Samantha Hankey, winner of the Glyndebourne Opera Cup, with Dame Janet Baker Photo: Richard Hubert Smith
You've heard about the journey home, so now here is a view from the inside on the Thing Itself, i.e. the brand-new Glyndebourne Opera Cup. I've written about it for The Arts Desk and you can find it here: https://theartsdesk.com/opera/glyndebourne-opera-cup-view-inside-0
Taster:
I was on a panel of six critics convened to
choose the winner of a special ‘media award’ at the Glyndebourne Opera Cup on
Saturday evening. What follows is therefore not a review, but rather a chance
to chew over the concept and its highs and occasional lows. And you may be
intrigued to hear that our panel and the main jury picked the exact same top
three winners.
From its first season in 1934, Glyndebourne
has been inextricably associated with the music of Mozart. Having decided to
devote every edition of its new contest to the works of just one composer,
Wolfgang Amadeus was therefore the natural choice for the inaugural event. Mozart suits young voices, as the
competition’s founder, ex-Glyndebourne CEO Sebastian Schwarz, pointed out (all
the finalists were aged 21-28). But also, as any professional musician will
tell you, his music is the ultimate challenge. There’s nowhere to hide. His
writing is so streamlined, precise and exposed that if performers are able to
draw out its subtle shadings of meaning, with gorgeous tone and sincere
emotional expression, you know about it fast. And if they don’t, you know about
that too. It’s magic hidden in a minefield...
On Saturday night I was honoured to be a member of a media panel, six critics convened to select the winner of a special award in the Glyndebourne Opera Cup. It was a wonderful event, and nice to see the gardens in early spring for a change, full of daffodils and primroses. Describing us and our task, presenter Chris Addison quipped: "That must be a fun room." You better believe it, buster - we were tucking into our sandwiches very happily, and reached exactly the same conclusion as the chief jury, but in a fraction of the time. We gave our media prize to the lovely American mezzo-soprano Samantha Hankey, who also emerged with overall first prize. I'm writing a full account of the evening at the moment and will post a link as soon as it goes live. What follows now is what followed. Unfortunately Southern Trains had decided to do weekend engineering works that day, so the Lewes line was closed south of Three Bridges. The press office kindly agreed to provide the five of us who needed transport with a large taxi to and from Three Bridges station. Coming back afterwards, large taxi is late, but eventually turns up driven by cheerful if charmingly dim cabby, who treats us to a CD of Christian devotional songs from the 1970s twice through. After three hours of unadulterated Mozart, it's briefly refreshing; we could, of course, use some silence, but politely do not object. At some point the critic of the Financial Times notes quietly: "This journey feels longer than the one on the way down, doesn't it?" He's not wrong. "Oh," says cabby, "I missed the turning. Sorry 'bout that..." We go round a roundabout in a concrete wasteland for a second time, take a bumbly right turn across a carriageway on which a maniac is speeding towards us at what looks like 95mph, and pull up outside...Crawley station. But we don't want Crawley - the trains crawl. We want Three Bridges, whence trains go lickety-split to Victoria via Clapham Junction, and it's very nearby. Indeed, it's round the corner. There were signposts to it. Cheerful cabby can't find it. "Uh, that's where the satnav sent me... Dunno why I did that... I think it's just down here, let's go round this roundabout again." We do. We turn right. "Oh whoops, I think this was the wrong one..." - and, boing, we're back on the M23, with no turnoff before Gatwick, 'Amazing Grace' blaring out. One of us suggests going to Gatwick instead - it's only a mile away and there are more trains. We head for Gatwick... ...to find that the motorway exit, bless its cotton socks, is closed for roadworks. There isn't another for many miles. The deputy editor of Opera Magazine discovers on Google Maps that it will now take 26 minutes to get to Gatwick, despite it being 1 mile away, and it's only 3 mins longer to drive to East Croydon... Cheerful cabby, eye on meter, agrees to take us to the latter, as we can't turn round now in any case. A few miles up the A23 by a traffic light, there's a sign to Coulsdon station. Taxi screeches to halt: "Is it that station you mean?" No. The name's Croydon. East Croydon. We trundle through the backwoods of Surrey, which are quite extensive, to South Croydon. "Is it that station there?" No. That one's South Croydon. It's only just down the road from.... Full credit to the deputy arts editor of The Times, who is in the front seat, asserts his authority, finds the right turnoff and navigates us safely to East Croydon at long last. Moral: never underestimate a bunch of music critics. And if your cabby puts on a playlist of devotional songs from the 1970s, exit the cab at once. Don't wait. Run. If you enjoy reading JDCMB, please support it here. No amount is too small or too large...
One conductor's plane delayed in a snowstorm is another's....opportunity. Not that the snow helps. Last Sunday George Jackson was home and looking forward to a well-earned day off when all of a sudden the phone rang. Next thing he knew, he was dealing with a clutch of brand-new scores, cancelled Ubers and a banana case...
JD
George Jackson faces the music
Photo: Brian Hatton
BANANA CASE AT THE BARBICAN
A guest post by George Jackson
Sunday morning.It’s 6:30, and for some reason, I am wide awake.
I have just spent a week on tour with the Orchestre de
Paris, where I have been Daniel Harding’s assistant: Cologne, Dortmund,
Luxembourg, and Brussels.The week
before that, my first Schumann Symphony No.4 with the Transylvanian Philharmonic in Cluj; the
week before that, the first leg of the OdP tour, at ‘home’ in Paris, and then
in Vienna.
I was grateful for my first full day off in three weeks:
Sunday lunch planned with a couple of schoolmates, followed by the new Ricky
Gervais show on Netflix.Bliss!
I manage to doze back off at around 7:30am, but was woken
by my phone ringing at 8:21am.Unusual,
I thought, for a Sunday morning…
The previous day, I'd had the pleasure of conducting the premiere of Jasmin Kent Rodgman’s ‘The Letter’ at LSO St Luke’s, as part of the Barbican’s ‘Open Ear’ Festival. A Jerwood Foundation composer, Jasmin curated an inspiring afternoon featuring performances by the best of London’s spoken word community, culminating in the premiere of her own piece with Salena Godden’s poetry and a quartet of LSO musicians. During the break, I had
jokingly quipped to a colleague: ‘Let’s hope Francois-Xavier Roth’s plane takes
off tomorrow morning...’.One of the LSO St.
Luke’s plasma screens was advertising Sunday’s Panufnik Composers’ Workshop,
where eight brand-new pieces would be publicly workshopped with the orchestra.
As my ringtone echoed into the slumber, I realized how cold
it was.Which means snow.Which in the UK (and, incidentally, Frankfurt)
means travel chaos… I answered about three octaves lower than usual.Natalia, the LSO’s artist development associate projects
manager, greeted me with her chirpy and friendly tone (she had
managed the Jerwood project too).‘Morning George!It’s Natalia at
the LSO.Francois-Xavier’s plane has
been temporarily grounded in Frankfurt.Do you fancy coming in and starting the session this morning?How far away are you?Can you get here?’
The slow-motion realisation of what this
meant dawned upon me: the chance to spend the morning with one of the world’s
finest orchestras, conducting music by the most talented young composers in the
UK.‘Yes.I’m at home in Hanwell.Can you email me pdfs of the scores?What’s the dress code?’
I scramble around: batons are
still in my bag from yesterday; I throw on the only non-creased shirt I can
find, some jeans, the nearest shoes.I
make an espresso, but then ignore it, since the adrenaline buzz is already
doing the coffee’s work. An Uber is
ordered: ‘Driver completing journey nearby’.It could take up to 18 minutes…..
I risk it, thinking that if the
Uber arrives at 9am, with a 40-minute drive to Old Street, I should have a
little bit of time to run through the PDFs at the piano at home, before looking
at hard copies in the conductor’s room.
Perfect!
Sunnier times in Bolzano...
At 8:50am, Uber cancels the order
– there are no drivers available.
I call two minicab companies with
no luck.The third one answers and can
send a car in 15 minutes.9:05, so I
should get to Old Street at 9:45.Great.
I attempt to find some
last-minute sustenance, and eat all that I can find in the house: a square of Dairy
Milk, three Jacobs’ cream crackers and two Trebor mints.I call Natalia: ‘Please can you leave a
banana in the conductor’s room?’I am
incredibly grateful for this later on.
The taxi driver clearly thinks I
am mad.I tell him that it is an
emergency, and can he race through London (he agrees, and does a wonderful job).I spend the next 40 minutes roughly
‘conducting’ my way through the scores, metronome app open in one hand.Yes, he thinks I am mad.No time to think about that.
I am now informed that
Francois-Xavier’s ETA is 11:15am, which means I will definitely be working on
the first two pieces of the day: Grace-Evangeline Mason’s Beneath the Silken
Silence and Han Xu’s Buddha Holds the Flower.I focus on these two, identify a list of
questions for each composer, and make sure I can at least work my way through
any tempo and metrical changes.Does
‘the new minim is the previous crotchet’ mean that I should just stay in 2?Those sorts of questions.The things that Simon Rattle likes to call ‘dental
hygiene’.
We arrive at the Old Street
roundabout.The friendly driver, for
some reason, misses the turn off for St. Luke’s, so we have another go round
the roundabout.Just to keep the
adrenaline running.
I race out the car, get to the
conductor’s room, and thank Natalia for the banana - which comes in a rather
dashing banana-shaped plastic case.The
scores are there, and I race through, underlining, highlighting, making notes.
I have a couple of very welcome
visitors to the conductor’s room before we start.The LSO’s managing director, Kathryn
McDowell, says a friendly hello and wishes me luck, and Colin Matthews, who is
mentoring the composers, pops in for a quick chat: he gives me a few invaluable
bits of advice about the two pieces, and describes how the workshop will run, as
a form of public conversation between myself on the podium, principal second violin
David Alberman, and the composer in
the hot seat.
At 9:59am, the orchestral manager
knocks on the door.
Time to go and face the music….
Winner of the 2015 Aspen Conducting Prize, London-born conductor George Jackson came to attention after stepping in at short notice with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducting the Austrian premiere of Michael Jarrell’s Ombres. Highlights in 2018 include his company debut in Opera Holland Park’s new production of Così Fan Tutte. Recent and forthcoming highlights include his Hamburg State Opera debut conducting the premiere of Immer weiter by Irene Galindo Quero and Jesse Boekman, and concerts with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and the Haydn Orchestra di Bolzano e Trento.
