Thanks to Lisa Hirsch & Helen Radice, I've just come across Adaptistration, a blog by musician, teacher and orchestra manager Drew McManus in the US. It's part of Artsjournal and concerns the evolution of orchestral management, but using a sharp mind and fine arguments to do so. Well written, to the point and most insightful. Anyone in the music business, or with a serious interest in orchestras for any reason whatsoever, should read it.
Footnote: Drew, like me, is married to a professional violinist. Is there something about the instrument that induces its player's spouse to blog?!?
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Saturday, January 01, 2005
New year, new start
Among things that need a serious restart are our front room shelves, groaning with LPs that haven't been played for 20 years. Today Tom decided we should have clear-out. He has a vinyl buff friend who'll be coming round to take away most of our collection. So this seemed an apposite day, hangover notwishstanding, to sift out what we want to keep.
Ouch. Memories flood back. Tom kept anything that said JASCHA HEIFETZ on the front; I kept anything that said KRYSTIAN ZIMERMAN. Some of his early recordings have never been transferred to CD and the pictures of him aged around 21 are seriously cute. And many of them are signed (in 1982/83 I was a goggle-eyed teenaged groupie!).
Anything that has been transferred to CD went into the OUT pile - even things that nearly broke my heart because I remember listening to them again & again & again as a kid, years before my parents died: things like Mendelssohn ' A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Zukerman playing the concerto. There's a boxed set of 'Carmen' starring Teresa Berganza that has never even been opened...I remember buying it with my Dad on the day I took Grade VII piano aged 15 and somehow we never got round to playing it... All the Andras Schiff Bach recordings that helped me survive Cambridge in the mid 1980s (music faculty ethos in those days was Christopher Hogwood=God; Bach on Piano=Evil Subversive Forces) - I have them on CD now, but the big Decca double LPs were so lovely... Various recordings signed by musicians, not just Zimerman; others affectionately signed by ex-boyfriends with cryptic initials, meanings long forgotten. And recordings that have probably been transferred to CD but also possibly not...like Frederica von Stade, accompanied by Jean-Philippe Collard, singing Faure. Wonderful disc, surely, surely we must be able to find it on CD? But still, I haven't listened to it in over 15 years.
I can't quite imagine feeling this sentimental over CDs. Too much plastic, too many broken boxes, too small. But at least they don't warp.
We listened to one very special LP: Hugh Bean and David Parkhouse playing the Elgar Violin Sonata. Wonderful, rich,singing tone, masses of fantasy, perfect atmosphere. Warped, however. Have ordered it on CD now.
One end result, other than the agony of seeing one's childhood memories slung into the OUT pile, is that I want to get hold of the RCA Heifetz edition. Loads of CDs, but Tom deserves them for his next birthday. Unfortunately, though, as is so often the case in these alarming days, it now seems to be unavailable from Amazon and the various second-hand CD sites I've tried online have only bits and pieces from it. Anyone know where I might be able to run the whole lot to earth?
Ouch. Memories flood back. Tom kept anything that said JASCHA HEIFETZ on the front; I kept anything that said KRYSTIAN ZIMERMAN. Some of his early recordings have never been transferred to CD and the pictures of him aged around 21 are seriously cute. And many of them are signed (in 1982/83 I was a goggle-eyed teenaged groupie!).
Anything that has been transferred to CD went into the OUT pile - even things that nearly broke my heart because I remember listening to them again & again & again as a kid, years before my parents died: things like Mendelssohn ' A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Zukerman playing the concerto. There's a boxed set of 'Carmen' starring Teresa Berganza that has never even been opened...I remember buying it with my Dad on the day I took Grade VII piano aged 15 and somehow we never got round to playing it... All the Andras Schiff Bach recordings that helped me survive Cambridge in the mid 1980s (music faculty ethos in those days was Christopher Hogwood=God; Bach on Piano=Evil Subversive Forces) - I have them on CD now, but the big Decca double LPs were so lovely... Various recordings signed by musicians, not just Zimerman; others affectionately signed by ex-boyfriends with cryptic initials, meanings long forgotten. And recordings that have probably been transferred to CD but also possibly not...like Frederica von Stade, accompanied by Jean-Philippe Collard, singing Faure. Wonderful disc, surely, surely we must be able to find it on CD? But still, I haven't listened to it in over 15 years.
I can't quite imagine feeling this sentimental over CDs. Too much plastic, too many broken boxes, too small. But at least they don't warp.
We listened to one very special LP: Hugh Bean and David Parkhouse playing the Elgar Violin Sonata. Wonderful, rich,singing tone, masses of fantasy, perfect atmosphere. Warped, however. Have ordered it on CD now.
One end result, other than the agony of seeing one's childhood memories slung into the OUT pile, is that I want to get hold of the RCA Heifetz edition. Loads of CDs, but Tom deserves them for his next birthday. Unfortunately, though, as is so often the case in these alarming days, it now seems to be unavailable from Amazon and the various second-hand CD sites I've tried online have only bits and pieces from it. Anyone know where I might be able to run the whole lot to earth?
Friday, December 31, 2004
Solti does it again
Solti
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.
As I had the highest ever number of blog hits when I posted a photo of my cat Solti, I thought I'd wish you all a happy new year by posting another one.
Unfortunately, though, Solti's current state isn't too pretty. He got into a fight the other day and came in with a hole in his head. Today the vet dealt with the resulting abcess and now poor Sir Georg has a very bloody face, a bald patch and an enormous plastic collar to prevent him worrying at the wound. Not so much Long John Ginger this time as Shakespeare on an extremely bad day. Perhaps some disgruntled orchestral musician has been reincarnated as a neighbouring cat and wanted to get his revenge...So I'm posting the same old picture again instead!
Life isn't all bad, though: Solti got tuna for dinner. There's a moral in there somewhere.
HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE! Here's to a wonderful year of music in 2005.
____________________________
Thursday, December 30, 2004
A personal music universe 2004
A few highlights to usher in New Year's Eve...
FAVOURITE CDs
Emmanuel Pahud plays the Strauss and Franck violin sonatas on the flute with pianist Eric Le Sage; with Widor Suite for flute & piano (EMI). Top quality musicianship all round, knocks spots off many fiddlers. The first time I've really "got" the Strauss sonata.
Leonidas Kavakos plays Ravel & Enescu (ECM). Glorious fiddle playing, wonderfully imagined.
Philippe Graffin & the Johannesburg Philharmonic in the violin concertos by Coleridge-Taylor and Dvorak. This represents more than the sum of its parts, being the first classical CD recorded in South Africa since the fall of apartheid. But the parts are fabulous too. Serious beauty, gritty passion and great music heard too rarely. (Avie)
Faure songs - first CD in Hyperion's complete Faure song edition. Pianist Graham Johnson is joined by his stalwart singing colleagues like Felicity Lott and John Mark Ainsley, plus equally impressive others. This is just out and it's a wonderful selection of songs about water, from all periods of Faure's life and work.
Matthias Goerne singing Winterreise. Need one say more?
MOST MEMORABLE CONCERTS
Top slot has to go to St Nazaire, especially the day in which Tom took the stage with Philippe, Nobuko et al! Not an experience quickly forgotten. And yes, it sounded great. No less, also at St Nazaire, Philippe with Nobuko, Pascal Devoyon and Gary Hoffmann in the Faure 2nd piano quartet - some of the most moving, insightful, sensitive and vividly coloured chamber music playing I've ever heard.
Philippe's Ravel Day at the Wigmore Hall. Weirdly enough, what strikes me most in retrospect is the appropriateness of the weather: it was the last snow of last winter, magical and straight out of Un Coeur en Hiver.
Next, the Barkauskas premiere in Vilnius (again, Philippe and Nobuko, with plentiful Lithuanian colleagues!). A privilege to be there. And I hope we'll hear more of Barkauskas's Duo Concertante and its astonishing background story. (See BBC Music Magazine, February 2005, for more info, or just click on June 2004 in the archives...)
In Verbier, Vadim Repin playing Shostakovich. Mesmerising.
From the LPO, the Edinburgh concerts with Vladimir Jurowski, which set the house on fire. (Once, literally - the Usher Hall alarm went off 10 minutes before kick-off!). And Glyndebourne's double bill of Rachmaninov and Puccini - also with Jurowski. This guy has, and is, something very special.
Speaking of opera, Juan Diego Florez in Don Pasquale at Covent Garden had to be heard to be believed.
Ballet: Mayerling, also at Covent Garden. Hair-raising, edge-of-seat drama & virtuosity.
Best piano recitals: Stephen Kovacevich at RFH; Steven Osborne's Messiaen 'Vingt Regards' at Wigmore Hall. Best piano concerto: Martha Argerich in Prokofiev 3 with LPO. Absolutely incredible.
No doubt there are plenty of others too that I've forgotten about and over which I will kick myself tomorrow morning. But perhaps the ones that spring rapidly to mind have made the deepest impression...
FAVOURITE CDs
Emmanuel Pahud plays the Strauss and Franck violin sonatas on the flute with pianist Eric Le Sage; with Widor Suite for flute & piano (EMI). Top quality musicianship all round, knocks spots off many fiddlers. The first time I've really "got" the Strauss sonata.
Leonidas Kavakos plays Ravel & Enescu (ECM). Glorious fiddle playing, wonderfully imagined.
Philippe Graffin & the Johannesburg Philharmonic in the violin concertos by Coleridge-Taylor and Dvorak. This represents more than the sum of its parts, being the first classical CD recorded in South Africa since the fall of apartheid. But the parts are fabulous too. Serious beauty, gritty passion and great music heard too rarely. (Avie)
Faure songs - first CD in Hyperion's complete Faure song edition. Pianist Graham Johnson is joined by his stalwart singing colleagues like Felicity Lott and John Mark Ainsley, plus equally impressive others. This is just out and it's a wonderful selection of songs about water, from all periods of Faure's life and work.
Matthias Goerne singing Winterreise. Need one say more?
MOST MEMORABLE CONCERTS
Top slot has to go to St Nazaire, especially the day in which Tom took the stage with Philippe, Nobuko et al! Not an experience quickly forgotten. And yes, it sounded great. No less, also at St Nazaire, Philippe with Nobuko, Pascal Devoyon and Gary Hoffmann in the Faure 2nd piano quartet - some of the most moving, insightful, sensitive and vividly coloured chamber music playing I've ever heard.
Philippe's Ravel Day at the Wigmore Hall. Weirdly enough, what strikes me most in retrospect is the appropriateness of the weather: it was the last snow of last winter, magical and straight out of Un Coeur en Hiver.
Next, the Barkauskas premiere in Vilnius (again, Philippe and Nobuko, with plentiful Lithuanian colleagues!). A privilege to be there. And I hope we'll hear more of Barkauskas's Duo Concertante and its astonishing background story. (See BBC Music Magazine, February 2005, for more info, or just click on June 2004 in the archives...)
In Verbier, Vadim Repin playing Shostakovich. Mesmerising.
From the LPO, the Edinburgh concerts with Vladimir Jurowski, which set the house on fire. (Once, literally - the Usher Hall alarm went off 10 minutes before kick-off!). And Glyndebourne's double bill of Rachmaninov and Puccini - also with Jurowski. This guy has, and is, something very special.
Speaking of opera, Juan Diego Florez in Don Pasquale at Covent Garden had to be heard to be believed.
Ballet: Mayerling, also at Covent Garden. Hair-raising, edge-of-seat drama & virtuosity.
Best piano recitals: Stephen Kovacevich at RFH; Steven Osborne's Messiaen 'Vingt Regards' at Wigmore Hall. Best piano concerto: Martha Argerich in Prokofiev 3 with LPO. Absolutely incredible.
No doubt there are plenty of others too that I've forgotten about and over which I will kick myself tomorrow morning. But perhaps the ones that spring rapidly to mind have made the deepest impression...
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Tried to tinker with my Comments to amalgamate two slightly fuzzy and contradictory ones that I just posted, but have somehow managed to delete an entire post instead. Can any Blogger experts advise on how to alter Comments I've already posted?
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