Inside the Mind of Benjamin Grosvenor, with CNN

Good to see CNN taking on the story of a young British musician. In this thoughtful short film, Benjamin speaks with analytical acuity about what it really takes to be a pianist. It's from the channel's squirmishly-named 'Human to Hero' series.

Anyone who might think a C-list "celeb" can pick up some tips and perform on the piano in the usual hey-presto transformation for the telly had better think again.

Olympians head for Last Night of the Proms

You'd think the presence of Nicola Benedetti and Joseph Calleja would be musical Olympics enough, but there's an extra dimension to tonight's Last Night of the Proms. Look who's coming to listen.

Last Night of the Proms welcomes Team GB and ParalympicsGB to celebrate the end

of an extraordinary summer

Saturday 8 September 2012

The BBC Proms is delighted to announce that athletes from Team GB and ParalympicsGB will be joining the Last Night festivities at the Royal Albert Hall and in Hyde Park tomorrow evening. Following an invitation from BBC Proms Director Roger Wright to all that took part in this summer’s Games, the Proms is delighted to welcome over 80 athletes to the Last Night celebrations.

In keeping with the return of Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea-Songs in the traditional second half of the Royal Albert Hall concert (live on BBC One), the BBC Proms is thrilled to be joined in the hall by rulers of the waves themselves: Team GB Gold medal winners in the Mens Coxless Fours Alex Gregor, Tom James MBE and Pete Reed; Silver medallist in the Lightweight Mens Double Sculls Zac Purchase MBE and the complete ParalympicGB Mixed Coxed Fours Gold medal winners David Smith, James Roe, Naomi Riches, Pam Relph and Lily van den Broecke (cox).

Last night at the Vienna Philharmonic, the front-section Promenaders did their best to get into the spirit of the LNOTP by doing a few knee-bends to the encore, J Strauss's waltz Voices of Spring. Only a few, though. For a nuanced write-up of the concert I'm going to refer you to the sterling Boulezian.

As for tonight, fabulous to know that 900-carat Calleja will be beamed out to the entire world. So everyone can hear that the golden age of the Tenor Voice has by no means been and gone. It's alive and well and flying out fresh from Malta. Here's an extract from his new album, Be My Love - a tribute to Mario Lanza. Actually he leaves Lanza standing. (Be my love? Any time, Joe. Any time.)

Happy 20th Birthday, Classic FM!

Ah, I remember that day. Classic FM, the UK's first commercial classical music radio station, launched one merry morning in 1992. I was assistant editor of Classical Music Magazine at the time and everyone in the office wished the new kid on the block all the very best of British luck by placing a bet on Henry's Horse (remember that? Henry Kelly and the racing tips?).

We lost. But the station has continued its winning trajectory for two decades and is often first up to celebrate the achievements of the grass roots in the musical scene: the teaching of music, the charities that support it and, generally speaking, good music for everyday life.

Today they're offering a chance to win 1000 iTunes downloads an hour. We didn't envisage that 20 years ago.

And they chose to mark the big day...down at Morrison's. We don't find this kind of thing happening in our local Waitrose, I'm afraid. Well, not yet.

Pianomania on the BBC

Yes, that is a picture of Lang Lang playing a piano on a flooded heath. As I always say, chacun à son gout. He made quite a pig's ear of the Beethoven 'Emperor' Concerto at the Lucerne Festival the other week, providing surface beauty aplenty, but turning it into nothing more than a series of pretty episodes and pulling it around so much that several times it nearly fell apart at the seams. I pitied the poor wind players when he was supposed to be accompanying them. My full review will be in International Piano in due course.

Lang Lang, though, is a phenomenon that's more than the sum of its parts: he has become emblematic of our day and age (as I've explained in a lengthy essay introducing DG's new boxed set of his complete recordings 2000-2009). He could have been the world's greatest pianist and ten years ago seemed set to become just that; perhaps he still can be, once the commercial phase wears thin and deeper waters begin to beckon.

And he is at the centre of a tremendous pianofest that's fast approaching on the BBC and up in Leeds. The Leeds International Piano Competition is kicking off shortly and Lang Lang is to be its "global ambassador" (though exactly why isn't clear, as it's not as if he were a past winner, or even, as far as I'm aware, a past entrant...).

The piano is rolling off to flood the BBC airwaves much more thoroughly than the pond above. The three-legged monster is set to eat up the schedules on Radio 3 and BBC4, with extensive coverage of the Leeds contest on both, a series of Monday evening piano recitals on Radio 3, a major focus towards those actually learning the instrument, and much more. The full wonder of the piano is something exceptional, something magnificent, something magical, and if this unique season of pianomania can help to bring the essence of it to a wider audience, that is terrific. Let's see what happens.

For TV, Alan Yentob has made a movie about...oh yes, Lang Lang. I wish he would make one about someone else as well. Lang Lang has been featured on plenty of films before now, yet the truly towering musicianship of such artists as Grigory Sokolov, Mitsuko Uchida, Krystian Zimerman, Andras Schiff, Murray Perahia, Radu Lupu and plenty more remains scandalously under-documented.

Besides, if you want an interesting story out of China, then talk to Fou Ts'ong. We hear a lot about how 60 million children in China have taken up the piano under the influence of "the Lang Lang effect". We hear a lot about "tiger mums". We hear virtually nothing any more about the fate of an entire generation of Chinese artists and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution. And we should. (I think it's high time I unearthed my interview with Ts'ong for the old Classical Piano magazine in the mid-90s and re-ran it...watch this space...)

Wishing all the very best of luck to all the entrants at Leeds - and may the finest musician win.

Finally, at the risk of being accused of just posting the BBC's press release, I'm just going to post the BBC's press release (or part of it) and then you'll know what they're doing.

Discover a Suite of Piano Programmes on the BBC this Autumn

Saturday 15 September until Tuesday 6 November

This autumn, the BBC will be dedicating a suite of programmes to the music, people, history and beauty of one of the world’s most iconic instruments, the piano.
Piano Season on the BBC is a major six-week season celebrating a single instrument.  The season will explore the piano’s wide-ranging influence from the 1700s to the present day, as well as delve into the lives of the people behind the piano and the music created for it.
Highlights of the season include an in-depth insight into The Leeds International Piano Competition, a Jazz Battle live from Trinity Laban College Greenwich, a downloadable A-Z of the piano, Peter Donohoe’s 50 Greats, an online masterclass for budding pianists and well-loved personalities from around the UK, such as Woman’s Hour’s Jane Garvey, Radio 1’s Dev and Olympic medal winner Samantha Murray, taking up the challenge of learning the piano for the first time, with eight of them taking part in the season finale, Gala Concert in Cardiff on the 29 October 2012.
The season begins with extensive coverage of the Leeds International Piano Competition with live broadcasts of the Final on BBC Radio 3 and a six-part series about the finalists on BBC FOUR.  The season will culminate on November 6^th with a special episode of Imagine on BBC One focusing on Lang Lang as he turns 30.
The Leeds International Piano Competition on BBC FOUR will be presented by Suzy Klein, herself a pianist, and will showcase the six finalists and their concerto performances in full.  The series will also take viewers behind the scenes to discover why ‘The Leeds’ is admired worldwide, take a closer look at the mechanical marvel that is the piano, speak directly to the woman behind the competition, Dame Fanny Waterman, who has inspired a generation of young musicians and delve into what makes a world-leading concert pianist. With arguably one of the piano world’s biggest stars taking an ambassadorial role with the competition, we’ll also hear from Lang Lang on why ‘The Leeds’ still matters as it approaches its 50^th birthday.
BBC Radio 3 listeners can follow the competition live with both Concerto Finals nights and the Sunday Afternoon Gala Concert broadcast live from Leeds. Piano Season on BBC Radio 3 continues with artists such as Lang Lang, the Labeque Sisters and Malcom Martineau sharing their musical inspirations, as well as hearing from experts such as David Owen Norris and Peter Donohoe. Programmes will feature some of the greatest piano music ever written by composers who themselves loved and played the piano; including Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Beethoven, Debussy and Chopin alongside late night jazz programming exploring some of the greatest names in jazz pianism.
Monday nights will be 'Piano Night' when BBC Radio 3’s Live in Concert will offer listeners a series of unique piano recitals, from different corners of the nation, given by an array of international artists. Past Leeds finalist Sunwook Kim will play Beethoven and Schubert and  Russian Evgenia Rubinova presents a programme of music from her native country; Ukrainian Alexei Grynyuk plays Chopin and Liszt; Pascal and Ami Rogé play French music for two pianos; while Radio 3 New Generation Artist Igor Levit performs Rzewksi’s  celebrated and fiendishly difficult Variations on “The People United Will Never Be Defeated”; Ashley Wass and Huw Watkins team up to perform Robin Holloway’s  pianistic tour-de-force “The Gilded Goldbergs”.
In BBC Radio 3 ‘s morning programmes, listeners will have the chance to hear the ‘50 Great Pianists’ – a short daily focus on one of the fifty greatest names from the world of pianism as selected by Peter Donohoe, while regular programmes such as ‘'Composer of the Week' will explore the lives of composers who wrote for the instrument, from Clementi to Rachmaninov.  Special guests and piano lovers including as Kathryn Stott, Valentina Lisitsa, James May, Alan Rusbridger and Benjamin Frith will be joining the regular BBC Radio 3 presenters through the season to talk about their passion and experiences with the iconic instrument.   There will also be online master classes, exploration of the historical and social history of the piano and an entertaining A-Z of the piano in BBC Radio 3’s late afternoon programme ‘In Tune’. 
Trinity College London and the ABRSM [Associated Board of The Royal Schools of Music] will be helping budding pianists hone their skills in ‘110%’ on Friday nights.  We’ll be treated to great performances of Piano Syllabus pieces and hear from the experts on what make them so special and how to get 110% in their exams.
Later on in the autumn, BBC One’s Imagine will return with a special documentary presented by Alan Yentob on Lang Lang, arguably one of the greatest pianists of his generation, as he turns 30.  Lang Lang’s dazzling technique and musicality have inspired a generation of young pianists and delighted audiences throughout the world. Imagine follows him on an impressive schedule of concerts in Shanghai, New York, London and Berlin and reveals a personal story that began with great hardship and a family dream that nearly ended in tragedy.  In this auspicious 'Year of the Dragon' Lang Lang celebrates his 30^th birthday at a concert in Berlin with Herbie Hancock, opens his own piano school in China, plays for the Queen at the Diamond Jubilee, performs sell-out concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, and becomes the first classical musician to headline at a British pop music festival.
BBC FOUR will also celebrate Lang Lang being appointed as the Global Ambassador of the Leeds International Piano Competition with two one-off documentaries on Friday 2 November. Lang Lang at the Roundhouse will give viewers an opportunity to see this stunning performance at London’s legendary Roundhouse, recorded at the iTunes festival in July 2011.  Lang Lang performs a remarkable Liszt recital as the only classical music artist in a true rock-star surrounding, next to international pop stars like Coldplay, Adele and Linkin Park.  And Lang Lang: The Art of being a Virtuoso follows Lang Lang through China, the US and Europe and offers a glimpse into life on tour with the superstar.

Photo credit: BBC/Steve Brown

Happy Centenary, John Cage. Here's how to celebrate...

Set your stopwatch NOW.
Let it run for exactly 4 minutes and 33 seconds.
In which time you sit still.
And you listen
To the world around you.
Is there music?
It is music. It is always music.
Get used to it.
But not too used to it.

"Nichi nichi kore ko nichi." Each day is a beautiful day.

"The situation of being constantly on the brink of change, exterior and interior, is what makes the question that has been asked difficult to answer. One never reaches a point of shapedness of finishedness. The situation is in constant, unpredictable change..."

"It's not futile to do what we do...We wake up with energy and we do something. And we make, of course, failures and we make mistakes, but we sometimes get glimpses of what we might do next."

Jessicamusic.Bachspot.com

Meet Bach's Cantata BWV 146, Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal

Fetch a cuppa, sit back and listen to this perfect demonstration of the way that Bach could reimagine the same piece of music, or some of it, for utterly different forces: in this case, a keyboard concerto becomes a sacred cantata. If you know the D minor Keyboard Concerto, you'll have no trouble recognising the opening Sinfonia - but the movement that follows may come as quite a surprise. Thanks, Soli Deo Gloria, JEG and his brilliant ensemble for bringing it to us. (Thought for the day: why do we hear so little of these cantatas in concert?)

PS -- this is a serious case of KEEP CALM AND LISTEN TO BACH. A cabinet reshuffle has just moved Jeremy Hunt from culture to health (jeeeeeeeeez) and simultaneously a solitary builder is propping up my study window on the tip of a pointed plank. #ohhelp

JD meets... PIERRE BOULEZ

My interview with the man many consider today's greatest living composer was out in The Independent on Saturday. Read it here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/pierre-boulez-a-very-modern-maestro-8095947.html

I found the Maestro on excellent form, despite the eye operation. He may be 87, but the fire of his spirit burns as strong as ever. And I'm not sure I have ever met anyone else who is so searingly intelligent, creative and wise, all at the same time. I'll be doing a longer feature in a few months' time, for International Piano Magazine, which will also involve Pierre-Laurent Aimard, but for now, I'm putting below the "director's cut" of the Indy piece, which includes a few choice out-takes: the bit about Waiting for Godot might intrigue, and, of course, I love Boulez's attitude that you can't just see something is wrong and do nothing about it.

You can see the New York Philharmonic concert in the Armory on Medici TV until 2 October, here. (Remember, JDCMB readers get discounts on Medici subscription.)


 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If Pierre Boulez is this energetic aged 87, imagine him at 30. Arriving at the Lucerne Festival, the composer, maestro and man of musical action is recovering from an eye operation; it obliged him to cancel his visit to the Proms, where the conductor Daniel Barenboim juxtaposed his works with the complete Beethoven symphonies. But he will not be kept back. “It forces me to stay quiet for an hour to let the eye rest,” he remarks. “But it is very difficult to stay quiet.”

Boulez remains the heart, spine and soul of musical modernism. Many consider him today’s greatest living composer. His music is demanding listening, but once you open your ears to it, it can reveal entire vistas of sonic imagination and spectral beauty. And he affirms that he would like listeners to find it beautiful. “Sometimes it’s difficult to go to this kind of beauty, which is different from other beauties,” he says, “but I want the music to bring you into a sphere where you don’t go generally.”

He is a figure wreathed in myth. Some suggest he is a “musical Stalinist” (a term used by the composer Pierre Schaeffer); others, notably his performers, praise him as the nicest person they know. 

What’s certain is that he challenges everything, in music and in life, analysing issues with visionary exactitude. Besides, he is not a talker, but a do-er. “We don’t come to the world just to look at it and accept it,” he declares. In the 1950s he became notorious for the ferocity with which he called for the past to be swept away, seeking a blank slate for musical language to break with the preceding disasters of history. 

“The ‘tabula rasa’ was something of my generation,” Boulez says. “Works like Stockhausen’s could not exist in the years 1933-45: this part of musical life was banned completely in Germany. It was the same in the USSR under Stalin. Therefore I could not adopt the Communist point of view, because we have seen that already and we know what it produces. 

“It was not tabula rasa for pleasure. It was necessity, because this generation had, for us, failed to find something important. We did not want to prolong this kind of failure. We were radical in the sense that we at least tried to establish a new way of thinking. We did not succeed all the time, either – but it was important for us to begin from scratch.”

He was, moreover, a very angry young man kicking against the ultra-conservative musical establishment in his native France, where the music that galvanised him – Berg, Schoenberg, Bartók – remained unknown. Proving the point, it was down to Boulez himself to conduct the French stage premiere of Berg’s operatic masterpiece, Wozzeck, as late as 1963. He rejected France entirely until the prime minister Georges Pompidou used the promise of state funding for a new research institute for electronic music, IRCAM, to tempt him back from Germany, where a new internationalism in music was flourishing at Darmstadt. 

Boulez’s early pronouncements – burn down opera houses, kill the Mona Lisa, and so on – have clung to his image, perhaps excessively. Not that he has truly mellowed. “I was not more radical than I am now,” he says, “but I was, I suppose, more frank. Now I see that sometimes you have to be less direct – and more effective. But when things are wrong, insufficient, or not exactly the way it should be, then you have to tell it. I did tell it, sometimes with paradox or provocation. I did not stay at this point, but people think generally of me as a man of 1950, not of today – and I have to accept that.” His attitude is much as ever: “Something unpleasant exists: simply that. And you cannot just stay in front of it without doing anything.”

Among Boulez’s more prophetic demands was an upheaval in traditional concert environments and formats. Four or five decades ago, the world was not ready to listen. Today, though, the increasing popularity of ‘classical club nights’ – spearheaded by, for example, Gabriel Prokofiev (grandson of Sergei) in London, Le Poisson Rouge in New York, and a series at the Lucerne Festival – echoes Boulez’s call for informal, communicative atmospheres between audience and performers. Still, he smiles when I mention a recent performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in a south London car park. 

“It has a double meaning,” he suggests. “It can be important, or it can be just a fashion moment. But I prefer a ‘fashion moment’ to doing nothing. Recently the New York Philharmonic has done, with concerts in the Armory, what I tried to do as its music director in the Seventies. I was not successful because the time was not right.” 

In June the orchestra gave a performance in this unconventional venue on Park Avenue, including music by Boulez himself. It sold out and is streamed on the Internet until 2 October. He keeps dreaming: “Today people like to change the relationship between the sound and themselves. You could bring in improvised elements involving people’s reactions to the sound, like a fountain of music: sometimes good, sometimes not, but always with the freedom of creating.”

He is still composing, too. Currently he is trying to finish his Notations – 12 pieces for piano, some dating back to 1945, which he has been reworking for orchestra. Rumour has it that he would like to write an opera. It’s true, he says, but his plans were always beset by bad luck: intended collaborations with Jean Genet and Heiner Müller were each cut short by the author’s death. He would love to adapt Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: “The great novelty of Wagner,” says Boulez, “is that of creating a myth – the myth of Wotan, the myth of Siegmund – and finally the story becomes less important than the myth itself.” Wotan in The Ring is very real in dramatic terms, but in the Beckett, the myth is Godot, who never appears: “You find yourself questioning the myth, but you cannot discuss its qualities because there is nothing there! Therefore I was interested.” 

Can we keep hoping he will tackle it – or would we be Waiting for Boulez? “If you can give me an elixir of long life,” Boulez twinkles. Still, I wouldn’t put it past him. This is a man who changed the world. Given a chance, he will not stop now. 

Pierre Boulez gives a week of masterclasses at the Lucerne Festival from 1 September and conducts the Academy Orchestra on 7 September. www.lucernefestival.ch

 

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR died on 1 September 1912, aged 37

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's short life ended exactly a century ago today. Half British, half African (his father was a doctor from Sierra Leone), he grew up in Croydon - and died there too, of pneumonia exacerbated by overwork and exhaustion. Having had no notion of how popular his oratorio Hiawatha would become, he'd accepted a small flat fee for its publication and saw no financial benefit from its hundreds of performances. His story helped to inspire the creation of the PRS - but for him it was too late.

Had he lived, and emigrated to America, he might have become the international star he deserved to be - though there he was celebrated enough to be dubbed 'the black Mahler'. As things are, his fans still struggle to keep his memory alive.

Long-time JDCMB readers may remember this: http://jessicamusic.blogspot.co.uk/2004/03/coleridge-taylor-and-south-africa.html

But slowly, bit by bit, the recognition is arriving. The British Library has an online gallery devoted to him, which you can view here. Charles Elford has written a touching, fictionalised account of SCT's life, entitled Black Mahler and aficionados may also be interested to track down the volume, available at various libraries, by the composer's daughter, Avril. Apart from this, there isn't a great deal of literature about him. He had a short life and spent most of it struggling for survival, fighting the prejudice that dogged his every move, and ultimately working himself to death. His story came to its tragic conclusion almost before it had a chance to begin.

NB [UPDATE]: I fear some readers have been confusing Samuel Coleridge-Taylor with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. While his parents may have named the British-African composer in honour of his eminent forerunner, this has nevertheless been a problem for a long time. So, just to clarify:

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE: 1772-1834. English poet, critic and philosopher, author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, amongst much else. (Fact: he attended, uh, Jesus College Cambridge, where he appears to have had a nervous breakdown.)

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR: 1875-1912. British-African composer, counting the cantata Hiawatha among his greatest achievements...see above... This one is our anniversary man today.

Now, ANOTHER UPDATE, Sunday 2 Sept, lunchtime: Hilary Burrage has more about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in The Huffington Post (thanks for alerting us to this in the Comments, Hilary!). Read it here.

Last but by no means least, here's an extract from a US documentary in the making, apparently due out next March.

Korngold tops ALL MUSIC bestseller list on Amazon!

So now, thanks to that daft Sun interview and maybe a bit of BBC Breakfast too, Nicky Benedetti's CD The Silver Violin has zoomed up to be the top bestseller out of absolutely everything in Amazon's music section. And what's on it? KORNGOLD.

Other nice, mostly film-associated stuff too, of course, but she has included two transcriptions from Die tote Stadt - Marietta's Lute Song and the Pierrot Tanzlied - and the EWK Violin Concerto is the centre of it all and inspired the disc, and I should know because Nicky told me so when I was doing the booklet notes. Go get it.

Happy Birthday, Alma

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.

Phwoar! Meet the new tenor, Ivor Hardcastle!

There's been an almighty rumpus about an article in the Scottish Sun (which I'd thought a contradiction in terms after my last holiday up there) about Nicky Benedetti, who happens to be an attractive young woman as well as a brilliant violinist and a bright, idealistic mover and shaker in the field of music education. It was a heap of sexist claptrap and innuendo. Nicky later tweeted that it just made her laugh. Probably the worst thing that can happen is that a few more people might tune in to see her on Last Night of the Proms.

But it struck me that while men get away with writing that kind of junk about women, supposing the tables were turned? What would happen were the journalist to be female, the object of attraction male?

FANTASY GALAXY DAILY: THE MUSIC PAGES...

 Phwoar, what pecs. Get a dekko at the new singing sensation from willieful Wales, Ivor Hardcastle. 

Opera's hottest bit of beefcake, he stands six foot four in his stockinged feet (not that he wears stockings, natch) and - well, the tenor tones may sing, but those pecs speak volumes.

He grew up in the Valleys. His mother encouraged him to start developing his gifts incredibly early on. "She says I began to sing long before I could talk," says Hardcastle, 30. 

Virtuous Classics signed him to an exclusive recording deal as soon as they spotted him down the gym. "Sure, I like to work out, but singing's my vocation," he says. It was going to be a 5-CD deal, but was reduced to 3 after the sound engineer heard him sing.

So how many hours a day does he work out - I mean, vocalise? "Well, I've just enrolled in university to take a degree in astrophysics," the hunky hound declares, "so I kind of fit it in around that." Yes, I bet you do.

His favourite operatic roles are the ones where he doesn't have to get into a character or a costume. Things like Nes Sun Dormer from Puccini's Turandot by Puccini, or traditional sacred songs like Hallelujah, also to be heard on a Leonard Cohen album. 

"Nobody wants all the boring bits like recitatertives," he points out.

Bad news for drooling dames: he's just moved in with his childhood sweetheart. One, two, three: AHHHH. 

Can we hope he'll dump her? Doesn't look that way to me. "Ceri's the best thing that ever happened to me," he says. "She's an angel. And she goes off like a skyrocket." 

All right, don't rub it in.


*** Before you get all interested in the new singing sensation from Wales, btw, Ivor Hardcastle is 500 per cent fiction. I'm thinking of making him the hero of my next novel, Fifty-Seven Varieties of Tenor.

Salzburg: I am a Festspielhave

I'm just back from the Salzburg Festival, where I heard more amazing singers within 72 hours than you'd believe possible. Three very different operas from three different centuries, each focused on war, actual or between the sexes - usually both. My review-proper will be in Opera Now magazine. In the meantime, here's a little taste of the trip.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten proved perhaps opera's most devastating experience: an all-out tour-de-force, assaulting senses and emotions alike. Good to see TV cameras there last Sunday, as this production is a great achievement that requires preservation on film; nothing, though, can really capture the impact of experiencing it live, from a seat almost beneath the largest of several outsize tam-tams. This opera musters every last shred of force available to an orchestra, a cast, a lead soprano (the magnificent Laura Aikin), a conductor (heroic Ingo Metzmacher) and the human ear itself to get across its message: the horrors that these military men foist upon the hapless Marie, and the failure of a variety of parents to prevent it. The composer took his own life in 1970. Books on Zimmermann are in short supply, and there seems to be nothing in English, but Alex Ross provides some valuable insights here.

Other question-marks hang over Carmen. Updated to Franco's Spain, it starred Magdalena Kozena as a red-haired firebrand partnered first of all by her husband, Sir Simon Rattle, in the pit, and secondly by Jonas Kaufmann, whose Don Jose was a puzzling matter possibly determined by directorial decisions rather than tenorial ones.

Finally, Handel's Giulio Cesare, with Andreas Scholl as Julius, Cecilia Bartoli as Cleopatra, Anne Sofie von Otter Cornelia and Philippe Jaroussky Sesto. These people know how to Handel you. A perturbing moment towards the end when one reckoned that the Salzburg Festival and all those great singers should know better than to put drinks on a piano. But otherwise...these guys and GFH together moved me to tears several times - Cornelia's first aria, the duet for her and Sesto, Cleo's 'Piangerai' - and left me at the end of five hours almost ready to beg for more. Gulp.

Inside the venues: phenomenal music-making, imaginative productions (some more than others) and world-class performances. The setting: mountain scenery, evening dresses, outsize jewellery, facelifts, sponsors' parties, pre-show drinkies choice of Moet on one side of the road or Taittinger on the other.

And the Festspielhave? In case you haven't seen all this before, the Festspielhaus bears Roman-style lettering above the door, declaring it the 'Festspielhavs'. This is where the Festspielhaves go in. The promenade of the audience around the champagne stalls often attracts onlookers. Those are the Festspielhavenots.

Pretentious though it may look, it's not all snob value. On my second and third evenings my neighbours were enthusiasts who were there on their own purely for love of music and interest in theatre. One was a retired lady from west of Paris, the other a mechanic from the Salzkammergut. And there is kindness aboard, too. Exiting Die Soldaten, I was brolliless in a downpour that put Salzburg's famous Schnurlregen to shame. A Californian lady festival-goer spotted me and offered to share her umbrella across the bridge. That's never happened en route to Waterloo Station. (Below: the view of the Castle from the interval crowd outside the Felsenreitschule. The dog is a Festspielhavenot.)

The atmosphere has changed a little since my last visit, some 20 years ago. Back then, almost every shop window bore a poster showing one or more of the musical stars visiting the town. The buses carried advertisements proudly welcoming Maurizio Pollini and Krystian Zimerman to Salzburg. The record shops were full to busting. Today? The sides of the buses plug designer outlets and free parking. I only spotted one record shop in town, and it specialised in world music. Zimerman's recital had been cancelled due to illness (Leif Ove Andsnes replaced him). Sponsor logos are plastered everywhere - gone are the graceful days of discretion in philanthropy (though it's nice of Nestle to provide Kit-Kats for the journalists in the media centre). And a gaping division is all too evident between the down-at-heel atmosphere on the outskirts of town and around the station, and the dripping-with-gold-and-designer-shops historic centre. The one thing that hasn't changed is the number of tourists and the amount of Mozartkugeln on sale.

A more welcome addition is a big screen in the Domplatz that relayed Die Soldaten live on Sunday, and on other evenings showed film of operas from festivals gone by. And I may have missed a trick by not taking the Sound of Music tour bus - apparently you all sing 'Doe, a Deer' and there's a quiz to win a packet of Edelweiss seeds. But the way time panned out, it was a choice of that or a jog along the river, and the latter won. Had to burn off some of that chocolate.

Check the November issue of Opera Now for my detailed review of the three performances.