Conductor cat in residence

Solti on the bench
Originally uploaded by Duchenj.

I am hostage to my piano again - recital with Tom at the Elgar Birthplace Museum on Wednesday 1 June, a.k.a. the day after tomorrow. So, in the absence of anything refreshingly new to blog about, here is a picture of Solti, our conductor cat in residence. Sir Georg does love to sit on the garden bench of a sunny afternoon.

More about yesterday

Here's what The Guardian has to say about Paul Kildea's resignation from the Wigmore Hall. And The Classical Source has the official version released by the hall's PR.

I could say a few things too, but I'm not going to.

I spent yesterday evening there listening to Rustem Hayroudinoff playing the socks off the complete Etudes-Tableaux by Rachmaninov. I've admired Rustem's playing for years and have always felt angry that he's not had the attention he deserves, except in a vote of confidence by Chandos, for which he's made three recordings (his Dvorak Concerto, with the BBC Philharmonic and Noseda, is just out).

What we heard last night was the performance of a mature and deep-thinking artist who understands Rachmaninov's mind as if from the inside and delivers his music in the finest Russian tradition with a huge, deep, beautiful tone and superb elan, which increased as the recital progressed. The great E flat minor number was an exceptional treat. What I loved most was that he did not shy away from Rachmaninov's big emotional issues. It's often seen as an asset to be 'cool' about such things and not accentuate the emotional content of such intensely romantic music. Rustem, thank heavens, doesn't seem to agree with that. He sounds as if he is confirming what I have come to feel too: that if you deny great feeling, you deny life, never mind music, its essential meaning. That doesn't mean that the playing was 'over the top', however - rather, it was profoundly felt and totally sincere.

Here's a nice review from The Classical Source.

It's all happening here...

So today I get a press release that says Paul Kildea is to leave the Wigmore Hall to concentrate on his conducting career. He's been artistic director for just two years. Now 'the Trustees are to consider the best way forward' for London's finest and most beloved chamber music venue.

Will report back on anything further I hear about this. Meanwhile I am off to...yes, the Wigmore Hall itself, where Rustem Hayroudinoff is about to play a great deal of Rachmaninov.

"2005", the opera

My post about "1984" seems to have generated quite a noise (if a blog can be said to be noisy), not least from Clive Davis (hi Clive, I sense a kindred spirit there!), 'Pliable' at The Overgrown Path and Tim Worstall, who kindly credits me with a touch of class. Among other things, I find I've been praised for having the courage to change my view about this opera.

This got me thinking:

1. I didn't change my view, because I didn't have one. I'd read the libretto and thought it excellent; I'd ploughed through all the background material provided by the ROH, which told me that the team involved were thoroughly professional; but I had had no access to even a note of the music. So I didn't make a judgement in my Indy article, because I had nothing to judge.

2. That's the problem with writing about world premieres before they happen. Nobody can guarantee what they're going to sound like.

3. What really 'narked' me about some of the writing in the British press was that some of my respected colleagues decided to trash the thing BEFORE they'd heard a note, simply because a) Maazel was paying for some of it himself, b) he'd never written an opera before, c) some unnamed source in the ROH had told The Guardian that it was 'crap' (unnamed sources are so useful, aren't they?! I've only ever used one once - years ago, in a piece for The Guardian... Long story for another occasion). The tone of these writers were such that anyone would have thought Prince Charles had tried his hand at writing an opera - not someone who has been highly respected in the musical world for nearly half a century and is currently musical director of the NY Philharmonic. I seem to remember that once upon a time someone accused of a crime used to be innocent until proven guilty. That's a principle I like to uphold. OK, so the outcome wasn't so great, but it did look like it was worth giving the thing a chance.

Anyway, I'm not really a critic. I am now - oh yes yes yes - a NOVELIST! At the kitchen table I am currently surrounded by piles of pages from Novel No.1, just back from the copy-editor. I've got two weeks to finalise the text before it goes to be typeset. Anything I don't change now will outlive me on a shelf somewhere. In between wondering whether a reference to cafe latte has to be italicised, whether the cat really says 'miaow', not 'meow' and whether the Russian character is still too much like - oh, never mind who - I've been pinching myself and wondering how this happened at all. Someone has EDITED my NOVEL??? Someone actually agreed to publish it? I am dreaming, aren't I?

Perhaps one day it'll be a good source for an opera called "2005". If so, I shall choose the composer myself.

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?