. He's directed more than 40 films and won the Palme d'Or in Cannes for Taste of Cherry. Books have been written about him. 'Could there be a more startling, or intriguing, choice of director for Mozart's Cosi fan tutte?' said The Guardian last year.

Opera Chic had pictures of the production last year, along with the information that he has been refused a visa to the USA before now. But imagine if the petty officialdom in visa-land had decided to treat Ingmar Bergman like filth just because he was Swedish.

Kiarostami has commented: 'I would like to thank John Berry and the rest of the crew at ENO for the understanding and support they have shown in this very complicated but delicate situation. They respected my position and my principles in spite of the obvious fact that it was putting them in a very precarious and disagreeable position. I have to confess that this gives me hope; the world is still a livable place malgre tout....'

The UK hasn't been good at keeping out the real hate-monger extremists in the past, but for the visa system to make life or entry to the UK horrible or impossible for great artists, as they increasingly do (see Sokolov incident), let alone leaving them feeling they are treated 'not in a respectful way', is lamentable, inexcusable and makes me more than slightly ashamed of this little island. It's a sorry state of affairs, in which the state is not sorry.

Having so said, the reviews in Aix were not exactly outright raves - far from it. But that's not the point...

UPDATE: More on the story, from The Independent.

Concert, not catwalk

I have a rather angry piece in the Indy today about the way that the pressure on young female musicians to look good as well as sounding good has gone too far. Here's the Director's Cut. (By the way, I love Sarah, but if you look in the pages of the Indy at articles by Other People, you might stumble upon one of the musicians I had in mind.)

Sarah Chang is resplendent in front of the mirror at the Kruszynska boutique in Knightsbridge. She’s popped in for a concert gown fitting and has donned a fairytale creation of delicate pink and green lace over ivory silk. It’s perfect for Mozart and it looks stunning.

But maybe it is also symptomatic of the way that classical music’s female stars have collided with popular culture. A woman musician can play wonderfully and she can also look good – but what exactly is the top priority these days? The case of Susan Boyle has of course brought this issue into the headlines on an even wider scale.

Half a century ago, most female musicians did not care about their appearance: what mattered was how they sounded. Indeed, a ‘high priestess’ attitude seemed positively encouraged; anything visual was downplayed so that the music could sing out unimpeded.

In the 1940s, the pianist Dame Myra Hess always wore a plain black dress for her concerts. The late Rosalyn Tureck, famed for her Bach, was not amused when a press photographer captured an image of her, in her twenties, focusing on her legs. The Australian pianist Eileen Joyce (who plays Rachmaninov on the soundtrack of the movie Brief Encounter) enjoyed coordinating her dresses with the music she was playing, often changing gown between pieces; then, it caused amusement. Now, though, it’s de rigeur.

Chang, 28, adores high fashion and heels, but insists that her concert clothes shouldn’t be a distraction. “They must be repertoire-appropriate,” she tells me. “When I need a dress for the Brahms Concerto it must be substantial and robust, but if I’m doing a big Carmen concert the dress can be red and hot and fun.”

But has the pressure on young women musicians to look like supermodels gone too far? After all, these women have spent most of their lives practising their instruments for long, lonely hours, devoting themselves tirelessly to the interpretation of great music, making huge personal sacrifices and struggling for recognition. Then they’re judged on how they look. This is patently daft.

Of course the male musicians have worked equally hard, but men of comparable talent can simply don a tux or tails, pop on their glasses, brush a few strands of hair over the bald patch and stride on to a stage without worrying that they don’t look as if they’ve stepped off the pages of a glossy magazine. The music industry loves men who look good, but it’s not a prerequisite for a career. For 21st century women soloists, it seems that a gift for music is just not enough.

Female singers can get away with being overweight – a spare tyre supports the voice. But when did you last see in the world’s top concert halls a woman violin soloist plumper than a size ten, or a bat-winged female pianist under the age of 60? Yet some of today’s greatest musicians are seriously unphotogenic men. Grigory Sokolov, among the finest pianists on earth, is the shape of a Siberian bear. Even Nigel Kennedy is no oil painting. Would women with the equivalent in talent and looks have had the opportunities to shine? We’ll never know, but the speculation is sobering.

Some female musicians might have poorer careers if it were not for their physical beauty. This sounds frivolous, but there’s a darker aspect to it. I’ve attended music festivals (usually run by men) at which the women performers have all been not only gifted but also young, willowy and grateful for concerts. I’ve met female would-be soloists whose hopes of concert engagements following auditions have been dashed when they refused to do certain things beyond playing the music. And I’ve heard interpretations of great concertos by a few well-established women who look fabulous and whose images have been plastered over every music magazine, yet whose questionable musicianship has left me infuriated and incredulous.

To add insult to injury, some of the stuffier critics seem automatically to take against glamorously dressed female soloists. That’s equally iniquitous, because in some cases these musicians really are fabulous, yet find themselves presumed frivolous – again, judged for appearance, not expertise. In that sense, women in music just can’t win: damned by one set of people if they don’t look good, damned by another if they do.

Chang is fortunate: she has it all. But spare a thought for the undiscovered Susan Boyles of classical music who may never be noticed in a world in which the core values have become dangerously and often destructively skewed.

More #operaplot entries...

In case you were wondering. And yes, I should be working.

#operaplot Love potion...Tristan! Isolde! Isolde! Tristan! Trisolde! Isotan! We're one! Marc! Melot! Ouch! Schopenhauer! Nirvana!

#operaplot He doesn't love me! And he shot his best friend. Wish I hadn't written that letter. I'll marry a prince. Now he loves me? Tough.

#operaplot Cards say death is her lot, but she never loses the plot. She shags Don Jose, then runs away; is she asking for trouble or not?

#operaplot Husband goes to party instead of prison after mix-up with a bat. Wife turns Hungarian to get him back. Blame the champers.

#operaplot Dear Don, 1003 women in Spain alone is too many. You'll be in deep shit when my dad's ghost gets to you. Go to hell. Love, Anna

[UPDATE: Sunday morning. *sigh*...]

#operaplot Therewasagirloftheregiment/ whoseauntieprovedanimpediment/ Shetookheraway,butcalleditaday/ whenToniosaid 'you'rehermum,youmeant'

Fascinating

There's a super article by Michael Haas, brains behind old-Decca's Entartete Musik series, at the OREL Foundation's website. Entitled 'The Challenges Ahead', it explores the problems of perception that surround Schoenberg's lesser-known contemporaries and suggests that we haven't yet learned to recognise individual voices for what they are. He also surveys briefly the impact of 20th-century totalitarian regimes on the music of the day, and on its audiences.

...Confronted with new yet familiar sounding music that is clearly moving away from tonality, artists instinctively refer to the “gold–standard” of Schoenberg and thus assume, for example, that Egon Wellesz and Hanns Eisler must have been less talented Bergs and Weberns, or that Ernst Krenek's twelve–tone opera Karl V was most likely a 'poor man's' Lulu. Few take the time to ponder what these composers did differently and why they felt compelled to modify Schoenberg's ideas. For the listener who demands challenging repertoire, there is still much that remains unexplored. All of these composers, along with several others, did indeed feel that music's progress would inevitably lead away from traditional tonality. Whether their music was the result of haphazard ideas or consisted of scrupulously mapped out serialism or diatonic–sounding serialism — reflecting Eisler's ambition to write “twelve–tone music for the common man” — it becomes apparent that the Second Viennese School offered more than just Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg. In other words, when we listen to the music of Hanns Eisler, Ernst Krenek or Egon Wellesz, the issue should not be how they are similar to Schoenberg but rather in what ways they differ from him.

IMG Artists boss pleads guilty to fraud. The rest of us tweet operaplots

Jeeeeeez. Anybody think this one deserves a government bailout?

Drew McManus had the story in Adaptistration a couple of weeks ago (when I was down with flu, swine, critics or otherwise) and offers some interesting thoughts on implications for the music business and fees therein.

Meanwhile Norman Lebrecht, who reports on all that in Bloomberg News, is also busy contributing to the deluge of #operaplot entries over at Twitter. Hey, Norman, I thought you weren't supposed to say which opera the plot relates to...

Don't miss the fun! You can find all the entries by doing a search on #operaplot on the Twitter site. UPDATE: The limit was originally 10 per Twitterer, but Miss Omniscient Mussel has just thrown that out and now tweets that we can enter as many as we like. Get creating, folks!

Here are JDCMB's contributions so far. Since I tweeted these, others have started not only squeezing the plots into 140 characters but also turning them into limericks, which I haven't yet tried...

#operaplot Count <3 maid, valet <3 maid, countess <3 count, cherubino <3 everyone. Flowerpot broken, pin lost, chaos, remorse, love we hope.

#operaplot I can sing best. No you can't. Yes I can, cos shoemaker says so, and you're a nasty critic. And I'm GERMAN. Eva's in paradise :-)

#operaplot so why shouldn't I have a toyboy? whaddyamean he'll leave me for a younger model? Go gracefully, me?! Oh heck. Where's the tenor?

#operaplot Help, the snake will kill me! why are you dressed as a bird? OMG I'm in love. Nightmare mother-in-law. Let's find enlightenment.

#operaplot Here's my castle. Are you afraid? No, I'm going to open all those damn doors! Are you afraid? No, let me in! Who's that? Oh shit.

#operaplot Marie's dead. Marietta's alive. Paul thinks Marietta is Marie. Paul has dream. Paul doesn't murder anyone really. Bye-bye Bruges.

Villazon in surgery

Stop press - Rolando Villazon is off for surgery on a cyst on his larynx. Werther in Vienna this May will need a new tenor and forthcoming appearances in Berlin and Hamburg are off. Owch.

A second-hand report from the London International Piano Competition

Meet Bezhod Abduraimov, 18-year-old Uzbekistani winner last night of the London International Piano Competition. A little internet research tells us, among other things, that he has been scooping prizes left, right and centre recently and is studying in Kansas City with Stanislav Ioudenitch.

Alessandro Taverna of Italy won second prize and Andrejs Osokins of Latvia third. I wasn't there (went instead to the Wigmore to hear Razumovsky Ensemble with Philippe and Claire playing Faure G min Piano Quartet, and very wonderful it was), but Tom was playing in the orchestra and arrived home rather excited.

Abduraimov, he says, got a standing ovation for his Prokofiev 3 - for those of you overseas, this is very unusual at the Royal Festival Hall - and seemed "the business". He tells me this: "He had a wonderful attitude from the start - at the rehearsals he seemed very relaxed and was looking forward to the concert. Everything sounded and felt right." And ultimately: "He was amazing!" A friend who attended tells me exactly the same thing.

I found this interview with him in Star Magazine of Kansas City, where he was featured as an 'Emerging Artist' of 2008:

CHANNELING THE COMPOSERS

BY PAUL HORSLEY

The first thing to get past is the pronunciation of his name.

After that, Behzod Abduraimov seems like any other good-natured 17-year-old. He has a quick wit, an infectious laugh and dark eyes that burn with intensity.

But BECH-zod (with a mildly guttural “ch”) Ab-du-ra-EE-moff is no ordinary kid. He’s one of the most remarkable pianists of his generation.

The Uzbekistan native has been performing on the stage since elementary school.

He’s performed the Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 with orchestra “like 20 times.”

In recent weeks he sailed to easy victories at two competitions in Texas, most notably the Corpus Christi International Piano Competition.

He could have studied with any teacher in the world but instead of Juilliard or Berlin he decided to study at Park University with Van Cliburn gold medalist and Park professor Stanislav Ioudenitch.

“My whole family played piano,” says the Tashkent native and undergraduate, who learned English lickety-split after arriving here a little more than a year ago.

His family is Muslim, like 88 percent of Uzbekistanis. His mother, Gulsun, taught him and his three siblings piano, starting Behzod at age 5.

His father, Abdurazzak, was a physicist who taught at the university in Tashkent and invented a car that ran on oxygen.

When Behzod was 10, his father died suddenly of a heart attack.

His 11th birthday was on Sept. 11, 2001.

His mother had prepared the traditional lamb pilaf for his birthday dinner. His sister came home suddenly, upset: “Turn on the TV.” The fall of the World Trade Center put a pall on dinner.

There were other twists along the way. He suffered severe food allergies from birth, which caused his skin to break out in oozing rashes for years.

“You can see it in videos of me then. I looked like Quasimodo.”

The reaction was treated successfully, finally, by an herbalist who prescribed a Tibetan herb. Behzod still takes it daily.

He remains a faithful Muslim, praying twice a day and practicing around the clock in the piano studios beneath Park’s Graham Tyler Memorial Chapel.

“Now I’m 17, and it’s time to work.”

His goal is “to show what a composer wanted to say through his music.”

He came to Ioudenitch after a lesson he took with him in Lake Cuomo, Italy. “He found so many interesting things just in the first page,” he says.

Ioudenitch wanted him as a student the minute he heard him play.

“There are millions of performers, good performers with wonderful technique, but not every one communicates this energy,” Ioudenitch says. “Besides his great technique, he really communicates. He has his own ‘face.’ ”

Behzod’s hobbies include Internet video games. He can’t wait for “Grand Theft Auto IV,” which takes place in the city he hopes to live in some day: New York.

“You feel like you’re free in the city to do anything you want,” he says of the game’s therapeutic value.

And 10 years from now?

“I hope I can be a pianist. Not just any pianist. A pianist people need, who can give people something incredible — who can make people happy.”

He will be back to play a concerto with the LPO - always part of the LIPC prize roster - so I shall look forward to hearing him then.

Meanwhile I'd better call the friend I saw on the train into town last night and explain that when I said Tom was playing in a piano competition, I didn't mean he was playing the piano...

Zimerman at 19 plays Chopin Concerto no. 1

Just found on Youtube. Teenaged Z with Krakow University Orchestra under Jan Krenz, recorded in 1976. This is the slow movement - the rest is out there too. It's the most sublime Chopin I've ever heard, and I've heard quite a lot.

Walt Handelsman 'Worst Side Story'

Apropos de USA, enjoy this 'recession singalong' of a West Side Story remix from award-winning (and marvellously named) Walt Handelsman of Newsday...

Zimerman causes furore with political statements in Disney Hall

Massive fuss in LA after Krystian Zimerman used his recital debut at the Walt Disney Hall to criticise America's foreign policy and to declare that he will never play in the USA again.

About 30 or 40 people in the audience walked out, some shouting obscenities. “Yes,” he answered, “some people when they hear the word military start marching.”

Others remained but booed or yelled for him to shut up and play the piano. But many more cheered. Zimerman responded by saying that America has far finer things to export than the military, and he thanked those who support democracy.

There will always be those who tell musicians to shut up and play their music, including, sometimes, other musicians. Including even Opera Chic, who surprises me by doing so.

Also a lot of people don't have much clue about why America's effect on Poland should be an issue right now. I suggest reading up here (summary: Poland rushes into Iraq on America's exhortation when Germany said no way Jose) - and there's the small matter of America's plans to install a missile defence shield on Polish soil, which many Poles regard as effectively a military occupation and a potential provocation to Russia. Not to mention the economic fallout from America in Poland, for which please refer to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine...

It sounds as if Krystian had plenty of support. If the world's leading musicians don't make a stand, then who will? I applaud his actions wholeheartedly, and only wish he'd done it a few years earlier.

If any Americans are wondering what they're missing by losing Krystian, just have a look at this review from Seattle which appeared the other day. Update: and this one from the LA concert itself.

Or simply watch this.

As for the various people who are saying "nobody cares what artists think" - that's not correct. They do. Otherwise there wouldn't be so much fuss.

And yes, I'd be pretty cross too if some idiot pulled my Steinway Model D to pieces because the glue smelled funny.

UPDATE, Tuesday 2.20pm: Responses to Zimerman in the press are starting to filter through, so I will update this post as and when, rather than adding extra posts. Here is the first: excellent piece by Tom Service, the Guardian's classical music blogger, saying Zimerman did The Right Thing.

Tuesday, 4pm: Editorial from The Los Angeles Times

Wednesday: Shirin Sadeghi in The Huffington Post: "In this age of vapid celebrity personalities who gurgle amidst a significant burgeoning of global political consciousness, too few of the high profile artists of our world offer anything in the way of honest political awareness. Krystian Zimerman is an exception to be admired. "

And an editorial in The Guardian (the one British newspaper whose editor is an accomplished pianist himself): "Poland has a heritage of patriotic and political pianists that stretches from Chopin himself through the nation's virtuoso post-first-world-war prime minister Jan Paderewski. To that tradition, now add Krystian Zimerman, an exceptional musician - and more."

UPDATE: Fellow piano glory Stephen Hough in the Telegraph blogs on moral decisions re concerts, from Sars to swine flu to this.

UPDATE weekend: my boss in the Independent, headed 'The pianist doth protest too much'. I foresee some discussions when next we meet.