This is the indomitable Norman Lebrecht's inspiring account of how he found himself performing the recitation in Schoenberg's 'A Survivor from Warsaw' at Dartington last week.
Every music commentator should take part in a performance now and then and Norman's article helps to show why.
Speaking of stressful performances, we hear this morning that one of Leonidas Kavakos's strings broke during the Berg at the Prom last night and he finished the concerto on the leader's violin. It must take nerves of diamond, never mind steel, to switch fiddles in that piece, of all pieces, in the middle of the Royal Albert Hall, live on BBC Radio. What's more, Andrew Davis had dropped out and Joseph Swensen was drafted in to conduct instead, somewhat late in the day. Tom and I were down at Glyndebourne and missed the fun...
If I feel stressed out by proofreading my novel and trying to catch last-minute inconsistencies - of which there've been plenty - all I have to do is think 'I will never have to recite Schoenberg, or break a string in a Prom' and I feel better INSTANTLY.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Piano man or shaggy dog?
The mystery of the "piano man" has been solved. This is the report in The Guardian.
Turns out it was a bit of a shaggy dog story. He's from Bavaria and the whole thing appears to have been an elaborate hoax. As for the 'piano genius' element - it does seem that that was the result of mental health workers in the UK not being able to tell the difference between a full-fledged concert pianist and someone who can just about pick out a tune from Swan Lake. The report on the TV news last night was gently accompanied by a background account of Chopsticks.
Turns out it was a bit of a shaggy dog story. He's from Bavaria and the whole thing appears to have been an elaborate hoax. As for the 'piano genius' element - it does seem that that was the result of mental health workers in the UK not being able to tell the difference between a full-fledged concert pianist and someone who can just about pick out a tune from Swan Lake. The report on the TV news last night was gently accompanied by a background account of Chopsticks.
Sunday, August 21, 2005
What a feeling...
I become seriously proud of my husband on an occasion like this. There he was, standing on the stage at the Albert Hall, which was packed to the rafters with music lovers going absolutely nuts over Beethoven 9. Live on BBC TV. Up there with one of the world's great orchestras and Kurt Masur and a wonderful big choir and soloists. What an occasion. In Yiddish, we call my emotion last night 'clibing nachas' - roughly equivalent to basking in reflected glory from one's loved ones, but in truth untranslatable.
The Gubaidulina piece, 'The Light of the End', was stunning. Well worth a webcast listen this week if you didn't catch yesterday's concert in any other way. Full of astonishing imagination and possessed of a rich, instinctive spiritual progression that could only have been articulated through the medium of her own musical language. I'm looking forward to hearing it again in Lucerne during the LPO tour. I normally avoid travelling with the orchestra because of their stressful schedules, but can't resist the idea of two Swiss days in Lucerne! The fact that I don't really like Beethoven 9 is neither here nor there...
The Gubaidulina piece, 'The Light of the End', was stunning. Well worth a webcast listen this week if you didn't catch yesterday's concert in any other way. Full of astonishing imagination and possessed of a rich, instinctive spiritual progression that could only have been articulated through the medium of her own musical language. I'm looking forward to hearing it again in Lucerne during the LPO tour. I normally avoid travelling with the orchestra because of their stressful schedules, but can't resist the idea of two Swiss days in Lucerne! The fact that I don't really like Beethoven 9 is neither here nor there...
Saturday, August 20, 2005
Tonight's Prom...
...will be quite an event It features our very own Tomcat and his orchestra, under their principal conductor, the indomitable Kurt Masur! They will be starting with a piece by Gubaidulina and then doing Beethoven 9th. It's going out live on BBC2 - as well, of course, as Radio 3 and the good old webcast. The LPO Prom is always a slightly bigger deal for my resident fiddler than most other gigs, since it is always the first concert after Glyndebourne - having done nothing but opera for several months, one's suddenly out in the spotlight again. And the Albert Hall is very large. Tonight is a little compounded by the suspicion that he'll be in quite a lot of close shots on the TV, because for the Beethoven he's sitting on the second desk of the Firsts, next to the orchestra's glammest blonde Hungarian, who is bound to attract the cameras!
Tickets are a bit thin on the ground, or so I'm told, but the arena queue will be doing its stuff, as ever. Do come along if you can! Gubaidulina is doing a pre-concert talk at 6pm, which should be fascinating, and Tom assures me that the piece is marvellous and very listenable.
Tickets are a bit thin on the ground, or so I'm told, but the arena queue will be doing its stuff, as ever. Do come along if you can! Gubaidulina is doing a pre-concert talk at 6pm, which should be fascinating, and Tom assures me that the piece is marvellous and very listenable.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Another legendary Prom
One couldn't get into this one the other day for love or money. Annette Morreau's review (click above) really has it in a nutshell.
I did make it, though, to Barenboim's press conference last week -and have to say I've never before been moved to tears in a press conference before. Barenboim seems to have achieved what nobody else anywhere in the Middle East is able to do: bring young people from different sides together to meet one another during a shared endeavour. It's a grass-roots approach, and probably the only way to make any progress.
Five members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra were there with him; one was a young Palestinian violinist from Ramallah whose description of her endeavours to keep her musical training on the rails was deeply touching. After she'd talked about how she'd had a different teacher almost every year - they'd come in from other countries and then leave - Barenboim beamed: "Yet here she is, playing Mahler 1 in London." Two of the others, one Israeli and one Arab, pointed out that they lived just 40 minutes' drive from one another, yet there was no way they would ever have met, but for this orchestra.
The Goethe Institute has quite a good explanatory article about the orchestra's background.
They will play in Ramallah for the first time on 21st August. This is miraculous in itself. Spain - where the orchestra is based - has provided all the orchestra's youngsters with diplomatic passports for the occasion to make it possible. Barenboim's dream is that one day the orchestra will be permitted to play in every country from which its members are drawn...
I've been privileged to meet and write about a lot of fantastic musicians in the last 15 years, but if I had to pick out the greatest one of all, it has to be Barenboim. I don't believe anyone else on earth could have done what he's done for these young musicians.
I did make it, though, to Barenboim's press conference last week -and have to say I've never before been moved to tears in a press conference before. Barenboim seems to have achieved what nobody else anywhere in the Middle East is able to do: bring young people from different sides together to meet one another during a shared endeavour. It's a grass-roots approach, and probably the only way to make any progress.
Five members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra were there with him; one was a young Palestinian violinist from Ramallah whose description of her endeavours to keep her musical training on the rails was deeply touching. After she'd talked about how she'd had a different teacher almost every year - they'd come in from other countries and then leave - Barenboim beamed: "Yet here she is, playing Mahler 1 in London." Two of the others, one Israeli and one Arab, pointed out that they lived just 40 minutes' drive from one another, yet there was no way they would ever have met, but for this orchestra.
The Goethe Institute has quite a good explanatory article about the orchestra's background.
They will play in Ramallah for the first time on 21st August. This is miraculous in itself. Spain - where the orchestra is based - has provided all the orchestra's youngsters with diplomatic passports for the occasion to make it possible. Barenboim's dream is that one day the orchestra will be permitted to play in every country from which its members are drawn...
I've been privileged to meet and write about a lot of fantastic musicians in the last 15 years, but if I had to pick out the greatest one of all, it has to be Barenboim. I don't believe anyone else on earth could have done what he's done for these young musicians.
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