Carmen by train

I've been spending a few days in Lewes with Tom, whose Glyndebourne schedule doesn't permit daily homecoming at the moment. This week he has rehearsals at St Luke's (City of London) in the mornings for Edinburgh Festival concerts next week, followed by performances at Glyndebourne in the evenings. Insane. So he's staying with some friends and I went to stay too. I came home by train this morning and there on the train was Carmen.

I'm very accustomed to meeting musicians and feel lucky to count some incredible ones among my dearest friends, to the point that round the East Sheen dinner table I can often forget what they do for their living (until they slope off to try the Bechstein). But opera singers are quite another matter - it's almost impossible to get their latest character out of your head. Once I had to interview Richard van Allen about the opera studio in London which he was involved in running, not long after seeing him play the baddy in 'Billy Budd'; I turned up for the meeting and could only think 'Oh my God, it's Claggart!' So sitting on the Victoria train seeing Carmen leafing through the Sunday Times and then nodding off for the better part of the journey was a tad strange. She deserved her nap, though.

The weirdest thing of all, however, was the time Tom got to play in the stage band of Don Giovanni in Graham Vick's highly controversial staging, nicknamed 'the dead horse production'. The on-stage musicians were made up to look as decadent as everyone else, so Tom had to wear an 18th-century frock coat and a wig, with his face made up stark white except for black circles around both eyes. He looked like a vampire. But he thoroughly enjoyed himself and was even told off at one point for over-acting. All sorts of stuff goes on on the last night of the season, of course, and he took that particular opportunity to kiss several girls in the chorus during the dance scene, knowing full well I was out front and could do nothing about it...

Glyndebourne is nearly finished - the last night is 29th. But it's not quite the end of the summer...not quite...the Proms are still on, the Edinburgh Festival is in full swing (I am going for the first time) and St Nazaire is not until well into September. That will be the grand finale, especially for Tom, who has finally got a moment of real glory. He has been invited to play in the Weber Clarinet Quintet with Philippe Graffin, Nobuko Imai, Gary Hoffman and Charles Neidich. Go to Consonances de St Nazaire and scroll down the pics to a smiley fiddler between Devoyon and Graffin... Quite apart from that, St Nazaire will be fascinating this year because of the presence of the astonishing Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, who has written a new concerto for Philippe. St Nazaire is a strange place for strange marvels.

The Emperor and his new clothes

FIRST, here is the link to Artsblogging, the collaborative blog in which George Hunka, Helen Radice and I are pooling forces (if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor). This is how George describes it:

"Romantic tradition has it that artists are alienated not only from our
culture but from each other, and despite the explosion of information
technology in the past twenty years I can't say that personally I feel any
less alienated than I did in 1984. Blogs have the potential to provide the
communication and communion missing from the fragmented cultural milieux
in which we're all participating. Now, at least, we can be alienated
together."

Do come and join us! I shall, of course, be keeping this one going as diligently as ever...

...to which end, the Prom last night was quite an experience. Anyone convinced of the imminent demise of classical music should have been there. The place was packed to the magic mushrooms in the ceiling. And the ovation that greeted the veteran pianist Alfred Brendel before he had even played testified to the way people not only love the music but love its finest exponents even if they do happen to be white, male and 75. This was to be Brendel's last Prom: reports say that he no longer wants to do live broadcasts, and for someone who has been playing at the Proms for 36 years this seems fair enough. He played the Beethoven 'Emperor' Concerto, and for this night he was an emperor of the piano himself. The performance was full of colour, the tenderest and most luminous phrasing and the exhilaration of making music in such a joyous atmosphere; only a few memory lapses betrayed what might be the great man's reasons for wanting to bow out.

This was not all: before the concerto, we had to listen to the token piece of Birtwistle. Apparently there has only been about one Prom season in the last 20 years or so (that figure may be wrong - I'll check it) in which Birtwistle has not been played. I've never 'got' the big deal about Birtwistle. There are vast numbers of finer composers both dead and alive who never get a look in the BBC Proms door. It's not only that I don't like the way it sounds; but often, and certainly last night, I don't think it's very good music. This was a setting of three poems by Brendel - who, in case you haven't read them, is a marvellous poet, not only musical but also surreal and often hilarious. The three poems Birtwistle set are all excellent, but did the music add anything? Did it have anything to do with the words? Think of what Schumann could add to Heine, Faure to Verlaine, Duparc to Baudelaire... But here I found the noises emanating from (very good) baritone and orchestra little other than pointless - the usual Birtwistlian gloom and discord and squalliness. What for? Yes, it was the emperor again: but this time, the Emperor's New Clothes. The Emperor did very well without them.

And, oh my dears, it was SO last century. As Brendel is giving up Proms, couldn't someone persuade Birtwistle to do so as well so that we can hear some 21st-century voices instead? Music has GOT to move on from this cod-liver-oil effect. We need new sounds that can inspire us, sounds that look forward instead of backward, individual voices that communicate and fascinate and stimulate. We need new voices for a new century and the Proms should be trying to find them.

This is Solti

Solti
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.

It's the silly season, it's Saturday night and as usual I'm home alone because Tom is working, so here is a picture of our cat, Solti - Sir Georg for short. He lives up to his name. He thinks he's the boss. He thinks he's a tiger. We think he's a mobile teddybear with whiskers and, sometimes, claws.

It's warm and muggy here in London. After a hectic patch I've been doing useful things like washing my autumn skirts, buying jeans and trying, rather half-heartedly, to practise Faure.

A propos of ACD's comment on my misuse of the word 'crossover' the other day, I wonder what people made of the use of Mahler 3 in the Olympic opening ceremony yesterday? Despite the symbolism of the half-nude dancer on the sugarcube suspended above all that water, which according to the BBC commentator was 'man becomes a logical, spiritual being in quest of knowledge', it is still only a major sporting event that can expose Mahler 3 via TV to an audience of 4 billion. With my naive facility for being wonder-struck, I was blown away by the whole thing and am thoroughly in favour of Mahler being aired in this way, which goodness knows he deserves. The rest of the summer is going to be deathly, with nothing on TV except sport, sport and more sport. Honest to goodness, the BBC had nothing better to do today than show the HUNGARIAN Grand Prix. Excuse me while I vote with the red button at the top and take up a good book instead.

Speaking of good books, my Vilnius thoughts were reawakened today by a conversation with the editor of the Jewish Quarterly, for whom I've written a substantial article about the trip (yes, the editor of the JQ is prepared to work on a Saturday and so, mercifully, am I!). I am now reading The Pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman's memoirs on which the film was based - immensely harrowing. But not nearly as harrowing as the book that Philippe gave me for my birthday last year, 'The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania' - an 800-page tome of the diary kept by Herman Kruk, a librarian in the Vilna ghetto chronicling, day by day, moment by moment, the descent into destruction, horror and death of 90 per cent of entire community during the Second World War. Kruk, too, was eventually shot. Just before, anticipating his fate, he had buried the manuscript of his diaries in the presence of six witnesses, one of whom later dug them up; they constitute a horrendously vital document.

Oh my, there is a series about Stalin on Channel 4. I shall now go and watch a programme about Soviet genocide...


PS - I've been tinkering with my list of Musician Friends, deciding to limit it to those who have been round to dinner and/or invited us to their place, or with whom we have good intentions about getting together socially if they and we can ever find a moment when we're in the same place at the same time. I've also put the list into alphabetical order, since it was previously random and "there's some as might take their placing amiss". At some point I'll get round to making a list of Musicians I Think Are Interesting, to restore the casualties of these decisions.

Artsblogging is here!

George Hunka (see his blog Superfluities on the blogroll left) has started a new collaborative blog called Artsblogging. I just joined. Contributors include George, Helen Radice and - though so far just in comments pulling our grammar and word choice apart - ACD. (Note: Who is the mysterious ACD? My guess is that he must be a fearsomely experienced sub-editor, exactly what most of us started blogging in order to avoid!!)

Posts on Artsblogging so far have been focusing on the need for a greater interchange of ideas in the arts. Practitioners of each tend to stay in their own little pigeon-holes and don't mix easily. Even in a place like a 'school of music and drama' the chances are that the musicians will huddle in corners comparing notes on how fast they practise certain studies; and the actors will, well, be actors together. Very different from the early 20th century when writers, artists, musicians etc used to meet and mingle in places like the Princesse de Polignac's Parisian salon...oh for a time machine... The shell-shock for Lucy and me in 'Beloved Clara' was the insight we gained into the world on the other side. Only when working with these actors, Lucy said, has she ever found herself weeping with laughter 90 seconds before walking on to a concert platform.

Exchanging ideas is what Artsblogging is all about. Good on you, George!! It will have a new URL in the next few days, so when that is established I shall add it permanently to the blogroll.

Today in the Indy...

Today in the Indy I have this:

A hard act to follow about Clive Gillinson's imminent departure from the LSO.

I just want to clarify my reasons for having wanted to write this piece, because no doubt there will be people out there in the big wide orchestral chinese whisper factory who say that I want to bad-mouth the LSO because my husband's orchestra doesn't get as much money as they do. If anyone says this to you, please remember that it is bollocks. The LSO is a fantastic orchestra and everybody respects that, no matter where they are. The thing is, I am well placed to write this article because I know all about how orchestras function here and very often I get so angry about it that I risk high blood pressure.

Clive's achievements have been truly amazing, and what I wanted to do is to put the recent events into context: orchestra runs up deficit creating education centre, managing director pushes off to New York, etc, all highly symptomatic of the state of the arts in this country where the former shouldn't be allowed to happen and the latter tends to happen to anyone who is seriously good at their job. Unfortunately some of the juicier bits were cut, presumably because of space on page, but I think it still says what I wanted it to say. The point, though, is that the LSO has become what it is today largely thanks to Clive's cleverness and now, while the band has a deficit (albeit a small one) for the first time in years does not seem the greatest moment for him to say he's leaving. Because orchestras here depend on the brains of their MDs like on nothing else. They have to find someone equally good, otherwise...