Discussing John Ogdon

Quick reminder for pianophile friends in the north London area that today at the Hampstead & Highgate Literary Festival I am in discussion with the author Charles Beauclerk about PIANO MAN, his excellent biography of John Ogdon. The venue is Anna Pavlova's former home, now the LJCC - Ivy House, North End Road, London NW11 - and we start at 3.30pm. We'll talk for an hour and Charles will be signing copies of the book afterwards. Do join us if you're free. Details here.

And here is a reminder of what it's all about: a recital that Ogdon gave at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatoire in 1976.

Helter-Skelton!

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/stuart-skelton-rising-to-the-challenge-of-otello-9722095.html
Here's my piece from today's Independent about the fab Heldentenot Stuart Skelton, who stars as Otello at ENO's opening night on Saturday. He tells me about his path to the top, the challenges of Otello and why he and ENO feel the love...

Smile, please!

Meet Gabor Takács-Nagy, the inspirational secret weapon behind an ongoing transformation of ethos at the Manchester Camerata. If you're a fan of the Takács Quartet, you know Gabor already - he was its original first violin and it remains named after him long after he moved from the violin (due to an injury) to coaching and conducting. The Manchester Camerata's new season launches on 19 and 20 September with Nicky Benedetti as soloist in a little something by Vivaldi...and the starting point for the orchestra's self-reinvention is simpler than you might expect. As Gabor says: smile...and be ready to fall in love.

JD: Gabor, please tell us something about what “drives” you musically? I’ve heard you as violinist, conductor and teacher and I’d love to know what your ideals are and what qualities you think are vital in a musical performance.

GTN: The most important thing is to manipulate the emotions of the listeners (as Leopold Mozart wrote in 1756 – sending to them spiritual messages which are behind every note and phrase). In the score we find dead notes; we have to bring them alive. In other words, the composer feels an emotion or atmosphere and finds the notes for them; we performers find the (dead)  notes on paper and have to find the spiritual values behind each of them. This is fascinating and is what drives me – I am not a genius but hopefully have antennas to them. There is an Indian saying: 'You are as rich as much as you give.'  A musical performance, which is an emotional strip-tease, is nothing other than sharing and giving emotions and spirits.

JD: How did you come to join the Manchester Camerata? What is special about them, for you? What are your plans for the new season with them? And how would you like to develop your work with them in the longer-term future?

GTN: In 2008, Bob Riley, CEO of Manchester Camerata, invited me to conduct the new year’s concert and I felt a big affinity with the orchestra. They are very nice people and very good musicians and I knew immediately that we could make music as I just described . I‘d like to use fewer gestures in future performances and rehearsals and also to talk less because now we understand each other more and more. The mutual trust and confidence in each other could be even higher, which means we could be even more creative in the future.

JD: When the orchestra says that they wish to “redefine what an orchestra can do” - what do you feel this means? How would you like to see the orchestras of the future - or, indeed, the present - operating?

GTN: When I asked my young daughters if they like concerts of classical music, they answered, “No, because the music is nice but both the musicians and public are very stiff”. I had to agree with them. We have to be more communicative, open and emotional on stage, otherwise we will lose the next generation. Some years ago, I began presenting the pieces to the public and it makes the atmosphere more human and relaxed for both orchestra and public.

JD: The conductor Iván Fischer recently said (in an interview with The Times) that he thinks the traditional symphony orchestra model can last only another few decades, if that. What do you think he meant by this? Do you agree? How will things change?

GTN: I agree with Iván – if we don’t change drastically, we could lose the next generation.  We have to reform many things, but still manage to avoid circus-like activities.

JD: How is the musical scene of Hungary at the moment? Why is the place home to such a special tradition of musicianship - and does this still exist?

GTN: The Hungarian music scene is very alive: we have lots of brilliant musicians and the public loves classical music. The tickets are getting more expensive for an average wage but there are many free events as well. I hope the country will get stronger economically, which will help cultural activities. I do not know exactly what the secret could be of the special tradition of musicianship – one thing is true, though, which is that the Hungarians are very emotional with extremes of mood that can change abruptly. This is very useful for music-making!

JD: How can we best attract and excite new audiences with classical music in a world that seems so ignorant of it and resistant to the idea of it?

GTN: With exciting, emotional, colourful performances and with smiling faces from the stage. Classical musicians, especially in orchestras, can look far too serious. One of the reasons is the fear of making small mistakes which the public doesn’t hear anyway! It’s a long story.

JD: Please would you name a few of your favourite pieces?

GTN: My favourite piece is always the one I am working on (most of the time). If you study a masterpiece and get closer to it, sooner or later you will fall in love with it. During the performance, this love can be the generator for our energy and enthusiasm.

St Matthew and St Mark?

It was one of the hottest tickets in town yesterday: the semi-staged performance at the Proms of the Bach St Matthew Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle conducting, direction by Peter Sellars. Add to this the Berlin Radio Choir, singing from memory, an all-star cast and a packed Albert Hall that was ready for anything...

Well, almost anything. We were not quite ready for the utterly devastating performance that Mark Padmore gave as the Evangelist. In Sellars' concept - sometimes convincing, sometimes less so - the Evangelist carries everything, experiencing the emotions and traumas of each character, supporting them, leading them, suffering in their place. Christ - the astounding Christian Gerhaher - is a distant figure, seated above the orchestra and outside the action through the first half, then entirely off stage for his scant few phrases in the second. The Evangelist lives the drama and is its focal point. The beauty, nuancing, clarity and stillness of Padmore's voice would have been enough to carry the night on its own, but his every move magnetised us and convinced us that he felt every anguish, every burden and every lash. If the British music business had not already given him a virtual sainthood by repute, they certainly should now. (Gerhaher, of course, is just as magical, but has frustratingly little to sing.)

The staging has its ups and downs, many of them literal. A lot of rushing around is involved and sometimes one wished they'd keep still for a few minutes. Yet some extraordinary images unfolded that also enhanced the music at a profound level, notably through the interaction of the instrumental soloists with the singers, moments that carried a plethora of meanings. Sometimes the players seemed to represent the soul, the conscience or the better self; perhaps even God, or Bach in place of God? Magdalena Kozena sang 'Erbarme dich' kneeling at the feet of her violinist; Camilla Tilling in 'Aus liebe will mein Heiland sterben' stood in close quartet with her oboists and flautist; Emmanuel Pahud, no less, beside her right shoulder. Tenor Topi Lehtipuu stretched up towards an unattainable oboist in the organ inset; bass Eric Owens appeared to pray for mercy before a vengeful virtuoso fiddler. 

Rattle's tempi were largely very brisk, sometimes too much so - occasionally I longed for an old-school influence to bring back a little more time for breath, contemplation and refulgence, since some of the intricate instrumental writing whooshed by to somewhat unsettling effect. But the magic was there all the same and the moments of stillness stood out all the better. The episode that brings the whole work together is (I feel) the final bass aria, 'Mache dich mein Herze rein' - here he understands, accepts and transcends all that has gone before. If that doesn't do its job, nothing does. It worked. 

My personal frustration with the staging is mostly due to the sonic impact, as it entails much clonking about and some directional echoes which are the fault of the RAH's acoustic, not the performers. Still, there's much to chew over: the presence, or lack of it, of Jesus himself (we might ask: is he real?), those intimate dialogues between singers and instrumentalists, that soul-searing performance by Padmore. 

Would less be more? We can feel the suffering in the music; we don't need to see it. The spiritual catharsis of this work, like Parsifal's, is perhaps better internalised if there is not too much to observe and assess: that process puts us outside ourselves, switches on our objective brain and mutes the intuitive, emotional plane that's necessary for the full cumulative effect to reach us. (Btw, I am not religious in any way, shape or form; yet perhaps that makes the spiritual dimensions of Bach and Wagner all the more meaningful.)

What seemed at the time a long, hot evening now haunts for its ineffable beauty, its deeply human quest for meaning and its all-consuming, tour-de-force performances. 

In the foyer I spotted the head of the LSO, who may or may not have been clutching a metaphorical butterfly net. 

In which your blogger nearly dances with the Royal Ballet...

Your Cinderella put on her ballet hat the other day and went to the ball. Well, a gala at Claridge's. The Royal Academy of Dance celebrated the 60th anniversary of its most prestigious award, the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Award, by holding a fundraising dinner at which the prize was handed over to an entire company for the first time, rather than just one individual: namely, the Royal Ballet. Darcey Bussell, president of the RAD, is in the photo above, giving the award to RB director Kevin O'Hare.

The evening, complete with a glittery auction, raised about £65,000 towards the creation of a new bursary scheme to help young dancers from all over the world to enter the RAD's Genée International Ballet Competition. A talent for dance, like that for music, is no respecter of geography or bank accounts. In these straitened times this kind of support has become more crucial than ever to ensure that gifted youngsters do not miss out on opportunities due to financial disadvantage. The Genée is one of the biggest: its former medallists have frequently gone on to very distinguished careers, including RB stars Steven McRae and Lauren Cuthbertson (pictured right as Juliet). More info about the new bursary scheme will be revealed in time for next year's competition.

This got me thinking. I do wonder if some of the top musical competitions could consider starting a similar scheme for young instrumentalists. Not everyone can afford to travel to Moscow, Fort Worth or Leeds. Independent schemes like the Solti Foundation offer grants for young musicians for such purposes, but why should the most famous and well-heeled of contests not offer means-tested bursaries to gifted entrants who couldn't otherwise afford to go?

Meanwhile, it was quite a night. The exquisite Art Deco ballroom of this most fantastical of swanky London hotels was chock-full of the ballet world's great and good. And if you're me, dear reader, thinking back to the starry-eyed schoolkid who used to run up to the back of the amphitheatre on every possible occasion, this meant a lot more than Christmas come early.

I had some wonderful chats during the course of the evening with luminaries past and present: Lesley Collier, for example, who was the one I loved best when I was 13 and had never met before - she now coaches the principal dancers. Darcey Bussell talked into my voice recorder about the occasion and about her championship of dance for all; and over dinner I encountered, among others, Philip Mosley, a brilliant Puck, who was the original model for Billy Elliot, and the Canadian premier danseur Matthew Golding, who joined the company earlier this year and happens to be a dead ringer for Brad Pitt.

My fairy godmother was the RAD's press office, my pumpkin was South West Trains and I did not lose a shoe. There was dancing - the fun, after-dinner kind, to Abba and Michael Jackson and suchlike. If I'd only had the guts, I could have danced with the Royal Ballet...

Watch this space for more news of exciting initiatives - this one and others too - designed to support talented young dancers and more. The autumn promises much.

Jonas Kaufmann talks about...

...his lovely new disc.

I just want to add a few things. I love this stuff. It is very close to our hearts here at JDCMB, not least because some of these songs were associated with the Comedian Harmonists, that remarkable singing ensemble - pop group, indeed - who rose to fame in risqué 1920s Berlin, but were destroyed by the Third Reich since half the members were Jewish.

They all escaped the Nazi era, fortunately, but were scattered to the corners of the globe and never sang together again. One baritone with a gorgeously warm voice became a synagogue cantor. We stumbled across some reissued recordings ten or fifteen years ago and when we took them to my father-in-law - who was born in Berlin in 1921 and left forever in 1936, settling in Buxton - he still knew all the songs from memory and sang along, a faraway look in his eye...

There is also, as previously noted, some Korngold on this CD: the Lute Song from Die tote Stadt - but it's not on the trailer, so we'll just have to wait.

I'll leave you with this nice dose of Kaufmania as I am now off to meet some cats. This is not a euphemism.

September: some gigs and a song

Hello, it's September. How did that happen?!

Here are a few things I'm doing this month: do come along if you're in the vicinity of any of them!

14 September, 3.30pm:

HAMPSTEAD AND HIGHGATE LITERARY FESTIVAL: JOHN OGDON. I interview Ogdon's biographer Charles Beauclerk about the life and work of the troubled musical genius. LJCC, Ivy House, North End Road, Golders Green, London NW11.

21 September, 4pm:

ALICIA'S GIFT, the Concert of the Novel. Viv McLean (piano), me (narrator). Chopin Society, London, Westminster Cathedral Hall.

24 September, 6.15pm

PANUFNIK CENTENARY Pre-Concert Talk at the CBSO, Symphony Hall, Birmingham. I interview Sir Andrzej Panufnik's daughter, composer Roxanna Panufnik, about the life, legacy and influence of her father and his music. Concert includes A.Panufnik's Piano Concerto (with Peter Donohoe) and Sinfonia Elegiaca. 

September is one of the most beautiful months of the year. Here is its eponymous song by this year's top anniversary man, Richard Strauss, from Four Last Songs. The soprano is Nina Stemme, and it's the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Tony Pappano. 

I am sick as the proverbial parrot about having missed Nina's Salome at the Proms on Saturday night. I was in Salzburg to interview a VIPianist and was travelling back at the time. Apparently it was totally sensational and you can hear it on the iPlayer here: click on Listen Again, even if you haven't listened before.

"It's got to be obsessive." Meet Mark-Anthony Turnage

I went to see Mark-Anthony Turnage the other week to talk to him about the revival of Anna Nicole that is to open the Royal Opera House's new season (11 Sept). Article is in the Independent now and the uncut version is below. First, a taster: the PARTAY scene with the amazing team of Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna Nicole and Gerald Finley as Howard Stern... 

One more thought: isn't it also high time someone staged his earlier opera The Silver Tassie again? 

The premiere of Anna Nicole by Mark-Anthony Turnage, in 2011, was unlike any other the Royal Opera House has experienced. The foyer was plastered with images of the soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna Nicole Smith, complete with supersized fake breasts; and on the stage’s red velvet curtains the initials for the Queen, ER II, were replaced with “AnR”. This startling transformation of empty celebrity into high art is back to open the Royal Opera House’s new season on 11 September, with a special performance for an audience of students.

Turnage himself is all for this latter idea. “I think it’s fantastic,” he says. “I feel it’s part of a genuine effort by Covent Garden to get a wider audience in – they really want to make a difference.” Still, he has no idea how the work will go over with this youthful crowd: “I hope they’ll see it as a comic piece with a tragic end. But it’s quite likely that none of them, mostly aged between 18 and 26, will have heard of Anna Nicole Smith,” he remarks.

The eponymous heroine, to remind you, built a career as model and TV presenter after having her breasts surgically enhanced to vast proportions. She married an octogenarian billionaire, but was excluded from his will, lost her son to drugs and died of an overdose aged 39 in 2007. The court cases around her have rumbled on into recent weeks.

Still, it is the archetypal “fallen woman” resonances of her tale that well suit the genre of opera. “I think you can get too obsessed with the idea that it’s a story that relates to today,” says Turnage. “We were after a story that’s universal. Relevance – so what? If it dates, it dates. This time I won’t read the reviews.”

Anna Nicole was a hit with some for Turnage’s gritty, jazzy, sometimes heartbreakingly beautiful score and its snarky libretto by Richard Thomas (of Jerry Springer: The Opera). Others, considering the subject too trashy for an opera house, couldn’t abide it. For its composer, creating it was both agony and ecstasy.

“I found it very hard to write,” he says. The difficulty was the comedy: “It’s so hard to make people laugh!” He says he relied strongly on Thomas’s skill and experience with that side of it, adding, “All the miserable, angsty, lyrical stuff – that’s much easier for me.”

Controversy still surrounds the work: several opera houses in the US have demurred from staging it because of its bad language. But at 54 Turnage is no stranger to controversy. He shot to fame in his late twenties when his first opera, Greek, established him as the “bad boy” of British new music. While modernism and serialism were still excessively dominant forces, he drew vital influences from popular idioms, which was considered highly rebellious; and much was made in the press of his Essex background and his passion for football. “I’d played it up,” he admits, “and it hasn’t done me any harm.”

More fuss emerged in 2010 when his orchestral work for the Proms, Hammered Out, proved to have rather a lot in common with Beyoncé’s "Single Ladies". The imitation was a sincere form of flattery, plus a musical gift for his son, who liked the song; but eventually, Turnage says, “I paid 50 per cent to Beyoncé. I’d handled it really badly,” he reflects. “I should have come clean about it from the start.” His biggest regret, though, seems to be that he did not get to meet the R&B star.

His penchant for popular idioms may not have endeared Turnage to musical establishment organisations that give annual awards; incredibly, his only prizes are for his opera The Silver Tassie, which scooped an Olivier Award and a South Bank Award in 2000. Nevertheless, he has a strong following among both public and musicians, constantly garnering an impressive string of international commissions at the highest level, with orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic. The premiere takes place in Flanders, in October, of Passchendaele, a work commemorating World War I; further highlights ahead include another opera for Covent Garden, planned for 2020.

“People say I’m prolific,” Turnage remarks. “Well, I’ve got a lot of kids, so I’ve got to write a lot of music. I’m not writing to be indulgent, I’m writing to provide for my family.” He has four children aged between 18 and three, from two ex-marriages. Composers, he acknowledges, can be difficult to live with: “You can become so focused on work that you can be a pain in the arse. I think I’ve learned how to switch off.” Today he lives alone in a compact north London flat where his desk companions are busts of Beethoven and Brahms and, on his computer, an exceptionally scary photograph of Stravinsky.

“People do find composing hard and they do struggle,” he says. “But that struggle, the pain of it, is also very attractive to me, very engaging. If we’re not totally bound up in this strange world we’re in in composition, then something’s wrong. It’s got to be obsessive.”

Anna Nicole, Royal Opera House, London, from 11 September. Box office: 020 7304 4000

Undersung heroines: a way to sing them

After yesterday's little bit of awardish news, a few of us tweeps are starting a #fantasticfemales hashtag to help keep great female achievers in our sights, and yours. We're aiming to tweet about five fantastic females per day each. Please retweet us or tweet your own contributions. And the more men who join in, the better! It's about celebration, after all. Nothing more, nothing less.

Here are my first five: 

1. @SaintHildegard, medieval musician extraordinaire

2. Fanny Mendelssohn: the composer who never gave up, despite brother's best efforts

3. Claudia Muzio (1889-1936), one of the all-time great Italian singers. Hear this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVcIBzMgTaQ …

4. Gioconda de Vito, the amazing violinist who stopped her career at its height because she did not want her playing to deteriorate

5. Clara Haskil, pianist supreme: dogged all her life by ill health & nerves, but an interpreter of genius

Enjoy.

Gramophone Awards - for blokes

Wonderful list of winners for this year's Gramophone Awards. All top-quality stuff, including such luminaries as Jonas Kaufmann, Mahan Esfahani, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Arcadi Volodos, Iestyn Davies, Riccardo Chailly...

Oh, and, er, all the composers and conductors and instrumentalists are blokes. Great guys. Amazing musicians. Phenomenal talents, the very best in the business. But still, all blokes.

Plus ça change.

Now, there are some fabulous women involved in the line-up. George Benjamin's opera Written on Skin features the soprano Barbara Hannigan and director Katie Mitchell; there are female singers, of necessity, in the likes of the Ravel double bill from Glyndebourne, the Mozart Requiem and (I think) Marenzio's Madrigals; and the Pavel Haas String Quartet does have one female member. Plenty of women in the orchestras, choruses and so forth. But still, we hope there might even be some proud women included among the actual front-runners accepting the awards on the platform - not just another row of men in suits?

A few key awards remain to be announced on the day, e.g. Recording of the Year, Artist of the Year, Young Artist of the Year, Lifetime Achievement Award and Outstanding Achievement, etc, so hope remains. Shall we venture to hold our breath this time?

This is not to denigrate any of the winners - all deserve enormous congratulations and fulsome applause. But the issue needs addressing. If the Gramophone Awards are for men, we need some other music awards that are for women.

Full list here. http://www.gramophone.co.uk/awards/2014

Budapest Festival Orchestra - more!

I've reviewed the second of the Budapest Festival Orchestra/Iván Fischer Proms for The Arts Desk. Two Brahms symphonies, five stars.

About 10 minutes into the Brahms Third Symphony I wanted to check a name in the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s programme. I dared to turn a page. Bad idea. Such preternatural stillness had settled over the sold-out Royal Albert Hall that the gesture could probably have been spotted from the balcony. A motionless, virtually breathless audience is a rarity even at the Proms, where quality of listening is venerated; still, to hold around 6000 people quite so rapt with attention is an extraordinary skill in orchestra and conductor. But then, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer are no ordinary visitors...

Read the whole thing here.

Must great conductors be control freaks?

After the first of two Proms by the Budapest Festival Orchestra, last night at the RAH, I'm pondering about what a great conductor can teach us about how to run things. Because running things, in general, is not the strong point of the planet right now. As you know, institutions of all kinds are mired in hesitation, disagreement, argument, ideology, trumped-up fears re political correctness, and so forth - a situation that puts our ideals and long-established triumphs (like the NHS and the BBC) in jeopardy. We need some life lessons from music: when it works as wonderfully as this, why does it do so? What are they doing right? What general principles can we extrapolate from that that might give us a helping hand somewhere else?

There is no other orchestra that I run to hear, whatever they're doing, wherever they're doing it. With the Budapest Festival Orchestra I don't look at the programme; I just go. Because it'll be fantastic. And they've never let me down yet. Their founder and conductor, Iván Fischer, has a mesmerising platform presence, like Kastschai the magician, and a feel for both the bigger picture and minute detail that is many cuts above your average concert experience.

Yesterday at the Proms the BFO and Fischer performed a mixed programme of central European fizzy treats - Brahms Hungarian Dances, Strauss waltzes and gallops, a Dvorák Legend and the Kodály Dances of Galanta - alongside possibly the best account of the Schubert 'Unfinished' Symphony I've ever heard. Within the dances, every phrase was filled with ideas, meaning, the essence of its existence drawn out: try the razor-smooth, heart-melting arch in The Blue Danube (the Danube is much more beautiful and much bluer in Budapest than it is in Vienna, btw), or the perfectly poised rubato in the Hungarian dances - true rubato, a delicious lingering and spirited catch-up, time robbed and regained.

The Schubert was dark as night, with hushed tremolandi through which one held one's breath and soft solos peering over the edge of the emotional ravine. Each section of the orchestra is so unified that it sounds like one super-instrument, whether the double-basses - ranged in a row along and above the back of the orchestra, providing a wonderful solid foundation for the sound - or the most delicate of first violin sections, poised in the long notes of the second movement as if hanging suspended in outer space (a notorious bow-shake moment, but not a hint of that here). They even went on to play the fragment of scherzo that Schubert left behind - fascinating indeed, though it proved to be an idea that doesn't share the quality of the existing movements and was possibly abandoned for a good reason.

The control was absolute, as if Fischer were a pianist, playing the ensemble the way a deep-thinking virtuoso would the finest Steinway. The BFO seems to be Orchestra Fischer in the way that the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is Orchestra Barenboim: an ensemble so finely attuned to its conductor that every flicker of thought is noted and responded to, the understanding entire and unanimous. When tiny things did go wrong, as happened perhaps once or twice (possibly thanks to the awkward acoustic on the RAH stage, which can take some getting used to), it was audible because everything else was, to put it bluntly, perfect.

Now, this sort of near-perfection doesn't happen by itself. This is a conductor in utter control of every last detail. Only by being, essentially, a control freak can a musician achieve this degree of finesse and unanimity. Take the true greats, like Carlos Kleiber: those who have seen his scores tell me that they are minutely annotated, with phenomenal detail and exactitude. Take Debussy's manuscripts: to create that glorious whole, full of colours and atmosphere, takes vast and analytical precision during creation.

So to do something worthwhile, to say something worth saying, to put across the message that is worth hearing, takes two things: the vision to create it, and the control to make it happen. A great conductor, therefore, is of necessity a visionary control-freak. A benign and hopefully enlightened dictator. One who works his players very, very hard - with players who are willing to work as hard as that. It can't be otherwise if you want the results to be as good as what we heard last night.

More than one conductor has said to me in interviews, when I've asked them about this aspect of their profession, that the idea of a democratic model in musical interpretation just doesn't work. I still hope someone will come along and prove them wrong - later this autumn I'm hoping to visit Spira Mirabilis in Italy, for example, to see how they have built their alternative model.

But until someone can prove otherwise, the evidence is that great interpretations come from musicians of genius, and that if such a figure is to get his/her message through an orchestra, he/she has to persuade the players to give, and to surrender.

I think that is what happens in the BFO. Of course, it is also unique in another respect: its players are mostly Hungarian and share a specific background and training with one another and with Fischer. (There seems to be one exception: a name in the brass section that can only be Irish.) This is the exact opposite of an organisation such as the World Orchestra for whatever-it-is - somehow I can't buy into the Peace thing right now - which now and then brings together players from all over the world who do not usually work together, with end results that can be exciting one-offs in their own way. The BFO, by contrast, is as tight an ensemble as a top string quartet. The two approaches are like the proverbial chalk and cheese.

Conductors of Fischer's calibre do not grow on trees, of course, and he is one of just a handful of living conductors whom I, personally, would run to hear at every possible opportunity (the others are Barenboim, Jansons, Nelsons and Rattle). But can these visionary, galvanising, strong-willed characters set a model for world leadership? Dictators in politics tend to be a very bad thing indeed, because they are rarely benign, rarely functioning as they do for the sake of something greater than themselves. Our maestri have (we hope) the composer's interest at heart, rather than those of their wealthy cronies or crooked party donors - yes, you have to please the sponsors when you're off the platform, and don't we know it, but once you are doing your job, that must be left aside. If you are performing great music, you won't be cornered into using your own strength to push someone else's dubious agenda when actually in the flow of your artistic creation. There's room on the concert platform for visionary thinking and the realising of its finest dreams. We could use something similar on the world stage too: leaders with altruistic vision and control-freakery to devote to making it a reality.

Dream on... But meanwhile, come and hear the BFO and Fischer tonight, when their second Prom involves Brahms's third and fourth symphonies.

You can hear last night's Prom on the iPlayer here for four weeks: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04f8ny3 (part one) and http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04f8nzx (part two)

And here is the Proms Plus talk in which Petroc Trelawny hosts a discussion of the current cultural situation in Hungary, which is not a pretty tale.

The ice-bucket comes to opera...

My latest interviewee tried to sing his way out of the ALS ice-bucket challenge - did his pals agree? The Times of Malta (clue to identity there) has the story and video here. Our tenorial hero's three next nominees include Bryn Terfel...

With all of this going on, don't be too surprised if there's a sudden spurt of opera singers succumbing to chills.

Pianophiles, do not miss this one...

The legendary Russian pianist Grigory Sokolov has been filmed in recital for the first time in ten years, at the Berlin Philharmonie. The concert, including impromptus and Klavierstücke by Schubert and the Beethoven 'Hammerklavier' Sonata, is available to watch exclusively on Medici.tv starting from today.

Above, a taster: sounds like it is not exactly your average piano recital. But it wouldn't be and couldn't be. Sokolov is occasionally compared to his mentor, Gilels - but in fact he is a one-off. I've never heard an artist like him, before or since, and as he won't come to Britain because of our crazy requirements for a working visa (after all, why should he bother coming here when he can go elsewhere more easily?) this chance to see him in action is valuable indeed.

La Nina: no words are enough

My interview with the great Nina Stemme is in today's Independent, trailing her appearance as Salome at the Proms on Saturday night. Because last year she was there to do the Ring cycle and words just weren't enough, either for us or for her.

As Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Ring cycle at last summer’s Proms, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, she had London at her feet; one critic commented that her final scene in Götterdämmerung “flooded out into the auditorium in an unending stream of perfection. No one who heard it will ever forget it.” How did it feel to her? “I had to use my breath, but it was breathtaking,” she quips. “But I don’t have words to describe it, because it is music, and no expression is imaginative enough.”.....

Read the whole thing here. 

And here's a taster of her Salome from the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockhom, filmed last December. Fasten your seatbelts.

Schubert's Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Ever wondered why we don't hear Schubert's operas more often? Occasional extracts, recorded by the likes of Jonas Kaufmann and Christian Gerhaher, prove that within them there is some vintage Franzi music; now and then, too, an enterprising company in Germany or Austria sees fit to give Fierrabras or Alfonso und Estrella a peer over the parapet, though this is rare. Too many operas are let down by their lousy libretti, and Schubert's, sadly, are no exception. But the music, the music...

Now, though, Kammeroper München has a brand-new Schubert opera for us: nothing less than the story of Kasper Hauser.

Please have a little listen to this: http://www.br.de/mediathek/video/sendungen/nachrichten/urauffuehrung-kaspar-hauser-100.html

The story is much older than the Werner Herzog film, of course: the 19th-century legend of a child who appeared as if from nowhere in a village square, unable to talk; on gaining the power of speech, he proved a wunderkind in terms of intelligence and, possibly, prophecy.

But true enough, the scenario is not one that the composer picked for himself. The librettist Dominik Wilgenbus and the composer and arranger Alexander Krampe have this summer transformed Kasper Hauser into an opera, with music drawn from extracts of Schubert: the operas, the early Lieder and more. It is having its world premiere run now and until 13 September at Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich: full details here.

More info from the Süddeutsche Zeitung here, and an interview (German) with Alexander Krampe from Merkur here.

And if you're wondering about the calibre of Schubert's operatic music in general, just try this.



Meanwhile on these shores we need to get back to blogging PDQ. Solti was always here to help me along with encouraging purrs, and I reckon he wouldn't have wanted everything to come to a standstill now that he has gone.

RIP SOLTI (1 September 1999 - 19 August 2014)

Today we bade farewell to the best cat in the world. Solti - Sir Georg for short - has been our beloved companion through the roller-coaster of the last 15 years. Life won't be the same without him.

We're trying to think of all the good times we shared with the animal who was named after Tom's favourite conductor and lived up to the original Solti's reputation more than any feline should be able to. He was an indefatigable optimist and I reckon he shared with the great Hungarian maestro the motto "NEVER GIVE UP".

He had a passion for Wagner: he'd always come in, sit down and purr, paws tucked under, ears at the ready, especially if it was one of "his own" recordings. He was also a happy, if unbidden, assistant to my piano CD reviewing: he hated bangers and would vote with his paws at the sound of a nasty player.

On one occasion my editor from Hodder came to dinner; Solti bounced in through the cat flap carrying a live mouse, which he deposited proudly at her feet to thank her. As mouser, he was keen, but not obsessive; scrunched-up silver foil would do equally well for a game of pawball. The only time he ever brought me two mice on the same day was on my 40th birthday.

He would join in all goings-on at home and wasn't above invading our occasional house concerts, especially Viv McLean and Sue Porrett in Divine Fire in which he miaowed his approval half the way through. Having developed a call that could be heard through the violin and piano being played together, he used to make his presence felt during phone interviews to far-flung (and other) places and has therefore miaowed at pianists in Argentina, conductors in Russia, composers in Barnes, opera singers in Germany and violinists in Vienna, to hint at but a few.

He'd welcome us home, curled up on the doormat, or meet us at the corner of the cul-de-sac for a quick dash back to his territory. He loved the sun, the hotter the better, despite his lavish fur coat; but he also loved to sit in shelter on the porch and watch the rain. Indeed, he liked to go out in foul weather, get completely drenched, then come charging in, demanding to be dried - the cat equivalent of going to the salon. He kept me company through countless lonely patches of orchestral absences.

Of course he would preside over our annual Ginger Stripe Awards here on JDCMB every 21 December. As these events were often attended by the likes of Mendelssohn, Wagner and the Schumanns, I see no reason why he should not continue to do so, from the silken cushion in the sky.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has sponsored his cat-food in the past couple of years. Your enthusiasm, faith and kindness has been enormously appreciated and those sponsorships that still stand are still, of course, up in the sidebar in the appropriate spot, which will remain the Solti Sponsorship scheme in his honour (though now you might like to sponsor my chocolate supply instead - and I am going to need plenty of it).

Solti died today after a short illness, but he will live forever in our hearts. I am leaving his blog, Paws for Thought, online as a tribute.