Monday, November 28, 2005
Warming the cockles
The Pianist Magazine/Yamaha Amateur Piano Competition held on Saturday night for the first time has awarded its first prize to a 79-year-old piano tuner who once prepared instruments for Liberace but has never played in a concert hall before. Jamie Cullum awarded the prize and magazine editor Erica Worth is justifiably very, VERY proud of the event she's initiated. Doesn't this just warm the cockles of your heart? What a change from all those beastly, corrupt, political piano competitions that young pros have to endure... Read more about it here.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Moving stories
Some dips into the blogroll have produced deeply moving moments today:
Evelio writes about the laser surgery he's had on his eyes this week, and the sensation of finally being able to see properly. Words like 'congratulations' just aren't enough.
Cathy Fuller writes about some metaphysical musical shivers, most notably about Schubert's A major sonata, with tremendous sensitivity and beauty. And I'd have loved to hear Renaud Capucon play the Korngold Violin Concerto!
Speaking of Korngold, Andrea has just discovered Die tote Stadt. Weird coincidence or fate knocking, she asks, pleading for my help. Fate, Andrea. Definitely Fate. With Korngold, it always is.
Plus - not blog-related - Roy Howat's performance with the Panocha Quartet at the Wigmore Hall this morning finally lifted the lid off the Faure First Piano Quintet. It's a much maligned piece and Roy's new edition attributes this, basically, to the fact that someone seems to have slapped the wrong metronome marks onto it at some juncture. It was FAST. Very fast. But fabulous: out came the Faurean elan that is so often missing from interpretations that decide it should be as esoteric as esoteric can be. The last movement worked for me for the first time ever. The performance really moved. In every way.
I don't understand why the Wigmore Hall still calls its coffee concerts Coffee Concerts. You get a free coffee, orange juice or sherry after the performance upon production of your ticket. Everyone makes straight for the sherry.
Evelio writes about the laser surgery he's had on his eyes this week, and the sensation of finally being able to see properly. Words like 'congratulations' just aren't enough.
Cathy Fuller writes about some metaphysical musical shivers, most notably about Schubert's A major sonata, with tremendous sensitivity and beauty. And I'd have loved to hear Renaud Capucon play the Korngold Violin Concerto!
Speaking of Korngold, Andrea has just discovered Die tote Stadt. Weird coincidence or fate knocking, she asks, pleading for my help. Fate, Andrea. Definitely Fate. With Korngold, it always is.
Plus - not blog-related - Roy Howat's performance with the Panocha Quartet at the Wigmore Hall this morning finally lifted the lid off the Faure First Piano Quintet. It's a much maligned piece and Roy's new edition attributes this, basically, to the fact that someone seems to have slapped the wrong metronome marks onto it at some juncture. It was FAST. Very fast. But fabulous: out came the Faurean elan that is so often missing from interpretations that decide it should be as esoteric as esoteric can be. The last movement worked for me for the first time ever. The performance really moved. In every way.
I don't understand why the Wigmore Hall still calls its coffee concerts Coffee Concerts. You get a free coffee, orange juice or sherry after the performance upon production of your ticket. Everyone makes straight for the sherry.
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Answers
Yesterday's two extracts from Gramophone were both written by Knights of the Realm.
No.1: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, composer, Master of the Queen's Music.
No.2: Sir John Tusa, Managing Director of the Barbican Centre.
No.1: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, composer, Master of the Queen's Music.
No.2: Sir John Tusa, Managing Director of the Barbican Centre.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Living daylights?
I don't usually buy Gramophone. But this month Philippe Graffin's CD 'In the Shade of Forests' has made Editor's Choice and an extract on the cover CD - he's plastered all over the thing! - so I thought I'd better get a copy. Gramophone is celebrating its 1000th issue and it proves full of interesting things to read, not only the review of Philippe's disc by Rob Cowan, which is marvellous. I'll post a link to it as soon as Gramophone.co.uk has sorted out the glitch on its Editor's Choice page.
[UPDATE, 3 DECEMBER: Finally, they've done it! Voila!]
The magazine's celebratory articles include a section in which they've asked musical bigwigs to contribute short pieces about why classical music matters (unfortunately heralded with a picture of an audience giving a standing ovation in a plush hall dressed in penguin suits - not the most encouragingly egalitarian approach and not a regular sight anywhere in the UK except Glyndebourne!) Some are succinct and moving on the reasons why we can't live without music, others fully representative of the dense academicism that puts so many people off the stuff altogether. Here are two. Anyone want to guess who wrote each of them?
1. Classical music is unique, in that its grammar, syntax and formal construction present an abstract discourse in time roughly equivalent to that of the most ambitious architecture in space, in which thematic material of contrasting functions is subjected to variation, development and transformation in organically consistent ways, with the tonic of the home key providing a sense of direction over large spans of time - not least harmonically - making multi-dimensionality possible in time, with an ever-changing focus between foreground, middle-ground and background, which as a vanishing point enables this to happen in space. This has no equivalent throughout civilisation.
2. Think of a world without the joys of Rossini, the consolations of Schubert, the ambiguities of Mozart, the austerities of Stravinsky, the complexities of Birtwistle, the diversions of Ligeti. No, don't; it would be too awful to endure. For at least 1000 years, from medieval plainchant to Renaissance polyphony, though two Viennese schools and on to contemporary minimalism, 'classical music' has demonstrated a continuing ability to adapt, form and reform itself, and divert into new codes, discipline and shapes. Throughout this time, 'classical music' has remained universal in its language, extending its reach globally in a remarkable way. If it wasn't also about exhilaration, exultation, anguish, despair and pathos, it would not have survived or deserved to.
Identification tomorrow!
Elsewhere in the magazine, critics are asked to a) select any musician of their choice to give them a Command Performance; b) choose their greatest disc ever. It's refreshing to find Jed Distler choosing Barbra Streisand for his Command artist - and volunteering to accompany her! But the fact remains that the vast majority of musicians chosen by critics in both categories are DEAD. Is there any other field in which young creative artists have to struggle quite so hard to hold their own in the present day against the reputations of their forerunners? At least in literature, the reputations of Tolstoy or Jane Austen don't actually prevent new books from doing well. But any young pianist on CD has to battle the recorded legacy of Rachmaninov and Horowitz, while violinists are up against that of Heifetz and cellists Casals or du Pre.
I'd agree with many of these critics, of course - I'd love to have heard Heifetz, Rachmaninov or Cortot live, and I'm certainly with Rob Cowan on longing to hear Fritz Kreisler play the Elgar Violin Concerto. Still, I've also heard a lot of great stuff right here and now. As I don't write for Gramophone, here is my request for a Command Performance:
DEAREST KRYSTIAN, PLEASE PLAY ME SOME CHOPIN?
[UPDATE, 3 DECEMBER: Finally, they've done it! Voila!]
The magazine's celebratory articles include a section in which they've asked musical bigwigs to contribute short pieces about why classical music matters (unfortunately heralded with a picture of an audience giving a standing ovation in a plush hall dressed in penguin suits - not the most encouragingly egalitarian approach and not a regular sight anywhere in the UK except Glyndebourne!) Some are succinct and moving on the reasons why we can't live without music, others fully representative of the dense academicism that puts so many people off the stuff altogether. Here are two. Anyone want to guess who wrote each of them?
1. Classical music is unique, in that its grammar, syntax and formal construction present an abstract discourse in time roughly equivalent to that of the most ambitious architecture in space, in which thematic material of contrasting functions is subjected to variation, development and transformation in organically consistent ways, with the tonic of the home key providing a sense of direction over large spans of time - not least harmonically - making multi-dimensionality possible in time, with an ever-changing focus between foreground, middle-ground and background, which as a vanishing point enables this to happen in space. This has no equivalent throughout civilisation.
2. Think of a world without the joys of Rossini, the consolations of Schubert, the ambiguities of Mozart, the austerities of Stravinsky, the complexities of Birtwistle, the diversions of Ligeti. No, don't; it would be too awful to endure. For at least 1000 years, from medieval plainchant to Renaissance polyphony, though two Viennese schools and on to contemporary minimalism, 'classical music' has demonstrated a continuing ability to adapt, form and reform itself, and divert into new codes, discipline and shapes. Throughout this time, 'classical music' has remained universal in its language, extending its reach globally in a remarkable way. If it wasn't also about exhilaration, exultation, anguish, despair and pathos, it would not have survived or deserved to.
Identification tomorrow!
Elsewhere in the magazine, critics are asked to a) select any musician of their choice to give them a Command Performance; b) choose their greatest disc ever. It's refreshing to find Jed Distler choosing Barbra Streisand for his Command artist - and volunteering to accompany her! But the fact remains that the vast majority of musicians chosen by critics in both categories are DEAD. Is there any other field in which young creative artists have to struggle quite so hard to hold their own in the present day against the reputations of their forerunners? At least in literature, the reputations of Tolstoy or Jane Austen don't actually prevent new books from doing well. But any young pianist on CD has to battle the recorded legacy of Rachmaninov and Horowitz, while violinists are up against that of Heifetz and cellists Casals or du Pre.
I'd agree with many of these critics, of course - I'd love to have heard Heifetz, Rachmaninov or Cortot live, and I'm certainly with Rob Cowan on longing to hear Fritz Kreisler play the Elgar Violin Concerto. Still, I've also heard a lot of great stuff right here and now. As I don't write for Gramophone, here is my request for a Command Performance:
DEAREST KRYSTIAN, PLEASE PLAY ME SOME CHOPIN?
Thursday, November 24, 2005
From Russia, with teddy bear
The St Petersburg Philharmonic concert last night was quite an event. A huge orchestra crammed on to the Barbican platform - not for these guys those trendy slimmed-down bands - and, presiding over them, the modest yet magnetic figure of Yuri Temirkanov, whose combination of authority, focus, musical fidelity and genuine feeling makes him one of the few maestri whom most musicians not only respect but also love.
The tone blew me off my chair in seconds. Oh, those strings. To die for... Brahms 2, in the second half, was a chance for a serious wallow: those violas! Those cellos! Oh yes, yes, YES! But the first piece in the programme was a highlight in itself. The Suite from Prokofiev's Cinderella doesn't hit the concert hall often enough - I've only heard it live before at the ballet (admittedly, the Ugly Sisters bits aren't the same without Frederick Ashton) - and it has some glorious moments. The best, for me, is the striking of midnight: it's as if you are inside the mechanism of a great grotesque clock with the cogs and wheels grinding and clonking around your ears. And the greatest magic is the moment of silence when it's over and you have to surrender to the big tune that signals all is lost and pumpkindom regained.
So to our young pianist, Denis Matsuev, who was the soloist for the Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody. Apparently he's 30, but he looks like a 14-year-old teddy bear in a penguin suit who wants, when he grows up, to be Sokolov. I swung both ways, listening. Some of it I loved; some I admired; some had my eyes and ears on stalks; some I hated. His tone in the quieter parts is truly beautiful: loving phrasing for the famous tune, the clearest, most gleaming sound and beautifully limpid phrasing for the fast solo variation that I've come across; but he's not above thumping the hell out of the piano at the top end of the spectrum (Sokolov's tone, please note, remains rich and glorious even at FFFFF). Sometimes he let things run away with him: the excitement becomes too extreme, he overheats and the sound, and concept, become less controlled and more questionable than they should. But my attention was absolutely with him the whole way, which is more than I can say about Lugansky's performance of the same piece last year (=bored silly). I'm convinced, too, that there was a sense of striving for something beyond the ordinary, a visceral excitement, hints of a far-seeing beauty that one hopes he'll develop over the years. His encore was breathtaking: a virtuoso fantasy on The Barber of Seville, dizzyingly fast, light as a feather, spot-on timing, the whole thing assured as a mountaineer at the summit of Everest. The hall went bananas. The friend I was with, incidentally, absolutely hated his playing - "He's slick, he plays fast, so what?!"
But I feel this was more than just another teddy bear's picnic - though Matsuev will probably be dining out on his success with the audience for years to come. The place was full of music-biz bigwigs cheering him to the rafters. Like him, loathe him or both, I think he'll be back.
UPDATE, FRIDAY 25TH NOV: Here's Richard Morrison's review from The Times. Seems like he doesn't share my taste for yummy string tone. He's right about the fluffed horns and missing flute phrase in the Brahms, but frankly I didn't think it was worth mentioning those because a) find me a horn section these days that DOESN'T fluff anything, b) the band was probably in the midst of tour-funk knackeredness. His comments about Matsuev are pretty interesting.
MORE, TUESDAY 29TH NOV: Here's Erica Jeal's review from The Guardian.
The tone blew me off my chair in seconds. Oh, those strings. To die for... Brahms 2, in the second half, was a chance for a serious wallow: those violas! Those cellos! Oh yes, yes, YES! But the first piece in the programme was a highlight in itself. The Suite from Prokofiev's Cinderella doesn't hit the concert hall often enough - I've only heard it live before at the ballet (admittedly, the Ugly Sisters bits aren't the same without Frederick Ashton) - and it has some glorious moments. The best, for me, is the striking of midnight: it's as if you are inside the mechanism of a great grotesque clock with the cogs and wheels grinding and clonking around your ears. And the greatest magic is the moment of silence when it's over and you have to surrender to the big tune that signals all is lost and pumpkindom regained.
So to our young pianist, Denis Matsuev, who was the soloist for the Rachmaninov Paganini Rhapsody. Apparently he's 30, but he looks like a 14-year-old teddy bear in a penguin suit who wants, when he grows up, to be Sokolov. I swung both ways, listening. Some of it I loved; some I admired; some had my eyes and ears on stalks; some I hated. His tone in the quieter parts is truly beautiful: loving phrasing for the famous tune, the clearest, most gleaming sound and beautifully limpid phrasing for the fast solo variation that I've come across; but he's not above thumping the hell out of the piano at the top end of the spectrum (Sokolov's tone, please note, remains rich and glorious even at FFFFF). Sometimes he let things run away with him: the excitement becomes too extreme, he overheats and the sound, and concept, become less controlled and more questionable than they should. But my attention was absolutely with him the whole way, which is more than I can say about Lugansky's performance of the same piece last year (=bored silly). I'm convinced, too, that there was a sense of striving for something beyond the ordinary, a visceral excitement, hints of a far-seeing beauty that one hopes he'll develop over the years. His encore was breathtaking: a virtuoso fantasy on The Barber of Seville, dizzyingly fast, light as a feather, spot-on timing, the whole thing assured as a mountaineer at the summit of Everest. The hall went bananas. The friend I was with, incidentally, absolutely hated his playing - "He's slick, he plays fast, so what?!"
But I feel this was more than just another teddy bear's picnic - though Matsuev will probably be dining out on his success with the audience for years to come. The place was full of music-biz bigwigs cheering him to the rafters. Like him, loathe him or both, I think he'll be back.
UPDATE, FRIDAY 25TH NOV: Here's Richard Morrison's review from The Times. Seems like he doesn't share my taste for yummy string tone. He's right about the fluffed horns and missing flute phrase in the Brahms, but frankly I didn't think it was worth mentioning those because a) find me a horn section these days that DOESN'T fluff anything, b) the band was probably in the midst of tour-funk knackeredness. His comments about Matsuev are pretty interesting.
MORE, TUESDAY 29TH NOV: Here's Erica Jeal's review from The Guardian.
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