Don't give up the day job, Maestro

After interviewing Maazel about "1984" for the Indy and then reading the clutch of appalling reviews that followed the premiere, I wanted to give the poor thing a chance and make up my own mind. So Tom and I went to see it last night.

The staging was brilliant. The singing and acting were stunning. The orchestra sounded marvellous. The libretto is well written and well constructed and you could hear all the words, rendering the surtitles (yes, for an opera in English) redundant. We even had the voice of Jeremy Irons doing the telescreen propaganda. Yes, the quality of the performance and the production were absolutely world class, Royal Opera House at its very finest. But the music....oh deariedeariedear.

When I read the libretto, when writing that mega-article, I'd visualised the whole thing in my head and my ears. Unfortunately, what I imagined turned out to be rather more exciting and moving than the sounds that assailed us yesterday. A few of my gripes are that sensitivity to words was non-existant (silly repetitions, amateurish stresses, lack of imagination), colouristic imagination was equally lacking (one thing I liked - the single coloratura singer over a few phrases of the Big Brother chorus - but that was it), dramatic moments that should have been moving or at least touching were not, because the music was so ineffective, the pace never seemed to vary and when it did it was unbelievably crass (build up to climax of scene two by getting faster and raising the pitch. Yawn.) Etceteraetceteraetcetera.... I must concede that my various colleagues who panned this thing were dead right: it should NOT have been put on at Covent Garden.

Tom nodded off after the first 15 minutes. The only time he began to look interested was when he thought the leading lady was going to get her kit off, but she didn't.

Didn't anyone tell Maazel how 'Oranges and Lemons, Say the Bells of St Clement's' goes? He could have got the correct tune from any ice-cream van. Or is it perhaps under copyright?

Old music never dies, it just loses its appeal...

Hyperion has lost its appeal against Sawkins and what this means for the future of musical copyright as we know it is currently anybody's guess. What is clear is that it's lawyers, not musicians, who stand to benefit the most; and music-lovers who will lose out.

Speed date

Have just seen an item on Newsnight about a policeman who's been let off speeding while merely trying out his new car, despite driving at over 150 miles an hour on the motorway. Apparently this was because the judge decided that he was 'like a concert pianist' who has to practise to stay perfect.

Does this mean I could drive at c150 mph coming back from our Elgar concert in Malvern on 1 June without fear of reprisal? I shall officially be a concert pianist that evening, after all - and we'd be home in an hour.

Mystery on the coast

The 'piano man' of Sheerness has been making waves in the news here. One of the most bizarre things anyone has ever heard of.

One cynical soul of my acquaintance pointed out the event's uncanny similarity to a wonderful British film called 'Ladies in Lavender' in which a handsome young Polish violinist is shipwrecked on a beach and rescued by Maggie Smith and Judy Dench, who then a) nurse him back to health, b) help him establish his career, c) fall in love with him, despite being 50 years his senior... If you were a pianist, says my pal (not that I am...), and you wanted publicity above everything else on earth and you'd seen that film, what would you do? I pointed out that the Piano Man, picked up on 7 April, has apparently not spoken at all and I don't think I could go for 5 weeks without saying a word. To which said pal remarked, "well, YOU wouldn't..." - which could, of course, mean a multitude of things.

Apparently the response to the BBC appeal has been immense, so the mystery may yet be unravelled. All of us in the blogosphere will be watching for developments with eagle eyes.

What one learns...

Yesterday was what one could term 'instructive'.

Stephen Kovacevich had very kindly offered to let us do a 'play in' at his place to help us prepare for our recitals in June. It's one thing to play in your front room for the neighbours, quite another to play in an unfamiliar room on an unfamiliar piano in front of a group of frighteningly musical friends: one step further towards the Real Concert Setting. So along we went.

Oh, the things one learns...

Strange how after just two days the programme came out sounding entirely different. The Elgar Sonata went like a dream - it came together as never before and said everything we wanted it to say. The Delius Legende now goes faster than it used to; one friend who particularly loves it thinks we should slow it down again. There was much to be pleased with in the Faure A major sonata (and yesterday was Faure's 160th birthday!). But one notices other matters in this context that were never apparent before.

This is particularly true of energy and pacing - applying not only to the music but to oneself. Mistake number one: practising and rehearsing for three or four hours in the morning, then practising at Stephen's place for an hour and a half before the 'performance'. We were, obviously, knackered before we began... As for the flow of energy in the music, our programme involved two high-emotion sonatas with the Delius as a breather in between; and we thought that finishing with three short Debussy numbers and two Elgar salon pieces would work after the Faure. But the Faure is such a high-energy piece that after it the pace simply sagged and we felt we never got off the ground again. With the help of two clever and experienced friends at the end, we've decided to lose all the Debussy except possibly La plus que lente, to drop Elgar's Sospiri and to finish with the Faure. (Fine with me - as long as I don't have to start the entire programme with the ant-heap of a piano solo that begins that sonata, anything is OK.)

It was afterwards that the weird things started happening. Notably, Tom collapsed. Why? The hot room? The exhaustion? Something he'd eaten? First he started feeling odd and turned a greenish shade of white. Then he cut his finger on somethingorother and there was rather a lot of blood, which made me come over queer too (I'm idiotically squeamish about blood), then he went to the bathroom and fainted briefly, and I sat in the kitchen with my head down trying not to faint in sympathy; then someone bandaged up Tom's finger, after which he lay on the landing with his feet up saying he felt better and then he had to go and be sick and then somehow we got him out of the house, into the car and home. Stephen was marvellous about it...poor guy, I wonder if that will be the last time he offers to let friends perform at his home......

Whatever we learned yesterday, I'm glad that we learned it at a 'dress rehearsal' rather than the 'real' concerts. Hopefully in two weeks' time, we will have sorted out the programme and will be able to keep away from our instruments for the better part of the day. And I hope that finally the end will justify the means.