Triple Paprika! 'Hungarian Dances' is in Proms Lit Fest

Stop-press news: I'm reliably informed that my novel HUNGARIAN DANCES is to feature as one of Tasmin Little's chosen books in the Proms Literary Festival this afternoon. Tasmin will be discussing her literary favourites at the Royal College of Music at 5pm and the talk is broadcast the interval of tonight's Prom on BBC Radio 3. An extract will be read - I understand they've picked a passage about Gypsy music and the violin in particular. Catch it at the college, on the radio or later on the iPlayer (or catch the book here). That is Paprika part 1 - or chronologically speaking, part 3.

Paprika part 2: Today comes hot on the heels of a truly fabulous evening with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer last night. It's all true: Ivan Fischer did indeed become the first conductor at the Proms ever to throw a toy animal from the podium into the arena.

The BFO is unmistakeable for its characteristic mix of suave, smooth sound and absolutely direct, deeply engaged musicianship; as I said in the feature yesterday, when they play you feel the love. This was no exception: they made me fall in love with Mahler in earnest. After two years of head-bludgeoning Mahler-anniversary overkill, that takes some doing.

The first half was unusual for its mix of irony and magic: first, fizzing, demonic Liszt. Mephisto Waltz for once was convincing, seductive, genuinely sensual - and whatever did that harpist do towards the end? Whatever it was, she deserves a medal. Mahler's Blumine blossomed gently and suavely as the concert equivalent of a 'prequel'. And the Liszt Totentanz - usually a bit of a waste of space - proved a brilliant vehicle for the pianism of Dejan Lazic. He is a seriously classy player with a singing, certain touch and a terrific feel for Lisztian flair. He also brought along an unusual encore: a spoof fugue by an Italian composer, Giovanni Dettori, which would seem familiar to the younger members of the audience. It did. Fortunately I'd taken my niece with me; she kindly explained that this brilliantly-wrought Bach-style piece was based on a Lady Gaga song. (Now Neil Fisher of The Times has tweeted a link to the sheet music - so you can see it is real!)

And so, Mahler 1. Empathy, detail, brilliance, flow and energy: everything was there. Fischer's was a Mahler straight from the heart and guts, tempered by a sensible and incredibly perceptive brain. Shaping of narrative couldn't have been more convincing if it tried - especially the final movement, with its gradations of dynamic in the distantly approaching triumph. I'm a great fan of the orchestra configuration preferred by Fischer at this concert, with the double basses raised in a row along the back providing a solid, oaky depth across the board and the first and second violins opposite each other at the front of the stage. The tone produced is balanced, clear and homogeneous. And this Mahler symphony, for the first time, felt too short. I could happily have listened to it all night.

But that's where the third part of 'triple paprika' enters: the late-night Prom, complete with flying bunnyrabbit. The orchestra summoned us back from interval fun with one of the violinists playing some Transylvanian folk music while everyone settled down. The orchestra appeared in its everyday clothes and Fischer took up a microphone to explain how the event would work. We each had a raffle-ticket; the tuba player perambulated through arena and stalls asking punters to draw a number. Three numbers, three pieces, and sometimes a flying rabbit to catch, to choose another. Then the vote, which got everyone beautifully heated as we shouted for our favourites and hissed when someone tried to pick the Ravel Bolero.

Everything came off very slickly and rapidly - obviously the band, its conductor and its librarian are a dab hand at the logistics - and between numbers, while the parts were found and distributed there were chances for small groups of musicians to strut their solo stuff: a brass ensemble piece from the movie Eight and a Half, a Telemann piece for four string players, some Bartok violin duos, some more folk music, four percussionists doing a brilliant body-percussion turn and, last but not least, the tuba player with a didgeridoo.

So what did we end up with? Kodaly Dances of Galanta; Bartok Romanian Folk Dances; Strauss Music of the Spheres Waltz; Glinka Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila; and the Hungarian March from Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust. The idea is that the orchestra has no idea what it's going to play beforehand and has had no rehearsal, so anything can happen. Obviously, they knew certain of these numbers inside out and backwards. They gave the Hungarian pieces a terrific workout; the most challenging item seemed to be the Strauss waltz, involving sensual and well-calibrated ebb, flow and old-world rubato.

Two conclusions to draw: first, that this was an inspired format for orchestral display of the first water. The solo spots let the individuals shine as they can and should, and if the BFO plays like that unrehearsed....pas mal, hein? Ivan proved a great showman too: "Pass the tuba to somebody who thinks it's all a trick," he instructed. Secondly, the informality of the event made it terrific fun and the music and musicians shone all the brighter for that.

Once again, it was the usual Budapest Festival Orchestra achievement of sending you home walking on air, feeling glad to be alive. Could we do Audience Choice here? Well, whyever not?

No video available from last night, but here they are playing The Blue Danube in Heroes' Square, Budapest. The Danube, taken literally, is much bluer in Budapest than Vienna.

Friday Historical: Dame Myra Hess plays Beethoven's 'Appassionata'

Life goes on, it's Friday afternoon and it's high time we had a Friday Historical from one of my pianistic goddesses, Dame Myra Hess. Here is some all-too-rare film of her: this was recorded at one of her National Gallery Lunchtime Concerts during World War II. It will soon be time for the National Gallery's annual Myra Hess Day and I'll post more details nearer the time.

Tonight's Prom will be unlike any seen before...

The second unique event in 24 hours is about to hit the RAH, but it's going to be a little bit different from yesterday... Here comes the Budapest Festival Orchestra and its founder & conductor Ivan Fischer. And though the first part of the evening is a "normal" concert, the late-night one at 10pm asks the audience to choose the music on the spot, from a list of several hundred - all of which will have to be brought along on the van from Hungary, just in case. Please send that librarian some chocolate.

Here's my interview with Ivan from today's Independent, in which he explains why he came up with the idea and how it's going to work. Get ready to catch the flying rabbit.

Ivan (above) is on a roll. He just won the Royal Philharmonic Society's conductor prize, he is currently on the shortlist to be Gramophone Artist of the Year and in January he and the BFO gave one of the most wonderful concerts I've heard this year. 

Here they are in the Bartok Dance Suite.

Licitra is still fighting for his life

A few days ago the news reached us that the Swiss-Italian tenor Salvatore Licitra was in a serious condition after his Vespa hit a wall on Saturday night in Sicily. Now Opera Chic has more news - according to an Italian radio interview with Licitra's doctor, it seems he could well have had a cerebral haemmorhage just before the accident happened.

We're all thinking of this much-loved operatic figure in his hour of need. Here he is singing 'Recondita armonia' from Tosca. Send your preferred form of prayer/good vibes urgently towards him.

How desperate are YOU?

Or... A Little Black Humour for Tuesday Morning. To begin, here's some music.

It's a tough old life, being a musician. Many of us in this field are reared by doting parents who, along with our schools, convince us at the tender age of 0 that we are born to be stars and have a talent second only to that of Johann Sebastian Bach. By the time we're 20, we've usually begun to understand that this isn't the case, and to wonder how we can make ends meet in such a cut-throat field. By 40, some of us are still at it.

How desperate are you? What does your future hold? 

Take the JDCMB quiz to find out...

1. You can't get a recording contract, so you produce your own CD. Do you:

a. Send a well-presented package to an 'artist-led' label and invite the manager to lunch with you, your sponsor and a famous advisor like Ivor Chestikoff to discuss market gaps and interesting repertoire.

b. Do it all yourself, hiring a good PR and making sure your distributors are reputable and respected, but neglect your practising in order to organise everything. Then you give a concert to launch the disc...

c. Decide it's not worth doing at all: it's got to be DG or bust. You devote yourself instead to learning the 48 and writing about how your interpretation is the definitive one and that nobody else knows how to play Bach properly. Only at that point do you make a demo disc and send it out with your tracts to blind everyone with your expertise.

d. Do it all yourself, but decide that PR and advertising is a waste of money: only word of mouth counts. You always carry a supply of your CDs, so that if a music critic happens to turn up at your mum's 80th birthday party, you can talk to him for half an hour about your achievements and give him a copy to take home and write about. You know he wants it.

2. Your sponsor hires the Wigmore Hall for you. Do you:

a. Plan your programme carefully, featuring the works Ivor Chestikoff says you're best in, and tactfully try to avoid the concert being on a Monday evening or a major public holiday. You engage a good PR person at least six months in advance, organise a drinks reception after the gig to which you can invite more potential sponsors, critics and all the people to whom you 'owe one' for their support over the years. You practise like the blazes, give some trial runs at friendly private salons and make sure your concert outfit fits you snugly and elegantly. On stage, you forget about everything but the music.

b. You decide you're going to play Bach's 48: 24 in the first half, 24 in the second, everything by memory, even though so far you've only learned 12 of them. You love a challenge! And what an opportunity: this could make you a real splash. You're so busy memorising the fugues that you forget you need to publicise the gig until a week beforehand. Oh well, perhaps Facebook and Twitter can sort it - "Please RT".

c. You don't need to do PR - everyone will come to hear you anyway, because you're the best, even if nobody knows it yet. It's all down to luck in any case.

d. You splash out on a Vivienne Westwood outfit, have your photo taken in it and put it on your Facebook page and website. Then, to save money, you write your own press releases, though there's no time to have them checked or proofread, and you badger every publication and website with them, plus phone calls, sending emails four times if no reply comes within the first day to the first one. Finally, on the underused blog section of your website, you embed the tags "Vivienne Westwood", "Luciano Pavarotti" and "Katherine Jenkins" to ensure more hits. 

3. You've managed to get backstage to meet a famous conductor. Ivor Chestikoff introduces you and the maestro holds your hand, gazes into your eyes and says it's a great pleasure to meet you. Then he tells you to call his secretary to arrange an audition. You do so; the PA says you can go to play to him in Los Angeles, Berlin or Hong Kong. You can just afford Berlin if you go on a budget airline, but it's in the middle of your holiday. Do you:

a. Cancel the holiday and go to Berlin, taking the pieces that Chestikoff has suggested that you are good at and that he knows the maestro will respond to well. You arrive the night before and make sure you're well rested despite your nerves. You arrange to fly back on the last plane on the day of your audition to save the hotel bill. When the maestro asks you what you're doing later that night, you explain you have to get back home to prepare for your concert in three days' time.

b. You can't bear to miss your holiday. You decide to go to LA and you twist a sponsor/parent's arm into paying your fare and a cheap motel for two nights. You get there ready to audition the next day - but you're jet-lagged. Will you play your best? Will you notice the inference when the maestro asks you what you're doing later that evening?

c. You laugh and say you couldn't possibly afford to go to LA or Hong Kong and you can't miss your holiday, so what about looking further ahead? The PA checks the schedule and suggests October 2012 in Moscow or Sydney. 

d. You choose whichever is soonest - hang the air fare and the holiday. You play the most difficult piece you know. You wear sexy clothes and you smile a lot. When the maestro asks you what you're doing later, you're free. He invites you to dinner and you go; you get a bit starry-eyed that you are quaffing expensive champers with the maestro and he's flirting with you something chronic, even though he is decades older than you and you'd maybe hoped he'd be fatherly and caring. Then he suggests you go up to his room where he can give you some of his latest CDs. You don't have the contract or a promise of a concert yet, but you go. You will do anything for your art. 

Results:

Mostly a: Your feet are on the ground and you have a good chance of achieving a certain amount of recognition; with luck and talent you might have a breakthrough. Do you take enough risks to get the extra edge of danger that sets concert halls alight? 

Mostly b: You take risks, but you're erratic. If you hit the jackpot, it'll probably be by sheer fluke. You may have something special to offer; or you may find yourself passed over as a harmless eccentric. 

Mostly c: Take a teaching diploma or business course, or learn to touch-type. You may need a job.

Mostly d: You're desperate. Very desperate. Someone will notice. See 'Mostly c'. 

Shock news: good-looking violinist can really play

Dodging our diligent builders who work on bank holidays, I turned on BBC Breakfast to see what the hurricane news was from the US, only to find myself witnessing some pretty bloody amazing Paganini instead. The culprit: Charlie Siem, a young British violinist fresh out of Cambridge and, uh, the modelling world. When I read that he was the 'global face' of Dunhill, I thought that meant the cigarettes and I was all ready to write an Outraged Non-Smoker of Sheen piece about the iniquities of young musicians having to get ahead by modelling for a filthy habit that kills people. But it turns out that Dunhill is actually a James Bond-ish designer menswear label...I wouldn't know; my husband is, like, more of a Ralph Lauren man.

When a fresh-faced, square-jawed, youthful supermodel type emerges with violin in hand and one painted fingernail, the knee-jerk music-critic reaction is to yawn and switch off; the knee-jerk Gidon Kremer-style reaction could be to walk out of the festival. But this guy can really play. And not just because he has Menuhin's Guarneri del Gesu, nor just because he's related to Ole Bull (have tweeted him to ask how so, but am not currently convinced he does his own tweets), nor just because Lady Gaga likes him. Seems he can talk the talk, walk the walk and, best of all, play the Paganini.

Have we turned full circle? Now that almost every young musician who pops up does look good, they need more than ever to be differentiated by their playing. Rather than one photogenic fiddler standing out from the crowd of technically adept ones because of his or her appearance, do we have a case in which the really fine musicians will emerge from the crowd of photogenic ones because of their playing after all? Hmm. He's got a new album out (hence BBC Breakfast), so see what you think.

Here's Charlie in something a little different (?! pink shorts) - two years ago, in Cuba with the Royal Ballet...



...and some Wieniawski.

Watch Glyndebourne's The Turn of the Screw right here on JDCMB

Missed the webcast? Missed the show? I can't blog you a slice of Miles's birthday cake, but here is the complete performance of Britten's The Turn of the Screw as performed last Sunday at Glyndebourne. It will be online until 12 September. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. More resources, videoed interviews et al at the Glyndeboune website here.

Friday historical: Authentic Johann Strauss II

Here is Johann Strauss II conducting an extract from his own Voices of Spring. A dream for all Viennese schwung junkies.

I'm up to my eyeballs in noise & dust from domestic building works, internet connectivity problems and other stuff I could really, seriously do without, so it's over & out for the moment. Back when I can think straight, Enjoy the music.

Of football, webcasts, Britten and cake

Here's my review of The Turn of the Screw at Glyndebourne the other day. I think I once described the piece as dreary, weak and boring. Please scrub that. It's completely brilliant. Not as mad about this production as about David McVicar's for ENO, but it's striking, original and very clever. Chances are you've already seen the webcast via the Guardian site the other day. I had to treat that like the football results, when you're advised to 'look away now' if you don't want to know the outcome before you've watched the match ...

Toby Spence was singing Peter Quint. I once wrote a piece about him headed 'Toby Takes the Cake' - metaphorically speaking, of course. So on Tuesday I bumped into him on the train and this time he was taking a real cake. It was for Miles, who was turning 13 that day. A pleasing sequel.

Less pleasing was the return journey in which the train was diverted via Falmer and Brighton because of - yes, a football match. The London train from Lewes had to go off route to pick up the overcrowded footy fans, so we were late late late and arrived at to Clapham Junction aeons after my connection had departed. It was the Turn of the Screwed.

Meet Daniil Trifonov

Happy Monday, dear readers. We've got builders in from today (bathroom), my back is playing up and I'm ploughing through some deadlines, so blogsperation is flagging slightly. But I'm happy to tell you that I'll be writing a new monthly Letter from London for the Istanbul-based music magazine Andante, starting from its October issue. In the meantime I'm following one of the most fascinating musical trails I've yet discovered, if and when I can think straight...but here's some nice music to entertain you while I can't.

This is Daniil Trifonov, winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition's piano prize, a prizewinner at the Chopin Competition and seen here at the Arthur Rubinstein Competition earlier this year. He's been a very busy boy and I've just heard his new CD of Chopin, recorded before the Tchaikovsky win; it is jolly impressive. But this, as you'll see and hear, is Liszt. Trifonov will be coming to London in the autumn to take part in Gergiev's concert with the LSO featuring concertos with the Tchaikovsky Competition winners, so it looks as if we'll be hearing a lot more of him... Enjoy this spirited, lit-from-within performance.

Double Brahmsfest: Haitink and Abbado go head to head

Another Friday, another Brahms Piano Concerto No.1 given at a great music festival by legendary performers. Honest to goodness, it's quite something to hear it in Lucerne with Abbado at the helm one week and at the Proms under Haitink just seven days later. Last night's Prom was a Brahmsfest par excellence - and the first of two, since tonight the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Bernard Haitink and Emanuel Ax follow it up with the Piano Concerto No.2 and the Symphony No.4.

Yesterday opened with the Third Symphony (which steamed into first place as my favourite of the four while I was on tour with the LPO and Vladimir last December) - the most intimate of them, it's the one you can turn, while listening, into the middle-period piano sonata Brahms never wrote, or the finest of his chamber works. In Haitink's hands the solid centre radiated the orchestration's golden glow; the playing was faultless, the tempi spot-on-delicious, the beauty and reflectiveness balanced out with certain touch and vast affection. Brahms 3 doesn't get much better than that. It was so good that there's almost nothing to say.

As for the concerto, Manny Ax was everything that last week Radu Lupu unfortunately didn't manage to be. I don't know what happened to Lupu in Lucerne, but he wasn't on form - technically the concerto was all over the shop, and there were some alarming moments where he and the orchestra seemed to be on different planets - the passage in the final movement just before the fugue, where the piano duets with a French horn off the beat, was a case in point (one pitied the poor horn player). What remained was Lupu's characteristic sound, a palette like an Odilon Redon pastel, dusky, velvety and radiant all at once. Ax, by contrast, was rock solid, dynamic, shining, thoughtful, humane.

And Haitink v Abbado? Telling, dear friends. Very telling. Haitink is a conductor whose work I've revered for donkey's years. There's something pure about his approach, free of egomania and point-proving, setting out simply to convey the truth of the music as he feels it and thinks it through. In the past his Ring Cycle was what turned me on to Wagner, his Ravel Daphnis left me exhilarated and his Mahler Nine sent me home speechless. And this Brahms 3 was, as I said, pretty much perfect.

But last week Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra arrived riding a different variety of phoenix. Things went wrong - plenty wrong - if this was only Lupu's doing, I just couldn't say. Yet that opening orchestral exposition wasn't only strong, but revelatory. Abbado's detailed emphases lit the opening motif like a shaft of sidelight in a Caravaggio; the phrasing of the second theme's descending scale linked it at once in the mind to the melody of the slow movement. Risks were taken, all of them in the service of dear old Johannes, and when they paid off they did so spectacularly. Haitink and Ax took few risks: what resulted was the solidity of the ideal just about realised. Yet despite all its problems, it's the Abbado-Lupu performance that I suspect I'll still remember in 20 years' time, assuming my brain is still in reasonable working order by then.

One other little grumble involves the RAH acoustics. For me, Ax's performance fell foul of The Echo. Apparently this phenomenon is well known at the Proms. It's not something I normally encounter in the usual press seats around door H, but this time we were by door J, further round the circle, and each piano note seemed to sound twice in rapid succession. Others have tweeted that they too experienced this, one from the centre of the arena, another from the other side of the stalls, so it's clearly not specific to seat 52 in row 7. Some say it does not detract from their enjoyment of the music, but I found it immensely bothersome, especially in the fast passages where at times it felt like seeing double. Please could someone investigate whether anything can be done about it?

Meanwhile, read more about my trip to Lucerne in yesterday's Independent, here.

And here is a taster of the performance last night from BBC TV - accessible only to UK readers, I'm afraid (that's not my doing, folks).

A quick dart to Dartington

Revisiting the Dartington International Summer School of Music after more years than I'd like to admit, I've had an absolute ball. I was only there for a few days, but am now experiencing serious withdrawal symptoms, just as I used to when I was a starry-eyed piano student knocked sideways by proximity to such musicians as Schiff, Keller, Perlemuter, Imogen Cooper et al. But the biggest surprise was to find myself recognising the same people I saw there in 1982. I asked the familiar-looking gentleman opposite me at lunch whether he would indeed have been there 29 years ago. The reply? "Of course. I've been here every summer for 40 years." He was far from being the only one.

Some things are different, of course. The make-up of the masterclasses is unrecognisable: instead of Americans, Japanese and Canadians queuing up to audition in droves, everything's organised in advance and Stephen Kovacevich's class involved just five students, each of whom played to him most days. They came not from the US and Japan, but Poland, Lithuania, France and Russia-via-UK. The situation in the singing class with the irrepressible Della Jones seemed similar, and involved both eager amateurs and good students. Meanwhile keen attendees of all levels, including the basic, can take intensive classes with top-level pros like Helen Reid and Gemma Rosefield.

I'm promised by the new DISS artistic director, John Woolrich, and the Dartington head of arts, David Francis, that the summer school is secure, it's not moving, it's not closing, it has funding and access to more - being dropped by the ACE has given it a 10 per cent shortfall, but they regard this as manageable - and it will continue to delight its regulars and newcomers alike in the years ahead. Composition and contemporary music remain vital, but early music won't be banished. The mix is everything - and why shouldn't it be? That's what creates the magic.

One institution that's disappeared is the tradition of morning coffee and afternoon tea-break on the courtyard lawn - now you can get your beverages in paper cups anytime and take them into classes. It's a pity in a way, though presumably it frees up the schedule. The whole summer school is also much more integrated into the year-round Dartington activities, focused strongly on issues of social justice, sustainability, literature, poetry (the original Dartington was the brainchild of Rabindranath Tagore) and much more. And let's not forget the cider press. Powerful stuff, that home brew.

But what has not changed is the atmosphere. Partly it's the place - the medieval hall, which must be haunted up to the back teeth, never mind the back stairs - and the gardens with their gigantic, ancient trees and mysterious tiltyard. Still, what makes it so very special is that the audience at the concerts are all themselves performers, and vice-versa. Everyone is there to make music in whatever way they can. When we walked into Nick Daniel's oboe recital on Tuesday night, we bumped into a friend who's a retired cancer specialist and plays the clarinet. He greeted us in great joy. "I've just had the greatest day of my life!" he declared. "I played first clarinet in the Mozart Gran Partita."

The whole thing is completely infectious and life-enhancing. I took myself to the music shop (provided by good old Brian Jordan's, from Cambridge) and bought the Faure C minor Piano Quartet, which happens to be my favourite piece and is possibly the only thing that can tempt me back to some serious piano practice after a five-year hiatus (writing Alicia's Gift proved cathartic, but it got "the piano thing" out of my system that bit too thoroughly). Tom and I came back yesterday evening and the first thing we did was bash through the thing on violin and piano together. We haven't done anything like that in years. Somehow I don't think it will be another 20 years before I go back again.

Here are just a few of the musicians we've been hanging out with.