You may have wondered why I've been posting clips of late Schumann and asking you to have a special listen. Now I can reveal all...
The campaign to launch my new novel, Ghost Variations, goes live TODAY via the groundbreaking 21st-century-style publisher Unbound.
Our heroine: Jelly d'Arányi
1933. A world spiralling towards war. A composer descending into madness. And a devoted woman struggling to keep her faith in art and love against all the odds.
Ghost Variations, inspired by real events, tells the extraordinary tale of how the great violinist Jelly d’Arányi rediscovered the long-suppressed Schumann Violin Concerto with the aid of supposed messages from the spirit world.
The concerto, Schumann’s last orchestral work, was embargoed by the composer’s family for fear that it betrayed his mental disintegration. As rumours of its existence spread from London to Berlin, Jelly embarks on an increasingly complex quest to find the manuscript, upon which the Nazi administration has designs of its own.
Though aided and abetted by a team of larger-than-life personalities – including her sister Adila Fachiri, the pianist Myra Hess and the musicologist Donald Francis Tovey – Jelly finds herself confronting forces that threaten her own state of mind. Saving the concerto comes to mean saving herself.
Clara and Robert Schumann
We have 90 days from now to crowd-fund the book: https://unbound.co.uk/books/ghost-variations. If you enjoy my other books, my articles and JDCMB, or if you just like the sound of this one, please come on over and be part of it! This digital e-book publication is worldwide, so it doesn't matter where you are - Sheen or Sydney, San Francisco or Singapore, you'll be able to get your e-copy.
For a pledge of just £10 you receive the e-book upon its release, are credited as a patron in its pages and gain access to the “shed” (a new blog at Unbound in which I chronicle the book’s creation).
A range of further rewards attend higher contributions.
For example, a special Early Bird deal includes a ticket to join me and fellow patrons to attend the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s performance of the Schumann Violin Concerto at the Royal Festival Hall on 6 February (violinist is Patricia Kopatchinskaja, with Marin Alsop conducting). We’ll have a drink and discussion after the concert. ONLY 9 PLACES AVAILABLE and you need to book by 31 JANUARY. You could sign up for an option which gives you a special print of the cover art, access to a playlist I'm creating to illustrate the book, a credit as a SuperPatron and an invitation to the launch party.
Or you could sponsor a character from the cast of real-life musicians: in addition to all the above, you’ll receive an information pack about her/him, compiled and written by me, including recommended reading and listening lists, plus a special credit in the book. Choose from Jelly d’Arányi, Adila Fachiri, Myra Hess, Donald Francis Tovey and Yehudi Menuhin.
To learn more about Ghost Variations, please join us for a special evening at London’s Hungarian Cultural Centre on 21 March. I give a short lecture about Jelly d’Arányi (who was, of course, Hungarian) and David Le Page (violin) and Viv McLean (piano) perform some of the music associated with her – including Ravel’s Tzigane, music by Bartók and Brahms, and a spot of Schumann. Admission is free, but booking is required: please phone 020 7240 8448 or email bookings@hungary.org.uk.
I look forward very much to bringing you this extraordinary tale and hope that you will be as swept up in it as I have been for the four-or-so years it's taken to write.
We've been away for a couple of weeks, escaping British winter (the Pierre Boulez appreciation was written on the beach).
For the last couple of days, the weather on the island was distinctly odd. The sea was delivering surfing-style breakers instead of tranquil bathing water and everything turned slate-grey instead of turquoise. The wind was strong and rain fell from otherwise clear skies. The hotel put up a notice saying that, very unusually for this time of year, we were experiencing "strange sea conditions" and one shouldn't bathe when the red flag was raised. Perhaps, we wondered, something far away to the north was causing problems from a great distance, since there is nothing between except ocean across which all that energy can cascade unhindered.
The other night we flew back - and some very uncomfortable things began to happen around 2am, somewhere mid-Atlantic.
The sensation that everything is shaking. The feeling that the dipping and plunging might be limitless and there's a wild ocean beneath offering more of the same. The impression that at any moment you might be turned upside down or knocked sideways out of your seat, and you don't really know what's going on because it's officially night-time on board and all that has happened in the cabin is that the pilot has turned on the Fasten Your Seatbelts sign.
We got back in one piece, just about. "Sorry about those few lumps and bumps along the way," remarked the cheery pilot.
We'd clearly flown through the effects of Storm Alex. Honest, guv, I will never understand those people who like going on roller-coasters at fairgrounds for fun.
So what do you do when you're on a plane and you think you may die and you can't do anything about it? Some people pray. I sing Bach to myself. I got through Storm Alex by imagining this.
Pierre Boulez has died at the age of 90. A visionary who owned a muse of fire. Farewell, Maestro, and thank you for waking us up and changing our lives.
I had a lovely interview the other week with the American pianist Mona Golabek, whose mother started out as a child prodigy pianist in Vienna. Once Hitler had annexed Auatria, though, she was fortunate to escape, one of the several thousand Jewish children permitted to come to Britain on the Kindertransport - but leaving their families behind. Mona wrote a book about her mother and now performs an inspirational one-woman show telling the story through words and music. She's bringing it to the St James Theatre, London, later this month.
The pianist and composer Ben Dawson has written a song about all those xxest of the xx artist biographies. You know the ones. Ben says: "Being a musician for a living means you have to write, and then keep re-writing your professional biography to put in concert programmes, on websites, for publicity etc. It's unbearably tedious and painful having to stretch the truth about oneself in the third person without sounding like a d*ckhead. That doesn't, however, stop numerous musicians from calling themselves 'the greatest/most admired x of his/her/their generation'. They can't all be the greatest living whatever, can they? Someone, somewhere is lying... Every lyric (almost) is from a real biography I have seen in print over the past year or so." Here's Rachel Weston singing it, with Ben at the piano. Enjoy.
And on that merry note I am off to do some intensive writing for a week or two. Back soon...
I'm not quite sure how this came about, but last week Angela Hewitt came round and played the Bach Goldberg Variations on my beloved Bechstein to us and a few friends in the living room.
Sounds simple, doesn't it? One of World's Great Bach Players pitches up and gives you a private concert, and afterwards you cook risotto primavera. What's certain is that this setting, an ordinary room where the listeners are at close quarters with the performer, is far and away the best way to listen to music on an intimate scale. Even so, this was a house-concert with a difference.
You might remember a piece I wrote about St Mary's Perivale, the 12th-century church in west London, a year or so ago. It was about "sacred space" syndrome: an atmosphere that a special place bestows on a performance. I wouldn't normally count our living room as a sacred space, though, so last week's magic had nothing to do with that. No, this was about Bach, and about Angela's particular mastery of the Goldbergs.
Back in the days of Wanda Landowska, Myra Hess and Rosalyn Tureck, great female soloists were sometimes termed 'high priestesses' of their art. It's worth pausing to think about what that really meant. It implies a pure, holy-ish approach to the music: at the keyboard these phenomenal performers would be perceived as handmaidens, if you'll excuse the slightly ghastly term, to the sacred spirit of Bach, Beethoven et al. Today this is an unfashionable idea.
Angela Hewitt. Photo: C M Yamanoue
Still, something extraordinary happened during the 80-or-so minutes in which Angela held us all under Bach's spell. It's not easy to articulate this. Around variation 9, one could sense a subtle change in the air. By 13 the stillness was absolute; and by the time the final toccata-style variation before the Quodlibet emerged as if on full organ, the illusion - if illusion it was - that we were experiencing some kind of spiritual visitation that was blessing us could not have been stronger if we could see its presence in the room. At the end I think we were all in tears.
You can attribute this "state of grace" (I write as an atheist, by the way) to many things. You can put it down to Angela's supreme control of technique, pace, concentration and drama - without which nothing would have happened. You can suggest a "sacred fire" descends while certain artists play certain works and that it's beyond anybody's control; either it happens or it doesn't (a view I've heard espoused about the playing of the violinist Jelly d'Arányi - of whom I'll be writing a lot more soon). You can attribute it to Bach himself, to the incomparable construction and inspiration of the music - though this requires the interpreter to bring it to life. Add to that the listener's state of heightened awareness, arrived at through intense focus and concentration, akin to the nature of a deep meditation. You can put it down to a combination of all these factors, while additionally admitting that on a further level it is close to miraculous.
I mentioned the sense of "divine visitation" to Angela afterwards. She nodded and said that, yes, this can sometimes happen with the Goldberg Variations...
The ultimate issue is that only music can do this, and only the very greatest music, performed by someone who is entirely at one with it, artistically and technically, and only when it is played live and shared, perhaps congregation-like, with others. That's why we have and need live musical performance at the ultimate level, and that's why all those much-discussed peripheral issues (what to wear, when to clap, bringing in drinks, etc) will remain peripheral, because they're not relevant (we wore everyday clothes, we had no desire to make any kind of noise until the very end and we had some wine, but rarely touched it while she played).
This kind of experience is rare, but it's possible. It brings another dimension into life that might otherwise be missing. If that is a sacred fire, and its summoner a high priestess, so be it. It's the essence of what musical experience is all about.
New Year's Eve in London. Photo: Jonathan Brady/PA Wire
Good morning, everyone, and happy 2016!
A warm welcome back to JDCMB if you're a regular reader and a big Aloha if you are new to the site.
The blogging sphere has become quite strange since I started JDCMB by mistake back in March 2004, so here's a little about my mission statement, such as it is.
I'm not "a blogger"; I'm a writer who has a blog. I trained initially as a musician and I write mainly, though not exclusively, about music. I've been in music journalism for 27 years. I held a number of editorial posts on music magazines and since 2004 have been freelancing for The Independent. I've written biographies, novels and plays. Right now I'm working on an opera libretto and my fifth novel.
JDCMB is relatively random and spontaneous. I hope the linking thread is a certain set of musical values, headed by quality and equality. I employ a rather British sense of sarcasm and irony (so do watch out for that if you're not used to it). I try to keep a sense of perspective - life's taught me not to sweat the small stuff - and I don't like the hysteria, witch-hunting and irrationality that's invaded discourse on many topics, including music.
I live in London, UK, and I use English English, not American English.
You can follow JDCMB by signing up for email alerts in the box at the top of the sidebar. Every post is then sent direct to your in-box. (This is an automated system, so I won't actually have your email address.)
JDCMB is free to read and unpaid to write. If you enjoy it, you're invited to support the site in several ways. You could come to my concerts and talks, buy the books, and support my next novel - on a very musical topic - which will be up for crowd-funding with Unbound later this month.
I receive many requests for coverage here, but I can't do everything. If you would like your event, recording or product to be visible on JDCMB, you might like to consider taking an advertisement, or alternatively a Solticat Memorial Sponsorship paragraph, at a highly competitive rate, which contributes to cat food for Solti's successors, Ricki and Cosi.
JDCMB does not invite reader comments, but we have some lively discussions around the posts that are shared on Facebook.
What you won't find on JDCMB: ad hominem attacks, porn, conspiracy theories, twisted thinking and malice.
What you will find: good humour, solid artistic values and plenty of passion. I believe that everybody deserves truly great music and arts in their lives.
Last but not least, Pierre Boulez once said to me: "When things are wrong...you cannot just stay in front of it without doing anything." He's right. So sometimes I try to do something. Very occasionally, it works.
Happy reading, happy listening and, above all, happy music-making!
Radu Lupu, who is considered by most pianophiles as one of today's greatest artists, receives a CBE in the New Year Honours List. I'm afraid it is simply not recognition enough for an artist of his calibre.
Meanwhile, in Canada another great pianist, Angela Hewitt, has been made a Companion of the Order of Canada - the highest honour that the country can give one of its citizens.
Of course, plenty of people would like to see the UK honours system dismantled lock, stock and barrel, especially right now. I don't see that happening anytime soon, though, and meanwhile it is always good when musicians and deserving members of the music industry receive any public thanks. Here is a selection of the others in this year's list:
The pianist Malcolm Martineau and the conductor Steuart Bedford all receive OBEs, along with singer-songwriter Damon Albarn, former head of the ABRSM Leslie East and music publisher Paulette Long. The founders and artistic directors of Music Theatre Wales, Michael McCarthy and Michael Rafferty, and Jeremy Wilding, chairman of the Three Choirs Festival Society, all receive MBEs. So does the violinist Alina Ibragimova, as well as the CBSO violinist Catherine Arlidge, who has spearheaded numerous initiatives to engage children with music.
In ballet, this year's list includes a knighthood for choreographer and New Adventures director Matthew Bourne, a CBE for Tamara Rojo, head of English National Ballet, and an OBE for choreographer Christopher Wheeldon.
Meanwhile, I'm glad to say that the 2013 postFanfare for the Uncommon Woman Conductorremains hot property and has notched up more reads than any other post in more than 12 years of JDCMB existence.
Do have a listen to this interesting conversation, from the BBC World Service's Newsday, between conductor Odaline de la Martinez and composer Nicola LeFanu about the changing - ? - situation of women in their professions. One problem they raise is something that is increasingly being recognised: prejudice is not something conscious. They discuss the potentially great figures of the past whose talents are lost to us. And they wonder what the future may hold. I'm glad to say that there is optimism alongside the realism.
If you're new to JC, let me explain the Chocolate, Silver & Ginger Stripes Awards: -- This extraordinary Virtualbash takes place here every year on 21 December. It used to be the Ginger Stripes Awards, in honour of my cat Solti, but since his death we've been joined by two new young award-givers, coloured chocolate and silver. -- It's fun. -- The choices are entirely personal. -- It's a JDCMB retrospective of the year, plus a chance to let down one's hair; -- All you need is a smile and the willingness to join in and/or suspend disbelief, and there's some good stuff to listen to. -- Enjoy the party!
What? It's the Winter Solstice again? How did that happen? It feels like just the other day we were entering the CyberPoshPlace for Ricki and Cosi's first year as kitten-heirs to our late beloved Solticat's Ginger Stripes Awards. Still, the faster time progresses, the faster we get to enjoy our VirtualVintageBubbly and hug lots of people we can't hug in real life.
So please don your CyberGladRags and come on in to the aforesaid venue. Welcome!It's decked out in thousands of fairy-lights, plus tinsel and glittery stuff in our colours, which mix Ricki's chocolatiness with Cosi's silveriness and a tribute to Solti's ginger stripes. Please leave your outer selves in the cloakroom. Have a glass, relax, enjoy the scents of rose and citrus and cinammon, and you'll find lavish quantities of extremely good Italian virtualfood being prepared by our friends Luigi and Cristian, the best caterers I know, sourced with the aid of a favourite café, Nelson's... Next, a very warm welcome to our special guest stars. Bela Bartók has come to join us tonight, quiet, wise and great-eyed, modest and poised, and he leads the way for a rather surprised collection of characters, gathering by the door and gazing about, wondering how they got here. Three cheers, please, for the great Hungarian violinist Jelly d'Arányi (pronounced Yelly, not Gelly, btw), her sister - also a great violinist - Adila Fachiri, Jelly's former duo partner Dame Myra Hess, and their friend, Professor Donald Francis Tovey. Theirs is a very specific purpose tonight, but I'm not going to tell you what it is (you might have to check back in January to find out). Quiet, please...quiet... thank you. First, a big round of applause for every musician who has touched the hearts of his or her audience this year. You're wonderful. We love you. Thank you for all your inspirational music-making. Now, would the following artists please approach the platform where Ricki and Cosi are ensconced upon their silken cushions. They will let you stroke their chocolate and silver fur and are ready to give you each a very special purr. Icon of the Year: It was Sviatoslav Richter's centenary this year and if there was ever an icon to celebrate it was him. I heard him in the flesh once only, many years ago, in recital at the Royal Festival Hall, on which occasion he played the Schubert G major Sonata and the first chord lasted for what felt like an entire revolution of the moon. This man worked with Prokofiev, managed things in interpreting Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov that few have ever matched, and made recordings that set the standard for generations. Let's take a moment to honour him.
Pianist of the Year: The piano recital of 2015 that will stay with me forever was Daniil Trifonov's performance at the Menuhin Festival Gstaad of the complete Liszt Transcendental Etudes. It took place in an atmospheric 15th-century church in Saanen (the next-door village - where Bartók composed his Divertimento) and proved a universe of colour and sonic imagination - as if Daniil was improvising it, yet sounding deceptively easy, natural, unshakeable. It was a privilege to be there. Here he is in 'Harmonies du Soir' at Carnegie Hall:
String Player of the Year: This was a tough one, because I've spent a lot of this year editing The Amati Magazine, which means that I've had more good lunches with fantastic violinists, violists and cellists than ever before. But here's da man. He looks flamboyant, yet is sweet and gentle; his virtuosity is dazzling, though delivered with modesty and grace; and incidentally, his incredible band made a Welsh fish and chip shop very happy when we all pitched up in Fishguard for Peter Donohoe's festival on the same day. The ensemble came to London twice to play at the Amati Exhibition and it was a joy and privilege to introduce them. Please welcome the incredible Roby Lakatos. Gratulálok, Roby, and thank you!
Singer of the Year: Who else?! Here you go, Jonas...
Conductor of the Year:Susanna Mälkki is a wonderful musician and a powerful personality: straightforward, assertive and able to inspire brilliant results. Her muscular, up-tempo Sibelius 1 the other week had me reaching for my programme to check whether this was a different version of the text, because I was hearing things in it I'd never heard before.
Festival of the Year:Wexford Opera Festival is a true one-off. Every autumn this enchanting spot on the south-east coast of Ireland, two or three hours south of Dublin, is transformed into the most interesting venue in the opera world: rare and beautiful operas are performed by exciting young casts with rising directors and genre-expert conductors. This year hearing and seeing Delius's Koanga, Mascagni's Guglielmo Ratcliff and Hérold's Le Pré aux Clercs was a joy and, often, a revelation. If you've never been there, all I can say is: go. And book fast, because it sells out.
Youthful Artist of the Year:Beatrice Rana, ace pianist, welcome to the stage. You've got the musicianship, the technique, the intelligence, the personality, the gumption, the groundedness and, generally, everything it takes to make it to the top and stay there in this insane world. I look forward to hearing you many, many more times. Congratulations on your first Chocolate Silver Ginger Stripe Award - but please don't bring your adorable dog with you to the platform to collect it because he'd scare Ricki and Cosi...
Artist of the Year:Daniel Barenboim's performance of the Schubert B flat Sonata on his special, bespoke piano at the RFH was probably the most heart-shattering performance I heard in 2015. Barenboim is perhaps the most complete of all our great artists: a visionary, an educator and a philosopher as well as a musician, accepting no division between such roles. Maestro, thank you. Here's a slightly lighter piece of Schubert - with Martha Argerich joining him.
Colleagues of the Year: Our composer Roxanna Panufnik, our director Karen Gillingham and the entire team involved in creating our new opera, Silver Birch, for Garsington, where it will be performed in 2017. We now have a cast to die for. We also have a remit to create a work that seeks to reach the widest possible audience, from seasoned critics to opera newbies, featuring professionals, amateurs, children, teenagers, a VJ, Siegfried Sassoon's poetry and matters of life and death. It's a joy working with you all. And while I'd always wanted to write an opera libretto, this has been the most fun I have ever had writing anything, ever - because it is in collaboration with you. Please come up to the platform and receive your purrs. Opera of the Year: That joyous marvel that was ENO's Mastersingers. It sent us all home walking on air. (Honest to goodness, folks, we mess with that company at our peril. What is the ACE really up to there?)
Ballet of the Year:Matthew Bourne's The Car Man nearly burned down Islington: the hottest of the hot, with gripping, galvanising storytelling, fabulously danced by a cast who gave more than anybody's all has a right to be. Its star, Jonathan Ollivier, gave his life a few days later, killed on his motorbike in a road accident in Clerkenwell - a huge shock and tragic loss. There is to be a gala to benefit his young family - details here.
Stuffed Turkey: There were waaaay too many piano competitions this year, and some were distinctly more interesting than others. (The best I've yet heard, though, is the first prize winner Seong-Jin Cho of the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, whose debut CD I found seriously impressive). And a few personal highlights: Proudest moments: Signing the contract for my opera libretto for Roxanna and Garsington (see 'Colleagues of the Year') - a long-held dream come true. And discovering, after several days giving pre-concert talks at the Istanbul Festival in the gardens of Topkapi Palace, that I had amassed a little fan club. That was great. Weirdest moment: In Pontresina, Switzerland, learning that Richard Strauss wrote 'Beim schlafengehen' (from the Four Last Songs) just over the fence from where I started writing in earnest as a teenager sensing something creative in the air. Biggest sigh of relief: We are not moving house after all! PHEW.
Quote of the Year:"The power of music is to unite us and to bring out the best humanity has to offer"- Marin Alsop, Last Night of the Proms.
Wonderful Webmaster of the Year: Horst Kolo, of course. Dearest Horst, I don't know where I'd be without your attentive updates of the article archive and your ever so gentle chasing for my latest news. There's a good one on the way in the new year! Felines of the Year: There have to be two, obviously: Ricki and Cosi, who are beautiful, bright, fluffy Somali cats, now fully grown and too clever by half. As the pet insurance documents delightfully tell us, 'You never know what Richard and Cosima are going to get up to'. Let's spend a moment thinking about what we want to be in 2016. I'm often told that JDCMB is 'the voice of reason' in our little corner of this crazy world - and I hope that's the case and intend it should continue to be so. Too often, the wealth of culture, invention, wisdom and delight that centuries of accomplished art music has built up seemingly doesn't count for a hill of beans any more. Yet music is one of the true forces at work for spiritual, social, mental and corporeal good - and the case has been made to prove this again and again and again. Still it must be restated often, because people who haven't seen its power for themselves always need to be convinced. Once you've witnessed it, you know it's true. Please join me to love our music, explore the joy it brings us, celebrate it and uphold its marvels in the face of whatever life throws at it, and us. Let's keep our heads, our sense of perspective, our passion and our idealism where our art is concerned. Thank you all for a wonderful year! Now please mingle, have fun and enjoy the VirtualParty. And just in case we don't get much snow this Christmas, here's an extra bit of wintery sparkle...
A remarkable book landed on my desk recently - and if anyone is looking for a rapid Christmas present for a music lover, I can't recommend it highly enough.
Edited by Michael Church - for whom it has clearly been a lengthy task and an absolute labour of love - it is entitled The Other Classical Musics: Fifteen Great Traditions. Here western classical music emerges as just one of many: no more and no less than one possible option, a richly rewarding and individualistic approach to the art of sound, manifesting itself through the philosophies and social ecosystems of western Europe. This is not, however, world music for dummies. Every topic is treated with deep, considered and well-expressed exploration of history, society and musical analysis. It will suit academics and the general, intelligent reader alike.
Western musicians (to generalise, of course) can be broadly under-aware of other great worldwide traditions of music - maybe because we're so busy perfecting our own that it can be difficult to find the way out of our tunnel and, indeed, to know where to start.
As a student I used to go with my violinist duo partner (who lived in Kingsbury) to Brent Town Hall to hear Indian classical music. Often we'd be among a tiny sprinkling of European faces in the packed-out audience. And my goodness, we heard some marvels - not least, we were transfixed by Zakir Hussain, who was about 21 at the time. We also went rushing to hear the Peking Opera whenever they performed in London, with their breathtaking acrobatics and the acidic magic of their narrative music. I also spent a week at the Dartington International Summer School interspersing piano masterclasses with doing the gamelan class every morning; the more you are drawn into that collaborative, clangorous, vibrant flow, the odder distant Mozart would sound when you walked back past the other studios afterwards. Yes, we were seduced by apparent exoticism, but also we became aware of just how much we didn't know and weren't otherwise learning. My duo partner ended up becoming an ethnomusicologist and finally abandoned his violin for the Chinese erhu.
If only we'd had this book to help us in, I might have considered following his lead. On one level this weighty, beautifully produced and often almost surprisingly readable volume is a history of world societies seen through their musical traditions. On another, it's an extremely useful introduction to, and exploration of, numerous traditions - most centuries long, some longer still. Even if we are mesmerised by the sound of music from other traditions, we might derive still more pleasure and interest from it if we know the context it springs from and how, technically, it works.
Given the vital nature of the influence on the great western composers of traditions from, for example, the Far East, India and Africa, this exploration can bring much insight to those steeped in what we think of as classical music. Debussy and Messiaen might have been the first to applaud; Ligeti, who was influenced by the metric principals of Congolese drumming, would do so too.
As Church tells us, "This is not a comparative study, but it does allow comparisons to be drawn." Much of the book is devoted to the music of the far and near east, with two chapters apiece for China and India; the Mediterranean offers rich pickings with a fascinating exploration of the Andalusian music of the western Med area and one ranging through a Turkey that 18th-century Vienna might find it hard to recognise. The aural traditions of the west African regions that comprise Mande Jaliyaa are unpicked and beautifully evoked by Roderic Knight; Church and Terry E Miller whirl us through the contexts, splendours and technical bedazzlement of Chinese Opera; and the regions of south-east Asia are described in the Javanese chapter with an analysis of the local gamelan (Neil Sorrel). North America, meanwhile, is represented by a chapter on jazz.
That is just a taster of a sackful of riches. What this book can do is ultimately to offer a deeper, richer understanding of the nature of music itself and its significance to human beings the world over. As such, it could be transformative.
This extraordinary piece of music is going to dominate my next six months or so, so I'd love you to get to know it a little now. I'll be posting a lot about it for reasons that will become apparent. Please note that the second movement's main theme shares its derivation with that of the Geistervariationen, to which we listened here the other week. This wonderful performance is by Christian Tetzlaff, with the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra conducted by Paavo Järvi.
So the feasibility study for the new concert hall - The Centre for Music - has finally surfaced, a little later than planned. It's being greeted, generally speaking, as if it's to be the next London Olympics. "A global beacon," declares The Standard... Nicholas Hytner (he who said that building the Southbank Centre extension would spoil the view from his National Theatre) compares it to Tate Modern, which he says enlarged audiences for other visual arts rather than taking them away. This should, he says, be "a Tate Modern for music".
Having writtten more times than I can count that it's a disgrace London has no world class concert hall, on one level there's nothing I'd like better than to see it materialise. But there are an awful lot of questions to ask first.
1. Who's going to do the acoustics? If £278m is to be spent on this thing, it does have to be world class. World class has to mean putting its purpose first, its functionality as a hall, ahead of architectural concerns. Please, George, can we have Mr Toyota? Musicians in the know tell me that his halls are the finest in the world.
2. What are we going to put in it, besides the LSO? We have a name in this country for building boxes and then having trouble with content. It took a long time for the Millennium Dome to find its purpose in life. Waterloo Station, the busiest in the country, has a row of platforms that have sat disused since Eurostar shifted to St Pancras. Yes, just sitting there. And so forth. "The LSO" is not answer enough to this question: no orchestra performs every night of the week, and while visiting recitalists and international orchestras will welcome the venue, can they fill it every remaining evening? Dark nights would make it difficult to stack up the sums of money involved.
3. Assuming the £278m is found - and we can probably add a few extra £ms to that, as few projects are ever realised for the planned amount - that's one matter. The money for actually running the place day to day, year after year, will come from a different budget. That's where ACE competition is likely to kick in. If extra filthy lucre isn't forthcoming, this place is going to be competing for the same, dwindling pot of cash as the Southbank, the Barbican, dear ENO and the rest of it. This project would appear to be the darling of all concerned in creating it. What happens to everyone else?
4. Will London in the end be culturally better off - or worse? Will this be an excuse to axe classical music at the Southbank, the Barbican and one of this 10m-people city's all-of-two (2) opera houses? Is the price of running the new hall and its Orchestra Rattle going to be the lifeblood of the Philharmonia, the LPO, the RPO, the OAE and more? If so, that price is too high and it will leave London with worse musical provision, not better.
5. Where is Sir Simon going to take his shower? (Or his bath. Apparently he had a bath installed in his dressing room at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, during his CBSO years.) There's a good dose of hot air around: "There will be no 'formal' front and back of house areas dividing the musicians from the audience," the Standard reports. So, er, how do we think performers work? They need to change, wash, do their hair, rest, eat, be recorded and, above all, practise. The backstage facilities in London's current delights are currently woeful - when one big visiting orchestra was in town not long ago we found them changing in the corridors because they'd arrived with their concert clothes in their usual wardrobe trunks and there wasn't room for them all in the school-gym style dressing rooms. There's no space for anyone to rest between rehearsal and concert, let alone practise. You'll find, if you visit a "state-of-the-art" hall or a great historical one in Germany or Austria or Moscow, that the soloist and conductor have roomy rooms to themselves, usually with a grand piano. Most halls also have a good staff canteen, rather than making people who work there queue for hours at fancy sandwich bars in the foyer. The backstage facilities at this new place need to be better, not non-existent. This clause raises a question about what planet the planners are living on.
6. Does that piece of hot air indicate more of the same?
7. When are we going to have proper musical education in this country? Space and inspiration for education projects is very nice. All arts organisations need education departments these days (not least because they can thus access funding to run them). But isn't it time to take a long, hard look at what they achieve long-term? I do know people who have been inspired to discover their musical vocation by visiting orchestra education projects - the composer Tansy Davies is a case in point. But essentially, education departments were invented back in the 1980s as a sticking plaster to hide the wound left by the axing of peripatetic instrumental teachers throughout the school system.
Today the battle to include music as a core subject in schools is raging more than ever before. America has apparently elected to do it. As yet, we have not - despite the case having been made again and again and again, and thoroughly proven. The problem is that music needs to be taught consistently, week after week, by dedicated, qualified teachers, and practised daily by disciplined young people who want to learn to play or compose or both. Otherwise they can't become musicians. Dangling a great orchestra in front of a child for a day and taking some photos is no substitute and it never was. It may look wonderful - but what's left for the children after the orchestra goes home, unless they can be provided with instruments to play and teachers to show them how, regularly and consistently?
Learning music is like taking care of your teeth every day. A once-a-year visit from someone's education and outreach department is like going to the dentist once a year without flossing or brushing in between.
Music needs dedication and that's why some of the most musical kids in this country end up being home-schooled. For this young prodigy, Alma Deutscher, 10, no tests, no TV and no classroom: just fresh air and a magic skipping rope...
8. Location, location, location? The Museum of London site is a miserable place surrounded by City concrete and busy roads. On the other hand, I have no sensible ideas for a reasonable alternative... Battersea Power Station? Um, the London Coliseum? (Also... the riverside area around the Mortlake brewery could use some brushing up. The brewery could come down, the hall could go up, and I could walk there in 10 minutes. We can dream, can't we...)
9. How come funds go to buildings, but not the people who produce the art within them? Our performing artists are not paid adequately. They are subsidising the art themselves by accepting levels in some cases a quarter of those afforded for artists elsewhere. Musicians are struggling - most orchestral players can't afford to live in London any more - and if we think they have it bad, just try dancers, who have it even worse. As for extra individuals such as guest speakers, just the other day I was asked to do something at a distinguished concert venue which sounded fun, but when I asked what the fee would be I was told: "This event does not have a budget. We are looking for volunteer's who we believe have a lot to offer people...". (That's pasted in from the email, apostrophe and all.) I won't be the only one who faces this situation. How come a top venue is so starved of funds that it must refuse to pay its project participants even a tenner? Before we spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a new venue, we should ensure that its content is going to be provided for, and at levels that match those paid in comparable places in other countries.
10. Please, can we just get our priorities right? Yes, we want a great hall. Yes, London deserves one. But a civilised society also deserves the arts to be supported at every level, for every age, because if you don't nurture children with education in the arts, and if you don't present adults who have trained for an artistic profession since they were five years old the opportunity to make a decent living at it, and if you don't make the arts a daily part of life in a way that will help maintain the audience, then who will be left here to perform and listen to music in that snazzy new hall in any case?
The BBC's decision not to renew the contract of the BBC Symphony Chorus's conductor, Stephen Jackson, has sparked much upset and anger these past days. Spearheaded by singer Harold Raitt, who runs a social enterprise for schools, a letter has been written to BBC director general Lord Hall, objecting to the decision and expressing considerable discontent with how the chorus has been treated in this matter. The film director Tony Palmer has added his weight to the issue, contributing strong words to a press release issued by Raitt, and he has sent me the full letter.
Dear Lord Hall,
We are writing to you as both licence fee payers and a mix of:
• proud members of the UK’s world-class community of amateur (or, in many cases, ‘unpaid professional’) musicians who sing, have sung, or are considering singing in, Symphony Choruses in London or other towns and cities across the UK
• professional musicians (soloists, choral singers, instrumentalists, conductors, teachers, composers and administrators)
• some music-lovers who are also concerned and appalled.
You are, no doubt, aware of the immense discontent at the BBC Symphony Chorus, especially now that it has been covered in Private Eye. However, you may not be aware of the way in which the actions of the BBC Symphony Orchestra General Management, and the overall management of BBC Performing Groups, have been seriously damaging both the standing of the BBC, and the potential future of one its most important assets for a considerable period.
The pictured advert for “BBC Performing Groups” was a major affront to the unpaid professionals in the BBC Symphony Chorus, as well as their colleagues in the BBC National Chorus of Wales. Why on earth did the BBC consider it has only one singing group? Are the BBC Singers only world-class or worthwhile or valuable because they are paid? Is a group of unpaid professionals such as the BBCSC or BBCNCW not as valued, despite the lists of award-winning recordings to their names, and their high profile at national events such as the Proms? Despite requests, no retraction of, or public apology for this insult was made by the BBCSO General Management or by BBC Performing Groups.
The dismissal of Stephen Jackson after 26 years’ dedicated service, without any prior consultation with the BBCSC and conducted in a way as to try to prevent the Chorus even saying a proper goodbye to him, is an affront not just to the BBCSC, but to the entire amateur choral scene in the UK. Its members subsidise classical music in the UK to the tune of millions of pounds annually. The cost of a chorus of 100+ at MU minimum rates for just a single concert would be a large five-figure sum, or a six-figure sum for much of the larger and more rehearsal-intensive rep. Yet the attitude of the BBCSO General Management towards the BBCSC has been one of a disengaged and supercilious employer. But, in the case of unpaid professionals, it is us who really hold the keys; we pay our travel expenses to rehearsals, we donate our time, expertise and (in many cases) years of training and singing lessons to you free of charge, we learn difficult rep and present it to audiences flawlessly. The very least that can be expected is that we are treated as partners and stakeholders, rather than as disposable labour who need not be considered, consulted, acknowledged or even – on occasion – properly thanked.
None of us can think of a single other Symphony Chorus in the UK where the singers (either en masse, or via their representatives on committees) would not be thoroughly consulted on a leadership change of this magnitude.
The vast majority of the signatories to this letter are not currently and have never been members of the BBCSC. However, many of us are members of volunteer choruses in London or around the UK. Some of us chose to sing with other choruses because of our geographic location, rehearsal days or because of different performing opportunities. However, we all have immense respect for Stephen Jackson, and for the choice of our colleagues to sing with and under him.
Many of us are astonished that the BBCSC has not decided to go on strike until Jackson is reinstated. However, we recognise this not as tacit support for the BBCSO management, but as a sign of the love for music and its audiences that drives all such performers to do what they are so committed to.
You should be aware of how – despite ‘perks’ such as getting to star annually on the Last Night of The Proms – the BBCSC’s capacity to attract new volunteer unpaid professionals to sing in its ranks has been considerably damaged by these ongoing slights. Those of us who are ‘amateurs’ would be much harder pressed to consider singing with the BBCSC while the current General Management remains in place and/or remains so unashamedly unapologetic.
Furthermore, as licence payers, we are appalled at the callous disregard for the integrity of an asset which, in any other country, would be valued in millions of dollars or Euros, and which remains, given its budget of £0 for its unpaid professionals’ salaries, the envy of the world. For the moment.
Yours sincerely,
Harold Raitt
+ 146 other signatories
Responding with a statement, quoted in Classical Music Magazine, BBC Radio 3 said: "We regularly appraise the freelance contractual arrangements we have across BBC Radio 3 and the performing groups and took the decision, in this instance, not to renew Stephen Jackson’s contract. We’d like to thank him for his service over the years and wish him well for the future...Freelance musician contracts are rightly confidential arrangements between the individual and the BBC. We’re satisfied that this matter is being handled in a professional and responsible manner and are liaising with the Chorus whenever possible."
