Beethoven's Messiah?

Michael Church writes an ecstatic review in today's Indy of Barenboim's latest recital in his Beethoven Sonatas cycle at the RFH. I apologise for not being able to write one myself, but actually I can't get IN, having not planned ahead. I'm simply not used to a situation where you cannot get a ticket for a piano recital in the Royal Festival Hall for love or money.

Michael writes:

If Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas are classical music's New Testament, Daniel Barenboim is turning us all into his disciples. Special seating has been installed for those queuing for returns, and the standing ovations are extraordinary: these things usually start with a few groupies, then others gradually haul themselves up, but with Barenboim, the whole hall is on its feet in a trice. And I can't recall a musical series with so many big- and small-screen stars attending night after night. This disarmingly modest man has become a cultural messiah.

Apart from the fact that I wouldn't really describe Barenboim as 'disarmingly modest' (having interviewed him a couple of times), what I can't quite get my head around is the idea that this is being regarded as something new. I learned all the Beethoven sonatas - by ear - as an insomniac teenage piano-nut with a turntable, headphones and the LPs of Barenboim's Complete Beethoven Sonatas on EMI, recorded back in the late 1960s. Our Danny was in his twenties. They are stupendous. When I wasn't listening to him, I was listening to Schnabel, who was also revelatory - but it was Barenboim who grabbed the imagination's heart-strings from note no.1; somehow one sensed his identification with every aspect of Beethoven, from the profound mysticism to the humour, from the personal tragedy to the great humanitarian idealism. And now, if Beethoven is the most idealistic composer who ever lived, he could have no better match than Barenboim.

If you can't get into the concerts, just have a listen to those discs.

UPDATE: Wednesday, 9.15am: Intermezzo offers some advice on how to (try to) get in.

LPO 08-09 season

George's comment on the 41 Hours post, asking about the LPO programming for the 08-09 season, is timely. He wants to know why Vladimir Jurowski has scheduled works he's conducted recently such as the Tchaikvsoky Pathetique and the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances.

I may be closish to my orchestra-in-law (does this make Vladimir my principal-conductor-in-law?) but I'm not privy to their decision-making processes. In the speeches at the launch, however, Vladimir and MD Tim Walker announced that one important theme in the season will be Tchaikovsky, the influences upon him and his influence on his successors. I guess you can't do that without those two works. The crucial thing, it seems, is hearing them in a different context, coming to the music from an alternative vantage point that can change the way you listen to it.

But if you think that the new season will only be about repeating war-horses, you'd better think again, fast. Here is a selection of VJ's other Festival Hall programmes:

24 September (season opening):
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.8
Mark-Anthony Turnage: Mambo, Blues and Tarantella - Violin Concerto (world premere) (with Christian Tetzlaff)
Ligeti: Atmospheres
Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

27 September
Strauss: Metamorphosen
Hartmann: Gesangsszene (with Matthias Goerne)
Brahms: Symphony No.2

25 October
Tchaikovsky: Iolanta (complete, concert performance)

18 February
Vladimir Martynov: Vita Nuova (world premiere of complete opera)(with Tatiana Mongarova and Mark Padmore)
Martynov says: 'Dante's Vita Nuova is not a text about love. It is a text about text about love. Likewise, my opera Vita Nuova is not just an opera. It is an opera about the history of opera as the most important genre in European culture. It goes back even beyond the earliest operas to reveal the genre's historical prototype - a medieval miracle, but dressed in the alluring beauty of high-Romantic operatic language'.

22 April
Kancheli: Another Step
Yusupov: Cello Concerto (UK premiere)
Silvestrov: Symphony No.5

31 May
Mahler: Totenfeier
Mendelssohn: Symphony No.5
Torsten Rasch: Mein Hernz brennt (UK Premiere)

Something for the weekend

Serge Gainsbourg and friends playing 'All the things you are' in 1964. Oh yes - Serge Gainbourg was one hell of a fantastic jazz pianist. I love his style, the atmosphere of intimacy and friendship, the caress of the keys as he ends the piece...

If only this was what music-making could be all about, a little more often, a little more now.

Nice news...

...that my novel Hungarian Dances has been accepted for a Dutch edition by De Kern, the publisher in Holland that has already brought out Alicia's Gift (as Wonderkind). Of course there's only one language I find more difficult than Dutch and that is, er, Hungarian...
:-)

Meet Alex Prior...

...if you haven't already. The British prodigy of Russian ancestry and inclination is a very busy lad. Here's my piece about him - and prodigydom - from today's Independent. The online version includes a video clip from his new ballet, Mowgli, which he's just been conducting (yes, conducting at the tender age of 15) in Moscow.

I haven't quite worked out how they could call the performance on Sunday the 'official world premiere' when the thing has already been performed, last summer, but that's publicity for you. Or someone. On the strength of the video, the ballet seems unlikely to set up in competition with Disney or The Lion King, but the rate at which young Alex is churning out music is absolutely amazing. The real test will be what he's doing when he's twice, or three times, his current age.

Parenting, plus good teaching, is what helps any child prodigy to sink or swim; it cannot be otherwise. Almost a hundred years ago, a boy from Vilna (now Vilnius, capital of Lithuania) named Jascha Heifetz made his debut at the age of seven; he grew up to be (arguably) the best violinist of the 20th century. He said: "Child prodigism – if I may coin a word – is a disease which is generally fatal. I was among the few to have the good fortune to survive." Many haven't been so lucky...