A Magical Musical Tour at Southbank Centre

Here's my piece from today's Independent: meet Olly Coates, artist-in-residence at Southbank Centre and "curator" of the Harmonic Series. All you have to do, for a fiver, is pitch up by the box office at 7.45pm on the appointed day and Olly will lead you to a surprise space for a weird and wonderful mix of magical new sounds. No.1 is on 30 January with pieces by, amongst others, Michel Van Der Aa, Zemlinsky, Mara Carlyle and, with Streetwise Opera, Emily Hall's The Nightingale and the Rose. But where? Dunno. See you there.

Curiouser and Curiouser!

I couldn't interview Tchaikovsky about Swan Lake, but had a great time talking to Joby Talbot, who's written the first full-length original score commissioned for a new ballet at Covent Garden in 20 years. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland opens on 2 March and sounds, well, curiouser and curiouser. Joby tells me about writing a waltz that is like "Johann Strauss gone bananas" and what the White Rabbit will have in common with the Great Gonzo. All here in today's Independent.

Pity we went to print before I could grab @LondonBallerina Lauren Cuthbertson's latest tweets from rehearsals (she's dancing Alice on opening night), which involve the Duchess, a frying pan and a foot - hers. "Lesson learnt.... dont get your foot hit by a pan if you wanna get on point any day soon :(" and then "it wasnt hot.... the duchess did it in the kitchen scene!! Booooo!!!!" The Duchess is being danced by one Simon Russell Beale. Off with his head?

Here's the video trailer at the ROH site. There's more info, too, in a section aptly entitled READ ME. And here is the site for booking.

For tree's a jolly good fellow

Why doesn't Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony get played more often? Last night it was the climax of the Budapest Festival Orchestra's big Hungarian EU Presidency London concert and proved one of the most heartwarmingly delicious musical experiences you can have with a full orchestra. And instead of a rostrum, a tree - quite a tall one - appeared on stage in front of Ivan Fischer, the leaves high enough not to block his view of the players and vice-versa.

The players themselves popped up in odd places: the first flute, oboe and clarinet in tandem with the front desks of the cellos and violas, the second woodwind dispersed amongst the back desks of the strings. The double basses arranged as a wall along the back of the platform (a placing I always love: it gives a wonderfully solid grounding to the whole sound). The first violin entry in the fifth movement was played by the leader alone; and all the way through a sort of beatific stream of joy seemed to envelop the whole lot of them. No detail escaped Fischer's eye and ear; perfect clarity made the piece shine as if it was chamber music -- yes, I know it's a cliche, but hey, that's how it was -- and every so often you'd catch yourself thinking, "blimey, Beethoven really is the best, innit...".

It was indeed Beethoven at his best, and the Hungarians at theirs. When else, I wondered, have I sat beaming and transported to a better plane all the way through a piece of music like this? It used to happen with the old Takacs Quartet, in the Gabor Takacs-Nagy days. It happens frequently at Andras Schiff's performances, especially chamber music, but I seem to remember it at his St Matthew Passion with the Philharmonia some years ago too. It was definitely the case listening to Gabor Takacs-Nagy conducting the Elgar Introduction and Allegro in Verbier. Yes, it has something to do with the Hungarian musical tradition: all-giving, all-consuming passion, concentration, pride, rigour and fun, rolled up into one fabulous musical palacsinta...

Haydn's 'Oxford' Symphony -- written not all that long before the Beethoven -- was the opener, again filled with attention to detail, yet inhabiting rather a different world, one very much of 18th-century grace and elegance. Then came Birthday Boy Ferenc, in the persona of Stephen Hough: perhaps the perfect Lisztian, he stormed, dreamed and philosophised the First Piano Concerto into something much more worthwhile than it often seems. The terrific Anglo-Hungarian mix of Hough and Fischer took the work seriously and met it on its own terms, to dramatically colourful effect. Hough gave us the shortest, quietest Liszt encore you could imagine, and at the end the BFO added a Brahms Hungarian Dance (the one that segues with utter glee into the last section of 'Hejre Kati') and the Strauss Peasant Polka, in which the Hungarian-dancing orchestra started singing too. Result: audience on feet, yelling. Everyone happy. Time to party.

Upstairs, the wine flowed and the mini cherry strudels virtually evaporated the minute they appeared. The Hungarian chargee d'affaires explained that Hungary is basing its sixth-month presidency on the notion of Strong Europe; jokes were made about the placing of the storm before one can emerge into the sunny uplands of the fifth movement; many pan-European, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed Liszt fans were making friends and we all sang happy birthday to Ed Vaizey's mother, led by the evening's maestro himself (pictured left, with your blogger).

There will be a terrific Hungarian Liszt festival at Kings Place next week, from 26th to 29th Jan, featuring some amazing artists including violinist Barnabas Kelemen, pianist Denes Varjon and a folk group... Check the programme here and do come along. But more on this very soon...

As for the Hungaryfurore... The latest development is that Andras Schiff has expressed the view that he is now completely persona-non-grata in his native land and thinks he may never play there again. But meanwhile, Hungarian friends here with their fingers on the pulse of the media law issue have told me that the English translation of the legal pages in question is about to be presented to the EU powers-that-be and that if its contents do not meet with EU approval it will be changed accordingly. It may be worth remembering, at this juncture, that that is exactly what the EU is really for. Time to add Beethoven 9 to Beethoven 6? Complete, I hope, with tree.

Boldog évfordulót, Liszt Ferenc...

That's "Happy Anniversary, Franz Liszt", to you and me. It's the big Hungarian shebang at the Royal Festival Hall tonight. The Budapest Festival Orchestra and its founder and music director Ivan Fischer are here to play Haydn, Liszt and Beethoven; the Hungarian president, culture minister and a raft of ambassadors will be in attendance; the soloist in birthday boy Liszt's Piano Concerto No.1 will be our UK piano top-dog, the one and only Stephen Hough. It promises to be quite a night. If there are any tickets left, get one here.

I've done an interview with Fischer re tonight which is out now in this week's Jewish Chronicle. It doesn't seem to have hit the website yet, though, so I am reproducing it here. First, here is the orchestra with Fischer back in 1998, performing the Mozart Requiem in Heroes Square, Budapest, marking the BFO's 25th anniversary and given in memory of the victims of the 1956 Revolution.

If you go to the Royal Festival Hall this Sunday, listen out for a lot of Hungarian around the foyers. Speakers of this fearsomely complex language will be out in force: 16 January marks the London launch of both the Hungarian presidency of the EU and the 2011 bicentenary year of that Hungarian-born musical legend, Franz Liszt.

The Budapest Festival Orchestra will mark the event in a special concert of music by Haydn, Beethoven and Liszt himself. On the podium will be its founding director, the Hungarian-Jewish conductor Ivan Fischer.

Fischer is an undersung genius of the podium: he is among the most inspiring conductors in the world, yet one who has not entirely gained the universal recognition his musicianship deserves. Despite having held distinguished posts with orchestras in the US and western Europe, Fischer has always elected to return to his native Budapest, which has remained off the beaten musical track relative to Vienna and Berlin, although it boasts a magnificent cultural tradition and is home to the groundbreaking, influential and egalitarian system of musical training devised by Zoltán Kodály.

The combined Liszt bicentenary and Hungarian EU presidency represents an exceptional opportunity for the country to boost its international and cultural profile. “It will not change anything in Hungary,” Ivan Fischer comments, “but it may change the perception in other countries about Hungary. The country has a very rich culture and a very troubled present situation.”

That is all too true. In the financial meltdown that began in 2008, Hungary, its currency plummeting and unemployment rising, was on the edge of bankruptcy. Having enjoyed a boom in property and film-making (it offers strong financial incentives for foreign film-makers), it has been hard hit by the crash. Last year its notorious far-right, openly racist Jobbik Party won 47 seats in the 386-seat Hungarian parliament.

Fischer, though Jewish himself, takes a pragmatic view of this: he elects to use music as a positive and inspiring symbol of enduring humanity. “The situation is uncomfortable,” he acknowledges, “but our concerts with the Budapest Festival Orchestra are important to many people there, including the 100,000 Jews in Budapest. There is growing nationalism and racism in Hungary, with hatred against the Gypsy community. One needs to stand up against these tendencies. There are also great people there.”

Fischer was born into a musical Hungarian-Jewish family in Budapest in 1951; his elder brother, Adam, is also a celebrated conductor, currently music director of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. His earliest memories include the experience of the 1956 uprising, crushed brutally by Soviet forces while the world’s attention was diverted towards the Suez Crisis.

“I was five years old,” he recalls, “and I remember that we had to go to the cellar because of the shelling by tanks. The air pressure broke our windows upstairs. It was very cold until we found somebody to repair the glass.” Fischer nevertheless recalls childhood in 1950s-60s Budapest as “fun” and his musical studies progressed rapidly, encompassing piano, violin, cello and composition.

Later he studied conducting in Vienna with Hans Swarowsky and subsequently Nikolaus Harnoncourt, whose influence on him was prodigious. Still, his big break took place right here in the UK, where he won the Rupert Foundation conducting competition in 1976. This opened doors to guest conducting with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra, with which he undertook a world tour in 1982.

His posts have included principal conductorships with prestigious international orchestras, most recently that of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC, and he has been showered with honours: Gramophone’s Artist of the Year, Hungary’s Kossuth Prize, the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France, and the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in recognition of his services to help international cultural relations.

His family background is remarkably similar to that of Mahler: both had ancestors who were shopkeepers in the Tatra mountains. One of Fischer’s great-grandmothers, though, studied the piano with Franz Liszt himself. “When he wanted to convey the proper rhythm for a Viennese waltz, he danced with her all over the classroom!” Fischer recounts.

The concert on 16 January will include Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.1 with the British pianist Stephen Hough as soloist. Among the most famous of Liszt’s orchestral works, it represents the tip of the Lisztian iceberg that the bicentenary hopes to address -- for this sometimes controversial composer is still substantially misunderstood today.

“Liszt was an innovator, a pioneer,” says Fischer. “Some of his works are underrated because the main value, in his day, was the novelty.” This could sound paradoxical, but Fischer has a point: with hindsight, the original impact of such innovation is lost. “It seems less interesting today, 200 years later.” This is a valuable opportunity to reassess a composer whose works often paved the way for the iconoclastic musical developments of the early 20^th century.

Fischer founded the Budapest Festival Orchestra in 1983. Despite being in demand everywhere from the Israel Philharmonic to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, nurturing the BFO has remained his number one priority. The orchestra’s repute has grown incrementally and together they have brought Budapest some superb initiatives designed to widen the audience, with Cocoa Concerts for children, Surprise Concerts in which the programme is not advertised in advance, and One Forint Concerts in which Fischer talks about the music from the podium.

But the biggest innovation remains the BFO itself. A New York Times review has described the orchestra’s “dark, full sound” and “appealing energy that seems to flow from a combination of bottom-up and top-down leadership”. It is an ensemble of indubitably Hungarian character, playing with fabulous passion and conviction as well as absolute musical rigour.

“My main interest has been to create an orchestra of artists who are emotionally involved and creative,” Fischer says. “With some orchestras music-making feels like working and I think it should be playing. It is good that we use the word “play” for playing an instrument.” He is planning to cut back on his guest conducting, he adds: “I would like to stop completely in a few years and concentrate on my own orchestras.”

Fischer is also a composer, and this is where his fascination with his Jewish roots is most strongly reflected. “I compose sometimes,” he says modestly, “usually simple, tonal, vocal works. Many of them have Yiddish texts. This is because I fear that without compositions this language may be forgotten in a few hundred years. Others should also compose in Yiddish.”

Two of his Yiddish choral works for women’s choir, Sait gesund and A nay kleyd, were commissioned by Dutch television; and his most celebrated work is Eine Deutsch-Jiddische Kantate (A German-Yiddish Cantata), which has been performed in several European countries and the US, though has yet to be heard in the UK.

On Sunday the BFO can show us exactly what joys their country’s admirable music-making can deliver. But in a climate in which culture is under assault by funding cutbacks across Europe and the States, does Fischer feel that music and its audiences can continue to thrive? He does indeed. “Music will always survive,” he says simply. “It is essential to people. I am not worried.”

Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Festival Hall, 16 January. Box office: 0844 875 0073

[From the Jewish Chronicle, 14.1.11]

Amine & Hamza: Sounds of Tunisia

When Tom was on his way to Washington DC with the orchestra in 2008, he spotted a fellow passenger in the immigration queue carrying an instrument case that could only contain an oud. He bounced up to say hello and Amine M'Raihi was only too delighted to find someone who recognised this historic and beautiful Arabic instrument and wanted to know more. He and his brother, Hamza, who plays the kanun -- a type of zither -- were in fact on their way to perform at the Kennedy Center.

The brothers come from Tunisia and enjoy a successful international career as a duo; they have made seven CDs and play both together and in larger ensembles that mingle their characteristically north African sounds with jazz and modern influences. Extraordinarily enough, they are also studying medicine in Krakow.  We visited them there in the snow in 2009 and loved spending time in their warm, sparkly, astute company. They are wonderful, creative, sensitive musicians. More about them from Virtual Womex, here.

Today, given the developments in their homeland, I wanted to play the above song -- appropriately named 'Challenge' -- to let them know we are thinking of them and all the people of Tunisia.

Further reading: over at On An Overgrown  Path, Pliable has a fascinating thread devoted to the music of Tunisia.